Political Categories: Thinking Beyond Concepts

✍ Scribed by Michael Marder

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2019
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 211
• Edition: Hardcover
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Western philosophy has been dominated by the concept or the idea--the belief that there is one sovereign notion or singular principle that can make reality explicable and bring all that exists under its sway. In modern politics, this role is played by ideology. Left, right, or center, political schools of thought share a metaphysics of simplification. We internalize a dominant, largely unnoticeable framework, oblivious to complex, plural, and occasionally conflicting or mutually contradictory explanations for what is the case.

In this groundbreaking work, Michael Marder proposes a new methodology for political science and philosophy, one which he terms "categorial thinking." In contrast to the concept, no category alone can exhaust the meaning of anything: categories are so many folds, complications, respectful of multiplicity. Ranging from classical Aristotelian and Kantian philosophies to phenomenology and contemporary politics, Marder's book offers readers a theoretical toolbox for the interpretation of political phenomena, processes, institutions, and ideas. His categorial apparatus encompasses political temporality and spatiality; the revolutionary and conservative modalities of political actuality, possibility, and necessity; quantitative and qualitative approaches to the study of political reality; the meaning of political relations; and various senses of political being. Under this lens, the political appears not as a singular concept but as a family of categories, allowing room for new, plural, and often antagonistic ideas about the state, the people, sovereignty, and power.

✦ Table of Contents

Title Page......Page 2
Copyright......Page 3
Dedication......Page 4
Contents......Page 5
Preface......Page 7
Categorial Reduction; or, Reductio ad Conceptum......Page 11
The Real Problem of Republicanism......Page 17
Categories, Not Classifications......Page 24
Infrapolitics and Intrapolitics......Page 28
Ordinary Language Politics......Page 32
A Categorial Politics of Truth......Page 38
2. The Initial Approach: Aristotle......Page 43
Ousia-Beingness-Presence......Page 44
Quantity......Page 52
Space......Page 58
Relation......Page 62
Positionality and Correlationality......Page 66
Quality......Page 71
A Form of Politics......Page 81
Political Figurations......Page 85
The Categories “Themselves”......Page 89
An Excursus on Transtranscendental Reason......Page 96
“Before” the Categories: Forms of Judgment......Page 101
“After” the Categories: Schematism......Page 109
State......Page 116
Revolution......Page 130
Power......Page 142
Sovereignty......Page 156
Appendix 1: Aristotle’s Categories—a Political Interpretation......Page 167
Appendix 2: Kant’s “Transcendental Analytic” (Critique of Pure Reason)—a Political Interpretation......Page 178
Notes......Page 189
Bibliography......Page 195
Index......Page 199