John Grumley
Biographic Data
| ID | 370437 |
|---|---|
| NAME | John Grumley |
| GIVEN NAMES | John |
| FAMILY NAME | Grumley |
| SIGNATURE | GRUMLEY J |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Sydney |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5308-2546 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 40 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 12 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 40 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1986 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Contemporary China and the Budapest School in Australia
György Márkus, 75% mensch
In this article I give an overall interpretation of the development of the Budapest School in Australia as political emigres, who initially worked and wrote in Melbourne and Sydney until the final years when Heller and Feher moved on to New York in the mid-1980s and then back to Budapest in 1993. The translation of How Is Critical Economic Theory Possible? has allowed us to better grasp the motivations and theoretical innovations of the Budapest …
Tragedy and philosophy
This book is the sum of Agnes Heller's reflections on European history and culture, seen through the prism of Europe's two unique literary creations: tragedy and philosophy
Towards an intellectual Biography of György Márkus
Agnes Heller’s Late Lectures
In this paper I take a closer look at Agnes Heller’s late public lectures and her theoretical methods, scope and their contemporaneity. My relationship to Agnes Heller was a thirty-five year long friendship. She was one of my early mentors. Into her nineties, Agnes was characterized by great vitality, all-consuming interests, from all domains of higher culture to the everyday and current politics. I also meet her periodically during that time in …
Márkus, our contemporary
The road not taken - Márkus on Habermas
This paper concerns a little-known debate between Jürgen Habermas and György Márkus. Habermas argued that the Marxian paradigm of production was obsolete in the light of his own proposal for a 'communicative turn' in contemporary critical theories that avoids reductivism by focusing on moral learning processes connected to language and communicative interaction. This paper sets out Habermas's critique of the paradigm of production and Márkus's re…
De libero arbitrio (On Free Choice of the Will)
The Dialectic of Enlightenment Reconsidered
In the darkest days of the Second World War Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno overturned the wisdom of modern times by suggesting that the idea of a constant struggle between Enlightenment and myth overlooked an unacknowledged identity between these alleged eternal combatants. This paper will briefly explain this claim and examine it in its historical context, consider the responses of the subsequent generation to the first iteration of Dialectic…
Towards a Critical Theory of Cultural Pragmatics
At the time of his death in 2016 György Márkus’s magnum opus on the culture of modernity that he laboured on throughout his post-Budapest period remained unfinished. This paper attempts to reconstruct the theory of Cultural Pragmatics that lay at the core of this immense project. The intention is to retrieve the key ideas of Márkus’s understanding of modern cultural relations by reviewing the terms of his critique of Roland Barthes and Michel Fou…
Success, Needs and Decency
In the following paper I will analyse three key themes characteristic of the life and work of Marisha Márkus. This paper was originally read for a conference on her work at the time of her farewell from the University of New South Wales in 2002. Success, Needs and Decency are signature themes that percolate through her work. Under the theme of success I turn to central ideas in her early sociology of women and to the meaning of success in the wor…
Editors' Intro
Saying Goodbye to George
The critical potential of Marx today
On Reconciling Biopolitics and Critical Theory
This article examines attempts to reconcile biopolitics and Critical Theory, by drawing on Miguel Vatter’s The Republic of the Living (2014). Vatter contends that modern neoliberal government has become biopolitical by incorporating biological life into the calculations of political rationality. To counteract its “normalising” impacts, he recommends an “affirmative politics” of the living, one that escapes the techniques envisaged to administer a…
History and Totality
In this work, originally published in 1989, the author establishes a tradition of radical historicism from Hegel to the Budapenst School. He charts both its continuous evolution from the early 19th century to the late 20thh, and its transformation in the context of European social, economic and cultural change. Through a reappraisal of historical interpretation from Hegel to Foucault, the book demonstrates the contemporary relevance of radical hi…
The Messianic, Sovereignty and the Camps
After centuries of relative neglect, the notion of the messianic is again in vogue in radical discourse. This paper explores the meaning and significance of this concept in the work of Hannah Arendt and Giorgio Agamben. They have been chosen not only because of their biographical and theoretical linkages to the thinker most responsible for the current resurgence of the concept of the messianic – Walter Benjamin – but also because they offer two a…
The paradoxes of democratic life
Recent events have only reinforced the fact that the value of freedom occupies a pre-eminent, but also paradoxical, role in modern societies. Nowhere have the ambiguities and ambivalences of this leading concept been more fully explored than in recent analyses by György Márkus and Axel Honneth. The following paper brings these two theorists together, examining Márkus's claims for the perplexity that overtakes an investigation of modern freedom ag…
Ágnes Heller finds her voice
The paper is a reflection on the biography and philosophy of Ágnes Heller. It considers questions of emigration, personality, politics, change, continuity, and friendship in the development of her philosophy
Antipodean Enlightenment
In his monumental collection Culture, Science, Society: The Constitution of Cultural Modernity, György Markus lays down the conceptual framework for the theorisation of modern high culture across the cultural spheres and articulates an account of cultural pragmatics or cultural relations – author, text and public – in the domains of science, arts and the humanities. He explores in great detail the conceptual keystones in the evolution of the cult…
Dialogue with the Dead
The idea of a “dialogue with the dead” strikes us by turns as both impossible and intriguing. Yet, what can be really meant by it is far from clear. This essay attempts to explore this idea in the work of novelist W. G. Sebald. It examines the scope and the meaning of such an interchange in his works and connects this theme to his wider explorations of “creaturely life.” It also links this particular dimension of Sebald's notion of “creaturely” o…
New Adventures in the Dialectic of Humanism
This paper attempts to assess the state of the contemporary debate over humanism. Beginning with a brief recap of the main historical meanings of the concept of humanism itself, it details both the most recent articulation of the humanist standpoint in the work of Tzvetan Todorov and his "critical human ism" and the most potent anti-humanist replies in W. G. Sebald and Giorgio Agamben. While concerned to critically evaluate these new constellatio…
Agnes Heller's Existential Ethics and Bare Life
The following paper explicates and critically analyses the existential ethics of the reflective postmodernist phase in the work of Agnes Heller. Beginning with a brief summary of the biographical and theoretical roots of her development, it goes on to analyse the meaning of her key slogan of “turning contingency into destiny.” After elaborating her version of the “existential leap” and her later attempts to refine her position in An Ethics of Per…
Agnes Heller and the Question of Humanism
This article explores the vagaries of Agnes Heller's relationship to humanism. It initially outlines a brief account of both the historical adventures of humanism and of the great debates in the middle of the 20th century that conditioned the contemporary reception of the concept of humanism. It then analyses Heller's own unique intellectual formation under the tutelage of Lukács. After briefly outlining her initial commitment to his humanist pro…
Hegel, Habermas and the Spirit of Critical Theory
This paper explores the complex relation between Hegel and Habermas. Centring the discussion around the key themes of philosophy, modernity and political philosophy, it argues for a gradual re-approachment of Habermas towards Hegel. In the final section on critical theory, it takes up the question of the spirit of this theory to offer a more trenchant critique of Habermas' theoretical short coming from this perspective
Dissatisfied Society
The Messianic, Sovereignty and the Camps
After centuries of relative neglect, the notion of the messianic is again in vogue in radical discourse. This paper explores the meaning and significance of this concept in the work of Hannah Arendt and Giorgio Agamben. They have been chosen not only because of their biographical and theoretical linkages to the thinker most responsible for the current resurgence of the concept of the messianic – Walter Benjamin – but also because they offer two a…
Towards an intellectual Biography of György Márkus
Success, Needs and Decency
In the following paper I will analyse three key themes characteristic of the life and work of Marisha Márkus. This paper was originally read for a conference on her work at the time of her farewell from the University of New South Wales in 2002. Success, Needs and Decency are signature themes that percolate through her work. Under the theme of success I turn to central ideas in her early sociology of women and to the meaning of success in the wor…
The paradoxes of democratic life
Recent events have only reinforced the fact that the value of freedom occupies a pre-eminent, but also paradoxical, role in modern societies. Nowhere have the ambiguities and ambivalences of this leading concept been more fully explored than in recent analyses by György Márkus and Axel Honneth. The following paper brings these two theorists together, examining Márkus's claims for the perplexity that overtakes an investigation of modern freedom ag…
Antipodean Enlightenment
In his monumental collection Culture, Science, Society: The Constitution of Cultural Modernity, György Markus lays down the conceptual framework for the theorisation of modern high culture across the cultural spheres and articulates an account of cultural pragmatics or cultural relations – author, text and public – in the domains of science, arts and the humanities. He explores in great detail the conceptual keystones in the evolution of the cult…
Agnes Heller's Existential Ethics and Bare Life
The following paper explicates and critically analyses the existential ethics of the reflective postmodernist phase in the work of Agnes Heller. Beginning with a brief summary of the biographical and theoretical roots of her development, it goes on to analyse the meaning of her key slogan of “turning contingency into destiny.” After elaborating her version of the “existential leap” and her later attempts to refine her position in An Ethics of Per…
Negotiating the 'Double Bind
Agnes Heller was one of the first critical theorists to turn her attention to a contemporary theory of modernity. Yet her many writings on this topic remained fragments until the publication of her A Theory of Modernity (1999). This article focuses on the structural elements of this account. It traces the evolution of Heller's ideas in regard to logics, dynamic and social arrangement of modernity. It explains how these fit into her own developmen…
Weber's Fragmentation Of Totality
Adventures of the Concept of Totality
Weber's Fragmentation Of Totality
Marx and the Philosophy of the Subject
Dissatisfied Society
Fukuyama's Hegelianism—Historical exhaustion or philosophical closure
L'A. examine les fondements philosophiques de la reconstruction du concept hegelien de fin de l'histoire chez Fukuyama. Face a l'ambiguite de son analyse d'une fin democratique et liberale de l'histoire, le philosophe s'eloigne de l'esprit moderne de l'historicisme hegelien et se rapproche a la lettre du concept de cloture de la philosophie
Max Horkheimer
1995). Max Horkheimer: a new interpretation. History of European Ideas: Vol. 21, No. 1, pp. 126-129
Worldliness' in the Modern World
Revolting liberties
(1998). Revolting liberties: Revolution and freedom in Arendt and Foucault. The European Legacy: Vol. 3, On Social Darwinism, pp. 53-71
A Utopian Dialectic of Needs? Heller's Theory of Radical Needs
The concept of `radical needs' has been a constant element in Heller's social philosophy over the last 25 years despite the fact that her own perspective moved progressively away from Marxian philosophical anthropology towards the position that she now characterizes as reflective post-modernism. This article charts this theoretical journey with a close examination of her articulation of the concept of radical needs in various phases of her work. …
Negotiating the 'Double Bind
Agnes Heller was one of the first critical theorists to turn her attention to a contemporary theory of modernity. Yet her many writings on this topic remained fragments until the publication of her A Theory of Modernity (1999). This article focuses on the structural elements of this account. It traces the evolution of Heller's ideas in regard to logics, dynamic and social arrangement of modernity. It explains how these fit into her own developmen…
From the Agora to the Coffee-House
This paper considers Agnes Heller's attempt to construct a post Marxist radical philosophy. It examines the two main phases of this project: beginning with her late seventies A Radical Philosophy, it charts her development towards the position she now characterises as reflective post-modernism. It shows that despite a constant commitment to rational critique, Heller's concept of philosophical radicalism has shifted from an emphasis on total criti…
From the Agora to the Coffee-House
Heller's Paradoxical Cultural Modernity
Exploring the Options in No-Man's Land
This paper compares the analysis of the antinomies of modern culture in the work of Agnes Heller and György Markus. It is particularly concerned with Heller's innovative introduction of a third optative concept of culture as cultural conversation. The rationale, contours and diagnosis linked to this normative concept are explored and contrasted to the historicising alternative presented in Markus. It is argued that some weaknesses in Heller's acc…
Agnes Heller
Hegel, Habermas and the Spirit of Critical Theory
This paper explores the complex relation between Hegel and Habermas. Centring the discussion around the key themes of philosophy, modernity and political philosophy, it argues for a gradual re-approachment of Habermas towards Hegel. In the final section on critical theory, it takes up the question of the spirit of this theory to offer a more trenchant critique of Habermas' theoretical short coming from this perspective
Agnes Heller and the Question of Humanism
This article explores the vagaries of Agnes Heller's relationship to humanism. It initially outlines a brief account of both the historical adventures of humanism and of the great debates in the middle of the 20th century that conditioned the contemporary reception of the concept of humanism. It then analyses Heller's own unique intellectual formation under the tutelage of Lukács. After briefly outlining her initial commitment to his humanist pro…
New Adventures in the Dialectic of Humanism
This paper attempts to assess the state of the contemporary debate over humanism. Beginning with a brief recap of the main historical meanings of the concept of humanism itself, it details both the most recent articulation of the humanist standpoint in the work of Tzvetan Todorov and his "critical human ism" and the most potent anti-humanist replies in W. G. Sebald and Giorgio Agamben. While concerned to critically evaluate these new constellatio…
Agnes Heller's Existential Ethics and Bare Life
The following paper explicates and critically analyses the existential ethics of the reflective postmodernist phase in the work of Agnes Heller. Beginning with a brief summary of the biographical and theoretical roots of her development, it goes on to analyse the meaning of her key slogan of “turning contingency into destiny.” After elaborating her version of the “existential leap” and her later attempts to refine her position in An Ethics of Per…
Dialogue with the Dead
The idea of a “dialogue with the dead” strikes us by turns as both impossible and intriguing. Yet, what can be really meant by it is far from clear. This essay attempts to explore this idea in the work of novelist W. G. Sebald. It examines the scope and the meaning of such an interchange in his works and connects this theme to his wider explorations of “creaturely life.” It also links this particular dimension of Sebald's notion of “creaturely” o…
Antipodean Enlightenment
In his monumental collection Culture, Science, Society: The Constitution of Cultural Modernity, György Markus lays down the conceptual framework for the theorisation of modern high culture across the cultural spheres and articulates an account of cultural pragmatics or cultural relations – author, text and public – in the domains of science, arts and the humanities. He explores in great detail the conceptual keystones in the evolution of the cult…
Ágnes Heller finds her voice
The paper is a reflection on the biography and philosophy of Ágnes Heller. It considers questions of emigration, personality, politics, change, continuity, and friendship in the development of her philosophy
The Messianic, Sovereignty and the Camps
After centuries of relative neglect, the notion of the messianic is again in vogue in radical discourse. This paper explores the meaning and significance of this concept in the work of Hannah Arendt and Giorgio Agamben. They have been chosen not only because of their biographical and theoretical linkages to the thinker most responsible for the current resurgence of the concept of the messianic – Walter Benjamin – but also because they offer two a…
The paradoxes of democratic life
Recent events have only reinforced the fact that the value of freedom occupies a pre-eminent, but also paradoxical, role in modern societies. Nowhere have the ambiguities and ambivalences of this leading concept been more fully explored than in recent analyses by György Márkus and Axel Honneth. The following paper brings these two theorists together, examining Márkus's claims for the perplexity that overtakes an investigation of modern freedom ag…
History and Totality
In this work, originally published in 1989, the author establishes a tradition of radical historicism from Hegel to the Budapenst School. He charts both its continuous evolution from the early 19th century to the late 20thh, and its transformation in the context of European social, economic and cultural change. Through a reappraisal of historical interpretation from Hegel to Foucault, the book demonstrates the contemporary relevance of radical hi…
Philosophy (35 works) · Sociology (33 works) · Epistemology (28 works) · Political science (19 works) · Critical Theory and Philosophy (18 works) · Law (17 works) · Philosophy (15 works) · Aesthetics (12 works) · Law (11 works) · Politics (11 works)