Ted Benton
Biographic Data
| ID | 172128 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ted Benton |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ted |
| FAMILY NAME | Benton |
| SIGNATURE | BENTON T |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Essex |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 72 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 259 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 72 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1978 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Political Economy of Eco-sustainable Alternatives: Progressive and Equitable Futures
The title of this book clearly indicates that it is addressing central questions of our time. As it becomes increasingly clear that contemporary civilisation is heading for catastrophe on a global scale, with all the main strategies for reform either discredited or manifestly failing to achieve the hopes formerly held, fatalism seems unavoidable. That is, except for those who still strive to envision possible alternative historical societies—ones…
From a realist epistemology to ecosocialism: An interview with Ted Benton, Part 2
In Part 1 of this interview Professor Benton discussed his early life, education and the start of his academic career and focused in particular on his Philosophical Foundations of the Three Sociologies and his views on realism. In Part 2 he turns to his subsequent work. He discusses his most significant articles and later books. As well as his work as a field naturalist, the discussion ranges across structural Marxism, the moral status of animals…
From a realist epistemology to ecosocialism: An interview with Ted Benton, part 1
Ted Benton has had a long and distinguished career and made important contributions in realist philosophy, ecology and Marxism. In part 1 of this wide-ranging interview he discusses his formative years and education, how he came to have an enduring interest in ecology and natural history, and his early work and career. In particular he discusses two matters of special interest to realists. First, how he came to write, and the key arguments contai…
Marx, Animals, and Humans
The December 2018 issue of Monthly Review featured John Bellamy Foster and Brett Clark's "Marx and Alienated Speciesism" and Christian Stache's "On the Origins of Animalist Marxism: Rereading: Ted Benton and the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844," both of which take up Ted Benton's work on animals and Marxism. Here Ted Benton offers a response to the critiques offered by Foster and Clark, and Stache
Key Sociological Thinkers
Disentangling Capital's Web
Philosophical Foundations of the Three Sociologies (RLE Social Theory)
An extended historical and philosophical argument, this book will be a valuable text for all students of the philosophy of the social sciences. It discusses the serious alternatives to positivist and empiricist accounts of the physical sciences, and poses the debate between naturalism and anti-naturalism in the social sciences in new terms. Recent materialist and realist philosophies of science make possible a defence of naturalism which does not…
Philosophical Foundations of the Three Sociologies (Rle Social Theory)
Growing Moral Relations: Critique of Moral Status Ascription
Costas Panayotakis. Remaking Scarcity: From Capitalist Inefficiency to Economic Democracy
Philosophical Foundations of the Three Sociologies (RLE Social Theory)
Interdisciplinarity and Climate Change: Transforming Knowledge and Practice for Our Global Future
Keywords: climate changecritical realisminterdisciplinarity
Social Theory And The Global Environment
Science, Nature and Society: Some Alternatives to Empiricism
Interpretive Approaches 3: Critical Rationality
Interpretive Approaches 2: Rationality as Rule-Following: Cultures, Traditions and Hermeneutics
Commentary on Recent Developments
Some Problems of Empiricism and Positivism
Conclusion: In Defence of Philosophy
Feminism, Knowledge and Society
Post-structuralism and Post-modernism
Empiricism and Positivism in Science
Introduction to the First Edition
Interpretive Approaches 1: Instrumental Rationality
Critical Realism and the Social Sciences
Biology and Social Science: Why the Return of the Repressed should be given a (Cautious) Welcome
This paper is programmatic in its intent. I have avoided extensive literature-citations and, in some areas, resorted to rather tendentious assertion rather than thorough argumentation. My purpose is to 'place on the table' a project for re-conceptualising the relationship between sociology (together with related social science disciplines) and the biological sciences. Of course, this relationship has a lot of history behind it, some of it not at …
Philosophical Foundations of the Three Sociologies (Rle Social Theory)
Philosophy of Social Science. The Philosophical Foundations of Social Thought
dicho que formaban parte del populacho más abyecto de nuestras ciudades europeas.Y sin embargo seguían siendo salvajes.Los vicios que de nosotros habían adoptado se mezclaban con un no sé qué de grosero e incivilizado que los hacía cien veces más repelentes (...) Esos seres débiles y depravados pertenecían, sin embargo, a una de las más célebres tribus del antiguo mundo americano.Teníamos ante nosotros, y apena decirlo, a los últimos descendiente…
Objective' Interests and the Sociology of Power
In the first section of this paper I note a parallel between certain problems generated by Steven Lukes's 'three-dimensional' view of power, and what I call the 'paradox of emancipation' in certain traditions of Marxist thought. Lukes's critique of what he calls the 'one' and 'two-dimensional' views of power is next reviewed, and Lukes's own 'three-dimensional' view subjected to analysis and criticism. Lukes's definition of power in terms of inte…
Philosophy of Social Science: The Philosophical Foundations of Social Thought
Rights and Justice on a Shared Planet: More Rights or New Relations
It is now widely recognized that members of other animal species and the rest of non-human nature urgently need to be protected from destructive human activities. This article evaluates the case for extending the moral and legal scope of rights as a strategy for achieving these aims. It suggests that we require a more pluralistic approach to the moral standing of non-human beings—i.e. one which does not depend entirely on the discourse of rights …
Social Theory And The Global Environment
Marxism and Natural Limits: An Ecological Critique and Reconstruction
Many on the left find a source of hope in the realignment of ‘green’ and socialist perspectives. I believe they are right to do so, and I share the hope. But it remains true that important currents within Green politics and culture are hostile to socialism (as they
How Many Sociologies
Why the Welcome Needs to be Cautious: A Reply to Keith Sharp
On the limits of malleability
Disentangling Capital's Web
Marxism and the Moral Status of Animals
Perlo's engagement with the complex and ambiguous relationship between Marxism (and, more broadly, the socialist traditions) and the moral status of animals is very much to be welcomed. This sort of engagement is valuable for three main reasons. First, the more narrowly focused social movement activity—whether committed to animal rights, social justice in the workplace, or advancement for women—is liable to cut itself off from critical insights c…
Marx, Malthus and the Greens: A Reply to Paul Burkett
Founded in 1683 in Leiden, the Netherlands, Brill is a leading international academic publisher in the Humanities, Social Sciences, International Law, and Biology. With offices in the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, the USA and Asia, Brill today publishes more than 360 journals and 2,000 new books and reference works each year as well as a large number of databases and primary source research collections
Response to Cecile Jackson
The Politics of Animal Rights - Where is the Left
At the beginning of 1995, in the midst of a generalized governmental crisis, with accusations of ‘sleaze’ and corruption in high places, historically high levels of unemployment, fears about the commercialization of the health service and unprecedented government unpopularity, the political system was suddenly rocked by an explosion
From a realist epistemology to ecosocialism: An interview with Ted Benton, part 1
Ted Benton has had a long and distinguished career and made important contributions in realist philosophy, ecology and Marxism. In part 1 of this wide-ranging interview he discusses his formative years and education, how he came to have an enduring interest in ecology and natural history, and his early work and career. In particular he discusses two matters of special interest to realists. First, how he came to write, and the key arguments contai…
The Rural–Urban Division in U.K. Politics
Beyond Left and Right? Ecological Politics, Capitalism and Modernity
Animals and us: Relations or ciphers
Marxisme et limites naturelles: Critique Et Reconstruction Écologiques
Marx forgets that labour, which he considers as a simply transformative process, is also an appropriation of natural resources, and that nature, which he sees as an instrument of production, must also be reproduced. He shares also the spontaneous illusion of industrial capitalism which ignores its externalities and the modern ideology of domination of nature. Yet, historical materialism can be represented as « the ecology of the human species » s…
Prolegomena to a debate
Louis Althusser: An appreciation
L'A. etudie la pensee de Louis Althusser et releve ses contributions epistemologiques qui ont contribuer a ouvrir la voie aux irrationalismes du post-marxisme et du post-structuralisme
The State of Sociology: An Evaluation of Current Assessments
How Many Sociologies
The Philosophy of the Social Sciences
Objective' Interests and the Sociology of Power
In the first section of this paper I note a parallel between certain problems generated by Steven Lukes's 'three-dimensional' view of power, and what I call the 'paradox of emancipation' in certain traditions of Marxist thought. Lukes's critique of what he calls the 'one' and 'two-dimensional' views of power is next reviewed, and Lukes's own 'three-dimensional' view subjected to analysis and criticism. Lukes's definition of power in terms of inte…
Extended Review
The Basic Concepts of Historical Materialism
The preoccupations of Althusser’s writing during this early period remain philosophical: the elaboration of conceptions of knowledge, of science and its contrast with ideology, of dialectics, totality and historical causality. These philosophical ideas and themes are, as we have seen, set to work in an attempted periodisation of Marx’s work. This periodisation represents Marx’s work as divided by an ‘epistemological break’ through which a scienti…
The Rise and Fall of Structural Marxism
Shorter Notices
Biological Ideas and Their Cultural Uses
The topic of my talk is a very ancient one indeed. It bears upon the place of humankind in nature, and upon the place of nature in ourselves. I shall, however, be discussing this range of questions in terms which have not always been available to the philosophers of the past when they have asked them. When we ask these questions today we do so with hindsight of some two centuries of endeavour in the ‘human sciences’, and some one and a half centu…
The Rise and Fall of Structural Marxism
The Intellectual Saga of Althusserian Marxism
Understanding Social Science: A philosophical Introduction to the Social Sciences
The Rise and Fall of Structural Marxism: Althusser and His Influence
Domination and Power
Marxism and Natural Limits: An Ecological Critique and Reconstruction
Many on the left find a source of hope in the realignment of ‘green’ and socialist perspectives. I believe they are right to do so, and I share the hope. But it remains true that important currents within Green politics and culture are hostile to socialism (as they
On the limits of malleability
Louis Althusser: An appreciation
L'A. etudie la pensee de Louis Althusser et releve ses contributions epistemologiques qui ont contribuer a ouvrir la voie aux irrationalismes du post-marxisme et du post-structuralisme
Biology and Social Science: Why the Return of the Repressed should be given a (Cautious) Welcome
This paper is programmatic in its intent. I have avoided extensive literature-citations and, in some areas, resorted to rather tendentious assertion rather than thorough argumentation. My purpose is to 'place on the table' a project for re-conceptualising the relationship between sociology (together with related social science disciplines) and the biological sciences. Of course, this relationship has a lot of history behind it, some of it not at …
Animals and us: Relations or ciphers
Why the Welcome Needs to be Cautious: A Reply to Keith Sharp
Ecology, Socialism and the Mastery of Nature: A Reply to Reiner Grundmann
Reiner Grundmann’s ‘The Ecological Challenge to Marxism’ is very much to be welcomed as a well-argued and challenging contribution to a debate that is clearly quite central for the Left today. I think it is especially valuable for its defence of the metaphor of ‘domination’ or ‘mastery’ over
Marxisme et limites naturelles: Critique Et Reconstruction Écologiques
Marx forgets that labour, which he considers as a simply transformative process, is also an appropriation of natural resources, and that nature, which he sees as an instrument of production, must also be reproduced. He shares also the spontaneous illusion of industrial capitalism which ignores its externalities and the modern ideology of domination of nature. Yet, historical materialism can be represented as « the ecology of the human species » s…
Prolegomena to a debate
Natural relations: Ecology, Animal Rights, and Social Justice
Rationality and Nature: A Sociological Inquiry into a Changing Relationship
Sociology (48 works) · Philosophy (42 works) · Epistemology (39 works) · Philosophy (20 works) · Political Economy and Marxism (19 works) · Political science (19 works) · Social science (18 works) · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice (14 works) · Environmental ethics (14 works) · Law (11 works)