Matthew Specter
Biographic Data
| ID | 953672 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Matthew Specter |
| GIVEN NAMES | Matthew |
| FAMILY NAME | Specter |
| SIGNATURE | SPECTER M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Central Connecticut State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0946-3162 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 10 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 14 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Fascism in America
Has fascism arrived in America? In this pioneering book, Gavriel D. Rosenfeld and Janet Ward have gathered experts to survey the history of fascism in the United States. Although the US established a staunch anti-fascist reputation by defeating the Axis powers in World War II, the unsettling truth is that fascist ideas have long been present within American society. Since the election of Donald Trump as President in 2016, scholars have debated wh…
Realism
Apostates from Realism
By focusing on the joint scholarly work of Harold and Margaret Sprout in the first two-thirds of their academic career, this article aims to recover the work of an important female international thinker from relative obscurity. The Sprouts were important protagonists in the making of a geopolitical strand of realism centered at Princeton University during the war. Historians of realism focused on developments in the mid-1950s centered on Columbia…
The Atlantic Realists
In The Atlantic Realists , intellectual historian Matthew Specter offers a boldly revisionist interpretation of "realism," a prevalent stance in post-WWII US foreign policy and public discourse and the dominant international relations theory during the Cold War. Challenging the common view of realism as a set of universally binding truths about international affairs, Specter argues that its major features emerged from a century-long dialogue betw…
Realism after Ukraine
This article seeks to historicize both the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the debate on realism occasioned by Russian aggression in Ukraine since 2014. Using the research of Gerard Toal on Russia’s construction of its security interests in the post-Soviet spaces that include Ukraine, the article argues that neorealist geopolitical explanations fail to do justice to the roles of contingency and culture in setting Russia’s so-called ‘red l…
Peter Uwe Hohendahl. Perilous Futures
Carl Schmitt (1888–1985) was one of the leading legal and political thinkers in the Weimar Republic, a theorist for the Third Reich between 1933 and 1939, and an unrepentant foe of the liberal democratic Germany that emerged in its western half after 1945. Schmitt’s political and legal writings have experienced a renaissance of interest in the West in the last twenty years due to their perceived relevance to contemporary political questions faced…
Jenseits Der Anarchie. Weltordnungsentwürfe Im Frühen 20. Jahrhundert Jens Steffek Leonie Holthaus Frankfurt and New York
From Eclipse of Reason to the Age of Reasons? Historicizing Habermas and the Frankfurt School
Two new works historicize the human faculty of reason. The first, a biography of Jürgen Habermas, traces the evolution of his postmetaphysical theory of reason from its origins to its most recent iterations. The second offers a far broader genealogy of the concept of reason in modern thought, especially in Kant, Hegel, Marx, and the Frankfurt school. Both depict Habermas as one of the most important protagonists in contemporary philosophy, but of…
Grossraum and Geopolitics
Contemporary theorists of international relations and historians of empire have found utility in the spatial theory of “ Grossraum ,” or “great space,” that Carl Schmitt developed in the 1930s and 40s. This article asks whether Schmitt's concept of Grossraum can be fully disentangled from its German history—from the Nazi pursuit of Lebensraum in which it eventually culminated, but with which it is not identical either. I argue that Schmitt's Gros…
Deprovincializing the Study of European Ideas
Though the fourteen contributors to this volume bring varied perspectives on method, most striking is their common engagement with contextualist approaches. While some of the essays advocate a temporally and spatially extended, renewed history of ideas with debts to Arthur Lovejoy, and are critical of excessive contextualization, several either defend contextualism, or the culture concept, or offer a more robust materialist foundation for the his…
Introduction
What’s “Left” in Schmitt?
Since the mid-1980s, the Western Left has split on how to evaluate the political and constitutional theory of Carl Schmitt. The analysis traces and historicizes a movement from aversion to appropriation of Schmitt’s writings in contemporary political theory. In the first half of the chapter Habermas is presented as developing his own positions in part through deep engagements with Schmitt’s thought. In the second half of the chapter, three contem…
Habermas
This book follows postwar Germany's leading philosopher and social thinker, Jürgen Habermas, through four decades of political and constitutional struggle over the shape of liberal democracy in Germany. Habermas's most influential theories - of the public sphere, communicative action, and modernity - were decisively shaped by major West German political events: the failure to de-Nazify the judiciary, the rise of a powerful Constitutional Court, s…
Habermas's Political Thought, 1984–1996
Jürgen Habermas (b. 1929) has for decades been recognized as a leading European philosopher and public intellectual. But his global visibility has obscured his rootedness in German political culture and debate. The most successful historical accounts of the transformation of political culture in West Germany have turned on the concept of German statism and its decline. Viewing Habermas through this lens, I treat Habermas as a radical critic of Ge…
Apostates from Realism
By focusing on the joint scholarly work of Harold and Margaret Sprout in the first two-thirds of their academic career, this article aims to recover the work of an important female international thinker from relative obscurity. The Sprouts were important protagonists in the making of a geopolitical strand of realism centered at Princeton University during the war. Historians of realism focused on developments in the mid-1950s centered on Columbia…
From Eclipse of Reason to the Age of Reasons? Historicizing Habermas and the Frankfurt School
Two new works historicize the human faculty of reason. The first, a biography of Jürgen Habermas, traces the evolution of his postmetaphysical theory of reason from its origins to its most recent iterations. The second offers a far broader genealogy of the concept of reason in modern thought, especially in Kant, Hegel, Marx, and the Frankfurt school. Both depict Habermas as one of the most important protagonists in contemporary philosophy, but of…
Grossraum and Geopolitics
Contemporary theorists of international relations and historians of empire have found utility in the spatial theory of “ Grossraum ,” or “great space,” that Carl Schmitt developed in the 1930s and 40s. This article asks whether Schmitt's concept of Grossraum can be fully disentangled from its German history—from the Nazi pursuit of Lebensraum in which it eventually culminated, but with which it is not identical either. I argue that Schmitt's Gros…
Realism after Ukraine
This article seeks to historicize both the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the debate on realism occasioned by Russian aggression in Ukraine since 2014. Using the research of Gerard Toal on Russia’s construction of its security interests in the post-Soviet spaces that include Ukraine, the article argues that neorealist geopolitical explanations fail to do justice to the roles of contingency and culture in setting Russia’s so-called ‘red l…
Habermas
This book follows postwar Germany's leading philosopher and social thinker, Jürgen Habermas, through four decades of political and constitutional struggle over the shape of liberal democracy in Germany. Habermas's most influential theories - of the public sphere, communicative action, and modernity - were decisively shaped by major West German political events: the failure to de-Nazify the judiciary, the rise of a powerful Constitutional Court, s…
Habermas's Political Thought, 1984–1996
Jürgen Habermas (b. 1929) has for decades been recognized as a leading European philosopher and public intellectual. But his global visibility has obscured his rootedness in German political culture and debate. The most successful historical accounts of the transformation of political culture in West Germany have turned on the concept of German statism and its decline. Viewing Habermas through this lens, I treat Habermas as a radical critic of Ge…
What’s “Left” in Schmitt?
Since the mid-1980s, the Western Left has split on how to evaluate the political and constitutional theory of Carl Schmitt. The analysis traces and historicizes a movement from aversion to appropriation of Schmitt’s writings in contemporary political theory. In the first half of the chapter Habermas is presented as developing his own positions in part through deep engagements with Schmitt’s thought. In the second half of the chapter, three contem…
Introduction
Deprovincializing the Study of European Ideas
Though the fourteen contributors to this volume bring varied perspectives on method, most striking is their common engagement with contextualist approaches. While some of the essays advocate a temporally and spatially extended, renewed history of ideas with debts to Arthur Lovejoy, and are critical of excessive contextualization, several either defend contextualism, or the culture concept, or offer a more robust materialist foundation for the his…
From Eclipse of Reason to the Age of Reasons? Historicizing Habermas and the Frankfurt School
Two new works historicize the human faculty of reason. The first, a biography of Jürgen Habermas, traces the evolution of his postmetaphysical theory of reason from its origins to its most recent iterations. The second offers a far broader genealogy of the concept of reason in modern thought, especially in Kant, Hegel, Marx, and the Frankfurt school. Both depict Habermas as one of the most important protagonists in contemporary philosophy, but of…
Grossraum and Geopolitics
Contemporary theorists of international relations and historians of empire have found utility in the spatial theory of “ Grossraum ,” or “great space,” that Carl Schmitt developed in the 1930s and 40s. This article asks whether Schmitt's concept of Grossraum can be fully disentangled from its German history—from the Nazi pursuit of Lebensraum in which it eventually culminated, but with which it is not identical either. I argue that Schmitt's Gros…
Jenseits Der Anarchie. Weltordnungsentwürfe Im Frühen 20. Jahrhundert Jens Steffek Leonie Holthaus Frankfurt and New York
Peter Uwe Hohendahl. Perilous Futures
Carl Schmitt (1888–1985) was one of the leading legal and political thinkers in the Weimar Republic, a theorist for the Third Reich between 1933 and 1939, and an unrepentant foe of the liberal democratic Germany that emerged in its western half after 1945. Schmitt’s political and legal writings have experienced a renaissance of interest in the West in the last twenty years due to their perceived relevance to contemporary political questions faced…
The Atlantic Realists
In The Atlantic Realists , intellectual historian Matthew Specter offers a boldly revisionist interpretation of "realism," a prevalent stance in post-WWII US foreign policy and public discourse and the dominant international relations theory during the Cold War. Challenging the common view of realism as a set of universally binding truths about international affairs, Specter argues that its major features emerged from a century-long dialogue betw…
Realism after Ukraine
This article seeks to historicize both the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the debate on realism occasioned by Russian aggression in Ukraine since 2014. Using the research of Gerard Toal on Russia’s construction of its security interests in the post-Soviet spaces that include Ukraine, the article argues that neorealist geopolitical explanations fail to do justice to the roles of contingency and culture in setting Russia’s so-called ‘red l…
Fascism in America
Has fascism arrived in America? In this pioneering book, Gavriel D. Rosenfeld and Janet Ward have gathered experts to survey the history of fascism in the United States. Although the US established a staunch anti-fascist reputation by defeating the Axis powers in World War II, the unsettling truth is that fascist ideas have long been present within American society. Since the election of Donald Trump as President in 2016, scholars have debated wh…
Realism
Apostates from Realism
By focusing on the joint scholarly work of Harold and Margaret Sprout in the first two-thirds of their academic career, this article aims to recover the work of an important female international thinker from relative obscurity. The Sprouts were important protagonists in the making of a geopolitical strand of realism centered at Princeton University during the war. Historians of realism focused on developments in the mid-1950s centered on Columbia…
Political science (11 works) · Epistemology (10 works) · Law (10 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Politics (10 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · German (5 works) · History (5 works) · Law (5 works)