Salvaging Modernity: A Social Contract for the Age of Permacrisis

Erscheinungsjahr 2025
ISBN: 978-90-04-73616-0
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 33, 231 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm

Reihe: Social and Critical Theory

Modernity is stuck on an unsustainable course, which poses a challenge to both critical theory and praxis. My book develops a comprehensive diagnosis of the times by reviewing the rapidly growing field of critical theories that focus on structural paradoxes and social suffering. To address the complex challenges of the era of permacrisis, various emancipatory praxes are elaborated from the perspective of intersubjective (e.g., mimetic violence), technological (e.g., algorithmic reification), and discursive (e.g., cynical justification) distortions. In order to provide a synthetic framework, a new social contract is proposed, based on responsibility towards the particularistic other instead of universal justice.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Sik, Domonkos

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtswissenschaft Allgemein
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Soziale Fragen & Probleme
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Philosophie: Allgemeines, Methoden

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments

Introduction: A Critical Theory for the Age of Permacrisis 1 The Contemporary Challenge of Social Criticism 2 Social Contract as a Critical Praxis 3 The Principles of a Social Contract in the Age of Permacrisis 4 In Search of the Missing Contractors 5 Towards a Social Contract for the Age of Permacrisis

1 From the Crises of Modernization to the Renewal of Social Contracts – the Dialectics of Freedom Taming 1 From System Paradoxes to Global Crises 1.1 From Market Bubbles to Financial Crisis: Global Capitalism out of Control 1.2 From Political Polarization to Solidarity Crisis: the Cost of the Moral Panic over Migration 1.3 From Exploiting Nature to Pandemic: the Structural Components of COVID-19 2 Taming Universal Freedom: Social Contracts in Early and Classic Modernity 2.1 Hobbes: Constraining Individual Freedom 2.2 Rawls: Constraining Market Freedom 3 The Normative Basis of a Social Contract in the Age of Permacrisis: from Universal Justice to the Morality of the Face and Hospitability 3.1 The Limitations of Universalistic Freedom 3.2 The Particularistic ‘Impossible Moralities’ 3.3 The ‘Trial of Particularity’ as Principle and Praxis 4 The Missing Contractors and the Critical Praxes of Grounding Moral Commitment

Reconfiguring Paradox Intersubjectivities: from Mimetic Crisis to the Supplements of Solidarity

2 Mimetic Crisis Unleashed – (Mis)Managing Violence in Late Modernity 1 Sociability from Controlling Mimetic Violence 1.1 Mimetic Desire and Violence 1.2 Managing Contagious Violence through Sacrifice 2 A Fragile Balance: the Classic Modern Paradigm of Controlling Mimetic Desire and Violence 2.1 The Reconfiguring Space of Mimesis 2.2 Mimetic Desire Unleashed 3 A Balance Turmoiled: the Late Modern Paradigm of Controlling Mimetic Desire and Violence 3.1 The Coalition of Capitalism-Fueled Desire and Biopolitical Surveillance 3.2 The Unsustainable Paradigm of Mimetic Violence 4 Naturalized Cruelty and Alternative Sacrificial Rites

3 From Constrained Subjectivities to Paradox Intersubjectivities – Impossible Solidarity and Its Substitutes 1 The Transforming Space of Social Suffering and Solidarity 2 The Dimensions of Late Modern Social Suffering 2.1 The Distortions of Late Modern Capitalism 2.2 The Individual Consequences of System Expansion 3 Internalizing Paradoxes: the Ideal-Types of Constrained Subjectivity 3.1 Unharmed Subjectivity 3.2 Unscrupulous Mobile Subjectivities 3.3 Uncertain Experimenting Subjectivities 3.4 Desperately Struggling Subjectivities 3.5 Broken Subjectivity 4 Impossible Solidarity: the Reduced Interactive Space of Constrained Subjectivities 5 The Substitutes of Solidarity – Emancipatory Intersubjectivities and the Trial of Particularity

Reconfiguring Paradox Inter-Objectivities: from Rigid Flesh to Hacking Back Ethics into Technology

4 Rigid Flesh – System Integration and Technologically Mediated Chiasm 1 Existence and the Plasticity of Chiasm 1.1 From Consciousness to Flesh 1.2 Inhabiting Chiasm: Enjoyment, Instrumentality and the Ethical 1.3 The Impossibility of Possibility: Death and Transcendental Meanings 2 From Chiasm to Structural Coupling 2.1 From Phenomenology to Autopoietic Systems 2.2 The Modernization Dynamics of Meaning Systems 2.3 Chiasm as System Coupling 3 The Critiques of Technology 4 From the Critique of Technology to the Trials of Particularity

5 Empty Satisfaction – Beyond Technologically Mediated Enjoyment 1 A Social Phenomenology of Embodied Enjoyment 1.1 The Visceral Level of Satisfaction 1.2 The Existential and Ontological Narratives of Enjoyment 1.3 Sharing and Intersubjectivity: the Ethical Aspects of Enjoyment 1.4 The Reduction of Enjoyment: from the Exclusivity of Visceral Satisfaction to Addiction 2 The Structural Components of Late Modern Enjoyment 2.1 Reified Control over the Visceral 2.2 The Existential Consequences of Social Disintegration 2.3 The Lost Horizon of the Ethical: Inequalities of Joy and the Overburdening of Intimacy 3 Hacking the Reified Actor-Networks of Satisfaction

Reconfiguring Paradox Discourses: from Cynical Justifications to the Reclaiming of Mutual Understanding

6 Justifying the Paradoxes of Modernity – the Emergence of Contemporary Cynical Discourses 1 Traditional, Classic and Late Modern Economies of Worth 1.1 Modernization and the Dialectics of Justification 1.2 Premodern, Classic and Late Modern Cités 2 The Late Modern Emptying of Critique 2.1 Modernization and the Emptying of Critique 2.2 From Emptied Critique to the Birth of Contemporary Cynicism 3 The Cynical Modalities of Justification 4 Overcoming Cynical Justifications

7 Reclaiming Communicative Action – Mutual Understanding in the Age of Technologically Mediated System Communication 1 Mutual Understanding via Speech Acts: the Latent Preconditions of Communicative Action 1.1 Action Coordination through Communication 1.2 Strategic and Dogmatic Distortions of Communicative Action 1.3 Moral Development and Communicative Action 2 The Late Modern Limitations of Mutual Understanding 2.1 The Triumph of Late Modern Digital Populism 2.2 The Expansion of Moral-Free Zones of Action 2.3 The Twilight of Traditions 2.4 Communication Trapped in Preconventional Morality 3 Overcoming the Obstacles of Mutual Understanding 3.1 Proximity vs. System Integration 3.2 Bricolage vs. Technological Reification 4 Reclaiming Communicative Action: the Triangle of Proximity, Bricolage and Justification

Concluding Remarks – from the Networks of Salvaging to a Social Contract for the Age of Permacrisis

Bibliography

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Domonkos Sik is Associate Professor at the Eötvös Loránd University, alumni of CEU-IAS. His research deals with political culture and mental disorders from a critical theoretical perspective. He wrote several monographs including Radicalism and Indifference (2016) and Empty Suffering (2021).