#david held

[incierto-en-el-aire]

La perpetua búsqueda de la seguridad parece solo haber engendrado una inseguridad crónica

—  David Held

[renaissancethepoet]

Global Government: A Remedy to Collective Action Problems

Global Government: A Remedy to Collective Action Problems

All the states and all the individuals on the earth share one planet, with one finite pool of resources that everyone depends upon, yet there is no ultimate authority which has the jurisdiction and enforcement power to manage that finite pool of resources. Currently the world is composed of sovereign states that claim to have jurisdiction and enforcement power over their citizens and their…

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[unrealuniversality-blog]

Corporate Survival Compliance

Sixteenth and seventeenth century thought nurtured the principle of individualism, the pursuit of of rational self-interest. The philosophies which articulated the principle were committed to the view that the individual is rational, capable of independent thinking. The fulfillment of this individuality was held to be dependent upon certain social and economic conditions; conditions in which the individual would be free to work and think in a setting of his or her choice. Free competition in the market and liberalism in the polity were thought to be sufficient guarantees of the individual’s rights. Over time, however, the course of commodity production undermined the economic basis on which freedom of the individual was built. Competitiveness and the autonomy of the individual economic subject was revealed as a facade of capitalist society. Under the impact of ‘the institutions, devices and organizations of industry’, the notion of individual achievement was transformed into labour productivity figures. The individual’s performance became ‘motivated, guided and measured by standards external to him, standards pertaining to predetermined tasks and functions’. Conditioned by the necessities and exigencies of capital accumulation, the spheres governed by instrumental reason or, as Marcuse called it, technological rationality, expanded, creating a common framework of experience for all occupations. Compliance and the subordination of thought to pre-given goals and standards was now required of ‘all those who wish to survive’. Furthermore, as standardized techniques advanced and the laws and mechanisms of technological rationality expanded over the whole of society, they developed, as Marcuse put it, ‘a set of truth values which hold good for the functioning of the apparatus – and for that alone’. Proportions concerning production, effective  organization, the rules of the game, business methods, use of science and technique, are judged true or false according to whether or not the ‘means’ to which they refer are suitable or applicable (for an end which remains, of course, unquestioned).

David Held, Introduction to Critical Theory: Horkheimer to Habermas (p. 67)

[unrealuniversality-blog]

Reason and Freedom become again the concern of philosophy

Critical theorists could hardly think of becoming a stimulating influence on the masses. Marcuse has expressed this view forcefully and noted some of its implications:

“If the proletariat no longer acts as the revolutionary class … it no longer furnishes the ‘material weapons’ for philosophy. The situation thus reverts: repelled by reality, Reason and Freedom become again the concern of philosophy. The ‘essence of man’, his ‘total liberation’ is again experienced [only] in thought [in Gedanken erlebt]. Theory … again not only anticipates political practice, runs ahead of it, but also upholds the objectives of liberation in the face of a failing practice. In this function, theory becomes again ideology – not as false consciousness, but as conscious distance and dissociation from, even opposition to, the repressive reality. And by the same token, it becomes a political factor of utmost significance.”

David Held, Introduction to Critical Theory: Horkheimer to Habermas (p. 37)

[randomberlinchick]

The donation – of which £300,000 was received – was paid to a research centre LSE Global Governance, of which Held was co-director. Saif al-Islam was allowed to lay out "objectives and expectations" for the programme, according to leaked LSE documents.

Academic linked to Gaddafi's fugitive son leaves LSE | Education | The Guardian

This kind of shit happens with stunning regularity in major universities . . .