Critical Theory Take-Home Exam 2015

DUE DATE: Mon 9^th Nov

Answer any two questions (1, 250 words each).

Submission

Please submit via Turnitin. The Take-Home exams will not be returned and late take-home exams will normally not be accepted. All extension queries address to the coursegiver (email: John.Grumley@sydney.edu.au)

QUESTIONS

     1.   Compare and contrast Hegel’s account of the role of philosophy in the Preface to the Elements of the Philosophy of Right with Adorno’s account in Marginalia to Theory and Praxis. Who has the most adequate account?

    2.   Compare and contrast the ways in which Habermas and Foucault consider the practical dimension of philosophy. Who has the most adequate account form a contemporary perspective?

    3.   Compare Marx’s account of praxis in the Theses on Feuerbach with Adorno’s critique of it in Marginalia to Theory and Praxis. Who has the strongest position and why? (Students who have attempted Q1 on this paper should not do this question as well)

    4. Compare Adorno’s account of reason in ‘Notes and Sketches’ from Dialectic of Enlightenment with Habermas’s account of enlightenment in Modernity Versus Postmodernity. Who gives the most adequate account and why?

    5. In his account of the relationship between theory and practice Habermas sees a vital role for philosophy. What is this role and what do you imagine Marx would think of this reevaluation? Is Habermas justified?

        6. In the German Ideology Marx gives the division of labour a central role in his account of historical materialism. Specialisation also plays a large part in Habermas’s account of the changed cultural context of philosophy in The Relation Between Theory and Praxis Revisited. Compare and contrast these two analyses. Are they that different? And if so, why?

    7. Habermas views modernity as an “incomplete project” of Enlightenment rationality whereas Foucault counsels us not to accept the “blackmail” of the Enlightenment. Are these alternative stances a question of style or substance? Explain the alternative positions and suggest who is more convincing and why?

     8. Compare and contrast the accounts of the uses of suffering in Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts and Benjamin’s Thesis on the Philosophy of History? Who do you think give the most potent account and why?