Multicultural Dynamics and the Ends of History: Exploring Kant, Hegel, and Marx

by Réal Fillion

Overview

Multicultural Dynamics and the Ends of History provides a strikingly original reading of key texts in the philosophy of history by Kant, Hegel, and Marx, as well as strong arguments for why these texts are still relevant to understanding history today.

Réal Fillion offers a critical exposition of the theses of these three authors on the dynamics and the ends of history, in order to provide an answer to the question: "Where are we headed?" Grounding his answer in the twin observations that the world is becoming increasingly multicultural and increasingly unified, Fillion reasserts the task of the speculative philosophy of history as it had been understood by German philosophy: the articulation and understanding the historical process as a developmental whole.

Fillion's interpretation engages many recent strands of social and political thought in order to provide a new understanding of current events, and possible futures, grounded in the understanding of the dynamics of the past and the present provided by Kant, Hegel, and Marx. The result is a rich and timely answer to the question of where our world is headed today.

Published in English.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780776606705
Publisher:	Les Presses de l'Université d'Ottawa/University of Ottawa Press
Publication date:	02/28/2008
Series:	Philosophica
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	186
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Réal Fillion has taught philosophy for almost 30 years and is Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Sudbury, part of the Laurentian UniversityFederation. He is the author of Multicultural Dynamics and the Ends of History: Exploring Kant, Hegel, and Marx and Foucault and the Indefinite Work of Freedom, both also published by the University of Ottawa Press.

Table of Contents

Preface     iii
Introduction: Where Are We Headed?     1
One World
Kant and the Cosmopolitan Point of View     21
Real Universality as a Challenge to the Cosmopolitan Ideal     39
The Dynamics of Recognition
Prologue: Hospitality-Conditional and Unconditional     61
Mutual Recognition and the Challenge of Unfamiliar Familiarities     69
Hegel, The Particularity of Conflicts, and the Spaces of "Reason-ability"     87
The Basic Struggle
Marx, Productive Forces, and History     107
The Biopolitical Production of the Common     125
Conclusion: The Dynamic Telos of History - A Shared Democratic World     143
Works Cited     151