Capitalism

The main objective of human beings as absolute entities is related to our urge for survival, because in a material sense we are not self-supporting, but completely dependent on what nature offers us. In earlier times survival instincts meant that we lived as hunters, guided by our functional antennas (hunger, thirst, fatigue, sexual feelings, etc.). Today, this activity can be described as economically motivated, basically including everything that can be assumed to be serviceable, so it must therefore be construed very broadly – not merely providing in our primary needs, but everything else that is necessary for this. As our human society becomes more complex and more prosperous, secondary activities to attain the primary necessities of life become more comprehensive. In our present day and age they are even so multi-faceted that we can now expect to be occupied with such activity for perhaps the greatest part of life, possibly even without being truly aware of it on a daily basis.

Ian McEwan’s Solar has been the subject of many a debate, mostly due to its controversial representation of climate change’s cause and the solution offered for the global disaster. The paper explores the novel’s judgment over climate change’s fountainhead and the protagonist’s vain project to save the earth. The scope of the study encompasses the narrator’s accounts of the characters and events in the story. In the light of David Harvey’s notion of ‘spatial fix,’ the study, through a close reading of the novel, focuses on the context within which the story unfolds in order to elaborate on the transformation of the earth into a globalized monolithic built environment called ‘the planet’ for the sake of efficiency and free flow of capital and commodities. It also argues that the protagonist’s solar energy generation project is a neo-liberal initiative to replace a less lucrative production mode and tackle the system’s critical spell of overaccumulation, rather than global warming.

Fascinated by the recent scientific progress, even some philosophers today claim that philosophy is dead and that natural sciences (quantum cosmology, cognitive sciences) can answer questions which were once considered a domain of metaphysics: is our universe finite? Do we have free will? etc. The essay tries to problematize this claims by raising a series of questions. First, it is easy to show that modern science itself relies on a series of philosophical propositions. Second, what accounts for the role of science in our world is its link with capitalism. Third, we should distinguish between knowledge and truth: not only philosophy, other discourses (like Marxism or psychoanalysis) also practice a notion of truth which cannot be reduced to knowledge.  

Since Critical Rationalism is considered by some more of an attitude or mindset and by others a methodological approach to philosophical thinking and practical problem-solving, its application, or more accurately, its epistemological testing grounds, should be expected to be much more wide-ranging than they have been so far. With the exception of some published anthologies on Critical Rationalism and occasional nods to the legacy of Karl Popper’s falsificationist methodology, relatively few applicaions of a critical rational approach to contemporary theoretical debates in the social sciences have been published. I wish here to critically challenge the (optimistic) Hegelian and by extension the neoliberal view of the progress of American capitalism by reframing it with the Marxian notion of expropriation as applied to enslavement on plantations. The logic of enslavement as a process by which brutal exploitation has been practiced for centuries offers a falsifying test case of the rationality of capitalism and its promise of individual freedom of choice. This essay is an explicit exercise in the potential power of a version of Popperian critical rationalism being applied to the intersection of modern liberalism and capitalism, exploring the imbrication of a critical and rational analysis.

Dēnkard  (Acts of the religion), written in Pahlavi, is a summary of 10th-century knowledge of the Mazdean religion and is described by Jean de Menasce on the title page of his translation as a ‘Mazdean encyclopedia.’ The  Dēnkard  VI (Book VI of the  Dēnkard ) is representative of late antique and early medieval Zoroastrian ethical ideas. This article analyzes Book VI of the  Dēnkard  based on modern moral philosophy and introduces it as a candidate for early consequentialism and capitalism. The first generation of Iranian studies scholars in the late 19 th  and early 20 th  centuries such as Buch, Darmesteter, and Menant were aware of these concepts and even explained some of them, but the next generation did not take them seriously. This article also analyzes paymān (the ‘right measure’), that is the ancient Iranian ‘golden mean,’ in Book VI of the  Dēnkard  and shows the similarities and differences between  paymān  and the Aristotelian ‘golden mean.’ Probably, due to the biblical tradition in the interpretation of ancient religious texts or the anti-utilitarianism and anti-capitalism atmosphere in the second half of the 20 th  century, many scholars like Shaked inclined to the view that  paymān  is the main ethical principle of the  Dēnkard  VI and neglected its consequentialist and capitalist concepts.