The Resources of Critique

Introduction

Part I: Four Kinds of Impasse

1. Modernity and its Promises: Habermas and Bidet

1.1 Between sociological suspicion and the rule of law: Jürgen Habermas

1.2 With and against Marx and Rawls: Jacques Bidet

2. Between Relativism and Universalism: French Critical Sociology

2.1 Capitalism and its critiques: Boltanski and Chiapello

2.2 The dialectic of universal and particular: Pierre Bourdieu

3. Touching the Void: Badiou and Žižek

3.1 The exception is the norm

3.2 Miracles do happen: the ontology of Alain Badiou

3.3 Unreal: Slavoj Žižek and the proletariat

4. The Generosity of Being: Antonio Negri

4.1 All is grace

4.2 Negri's Grundrisse: revolutionary subjectivity versus Marxist 'objectivism'

4.3 The refusal of transcendence

Part II: Three Dimensions of Progress

5. A Critical Realist Ontology

5.1 The story so far

5.2 Dimensions of realism

6. Structure and Contradiction

6.1 Realism about structures

6.2 The primacy of contradiction

6.3 A dialectic of nature?

7. Justice and Universality

7.1 From fact to value

7.2 Equality and well-being

7.3 Why equality matters

8. Conclusion