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It was with a certain amount of surprise mixed in roughly equal proportions with curiosity that I recently accepted the task of writing a review of a work, published in 2001, on the encounter between the Enlightenment (meaning the French Enlightenment) and postmodernism. Reading in the Scottish Enlightenment suggests a need to know something about the wider European context though the exclusivity of France as the Enlightenment or as the home of Enlightenment is no longer a sustainable proposition. The Scots, in their energetic Universities, were as much involved with applying Newton and developing Locke or extending Shaftesbury or countermanding Mandeville as they were with the continental philosophies. The proposition put to me, to persuade me to the task, was the work was likely to contain ideas that intellectual historians of economics might profit from. A reflection on the significance of two potentially conflicting sets of ideas ought to have significance for the study of 18th-century economics developed within the cultural context of wider Enlightenment thought.

Drawing from the work of sociologist Niklas Luhmann, this paper analyzes and critiques the ways sociology presents itself as a vehicle for sociological “enlightenment.” It begins with a brief historical account of how sociology has come to describe itself as a science in the name of promoting social justice rooted back to the European Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. Next, the relevant elements of Luhmann's theory of society are explained ground the analysis. Luhmann's critiques of sociology and science are then presented to explain how a Luhmannian understanding of social systems exposes what is missing in sociology's current self-description of itself and its “enlightenment” mission. Building upon Luhmann's observations, a preliminary observational analysis of the communication techniques and technologies of sociology, such as classes, conferences, and publications, is assessed to evaluate the tools sociology uses to engage in communication and “irritate” other social systems. The central question here is, are these tools effective in communicating sociological knowledge in a way that aligns with the aspirational humanistic goals sociology seeks to achieve? The argument then concludes with some remarks about how sociology might potentially overcome its communicative efficacy problem if it takes seriously the insights from a Luhmannian approach to communication and considers alternative forms of communication to reach new audiences. In this way, sociology could perhaps overcome the gap between the facts of its communicational efficacy and its enlightenment norms.

Purpose – Appreciating the continuing relevance and contribution of Theodor W. Adorno's work requires acknowledgement of the difficulty to grasp his philosophy in a way that is consistent with that which is to be understood, as the necessary first step to achieving concordant understanding.

Design/methodology/approach – To assay an understanding of Adorno's quest for the object beyond the concept, it is best to undertake a journey through the complexity of his thinking, beginning with the book he wrote with Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment.

Findings – The difficulty to capture the substance of philosophy in a manner that allows for representation arises from the inherently processual character of philosophy, which is always both unfinished and without secure summation of report at any step along the way. Indeed, the difficulty is all the greater with respect to Adorno, in light of his postulate that philosophy “must strive, by means of the concept, to transcend the concept.”

Research limitations/implications – Adorno's obsession to overcome the compulsion of identity made him perceptive and blind at the same time. To liberate his insights from their reconciliatory-philosophical shroud, one would have to expose the concept of rationality to the same obsessive gaze under which false generalities dissolve in Adorno's philosophy.

Originality/value – The inherently processual character of Adorno's philosophy makes his writings especially germane to present conditions of modern society, as they highlight the importance of efforts to develop theories that are sufficiently sensitive to the dynamic character of modern society, including its inconsistencies and its contradictions.

The Scottish Enlightenment, which gave birth to classical liberal thought and political economy, developed out of a strong theological tradition and was marked by significant theological conflict. Most people understand the Scottish Enlightenment through the works of David Hume, Adam Smith, and their intellectual circle of Moderate clergy and literati. Though this group represents the dominant strain of thinking in the Scottish Enlightenment, one should not neglect other important contributions made by more orthodox clergy and literati. Comparing the ideas of less well-known, but leading figures of the Moderate and the orthodox literati, Hugh Blair and John Witherspoon, reveals different views on doctrines related to salvation, human nature, and God’s providence, as well as on the nature of moral judgment and education. These differences provide important context for understanding the ideas and arguments of more influential philosophers like Smith and Hume.

Allen’s critique of current Frankfurt School theory presents the joint methods of “problematizing genealogy” and “metanormative contextualism” as alternative for the normative grounding of critical theory. Through a close reading of Allen’s critique, I investigate whether Allen’s identification of philosophy of history is an accurate diagnosis of the problems of the normative grounding of current Frankfurt School theory, whether Allen’s distinction between metanormative and normative levels is tenable for critical theory, and whether Allen’s methodology constitutes a viable alternative for the normative grounding of critical theory. As an alternative, I suggest scrutinizing the grounding strategies of current Frankfurt School theory to expand beyond their genealogy in Enlightenment thought, and address the question of what made the affirmative form of thought underlying current Frankfurt School theory a historical possibility. Expanding on Allen’s reiteration of the mediated nature of categories, I suggest that the stark contrast between forms of thought underlying first- and second-generation Frankfurt School critical theory needs to be understood not in relation to philosophy of history but against the backdrop of the specific context of the European historical present that informs its normative universe.

Austrian economist Ludwig Mises’s central role in the socialist calculation debates has been consensually acknowledged since the early 1920s. Yet, only recently Nemeth, O’Neill, Uebel, and others have drawn particular attention to Mises’s encounter with logical empiricist Otto Neurath. Despite several surprising agreements, Neurath and Mises certainly provide different answers to the questions “what is meant by rational economic theory” (Neurath) and whether “socialism is the abolition of rational economy” (Mises). Previous accounts and evaluations of the exchange between Neurath and Mises suffer from attaching little regard to their idiosyncratic uses of the term “rational.” The paper at hand reconstructs and critically compares the different conceptions of rationality defended by Neurath and Mises. The author presents two different resolutions to a detected tension in Mises’s deliberations on rationality: the first is implicit in Neurath’s, O’Neill’s, and Salerno’s reading of Mises and faces several interpretational problems; the author proposes a divergent interpretation. Based on the reconstructions of Neurath’s and Mises’s conceptions of rationality, the author suggests some implications with respect to Viennese Late Enlightenment and the socialist calculation debates.

This conceptual paper examines the claim of ahistorical, transcultural universality in aspects of Enlightenment thinking as it has been embedded in the assumptions of classical economic theory. Specifically, with respect we query to presupposing rationality and maximization, that all nations are on an evolutionary course to betterment conceptualized as development and progress.

Using historical data, examined from a cross-cultural perspective, the arguments put forth in England in the late seventeenth century to justify the enclosures and private property, that led to revolution, are shown to have introduced new institutions, including private property, entrepreneurship and self-regulating markets.

Maximizing behavior is shown to be the result of successive generations being socialized under the new institutional arrangements that, conflated with modernity, were then taken to the Americas and South Asia as part of British colonial/imperial expansion.

When economic theory is examined in its cultural and historical context it is just one of a large number of possible cultural patterns.

If contemporary economic and social institutions, and the behaviors they produce, are but one of a number of alternative possibilities, many of the problems facing so many can be rethought and perhaps ameliorated with new institutional arrangements.

The slogan ‘not in my backyard’ became a symbol of a successful campaign in a psychological war waged by the Soviet Union against the United States and the NATO allies. Russians have already placed their cruise missiles in firing positions, but tried to prevent the US Army from doing the same on the other side of the Iron Curtain, namely in the NATO countries. Misguided citizens of the welfare states on the western side of the Iron Curtain demonstrated for disarmament in spite of Soviet secret build up of the missile stockpile. The EU citizens and their intellectual elites never dealt with the Russian communist genocide and underestimated hidden injuries of the Cold War. Today, when Soviet secret decisions leaked out due to a temporary access to the communist archives in Moscow, even carefully orchestrated campaigns in social media cannot change facts and wipe awareness out. This time it is the financial level of military expenditures, which is questioned by Russian trolls in the social media of the Dutch, German or French populations. Apart from military expenditures of NATO member states, Russian troll campaigns are also directed towards the support of multicultural ideologies and welcoming all immigrants. At first sight, they are as successful with the immigrants as they were with the cruise missiles. Most respondents in the Netherlands claim that immigrants are welcome – provided they settle down somewhere else – anywhere, but not in my backyard. Perhaps in my neighbour's backyard, behind national borders? In Turkey, Greece, Hungary, Poland, Italy, Spain – anywhere (but not here)? This is the message defining the subtle brand of a Dutch xenophobia, phrased in a politically correct way. Nobody, except extreme right (e.g., Wilders) or extreme libertarians (e.g., Baudet), dares to spell it out – and yet it haunts all political debates. A spectrum is truly haunting Europe – a spectrum of mass migrations. Are all forces uniting against it? No, but even the most ardent believers in welcoming Third World masses in the first world infrastructures conclude that good fences do good neighbours make or that a sound democracy requires solid territorial borders. Or does it? And what does this turn of political mind tell us about the values of Enlightenment?

Toward the end of the 20th century, some work within political theory, of a kind that primarily foregrounds ethical considerations and another kind within political geography that links such ethical concerns to explication in terms of social space, territoriality and scale, has resuscitated the notion of contingent universality as an alternative to the either/or embrace or rejection of universality (and consequent denigration/celebration of particularity). As witnessed by the so-called spatial turn in many of the social and cultural sciences, this very circumstance, at least in the English-speaking world, has been one wellspring of current interdisciplinary interest in various geographical concepts and traditions. For political geographers, the idea of contingent universality arguably invites a fecund perspective from which to reflect upon a range of substantive and epistemological outcomes, which this essay will argue, are densely bound up in what, in short hand, is labeled globalization.