Abstract
In my contribution I argue that globalization cannot be reduced to an economic process that takes place regardless of the participant’s conceptualizations of it. The very process of globalization as such has repercussions in the symbolic order where agents represent the meaning of sociopolitical events to themselves. In particular, this feature becomes manifest when reflecting on the fact that theories of globalization bear all the marks of the phenomenon they aim at characterizing. The global market of ideas, which globalization is, is inscribed in globalization as its symbolic counterpart, without which the phenomenon itself would have been something different. This leads me to the conclusion that an ontology of a plurality of worlds (or fields of sense, as I call them for technical reasons) is an apt way of making sense of the profound conceptual changes forced upon social scientists and philosophers alike when it comes to theorizing about globalization.
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Notes
- 1.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, p. 21–22 (German original: Idem, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, Hamburg: Meiner, 1995, p. 16).
- 2.
On the details of the underlying debates, see Markus Gabriel, Die Erkenntnis der Welt: Eine Einführung in die Erkenntnistheorie, Freiburg: Karl Alber, 2013 (3rd edition); Idem., Warum es die Welt nicht gibt, Berlin: Ullstein, 2013 (10th edition), as well as recently Paul Boghossian, Angst vor der Wahrheit, Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2013, and Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos. Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. See also my afterword to Boghossian’s book and my review of Nagel’s book in the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, June 10, 2013. An overview of the underlying debate landscape is provided by Markus Gabriel (ed.), Der Neue Realismus, Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2014.
- 3.
See in this sense also Wolfgang Prinz, Das Selbst im Spiegel: Die soziale Konstruktion von Subjektivität, Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2013.
- 4.
As a summary, see Bertrand Russell, The philosophy of Logical Atomism: Lectures delivered in 1918 and published as a series of articles by the Monist in the Volumes for 1918 and 1919, University of Minnesota, 1948, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus logico-philosophicus, London: Routledge, 1994.
- 5.
In addition to Jacques Derrida, some examples here are Jean-Luc Nancy, The creation of the world or globalization, Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007 (French original: Idem, La creation du monde ou la mondialisation, Paris: Èditions Galilée, 2002); Giacomo Marramao, The Passage West: Philosophy After the Age of the Nation State, London: Verso, 2012.
- 6.
From a philosophical standpoint, see particularly Peter Sloterdijk, In The World Interior of Capital, Cambridge: Polity Press 2013 (German original: Idem., Im Weltinnenraum des Kapitals: Für eine philosophische Theorie der Globalisierung, Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 2005 (3rd edition)).
- 7.
See, of course, Carl Schmitt, The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum, New York: Telos Press, 2006 (German original: Idem, Der Nomos der Erde im Völkerrecht des Jus Publicum Europaeum, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1950). See also Idem, Land and Sea: A World-Historical Meditation, New York: Telos Press, 2015 (German original: Idem, Land und Meer: Eine weltgeschichtliche Betrachtung, Stuttgart: Klett Cotta, 2011).
- 8.
See particularly the recent studies drawing on Niklas Luhmann by Michael Makropoulos, Modernität und Kontingenz, Munich: Fink, 1997; Markus Holzinger, Der Raum des Politischen: Politische Theorie im Zeichen der Kontingenz, Munich: Fink, 2006 and Idem, Kontingenz in der Gegenwartsgesellschaft: Dimensionen eines Leitbegriffs moderner Sozialtheorie, Bielefeld: transcript, 2007.
- 9.
On the contingency of reflection see Markus Gabriel/Slavoj Zizek, Mythology, Madness, and Laughter: Subjectivity in German Idealism, London: Continuum, 2009. See also the debates that build on Quentin Meillassoux, After Finitude. An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency, New York: Continuum Publishing, 2008.
- 10.
See also Martin Heidegger, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics. World, Finitude, Solitude, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001 (German original: Idem, Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik: Welt – Endlichkeit – Einsamkeit, Frankfurt/Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2004 (3rd edition)), as well as Markus Gabriel, Die Erkenntnis der Welt, op. cit. For more detail on Kant see also Markus Gabriel, An den Grenzen der Erkenntnistheorie, Freiburg: Karl Alber, 2008.
- 11.
Martin Heidegger, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics. World, Finitude, Solitude, op. cit., p. 176. (German original: Idem, Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik, op. cit., p. 261). See the critical analysis of this idea in Jacques Derrida, Of Spirit. Heidegger and the Question, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1989.
- 12.
See Martin Heidegger, The Age of World Picture, in: Idem., Off the Beaten Track, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, p. 57–85 (German original: Idem., Die Zeit des Weltbildes, in: Idem., Holzwege, Frankfurt/Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2003 (8th edition)); on this and the following, also Markus Gabriel, Warum es die Welt nicht gibt, op. cit.
- 13.
For more detail and a summary of this, see Markus Gabriel, Warum es die Welt nicht gibt, op. cit., as well as Idem, Die Erkenntnis der Welt, op. cit.
- 14.
In order to clear up some of the confusion that threatens to arise here, and to address the phenomenon in a more precise way, I generally talk about fields of sense rather than worlds. See also Markus Gabriel, Die Erkenntnis der Welt, op. cit., and Idem., Warum es die Welt nicht gibt, op. cit.
- 15.
This observation has recently been discussed under the catchphrase “New Realism.” See the voices in Markus Gabriel (ed.), Der Neue Realismus, op. cit., as well as—in addition to the previously mentioned work—Maurizio Ferraris, Manifest des Neuen Realismus, Frankfurt/Main: Klostermann, 2013.
- 16.
See Ray Brassier, Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
- 17.
See Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere, New York: Oxford University Press, 1989 (revised edition). The best overview of Badiou’s position is still found in Alain Badiou, Paulus: Die Begründung des Universalismus, Zurich: Diaphanes, 2009 (2nd edition).
- 18.
This essay came into being during my time as Acting Director of the Käte Hamburger College “Recht als Kultur” lecture series. Some of the ideas go back to the time of my fellowship at the same institution immediately preceding that, for which I would like to extend my thanks here.
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Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Tractatus logico-philosophicus, London: Routledge, 1994.
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Gabriel, M. (2019). The World of Worlds. In: Kühnhardt, L., Mayer, T. (eds) The Bonn Handbook of Globality. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90377-4_4
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