Ethics, Justice, and Recognition: Essays in Critical Theory by Paolo A. Bolaños

Among the tasks Paolo Bolaños undertakes, in exploring three of the main philosophical preoccupations of the Frankfurt School (ethics, justice, and recognition), are answering what is critical theory, reconstructing Adorno’s philosophy from the standpoint of a damaged life, probing art’s critical role in society and the relationship between aesthetics and ethics, and highlighting Honneth’s spheres of recognition in order to articulate a materialist philosophical anthropology. Bolaños teaches philosophy at the Faculty of Arts and Letters and the Graduate School of the University of Santo Tomas

• “Paolo Bolaños’ book demands a fundamental reassessment of the dominant practice of philosophy in the Philippines by counterposing it to the material and corporeal realities of suffering and injustice in the Philippine context. Departing from the usual exercises in slavish exposition and the predictably rote gestures of intellectual subjection, his sustained and rigorous theoretical engagement with the ideas of the Frankfurt School initiates a genuine process of critical assimilation which, perhaps for the first time, has the potential to transform itself into a vital collective project.”

— Ramon “Bomen” Guillermo,
University of the Philippines-Diliman

• “Paolo Bolaños’ work is an important contribution to the revival and sustained interest in critical theory in the Philippines. Traversing the first generation to the third generation of critical theory, Bolaños boldly engages with Horkheimer, Adorno, and Honneth, including Levinas and Ricoeur, on issues related to art, philosophical anthropology, politics, democracy, and education. Indeed, his book testifies to the truth that doing philosophy, especially in the Philippine context, is not detached from material reality. Instead, it is essentially tied to it by exposing the social pathologies which hinder genuine emancipation of our own people.”

— Renante D. Pilapil,
Ateneo de Davao University