Heathwood Institute and Press aims to provide a venue for critical theoretical work that contains a radical, alternative edge. In a retrieval of critical theory – and of the academics as a whole – the goal of Heathwood is to, on the one hand, foster penetrating and normative discussion on the type of social issues characteristic of our rotten social reality. It is our aim to advance the critical theoretical tradition by offering normative critique of social-philosophical issues from a radical, foundational perspective that draws from an alternative to epistemology, anthropology and cosmology.
On the other hand, it is also a central aspect of our intentions at Heathwood that such normative critique and theory remains tethered to strict phenomenological or empirical grounds. Our aim in this light is two-fold: to hold close the experiential/phenomenological threads of everyday experience and, in turn, to extend those threads outward toward a broader scope of analysis in light of a radical critical social philosophy.
Due to our phenomenological background we encourage if not demand practical and grounded analysis which draws directly from the everyday events of daily life and experience. Phenomenology – especially a post-Sartrean critical-phenomenology – is a science of examples; it is driven by the need to keep as close as possible to the everyday experience of life, society and so on. This need is certainly expressed in how we try to promote a type of research that is ceaselessly engaged with phenomena; the metaphysics of language also follows this rule. In a similar sense, due to our post-Adornian heritage we equally demand normative social critique from these phenomenological grounds, one which therefore offers engaged analyses of coercive social structures and always with the aim of offering a fundamental alternative to them. We wholly feel – and herein lies a ‘guiding principle’ of the Heathwood Institute – that in the awareness of a radical alternative to epistemology, anthropology and cosmology, we have the ability to strive openly and genuinely toward a critical theory that is not only foundational in content but also engaging and revealing for the reader.
In this way, as a school of thought, each member of Heathwood shares a similar passion and a similar interest. Indeed, our aim to be more than a mere group of author/researchers who have come together under the canopy of a publishing house. Heathwood Press, the publishing arm of Heathwood Institute, functions as a unique and independent outlet that allows for us to raise a radical voice concerning a breadth of social issues.
At the end of our first year in operation there will have been several major publications to come from out of the institute, which explore everything from the fundamental philosophical problem of human history through to an analysis of the ravaged state of education, to a critique of the self-perpetuation of the “bad social context” behind liberal democratic ideology.
Heathwood would like to invite anybody who feels that they share a similar awareness of society, history, experience, academic thought and so forth, to submit their work to the Institute.
All information regarding submissions can be found here.
Heathwood
