On critique and therapy, normativity and Kant (!)

Comments on Filipe Campello, Crítica dos afetos (São Paulo: Autêntica, 2022)

Abstract

Critique of the Affections seeks to position the affections as the object of social criticism and defend their role in diagnosing injustice and correcting the perspective of justice. In the following commentary, I reconstruct the work's argument and raise a number of questions. As well as (1) accusing Campello of having incurred in the metacritical obsession he condemns, I question the "therapeutic" intention he envisages for his critical theory. Next, (2) I turn to the meanings of norm and normativity. I point out that the work oscillates between the proposal to reconstruct the grammar of social practices (pre-discursive level) and the reconstruction of accounts and discourses themselves. I also question a terminological use of the approach presented as "first-order justice" and, above all, I question the provenance and status of the normative criteria. Finally, (3) I question a set of assertions about Kantian philosophy. By highlighting Kantian public law and alluding to the role of feelings and affections in Kant's practical philosophy, I suggest that it could be an ally rather than an opponent of Campello's more general project.