As my work with these themes has developed and matured over the years, so has my academic practice of acknowledging helping hands, minds and institutions. Especially when it comes to the older texts included in this compilation, I am therefore likely to have forgotten many of the people that I owe a lot for their contributions along the way. I am sorry about this, and can only hope they will forgive me these omissions due to youthful negligence, ignorance and – some may add – a flawed character.

The Introduction was in a draft version made public at my homepage at www.academia.com in June 2016. Thanks a lot to Mogens Chrom Jacobsen who generously provided many helpful suggestions and corrections, as well as to Joaquín Valdivielso and Andres Felipe Hurtado for their comments.

The Presentation was also made public as a draft at my homepage at www.academia.com in June 2016, and I am grateful for comments and corrections by Joaquín Valdivielso.

The Interlude has not been published before. Also in this case, however, a draft version was made public in June 2016 at my www.academia.com homepage, and regarding this work I am grateful for comments, critique and corrections received from, in particular, Mogens Chrom Jacobsen, but also from Anders Ramsay, Joaquín Valdivielso, Luise Li Langergaard and Karsten Mellon Hansen. Part of the argument was presented and discussed in July 2016 at my PhD course at Universidad de la Laguna, Tenerife, Spain. Thanks to Maria José Guerra Palmero for the invitation and the pleasant stay, and thanks also to Maria José, Gabriel Bello and the rest of the participants for inspiring discussions.

Some of the basic arguments were presented in Danish already in 2010, in the chapter “6. Kritisk teori” in Michael Hviid Jacobsen, Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen & Peter Nedergaard (eds.), Videnskabsteori, pp. 168–195 (København: Hans Reitzel). A much extended version was published as “7. Kritisk teori” in the 2nd edition of the said book, 2012, pp. 245–87, and finally an abridged and thoroughly revised version as “7. Kritisk teori” (now co-authored with Luise Li Langergaard) in the 3rd edition of the book, 2015, pp. 251–86. I am grateful for comments, critique and corrections to this work in Danish, which I have received at various stages from Anne-Marie Eggert Olsen, Heine Andersen, Jonas Jakobsen, Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, Lars Theil Münster, Luise Li Langergaard, Martin Laurberg and Per Jepsen. Thanks also to Jan Riis Floor who originally, in 1980, introduced me to the Critical Theory of Horkheimer and Habermas, not because of philosophical inclination, but out of duty, since in those years it was considered essential reading. Thanks, finally, to Jan Ulrik Dyrkøb and Flemming Juhl who in the autumn 1987 – independently of each other, but in the same semester and at the same university (University of Copenhagen) – both gave their own course on Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enligthenment; to Gitte Pedersen, with whom I was to write a joint essay, for good discussions, and to Ole Thyssen who had the grace afterwards to explain to me and discuss not only the reasons for his marking, but also various crucial issues related to the content.

Chapter 1 was originally published as “Value, Business and Globalisation – Sketching a critical conceptual framework”, Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 39, No. 1–2, 2002, pp. 161–67. Allow me to express my gratitude to Juan-Carlos Siurana for the invitation to rework my presentation at the 14th Annual Conference of the European Business Ethics Network (eben), Valencia, 12th Sept. 2001, to an article in this special issue of Journal of Business Ethics, together with a very exclusive selection of contributions to the conference. It became my first publication in what at the time was recognized as an A-journal within this field, and I am also grateful for Juan-Carlos’s editorial comments and suggestions. The article was presented at Roskilde University in December 2003 and reprinted in Jacob Dahl Rendtorff (ed.), Værdier, etik og socialt ansvar i virksomheder – Brudflader og konvergens (Roskilde University: Center for Værdier i Virksomheder. Institut for Samfundsvidenskab og Erhvervsøkonomi, 2003), pp. 168–77. A Danish translation forms Chapter 7 in my I lyset af Bataille – politisk filosofiske studier (København: Politisk Revy, 2012), pp. 160–70.

Chapter 2 was originally published as “On a Universal Scale. Economy in Bataille’s General Economy”, Philosophy of Social Criticism, Vol. 38, No. 2, 2012, pp. 169–97. Thanks to the anonymous reviewers for helpful suggestions and especially to the editor-in-chief, David Rasmussen, for granting me the favour, upon my humble pleas, not to shorten the article even though it was recommended by the reviewers. An early version was presented at Chinese Academy of the Social Sciences (cass) in Beijing, September 2009. Thanks to Zhou Zuiming for the invitation, to Li Jian for translating the lecture, and to the participants for comments and questions. A presentation was also scheduled at the annual conference on Philosophy and the Social Sciences, Prague, May 2010, but due to institutional obstacles I had to stay at home. An abridged version translated by Li Jian was published in Chinese in cass’s journal, Foreign Theoretical Trends, as “在普遍的尺度上——巴塔耶一般经济学中的经济”, 国外理论动态, No. 2, 2012, pp. 17–25.

A very early version of the argument was published in Danish as “I universets målestok. Om økonomi i Batailles generelle økonomi”, Agora (Norway), No. 3, 2005, pp. 111–38. Thanks to editor-in-chief, Ragnar Braastad Myklebust, both for the invitation to contribute to the special issue on Bataille and for helpful suggestions. Also thanks to the anonymous reviewer. I owe a lot to people who have commented on and criticized earlier Danish drafts of the article. An early exploration of the theme was presented in Iceland, July 2004, in study circle eight under Nordic Summer University (nsu), “Critique and Analysis of Society under Global Capitalism”. A draft of the argument was presented, firstly, at the philosophical Autumn Academy at University of Southern Denmark in October 2004 (thanks to Lars Binderup for the invitation!), and, secondly, in the above-mentioned nsu circle in March 2005 in Lund. I would like to express my gratitude to the participants for a lot of inspiration, especially in the nsu circle to Anders Ramsay, Ingerid Straume, Leif Thomsen and Anders Lundkvist. In relation to the final phase of the work in Danish, I would like to thank especially Luise Li Langergaard, to whom I owe the structure of the argument that is also maintained in the English language version. The early Danish version is reprinted as Chapter 10 in my book I lyset af Bataille – politisk filosofiske studier (København: Politisk Revy, 2012) pp. 238–65.

Chapter 3 was first published as “Dialectics – a commentary to Singer: ‘Global business and the dialectic’”, Human Systems Management, Vol. 21, 2003, pp. 267–69. Thanks to Alan Singer for initiating the email exchange that sparked the arguments presented in this note and for facilitating the publication at a time when I had no idea how all this worked.

Chapter 4 has been published as “The Inner Experience of Living Matter. Bataille and dialectics”, Philosophy & Social Criticism, Vol. 33, No. 2, 2007, pp. 597–615. The same text was also published with the same title in Asger Sørensen, Morten Raffnsøe-Møller and Arne Grøn (eds.), Dialectics, Self-consciousness, and Recognition (Malmö: NSU Press, 2009), pp. 89–112. I would like to express my gratitude to Søren Brier for an extensive commentary, to Anne-Marie Eggert Olsen to whom I owe the present structure of the argument and to Thomas Basbøll who generously provided the original language revision. A draft version was published as The Inner Experience of Living Matter. Bataille and dialectics, Working Paper No. 2 (Department of Management Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School, 2006). The article was presented in May 2007 at the conference on Philosophy and the Social Sciences in Prague. The argument has been presented twice at Nordic Summer University, firstly in an early version in February 2004 in Oslo in study circle eight, “Critique and Analysis of Society under Global Capitalism”, and, secondly, in the final version in July 2007 in Uppsala in circle four, “Pauses – Shadows – Holes”. Thanks to the participants for comments, critique and corrections. A Danish translation forms Chapter 12 in my I lyset af Bataille – politisk filosofiske studier (København: Politisk revy, 2012), pp. 288–307.

Chapter 5 was first published as “Contradictions are Theoretical, neither Material nor Practical. On Dialectics in Tong, Mao and Hegel”, Danish Yearbook of Philosophy, Vol. 46, 2011, pp. 37–59, published in 2014. I would like to thank Finn Collin as editor of the journal and the anonymous reviewer for helpful suggestions and comments. Originally, the paper was occasioned by a visit by Tong Shijun at the School of Education, Aarhus University in September 2009, where a seminar was held on “Dialectics” in the research unit for Political, Ethical and Religious Development (perd) and I must express my gratitude to Jakob Soelberg for the references to Mao that proved to be essential for the argument. The argument was later presented in March 2010 at the annual meeting in the Danish Philosophical Association at the said School, just as elements of the argument were presented in a guest lecture on dialectics at the School of Architecture, Royal Danish Academy of Arts, March 2012. I would like to thank Dag Petersson for the invitation to lecture at the Academy and the participants at all the occasions for stimulating comments and criticism.

An early version was submitted in 2012 to International Critical Thought, published by Routledge and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (cass), and I thank both Marek Hrubec for the invitation and the two anonymous reviewers for comments, critique and suggestions. One of the reviewers, however, was clearly offended by the article and made the following comment, quoted in verbatim: “The article argues that Mao’s dialectics and Chinese traditional dialectical thinking are practical and naive materialist, which is common sense to those who were cultivated by Western philosophy. But it is not the truth. The great thinkers such as Martin Heidegger wish to seek inspiration in Chinese Taoism. The advantage Chinese thinking has over Western thought is she is conscious of ‘nothing’, and this is a kind of transcendent consciousness which is different from western religion. So it has some of Eurocentrism to argue easily that Chinese dialectical thinking is simple and instrumental”. Still, the recommendations were to accept the article with revisions, which I of course made, but then suddenly, months later in 2013, during the final copyediting phase, i.e. at the brink of publication, I received an email from Deputy Editorial Director Liu Zixu, cass, that the editors had decided the article “cannot be published as it is”, apologizing “for presenting this decision and reviewing results at the very late stage. The initial reviewing focused too much on the title itself and missed the sutlety [sic!] of the content. We would still love to publish it, if the content is consistent with the title and the part on the Chinese philosophy is theorized to enable a solid foundation for the comparison”. I of course offered to change the title once more, but the answer was that “the title is only one of a number of things that lead to our decision, so we won’t be able to take the easy solution of a different title”. The specification of my faults, however, was never provided, and that was a lesson for me, i.e. realizing the different academic cultures around the world in spite of years of globalization and ambitions of international cooperation. I would therefore like to thank those involved in the process for the lesson learned.

Chapter 6 has been published as “Not Work, but Alienation and Education. Bildung in Hegel’s Phenomenology”, Hegel-Studien, Vol. 49, 2015, pp. 57–88, 2015. I would like to thank Anniina Leiviskä, Carl-Göran Heidegren, Darío González, Jørgen Huggler, Peter Wolsing and the anonymous reviewer for helpful comments, critique and corrections. Thanks also to the editor at Hegel-Studien, Johannes-Georg Schülein, for many important corrections and especially for a relevant reference to Wissenschaft der Logik. Also, without the patience of generations of students, especially on the graduate programme in Philosophy and Business Economy at Copenhagen Business School, and continuous conversations over the years on Hegelian themes with Anne-Marie Eggert Olsen, Arne Grøn, Carsten Friberg, Dag Petersson, Per Jepsen and Thomas Schwarz, I would not have been able to maintain literacy in relation to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit for so long. My original introduction to the Phenomenology took place back in 1984, when I followed a course offered by Arne Grøn, two hours a week for fifteen weeks; however, on the day of the examination I decided not to show up, since I still did not understand enough of what it was all about. Again in 1987, Arne offered the course on the Phenomenology, but this time with four hours a week, and with all these lectures under my belt I finally reached the point of daring to show up at the examination day, passing the test however without distinction. Thanks to Arne for these unforgettable experiences and for having the courtesy to honour me a few years ago by asking to borrow my original notes from back then when, after many years, he was to repeat the course.

Thanks also to Ingerid Straume for commissioning and commenting on the chapter in Danish (“Hegel. Bevidsthed, fremmedgørelse og sprog” in Ingerid Straume (ed.), Danningens filosofihistorie (Oslo: Gyldendal, 2013), pp. 197–211.), which in part laid the foundation for the present chapter and benefitted a lot from the generous comments of Jørgen Huggler. Further thanks for an inspiring discussion to those who attended my guest lecture on Hegel and Bildung at the University of Jena, May 2013, and to Hartmut Rosa and David Strecker for making it possible. Thanks finally to those who attended and discussed my presentations on this subject at the Nordic Summer University (nsu) Winter Symposium, University of Turku (Finland), February 2012 (thanks especially to Carl-Göran Heidegren for some very enlightening comments); at the annual meeting in the Danish Philosophical Association, University of Southern Denmark, March 2013 (thanks especially to Jørgen Hass for a very illuminating, and extensive, comment!); at the 14th Biennial Conference of the International Network of Philosophers of Education (inpe), University of Calabria (Italy), August 2014; and at the first international congress of Red Española de Filosofía (ref) [The Spanish Philosophy Network], Universitat de Valencia (Spain), September the same year. An announced presentation at the second congress of the Asociación Latinoamericana de Filosofía de la Educación (alfe) [Latinamerican Association of Philosophy of Education], Universidad de la República (UdelaR) (Uruguay), May 2013, never took place – it was one of the last sessions; the convenor did not show up and neither did the rest of the presenters. Finally, the overall argument was presented in its entirety in July 2016 at my PhD course at Universidad de la Laguna, Tenerife, Spain. Thanks to Maria Jose Guerra Palmero for the invitation, and to her, Gabriel Bello and the PhD students for questions and comments.

A short preliminary presentation of the general argument has been published in the proceedings of the nsu symposium (“Alienation, language and freedom. A note on Bildung in Hegel’s writings”, Nordicum-Mediterraneum (Iceland), Vol. 7, No. 2, 2012 (4 pp., Web)), and in an almost unchanged version in the proceedings (on CD-rom) of the said alfe congress (“Alienation, language and freedom. On Bildung in Hegel’s writings (extended summary)” in Andrea Diaz Genis et al. (eds.), 2o Congreso Latinoamericano de Filosofía de la Educación (Montevideo: Dpto. de Historia y Filosofia de la Educacion, Instituto de Educacion, Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educacion, UdelaR and ALFE, 2013)). An early, but abridged, version of the whole argument with some detail was published in the proceedings of the inpe conference (“Bildung in Hegel’s Phenomenology. Acute alienation” in Stefan Ramaekers and Philippe Noens (eds.), Old and new generations in the 21st century: Shifting landscapes of education (The Site Committee of the 14th Biennial Conference of the inpe, 2014), pp. 274–285.). A translation of this text by Darío David González, “Extrañamiento agudo. Bildung en la Fenomenologia de Hegel”, appeared in Fermentario (Uruguay), vol. 9, 2015 (Web). An unrevised draft version of the present argument has been published in the proceedings of the ref congress (“Bildung in Hegel’s Phenomenology. Acute Alienation and Education” in Cinta Canterla (ed.), Sección temática 8: Historia de la filosofía (vol. IX in Antonio Campillo y Delia Manzanero (eds.), Los retos de la Filosofía en el siglo xxi. Actas del I Congreso internacional de la Red española de Filosofía (Valencia: Publicacions de la Universitat de Valencia (PUV), 2015)), pp. 63–80.

Chapter 7 has not been published before, but a draft has been accessible at my homepage at www.academia.com since early 2015. Thanks for extensive comments, critique and corrections to Alessandro Ferrara, Maja R. Ekebjærg, Per Jepsen and Søren Gosvig Olesen. The final version was sent to Philosophy of Social Criticism early 2016, and even though it was shortly after withdrawn, I received an extensive comment by an anonymous reviewer, for which I am very grateful. Thanks to the editor, Zhuoyao Li who decided to let me have the comments anyway! A heavily edited and abridged version, about half the length of the present chapter, and with a new introduction, various additions in the text and some for me completely unknown references, has been published as Chapter 2, “The Role of Dialectics in Marcuse” in Terry Maley (ed.), One Dimensional Man 50 years on: The Struggle Continues (Halifax: Fernwood Press, 2017), pp. 40–56. Thanks to the editor for the invitation and for his engaged editorial work, and thanks to the two anonymous reviewers for helpful suggestions.

An early draft of the chapter was presented at the 7th annual Critical Theory conference at Loyola University Chicago, Rome, Italy, and at a research seminar at the School of Education, Aarhus University, Copenhagen, in May and June 2014 respectively. More mature versions were presented February 2015 at the annual meeting of the Danish Philosophical Association at Aarhus University; in May 2015 at the conference on Philosophy and the Social Sciences in Prague, and in July 2016 on my PhD course at Universidad de la Laguna, Tenerife, Spain. Thanks to colleagues and students attending these sessions and commenting on my presentations, especially to Alessandro Ferrara, Lars-Henrik Schmidt, Maria José Guerra Palmero and Gabriel Bello. In particular at Tenerife, the discussion among the PhD students was very lively and stimulating. A special thanks to James T. Richardson for providing me with the reference to Koestler at a Nordic Summer University conference dinner in Vilnius, Lithuania, March 2014 and to Hans Siggaard Jensen for the reference to David Lodge. Thanks also to my post-graduate students in the programme Philosophy of Education, who have over the years engaged in discussing Marcuse, both in class and in essays, and have demonstrated to me that Marcuse is indeed relevant for the understanding and critique of contemporary capitalist society.

The Postscript has not been published before, although – once again – a draft version was made public at my homepage at www.academia.com in June 2016. I would like in particular to thank Bernat Riutort and Mogens Chrom Jacobsen for extensive and generous comments, as well as constructive critique and corrections. Thanks also to Joaquín Valdivielso and Luise Li Langergaard for helpful and encouraging comments. Some of the elements of the argument were touched upon in a guest lecture at Copenhagen Business School in February 2014 called “Critique of capitalism – reasons and varieties”: thanks to Jacob Dahl Rendtorff for the invitation and to those attending for comments and questions.

Language revision has been provided generously by the faculty of ARTS and the School of Education, both Aarhus University, in the former case facilitated by Nicholas Wrigley, in the latter by Simon Rolls. Introduction, Interlude, Postscript, Acknowledgements and the Chapters 1–6 were revised by William Frost, Last Word Consultancy, whereas Preface, Presentation and Chapter 7 were revised by Simon himself. Chapters 1–5 were revised after the original journal publication; in some cases, the texts in the present versions are therefore slightly changed in relation to the originals.

Little of all this would have been possible without the generous support of my employer, the Danish School of Education, and, more in general, Aarhus University (au). Apart from time specifically dedicated to research and all kinds of supporting infrastructure, such as language revision, travel allowances, bookkeeping, etc., the au Research Foundation provided the means to stay in Sussex in the form of a Mobility grant, administered by the au faculty of arts, just as the same Foundation has supported the publication of the present work financially.

Thanks finally to Johanna Sjöstedt and the board of Nordic Summer University for organizing Giorgio Baruchello’s review of the present publication, to Giorgio for the review, and to Thom Brooks for accepting to publish my work in the Brill series Studies in Moral Philosophy.