Adam Ferguson’s imperial thought casts new light on the age-old republican dilemma of the tension between empire and liberty. Generations of republican writers had been haunted by this issue as the decline of Rome proved that imperial expansion would eventually ruin the liberty of a state. Many eighteenth-century Scottish thinkers regarded this as an insoluble conundrum and thus became critics of empire. Ferguson shared their basic views but, paradoxically, was still able to defend the British Empire in the debates over (...) the American Revolution. His argument effectively offered a viable solution to the republican dilemma, which distinguished him from his contemporaries. In light of this, I argue that political representation was the pivotal conception for Ferguson to make empire and liberty compatible. It was on this ground that he could advocate the union with Ireland, which he believed would lead to a lasting balance of power in Europe. -/- ; British Empire; liberty; balance of power; political representation; American Revolution; Anglo-Irish Union. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Between April 1820 and April 1822, stimulated by the restoration of the Cádiz Constitution, Bentham devoted himself to writing a number of works on the constitutional reform and colonial rule of Spain, which have been sources of a scholarly debate over Bentham's views on colony. By examining those works, this essay aims to supplement the scholarly debate by drawing attention to a thesis that Bentham developed in his criticism and evaluation of the Cádiz Constitution: a thesis concerning the irreconcilable (...) incompatibilities of liberal constitution and colonisation. I focus on Bentham's critical analyses of the Constitution, and indicate that Spain's colonial rule of Ultramaria not only intensified the weaknesses of the Constitution, but also rendered its merits useless, if not harmful, to the public in both hemispheres. Moreover, I explore the tension that Bentham detected between liberal constitutionalism and colonialism. I maintain that, in Bentham's observation, the civil rights granted by the Cádiz Constitution to the Ultramarians stood to facilitate the enlightenment of citizens and the formation of civil society. As a consequence, the delusion of the Spanish ruling few would be exposed, and the Ultramarians’ discontent with exploitation by such foreign rulers would sow the seeds of disobedience and resistance. (shrink)

In this article I propose the concept of care as an organizing principle of John Stuart Mill’s theory of liberal utilitarianism. While both critics and proponents of Mill’s theory see his commitment to character development as a distinct feature of his utilitarianism, the specific type of character he promotes has received scant attention. Through a close reading of Mill’s Collected Works, with an emphasis on Utilitarianism, I argue that a commitment to caring characters is central to making sense of Mill’s (...) theory of utility and the tensions found between his individualistic commitment to the harm principle and the seemingly illiberal implications of his utilitarianism. I further argue that Mill’s concept of care, rather than being a type of sympathy, shows a close affinity to the concept of care developed in care ethics. I conclude with an observation of how Mill’s commitment to care helps explain his consistent support for Britain’s colonial endeavors, though in a direction different from conventional readings that connect his paternalistic account of human nature with the justification of colonial rule. (shrink)

Contemporary scholars routinely argue colonialism and imperialism are indistinguishable. In this essay, I challenge this argument. While it is true the “colonial” and “imperial” overlap and intersect historically, I argue there is a central thread of modern colonialism as an ideology that can be traced from the seventeenth century to mid-twentieth century that was not only distinct from—but often championed in explicit opposition to—imperialism. I advance my argument in four parts. First, I identify key ways in which the colonial can (...) be distinguished from the imperial, including most importantly the specific kind of productive power inherent in colonialism. Second, I examine how colonialism and imperialism evolve in meaning and are redefined by both champions and critics, in relation to each other in the late nineteenth/early twentieth centuries. Third, I examine the historical moment when colonialism and imperialism fully conflate after WWII through the UN process of decolonization as the “salt water thesis” delimits colonialism to mean foreign racialized domination, and it thus becomes synonymous with imperialism. I conclude with an analysis of why the distinction still matters in both theory and practice. (shrink)

This article examines the connection, personal and intellectual, between David Hume and Edmund Burke. Scholars have often compared the two thinkers, mainly in an unsystematic and selective way. Burke’s early biographers regarded them as opposite figures on account of Hume’s religious and philosophical scepticism and Burke’s devout Christian faith. By contrast, modern scholars often stress their intellectual kinship. More specifically, they have repeatedly attempted to place Hume and Burke either close together or far apart on a liberal-conservative spectrum. This article (...) shows that an historical investigation into their personal and intellectual relationship is bound to challenge and complicate such endeavours. Besides an account of Hume’s and Burke’s acquaintance, the article discusses Burke’s engagement with Hume, and provides a comparison of key areas of their thought. It demonstrates that while Hume had something to offer Burke as a man of letters, in the 1750s and after 1790–1, Hume was less useful for Burke in the intermediate period when Burke was an active parliamentarian and Whig party member, especially since the mature Hume was so hostile to Burke’s brand of Whiggism. (shrink)

Observers have noted a decline (in the US) in attributions of genetically-based inferiority (e.g. in intelligence) to Blacks, and a rise in attributions of culturally-based inferiority. Is this "culturalism" merely warmed-over racism ("cultural racism") or a genuinely distinct way of thinking about racial groups? The question raises a larger one about the relative place of biology and culture in racist thought. I develop a typology of culturalisms as applied to race: (1) inherentist or essentialist culturalism (inferiorizing cultural characteristics wrongly but (...) intelligibly regarded as inhering in the nature of racial groups). This view has an historical pedigree in the work of J.G. von Herder, and the tradition of "national racism." (2) non-inherentist culturalism (groups regarded as possessing changeable, malleable inferiorizing cultural characteristics). (3) colonalist culturalism (colonial subjects regarded as uncivilized but capable of becoming civilized under European tutelage). (4) neo-racism (cultures of former colonial subjects in or potentially immigrating to European countries are regarded in an inherentist manner and incompatible with but not inferior to European cultures). Non-inherentist culturalism (#2) can be put to either a racist or an anti-racist use. (shrink)

This article proposes that autocratic democracy represents the natural political form of right-wing populism. It argues that while the emergence of autocratic democracy as a genuine political alternative to liberal democracy may be currently located primarily in states where liberal democratic norms were not well-consolidated, there are reasons to hold that structural features of contemporary politics in consolidated democracies relating to the decline of mass parties and the globalisation trilemma create the space for the right-wing mobilisation of populism. It is (...) further claimed that the dilemmas of the EU in conjunction with the politics of immigration and multiculturalism provide resources for the right-wing mobilisation of populist discontents such that we should not be sanguine about the ability of liberal democracy to be resilient in the face of continuing populist pressures. (shrink)

Though recent years have seen a proliferation of critical histories of international law, their normative significance remains under-theorized, especially from the perspective of general readers rather than writers of such histories. How do critical histories of international law acquire their normative significance? And how should one react to them? We distinguish three ways in which critical histories can be normatively significant: (i) by undermining the overt or covert conceptions of history embedded within present practices in support of their authority; (ii) (...) by disappointing the normative expectations that regulate people’s reactions to critical histories; and (iii) by revealing continuities and discontinuities in the functions that our practices serve. By giving us a theoretical grip on the different ways in which history can be normatively significant and call for different reactions, this account helps us think about the overall normative significance of critical histories and how one and the same critical history can pull us in different directions. (shrink)

James Mill'sHistory of British India(1817) made a rather strange claim: first-hand experience of India was not vital in writing a history – potentially, it led to false ideas about its subject-matter: eyewitnesses are susceptible to bias. The historian was thus to perform his task as a judge: sifting through various testimonies to obtain a ‘more perfect’ conception of the whole than those who witnessed its various parts. Although strange, Mill's claim does not bewilder his readers: after all, Mill was a (...) ‘militant’ exponent of theorizing utilitarianism. I argue that such a reading of Mill's method is injudiciously restrictive. Not only did Mill draw on well-known methodological concerns in contemporary historiographical practice, not necessarily linked with Jeremy Bentham or the Scottish theoretical historiography, but he also seemed to adopt the vocabulary of forensic rhetoric, making his claim that his was a ‘judging’ history more literal than it has been supposed. (shrink)

Over the last 30 years the Indian philosopher-economist Amartya Sen has developed an original normative approach to the evaluation of individual and social well-being. The foundational concern of this ‘capability approach’ is the real freedom of individuals to achieve the kind of lives they have reason to value. This freedom is analysed in terms of an individual’s ‘capability’ to achieve combinations of such intrinsically valuable ‘beings and doings’ (‘functionings’) as being sufficiently nourished and freely expressing one’s political views. In this (...) account, ‘development’ is conceived as the expansion of individuals’ capability, and thus as a concept that goes beyond the economic growth of third world countries. My thesis is a philosophical examination of Sen’s capability approach. In the first part (chapters 1-3) I present and defend my interpretation of Sen’s work. (shrink)

In the literature seeking to explain concepts in terms of their point, talk of ‘the point’ of concepts remains under-theorised. I propose a typology of points which distinguishes practical, evaluative, animating, and inferential points. This allows us to resolve tensions such as that between the ambition of explanations in terms of the points of concepts to be informative and the claim that mastering concepts requires grasping their point; and it allows us to exploit connections between types of points to understand (...) why they come apart, and whether they do so for problematic ideological reasons or for benignly functional reasons. (shrink)

Is there a political philosophy of conservatism? A history of the phenomenon written along sceptical lines casts doubt on the existence of a transhistorical doctrine, or even an enduring conservative outlook. The main typologies of conservatism uniformly trace its origins to opposition to the French Revolution. Accordingly, Edmund Burke is standardly singled out as the ‘father’ of this style of politics. Yet Burke was de facto an opposition Whig who devoted his career to assorted programmes of reform. In restoring Burke (...) to his original milieu, the argument presented here takes issue with 20th-century accounts of conservative ideology developed by such figures as Karl Mannheim, Klaus Epstein and Samuel Huntington. It argues that the idea of a conservative tradition is best seen as a belated construction, and that the notion of a univocal philosophy of conservatism is basically misconceived. (shrink)

This essay tries to develop a “black radical Kantianism”—that is, a Kantianism informed by the black experience in modernity. After looking briefly at socialist and feminist appropriations of Kant, I argue that an analogous black radical appropriation should draw on the distinctive social ontology and view of the state associated with the black radical tradition. In ethics, this would mean working with a (color-conscious rather than colorblind) social ontology of white persons and black sub-persons and then asking what respect for (...) oneself and others would require under those circumstances. In political philosophy, it would mean framing the state as a Rassenstaat (a racial state) and then asking what measures of corrective justice would be necessary to bring about the ideal Rechtsstaat. (shrink)

Whether or not capitalism is compatible with ethics is a long standing dispute. We take up an approach to virtue ethics inspired by Adam Smith and consider how market competition influences the virtues most associated with modern commercial society. Up to a point, competition nurtures and supports such virtues as prudence, temperance, civility, industriousness and honesty. But there are also various mechanisms by which competition can have deleterious effects on the institutions and incentives necessary for sustaining even these most commercially (...) friendly of virtues. It is often supposed that if competitive markets are good, more competition must always be better. However, in the long run competition enhancing policies that neglect the nurturing and support of the bourgeois virtues may undermine the continued flourishing of modern commercial society. (shrink)

The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Race provides up-to-date explanation and analyses by leading scholars of contemporary issues in African American philosophy and philosophy of race. These original essays encompass the major topics and approaches in this emerging philosophical subfield that supports demographic inclusion and diversity while at the same time strengthening the conceptual arsenal of social and political philosophy. Over the course of the volume's ten topic-based sections, ideas about race held by Locke, Hume, Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche are (...) supplemented by suppressed thought from the African diaspora, early twentieth-century African American perspectives and Native-, Asian-, and Latin-, American views. The contributors bring philosophical analysis to bear on the status of racial divisions as categories of humanity in the biological sciences, as well as within contemporary criticism and conceptual analysis. Essays present the special applications of American philosophy and continental philosophy to ideas of race as methodological alternatives to more analytic approaches. As a collection of analyses and assessments of 'race' in the real world, the volume pays trenchant and relevant attention to historical and contemporary racism and what it means to say that 'race' and racial identities are socially constructed. The essays analyze contemporary social issues including the importance of racial difference and identity in education, public health, medicine, IQ and other standardized tests, and sports. Additionally, the essays consider the societal limitations and structures provided by public policy and law. As a critical theory, the volume compares the study of race to feminism. Historical and contemporary, academic and popular, racisms pertaining to male and female gender receive special consideration throughout the volume. While this comprehensive collection may have the effect of a textbook, each of the original essays is a fresh and authentic development of important present thought. (shrink)

This is the most comprehensive book ever published on philosophical methodology. A team of thirty-eight of the world's leading philosophers present original essays on various aspects of how philosophy should be and is done. The first part is devoted to broad traditions and approaches to philosophical methodology. The entries in the second part address topics in philosophical methodology, such as intuitions, conceptual analysis, and transcendental arguments. The third part of the book is devoted to essays about the interconnections between philosophy (...) and neighbouring fields, including those of mathematics, psychology, literature and film, and neuroscience. (shrink)

This article examines Bentham's contribution to anti-colonial thought in the context of the development of the British radical movement that attacked colonialism on the grounds that it advantaged what Bentham called the at the expense of the . It shows that Bentham was influenced as much by Josiah Tucker and James Anderson as by Adam Smith. Bentham's early economic critique is examined, and the sharp changes in his arguments after 1800 assessed, in the context of the American and French Revolutions (...) and the effects of British industrialization. The article also highlights the importance of Bentham's writings inspired by the Spanish colonial crisis of the early 1820s. They show developments in his economic analysis and include some very acute discussions of the psychological satisfactions that elites could gain from colonialism. The article ends with a brief comparison between Bentham and later radical thinkers to put his ideas in context. (shrink)

Assuming that states will remain a permanent feature of our world, what is the ideal that we should hold out for the international order? An attractive proposal is that those peoples that are already organized under non-dominating, representative states should pursue a twin goal: first, arrange things so that they each enjoy the republican ideal of freedom as non-domination in relation to one another and to other multi-national and international agencies; and second, do everything possible and productive to facilitate the (...) representation of less fortunate peoples in non-dominating states and to incorporate them in a non-dominating international order. This republican ideal stands midway between a utopian ideal of cosmopolitan justice and a sceptical ideal of non-intervention. The article explores its attractions and the broad institutional measures that it would support. (shrink)

This article argues that James Mill's immersion in Presbyterianism inspired an aversion to hierarchical government and a bias in favour of the Church of Scotland. These views are discernible in Bentham's Church-of-Englandism. Bentham argued for disestablishment on principle but, praising the Scottish Church as a , omitted the Kirk from his church reform manifesto. His position on disestablishment, however, and his endorsement of Presbyterianism were aligned with a voluntaryist strain of Presbyterian ecclesiological theory; Presbyterian dissenters and Benthamite Radicals began to (...) protest against the Kirk's established status. Underpinned significantly by Presbyterian tradition and laced with Benthamic influence, a radical voluntary campaign emerged in Scotland which sought to dismantle the old order and usher in a new era of political democracy and religious voluntaryism. Radicalism in Scotland was not solely characterized by the which J. C. D. Clark believes defined Benthamite ideology; Benthamism, it transpires, was not straightforwardly secularist. (shrink)

In his defenses of empire, Alexis de Tocqueville emphasized the need to achieve grandeur for France, and his writings on Algeria have shaped our understanding of his political career. In pursuing empire abroad as a remedy for weak politics at home, scholars maintain that Tocqueville abandoned the participatory politics of Democracy in America. This essay argues, however, that the focus on Tocqueville’s international turn has obscured his interest in the greatness of domestic party politics. It demonstrates that Tocqueville championed a (...) version of grandeur tied to the latent energies of the lower classes and distinct from the Bonapartism and aristocratic nostalgia that characterized his thoughts on empire. This version of grandeur was a political reclamation of disagreement and debate that supported great party opposition to counter the malaise of bourgeois rule. The essay concludes by comparing Tocqueville’s attitude toward foreign others, whose freedoms had to be sacrificed to the cause of French nationalism, with his description of the lower classes within his own nation, whose inclusion in the franchise could foster great politics. This comparison enables us to draw modest lessons for interpreting political grandeur in the present day. (shrink)

This essay explores some of the elements by which Muslim women who wear the hijab in the United States are managed so as to produce and distinguish "unruly" from "good" Muslim female citizens within the context of American liberation. Unlike the French state, which has regulated both the hijab and niqab through national legislation, the American liberal framework utilizes a laissez-faire approach, which relies on a range of public and private institutions to determine acceptable public presentations of the liberal female (...) subject. I refer to this form of management as "neoliberalism." Neoliberalism management works in conjunction with popular political discourses and domestic events in ways that alternately contract and expand the boundaries that allow "suitable Muslim women" in the public sphere. (shrink)

ABSTRACTCommerce changes the production of wealth in a society as well as its ethics. What is appropriate in a non-commercial society is not necessarily appropriate in a commercial one. Adam Smith criticizes Stoic self-command in commercial societies, rather than embracing it, as is often suggested. He argues that Stoicism, with its promotion of indifference to passions, is an ethic appropriate for savages. Savages live in hard conditions where expressing emotions is detrimental and reprehensible. In contrast, the ease of life brought (...) about by commerce fosters the appropriate expressions and sharing of emotions. Imposing Stoicism on a commercial society is therefore imposing an ethic for savages onto a refined society – something to abhor. Smith’s rejection of Stoicism in commercial societies can thus be seen as a defence of commerce. (shrink)

Edmund Burke’s speeches and writings during the trial of Warren Hastings—from 1788 to 1795—remain one of the most comprehensive assessments of the effects of colonial trade and territorial expansion on Britain’s nationalist self. A rhetorical reading of his prosecution speeches reveals how they affected the public response to the trial by evoking the sublime and framing terror as the basic feature of Britain’s mercantile imperialist agenda in the colonies. Moreover, by associating Hastings’s governance of Bengal with sublime terror, Burke altered (...) the interpretations of virtue and corruption, thus distancing both Britain and India from the rampant profiteering of the East India Company. Burke’s critique of the degenerative influences of commercial imperialism along with the reformulation of his ideas in subsequent colonial historiography is crucial for assessing how the aesthetics of the sublime conferred greater moral force to the sporadic and fragmented reports about the Company’s abuses of power in India. (shrink)

‘Racial justice’ is a term widely used in everyday discourse, but little explored in philosophy. In this essay, I look at racial justice as a concept, trying to bring out its complexities, and urging a greater engagement by mainstream political philosophers with the issues that it raises. After comparing it to other varieties of group justice and injustice, I periodize racial injustice, relate it to European expansionism and argue that a modified Rawlsianism relying on a different version of the thought (...) experiment could come up with suitable principles of corrective racial justice. (shrink)

Empires and nation-states are generally opposed to each other, as contrasting and antithetical forms. Nationalism is widely held to have been the solvent that dissolved the historic European empires. This paper argues that there are in fact, in practice at least, significant similarities between nation-states and empires. Many nation-states are in effect empires in miniature. Similarly, many empires can be seen as nation-states “writ large.” Moreover, empires were not, as is usually held, superseded by nation-states but continued alongside them. Empires (...) and nation-states may in fact best be thought of as alternative political projects, both of which are available for elites to pursue depending on the circumstances of the moment. Ultimately empires and nation-states do point in different directions, but it is not clear that the future is a future of nation-states. Empires, as large-scale and long-lasting multiethnic and “multicultural” experiments, may have much to teach us in the current historical phase of globalization and increasingly heterogeneous societies. (shrink)

This essay is in effect something of a self-review of my book Henry Sidgwick: Eye of the Universe and of the volume, co-edited with Georgios Varouxakis, Utilitarianism and Empire . My chief concern here is to go beyond those earlier works in underscoring the arbitrariness of the dominant contextualist and reconstructive historical accounts of J. S. Mill and Henry Sidgwick on the subjects of race and racism. The forms of racism are many, and simple historical accuracy suggests that both Mill (...) and Sidgwick could be described as ‘racist’ on some plausible understandings of that term. (shrink)

This paper examines the relationship between the critique of civilization, anti-imperialism, gender and representative government in the political thought of the neglected communist, environmentalist, and gay liberationist Edward Carpenter (1844–1929). In recent years, there has been a dramatic growth in the historical literatures on anti-imperialism and representative government, yet these two topics are rarely connected. Meanwhile, a voluminous literature on the concept of civilization and its role in British imperialism has largely ignored its role in justifying social and political domination (...) in Britain itself. Carpenter's writings on these topics are important because he offers a defense of the value of representative government that is grounded in his anti-imperialism. Furthermore, his critique of civilization led him to connect problems of social domination in India to the struggles of women, homosexuals, and the working class. These groups ought in turn to be enfranchised and given roles in the functioning of the state. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper offers an integrated account of maturity and the requisites of individuality in the political thought of John Stuart Mill, bridging his writings on the individual and society. To do so, it focuses on Mill's account of the relationship between civilization, democracy, class, individuality and custom in his later political thought. Mill draws on these concepts to flesh out his account of maturity in both individuals and societies. Mill's conception of custom, in particular, bridges the individual and society. (...) Maturity, simply defined, is the ability to be self-governing. For Mill, only mature individuals and societies are entitled to be self-determining. In offering a unified account of maturity in Mill, this paper is departing from two different views of maturity in Mill that have become popular in recent scholarship. It also offers interpretations of the relationship between civilization and democracy, and class and custom in Mill. (shrink)

L. T. Hobhouse (1864–1929) is most familiar today as a leading theorist of British new liberalism. This article recovers and examines his overlooked commentary on the concept and rhetoric of race, which constituted part of his better-known project of advancing an authoritative account of liberal doctrine. His writings during and after the South African War, I argue, represent a prominent effort to cast liberalism as compatible with both imperial rule and what he called ‘the idea of racial equality’. A properly (...) liberal empire, he asserted, would dissolve the colour line. This article traces the arguments Hobhouse advanced to make this claim, and explores his motivations for doing so. I contend that Hobhouse drew on the idiom of race as a form of exclusionary rhetoric, to delegitimise rival accounts of liberal empire and to cast his own as properly cosmopolitan. This recovery, I suggest, offers payoffs for our understanding of both Hobhouse's political thought and, more broadly, the uses of ‘race’ in twentieth-century liberalism. (shrink)

Even though revolutions are central to the history of modern constitutionalism, some revolutions have invited more attention than others. This essay, a response to a symposium on India’s Founding Moment, underlines the significance of India’s constitutional founding and highlights ways in which India’s founders sought to create and develop democracy in a land where its supposed ingredients did not exist. The essay then turns to contemporary politics and considers the possibilities and limitations of the constitutional framework to address the current (...) concerns over democratic backsliding in India. (shrink)

Here is an appealing position: one reason to pursue interaction with people from backgrounds that differ from our own is that doing so can improve our moral judgment. As some scholars have noticed, this position seems pedigreed by support from the famed philosophers of human sociability, David Hume and Adam Smith. But regardless of whether Hume or Smith personally held anything like the appealing position, neither might have had theoretically grounded reason to do so. In fact, both philosophers explain moral (...) judgment in ways that seem to present obstacles to the acceptance of the appealing position. This paper entertains the possibility that either of their moral theories contains resources to overcome these obstacles and implies the appealing position. I argue that Smith's theory does so more straightforwardly than Hume's does. This difference, I also argue, reveals something important about the Hume-Smith philosophical relationship. I close by sketching a way to fit the source of the appealing position in Smith's moral psychology with his focus on the desire for mutual sympathy. (shrink)

Constellations, Volume 28, Issue 3, Page 379-402, September 2021.

This paper examines the relationship between justice and colonialism. It defines colonialism; examines the kind of injustice that colonialism involved; and the possibility of corrective justice.

John Stuart Mill’s justification for British rule in India is well known. Less well known and discussed are Mill’s extensive writings on the practice of British rule in India. A close engagement with Mill’s writings on this issue shows Mill was a much more uncertain and anxious imperialist than he is often presented to be. Mill was acutely aware of the difficulties presented by the imperial context in India, he identified a number of very demanding conditions that would have to (...) be met if Britain’s imperial mission was to be successful, and he was very troubled by the dangers posed to this mission from politics in Britain. Toward the end of his life, Mill become much more pessimistic about the progressive possibilities of British colonialism, in part because of what he thought had happened after the transfer of British rule from the East India Company to the British state. A focus on Mill’s arguments about the practice of British rule in India goes some way to providing a more nuanced account of what Mill thought about colonialism. (shrink)

This article argues that Foucault’s account of the intersection between population, liberal economy, and biopolitics needs to be reconstructed in light of Malthus’ Essay on the Principle of Population. Taking Malthus into account brings to the fore how deeply the question of population is tied to a colonial hierarchy that differentiates between dangerous ‘savage’ and economic ‘civilized’ life. ‘Savage life’ is depicted as a catastrophic form of life, which uses resources in a non-economic way due to its forgetfulness of the (...) future. The article shows how this notion of ‘savage life’ broadens the concept of liberal economic governmentality. Most importantly, it highlights the role of passions and futurity for liberal governmentality. As the discussion of Malthus’ texts demonstrates, the passions of hope and fear assume a crucial role for engendering futurity in the economic subject. As will be shown, while the more ‘savage life’ is considered to be made governable through fear, the more civilized life is supposed to be allured by hope. The article points out the implication of this analysis for Foucault’s notion of biopolitics in relation to liberal economy. (shrink)

The writings of Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859) need little introduction. De la Démocratie en Amérique, published almost two centuries ago, is still praised by historians, political theorists, an...

It is possible to distinguish between empire, as a form of political order, and imperialism, as a process of aggressive expansion. Mill's liberalism allows for a legitimate empire, in which a civilized state rules a less civilized foreign people paternalistically to prepare them for liberal democratic self-rule. However, it rejects paternalistic imperialism, in the sense of aggression designed to establish such an empire. Apparent textual evidence to the contrary really demonstrates Mill's commitment to three distinct theses: that imperialism may benefit (...) those subject to it, and this can mitigate its evil; that it is easier to justify non-aggressive, empire-creating wars of conquest in response to aggression by barbarian powers; and finally, that civilized states are justified in engaging distant uncivilized peoples non-aggressively, even though the latter's aggressive tendencies mean that such engagement renders empire-justifying wars more likely. (shrink)

This article uses the framework of “traditions of thought” and “dilemmas” to problematize and revise the English School’s Expansion Narrative of international relations history in the crucial ninet...

In this article, I situate Orlando Patterson’s magnum opus, Slavery and Social Death alongside his earlier writings on slavery and slave revolts in Jamaica. To appreciate fully Patterson’s contributions to sociology, comparative historical sociology, and the wider literature on slavery, readers must engage with the full corpus of his scholarly production. By reading his body of work all together, as part of a much larger whole, social death may take on new angles, depths, and dimensions. Patterson’s previous work on slavery (...) and slave revolts in Jamaica, I suggest, invites novel ways to read his formulations of social death while opening other archives through which to study the (after)lives of slavery. (shrink)

The conservative German publicist and political theorist, Constantin Frantz (1817–1891), occupies an ambiguous place in German intellectual history. Some, such as Friedrich Meinecke, located him within the rich intellectual tradition of German federalism, highlighting his hostility to the idea of the “nation-state” and the traditions of nationalism, Realpolitik and militarism. Others, by contrast, have situated him within a long genealogy of German fascism, identifying his remarkable 1852 work, Louis Napoleon, as a kind of precursor or antecedent of twentieth-century fascist ideology. (...) This interpretation raises broader questions about the historiography on Bonapartism and Caesarism, which has often been motivated by an interest in the intellectual origins of modern fascism. The present article supplies a reinterpretation of Frantz’s thinking about Bonapartism (Napoleonismus) and Caesarism by focusing on a much broader range of his intellectual output and by tracking the development of his view of Bonapartism’s significance between 1851 and the early 1870s. The main outcome is not just to question Frantz’s place in the “prehistory” of fascism, but also to show how deeply nineteenth-century debates about Bonapartism were connected to concerns about liberalism, democracy, nationalism and imperialism. (shrink)

Amartya Sen has argued that contractarian theories of justice inevitably fall victim to the problem of parochialism, for the reason that they rely on a problematically narrow conception of impartiality. Sen finds a corrective model of impartiality in Adam Smith’s figure of the impartial spectator. In this essay, I argue that Sen’s invocation of the spectator to resolve the problem of parochialism is unfounded, as the impartial spectator is fundamentally a product of socialization that serves to propagate conventional moral norms. (...) I consider various interpretive avenues for “rescuing” the spectator from parochialism, and ultimately conclude that a minor amendment to Smith’s account, resting on the possibility of a conscience informed by moral pluralism, is required. (shrink)

Described as the ‘exemplary liberal’, John Stuart Mill is employed to support a dizzying array of different, even competing visions of liberalism. That he has been so widely appropriated is certainly a result of the plural perspectives and tensions embedded in Mill’s political writings. Yet, while Mill scholars have generally been attuned to these tensions, contemporary critics of liberalism have been less careful in their uses of his work. Mill is used as an archetype of liberalism, and is often depicted (...) as a less complex thinker than is justified. He is now a popular target in debates concerning the dilemmas of liberal individualism, and the inadequacies of liberal approaches to culture, harm, and to progress in the context of empire. Such studies present Mill as a thinker driven by ideological certainty, whereas he is more appropriately regarded as someone moved by political uncertainty. Drawing on his Autobiography, I recover Mill’s appreciation for the uncertainties of political thought and action to... (shrink)

In 1822, Alexander Berry (1781–1873), a recent free settler in the early colony of New South Wales (N.S.W.), read a paper on the geology of the coast of N.S.W. to the newly formed Philosophical Soc...

This article discusses Tocqueville’s and Mill’s views of the cultural progress of indigenous colonial societies in the context of the current debate about the Enlightenment. The analysis of their philosophical outlooks tends to support Jonathan Israel’s interpretation of the Enlightenment, yet with one important difference: while Israel emphasizes the Radical Enlightenment as the chief instigator of the movement towards modern democracy, Tocqueville’s and Mill’s views emphasize the preponderance of the Moderate Enlightenment, which, while sharing the radical advocacy for rationalism, broad (...) education, religious toleration, the critique of despotism, and other enlightened ideals, nonetheless shunned support of full democracy or universal suffrage. Tocqueville’s and Mill’s Eurocentric views regarding the possible ameliorative influence of colonialism emphasize how the ideals of the Moderate Enlightenment had an overriding effect on the emergence of nineteenth-century liberalism. While this conclusion broadly accepts Israel’s outline of the intellectual history of the Enlightenment, it gives greater weight than he does to the Moderate Enlightenment. (shrink)

Unfortunately, Adam Smith’s undeserved legacy as a proponent of laissez-faire and liberal institutions at the international scope inhibits profiting from his refined analysis of international affairs. I argue that the Wealth of Nations’ chapter on colonies contains Smith’s discussion of the sovereign’s adaptation to ignorance in global politics. I examine the sense in which the sovereign is ignorant according to Smith and how sovereigns adapt to ignorance with varying success. His comparative analysis suggests that reduction of one’s share in ignorance (...) is not always desirable, and a priori rejection of ignorance is impractical because it deprives of a potentially advantageous resource. A careful reading of his work enables learning from his approach to global politics, without filtering it through his ideas on the free market. (shrink)

Foundations of Modern International Thought, David Armitage , 300 pp., $85 cloth, $27.99 paper.A Search for Sovereignty: Law and Geography in European Empires 1400–1900, Lauren Benton , 340 pp., $94 cloth, $28.99 paper.Globalization and Sovereignty: Rethinking Legality, Legitimacy, and Constitutionalism, Jean L. Cohen , 442 pp., $103 cloth, $37.99 paper.Sovereignty apparently never ceases to attract scholarly attention. Long gone are the days when its meaning was uncontested and its essential attributes could be safely taken for granted by international theorists. During (...) the past decades international relations scholars have increasingly emphasized the historical contingency of sovereignty and the mutability of its corresponding institutions and practices, yet these accounts have been limited to the changing meaning and function of sovereignty within the international system. This focus has served to reinforce some of the most persistent myths about the origin of sovereignty, and has obscured questions about the diffusion of sovereignty outside the European context. (shrink)