This article examines the importance of Calvinism in producing the public/political “mind-set” of the United States, and how, after the Second World War, the export of this mind-set was as significant as the export of democracy, rock-’n’-roll, jeans, and Coca-Cola. It discusses the historical legacy and evolution of Calvinism from a civil religion to a religion of civility, and how the form and manner of Calvinist thinking—more specifically its ethic and aesthetic—has persisted in a secular manner so that much that (...) Calvin would have found damnable is now intrinsic to the “religion of civility.” It then concludes that the central principles and practices of this religion of civility have had success within nations already “Christianized” but, perhaps understandably, not outside of that sphere. (shrink)

This essay argues that the “republicanism versus liberalism” debate that came to prominence in the 1980s was largely an artificial construction made possible by the recent genealogies of its constituent terms. The first section suggests that the idea of “early modern liberalism” took shape from the 1930s, and identifies three broad schools of thought: Marxist, democratic and classical. Despite their differences, they pioneered a stereotype of “liberalism” that was well established – especially in the United States – by the 1950s. (...) The second section examines the so-called “republican tradition,” arguing it did not acquire that identity until the early 1970s, and that earlier work excavating the “commonwealth tradition” did not intend it as an alternative to liberalism. That only came into focus as a result of Wood’s work. The third section looks at elements of the debate in the 1970s, stressing the attempt to displace Locke and exploring the contribution of Pocock. He increasingly argued for the complex and interwoven nature of both “republicanism” and “liberalism,” partly as a response to revisionist work on the natural law origins of liberalism. By contrast, Appleby restated the older “liberalism” and pitted it against “republicanism,” thereby reinforcing the binary. (shrink)

To challenge the Foucauldian legacy of Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon prison, scholars often highlight Bentham’s later writings on the democratic power of public opinion. In doing so, they reaffirm Bentham’s reputation as a unreserved proponent of transparency. To recover the limits of Bentham’s embrace of publicity, I examine the model of visibility exemplified by his designs for the Sotimion, a residence for unmarried, pregnant women. The Sotimion draws our attention to Bentham’s appreciation for concealment as a method of preventing individual and (...) social harms caused by publicity and his criticisms of ascetic sexual norms. By being able to see visitors without being seen by them, the residents of the Sotimion would have avoided social censure while continuing to meet with friends, family, and even lovers. The Sotimion designs eschewed the panoptic principle, the use of asymmetric surveillance to reform moral behavior, and offered what I call the “soteric principle,” the use of asymmetric surveillance to protect the observer from punishment. By comparing the Sotimion to the Magdalen Hospital for Penitent Prostitutes and Bentham’s discussions of panoptic institutions for women, I examine the Sotimion’s distinctiveness while acknowledging its normalizing effects for residents from lower socioeconomic classes. Just as the panopticon captured Bentham’s commitment to publicity, applying the soteric model to Bentham’s theory of public opinion highlights his commitment to secrecy for protecting critics of government abuses from retribution. (shrink)

Presenting the challenges that face digital age citizens as philosophical, as opposed to technological, this paper explores the underpinning structure of digital civics through an overview of its four foundational pillars and their informing scholarship. Through this framework and the literature that supports it, a set of five key concepts are identified as a useful guide for developing digital civics initiatives, including policy and educational interventions. In closing, this work urges the further exploration of the conceptual underpinnings of digital civics (...) to improve future formulations of digital civics and digital citizenship endeavours. (shrink)

This article uses recent changes within the Austrian university system to illustrate some general features and dilemmas of organizational design and reform. We focus upon two recent layers of the sediments left by previous and current system reforms: that left by the events of 1968 on continental university systems, and Austria's late conversion to the path taken by the Anglo-American university system since the late 1970s/early 1980s; namely, towards what Marginson and Considine (2000) have called the "enterprise university". These two (...) reform waves are, we argue, neatly reflected in two university laws - UOG 1975 and UG 2002 - which capture with great clarity the spirit of these two policy moments. The Austrian case is thus of interest for two types of reason: first, because of the co-existence of deeply engrained traditions with more recent experiments in organizational democracy (co-determination); secondly, because of the rapidity with which current reforms seek to catch up with what are taken to be international developments in university management. Drawing on arguments advanced by Christopher Hood, Luc Boltanski and Ève Chiapello, and by Albert Hirschman, we seek to draw general conclusions concerning the implications of organizational reform for the management of organizations generally, and of universities in particular. (shrink)

This essay demonstrates that the management and contestability of power is central to Dewey's understanding of democracy and provides a middle ground between two opposite poles within democratic theory: Either the masses become the genuine danger to democratic governance (à la Lippmann) or elites are described as bent on controlling the masses (à la Wolin). Yet, the answer to managing the relationship between them and the demos is never forthcoming. I argue that Dewey's response to Lippmann for how we ought (...) to conceive of the relationship between citizens and elites if power is not to become arbitrary is located within a larger framework that avoids the problematic distinction Wolin draws between the demos and representative government. For Dewey, the legitimacy of decision-making, and, indeed, the security of freedom, is determined not merely by our actual involvement, but the extent to which non-participation does not preclude the future contestability of power. (shrink)

Although most of us know that human beings cannot and should not be replaced by computers, we have great difficulties saying why this is so. This paradox is largely the result of institutionalizing several fundamental misconceptions as to the nature of both trustworthy objective and moral knowledge. Unless we transcend this paradox, we run the increasing risks of becoming very good at counting without being able to say what is worth counting and why. The degree to which this is occurring (...) is the degree to which the computer revolution is already over — and the degree to which we human beings have lost. (shrink)

In Politics without Vision, Tracy Strong claims that in order to adequately grasp the politics of the twentieth century, and so be capable of meeting the challenges of the present, political theory must think without banisters. In this article I take up the task of thinking without banisters through the work of Theodor W. Adorno. Following the startling claim made by Adorno in a lecture course in 1963 that the term ‘humanity’ tends to ‘reify’ and ‘falsify’ important moral issues, I (...) examine three different usages of the concept of humanity in Adorno’s work, which I develop as a critique of foundations. I argue that understanding Adorno’s critique of humanity and of foundations involves understanding the role played by art in connecting the concepts of morality and politics. In connecting morality and politics in this manner, Adorno moves from a moral theory of resistance to a political theory of transformation whose insistence on the radical discontinuity between the present and the future serves as a model of a political theory without banisters. (shrink)

Sheldon S. Wolin’s ‘fugitive democracy’ is arguably his most provocative contribution to political theory. Breaking with the understanding of democracy as a constitutional form whose origins he locates in the work of Aristotle, Wolin claims democracy is better understood not as a constitution, but as a ‘rebellious moment,’ making democracy dependent on cultural rather than institutional characteristics. This formulation poses a problem for democracy as a political phenomenon, as political power today tends to be concentrated within institutions. Without institutional expression, (...) democracy is alienated from political power and hence a contradiction in terms. I reconstruct an understanding of Wolin’s fugitive democracy that can avoid such problems, while also being adequate to the current political juncture. I argue that Aristotle’s conception of the practice of justice, read through the lens of Wolin’s ‘fugitive democracy,’ becomes ‘fugitive justice,’ the cultivation of a democratic ethos that might support and sustain fortuitous democratic moments, connecting democratic culture to political institutions. In this way, Aristotle’s work is split: not simply the founder of constitutionalism, through ‘fugitive justice’ Aristotle becomes a resource for radical democrats, and a complement to Wolin’s concept of democracy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Modernity as a Rhetorical Problem: Phronēsis, Forms, and Forums in Norms of Rhetorical CultureJames Arnt AuneThe true paradises are the paradises that we’ve lost.—Marcel Proust, The Past RegainedThomas B. Farrell’s Norms of Rhetorical Culture (1993, 6) remains both a masterly synthesis of previous constructive work in rhetorical theory and the essential starting point for anyone committed to reconciling the practical impulses of Aristotelian rhetoric, ethics, and politics with the (...) critical imperatives of modernity. In what follows, I try to make a very simple point about Farrell’s recuperation of Aristotelianism: he neglects matters of social causation and institutional design that were essential to Aristotle’s understanding of rhetoric. In turn, by displacing the social in favor of the cultural—a displacement characteristic of much recent work in the human sciences (Schudson 1997)—Farrell lacks a coherent account of the gap between the normative aspirations of classical rhetoric and the empirical characteristics of public life in modern liberal democracies.The problem appears most clearly in chapter 7 of Norms : “Criticism, Disturbance, and Rhetorical Community.” Farrell defines culture as “the common definition of places for the invention and perpetuation of meaning. A culture offers to those who live in it symbols and families of practices that [End Page 402] permit ongoing performances of meaning and value” (1993, 277). Summarizing his previous arguments, Farrell contends that Aristotle’s Rhetoric informs modern “cultural occasions” in three ways: “the impetus for rhetorical meaning, which we find in Aristotle’s seminal understanding of phronēsis, typified by deliberative prudence; a concept of rhetorical form, which we have found in the prototype for public inference and judgment—the enthymeme; and a modern rhetorical forum, a space of engagement wherein the modern constraints of rhetorical culture might assert themselves” (1993, 277). Although these three concepts are inherently useful, both for analyzing past rhetorical episodes and for projecting emancipatory rhetorical possibilities in the present, they are insufficiently grounded in a historical account of the differences between ancient and modern prudential deliberation, rhetorical forms, and rhetorical forums. An adequate history of these differences would require attention to modern social systems as a whole, which include the economy, the polity, and social institutions such as the family, schools, religious and ethnic organizations, and, most crucially for contemporary social systems, the entire apparatus of the culture industry, including the news and entertainment “media.”The cultural aspect of the modern social system, loosely following Talcott Parsons (1951), includes norms, which make for communal solidarity, and values, which undergird the whole system. Although a thoroughgoing account of the place of rhetoric in the entire contemporary social system of a modern liberal democracy such as the United States or Canada would have required a book three times as long as Norms, there are three ways in which modernity complicates the appropriation of Aristotle’s concepts. First, rhetorical meaning is very different in a social system in which individual autonomy takes precedence over communal solidarity as a fundamental value (Pippin 1999). Second, rhetorical forms function differently in a social system in which those forms can be commodified (Aune 1994, 2001). Third, rhetorical forums are also far more complex, especially in an extended republic like Canada or the United States, requiring greater attention to the way in which constitutions literally create persons who speak (such as the president or prime minister) and spaces for speaking (Congress, the state or provincial houses [White 1984]). The need to raise massive sums of money to obtain media access for common rhetorical deliberation, as is especially the case in the United States, complicates the notion of a rhetorical forum immensely. Even without adopting a broadly Marxian framework, it is clear that the rise and development of capitalism have permanently altered rhetorical deliberation and its forms and forums. [End Page 403] In what follows, I expand on these three criticisms first, by developing a historical account of the social changes that necessitate a rethinking of classical rhetorical theory; second, by comparing and contrasting Farrell’s work with two other contemporary Aristotelianisms, one antimodernist and the other solidly modernist; and third, by developing a framework for normative and empirical investigation of rhetoric that is, I hope... (shrink)

‘Left melodrama’ is a form of contemporary political critique that combines thematic elements and narrative structures of the melodramatic genre with a political perspective grounded in a left theoretical tradition, fusing them to dramatically interrogate oppressive social structures and unequal relations of power. It is also a new form of what Walter Benjamin called ‘left melancholy’, a critique that deadens what it examines by employing outdated and insufficient analyses to current exploitations. Left melodrama is melancholic insofar as its use of (...) older leftist critical methods disavows its attachments to the failed promises of left political-theoretical critique: that it could provide direct means to freedom and moral rightness. Left melodrama is melodramatic insofar as it incorporates the specific melodramatic narrative, style and promise of the text that stands in for its disavowed attachments: the Manifesto of the Communist Party. Whereas the Manifesto's critical power promised radical political transformation, left melodrama incorporates the Manifesto's melodramatic style in an effort to revivify that promise. It thus inhibits the creation of new critical methods appropriate to our current historical moment and occludes Marx and Engels' warning that the possibility of radical transformation is diminished when the past furnishes the vision for the future. Left melodrama can be found in the texts of Giorgio Agamben, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri; their reincorporation of the Manifesto's melodrama both contributes to their widespread success and undercuts their critical capacities to examine and challenge the inequalities, injustices and unfreedom that shape the present moment. (shrink)

There has been much interest in conspiracy theories (CTs) amongst philosophers in recent years. The aim of this paper will be to apply some of the philosophical research to issues in political theory. I will first provide an overview of some of the philosophical discussions about CTs. While acknowledging that particularism is currently the dominant position in the literature, I will contend that the ‘undue scepticism problem’, a modified version of an argument put forward by Brian Keeley, is an important (...) general objection to many CTs. This in turn leads to some substantial conclusions for liberal political philosophy, as the undue scepticism problem sets up a strong argument against non-liberal alternatives to liberal thought. I shall argue that we are justified in having far more doubt about the reliability of official sources in non-liberal societies, and it is legitimate to be more sceptical about claims designed to bolster non-liberal politics. Moreover, because scepticism is often more warranted in non-liberal societies, this may provide the possibility for the state to be stable, even if it is highly tyrannical or ineffective. These considerations are not intended to be decisive, but raise unresolved questions about the viability of non-liberal politics. (shrink)

The present essay is the first part of an analysis regarding aspects of Aristotle’s ontology. Aristotle’s ontology is, in my opinion, a formal ontology that examines the fundamental structures of reality and that investigates the features belonging to entities such as substance, quantity, quality, universals. Aristotle’s ontology investigates, moreover, the reciprocal relations existing between these entities. Aristotle’s interpretation of universals is not, in my opinion, a nominalist interpretation of universals: I do not think Aristotle regards universals as being only mental (...) entities. Aristotle, rather, aims at the differentiation between the realms of reality to which individuals and universals belong. In this part of my investigation, I first expose my interpretation of the fundaments of Aristotle’s ontology. Thereafter, I concentrate my attention on chapter Metaphysics Zeta 13: I comment on Aristotle’s investigation regarding the ontological features belonging to the universal qua universal and to the substance qua substance. I analyse the ontological laws that Aristotle finds about universal and substance: substance and universals are considered by Aristotle as mutually incompatible entities. The analysis shows that a false interpretation of the features of the universals endangers the whole ontology. Moreover, the Third-Man-Regress, which is one of the consequences of the misunderstanding of the position of universals in the reality, is regarded as the key to the interpretation of one of Aristotle’s aims: Aristotle aims at the foundation of a typological ontology putting individual entities and universal entities on different levels of reality. The danger of the Third-Man-Regress is avoided through the introduction of a new ontology, that is, through the introduction of the typological ontology of the entities. (shrink)

Starting from considering how radical Hobbes' rejection of teleology was, this paper presents a coherent reading of Hobbesian reason, as applied to the justification of political obligation, striking a more perspicuous third way between the ‘orthodox’ and the ‘revisionist’ readings. Both families of interpretations are partial to some elements of Hobbes' thought, therefore incapable of providing a coherent reading of its whole. A precise rendering of Hobbes' deontological reason allows a better hermeneutical understanding of his philosophy as well as a (...) keener appreciation of its relevance for past and present political thought. (shrink)

A distinctive characteristic of Laclau and Mouffe’s theory of hegemony is its insistence on the denial of an essence or ground of the subject. This element of their theory is derived from their notion of antagonism, in which a relation with a ground is brought into question by revealing its contingency. This article argues that the political dimension of this argument makes sense only in the context of Laclau and Mouffe’s notion of modernity. However, the universalizing of modernity as the (...) form of hegemony reduces the ontological notion of antagonism to a dialectical or empirical notion of contradiction. This article examines two key moves in this process: first, the reduction of the subject to Lacan’s account of the subject; and second, the reduction of modernity to an ontotheologicalpolitical structure derived from Lefort as the support of the hegemonic subject. From this the article examines Laclau’s response to the exhaustion of political modernity in the figure of complexity, from which antagonism is evacuated through the hegemony of the category of myth. Finally, the article discusses a nonhegemonic approach to antagonism derived from the work of Foucault, Wolin and Rancière. (shrink)

This article discusses the perpetual debate on the Florentine, Niccolo Machiavelli's ethical values and leadership ideas and the consequent creation of the mythical reputation and negative epithet 'Machiavellian'. This article proposes recommendations on how Machiavelli's thought and his study can best be applied to bring genuine clarity and value to organisations in these interesting and turbulent times providing a hopefully viable compass for a changing landscape.

The purpose of this research is to present the major factors that lead to ethical dissolution in an organization. Specifically, drawing from a wide spectrum of sources, this study explores the impact of organizational, individual, and contextual factors that converge to contribute to ethical dissolution. Acknowledging that ethical decisions are, in the final analysis, made by individuals, this study presents a model of ethical dissolution that gives insight into how a variety of elements coalesce to draw individuals into decisions that (...) result in the ethical undoing of an otherwise healthy organization. ENRON, TYCO and WorldCom did not happen in a vacuum. Nor can such debacles be explained as simply one or two individuals who were morally corrupt. The ethical breakdowns that occurred in these companies happened over a period of time, involved numerous individuals both inside and outside of the organization, and brought about the implosion of viable companies. Seeking to extend the work of previous researchers, this study attempts to tie together a disparate set of factors into a cohesive explanation of ethical breakdowns in organizations. (shrink)

: Most contemporary attempts to draw inspiration from Kant's cosmopolitan project focus exclusively on the prescriptive recommendations he makes in his article, ‘On Perpetual Peace’. In this essay, I argue that there is more to his cosmopolitan point of view than his normative agenda. Kant has a unique and interesting way of problematizing the way individuals and peoples relate to one another on the stage of world history, based on a notion that human beings who share the earth in common (...) ‘originally’ constitute a ‘commercium’ of thoroughgoing interaction. By unpacking this concept of ‘commercium’, we can uncover in Kant a more critical perspective on world history that sets up the cosmopolitan as a specific kind of historical-political challenge. I will show that we can distinguish this level of problematization from the prescriptive level at which Kant formulates his familiar recommendations in ‘Perpetual Peace’. I will further show how his particular way of framing the cosmopolitan problematic can be expanded and expatiated upon to develop a more critical, reflexive, and open-ended conception of cosmopolitan thinking. (shrink)

This paper examines a remarkable document that has escaped critical attention within the vast literature on John Rawls, religion, and liberalism: Rawls's undergraduate thesis, "A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith: An Interpretation Based on the Concept of Community" (1942). The thesis shows the extent to which a once regnant version of Protestant theology has retreated into seminaries and divinity schools where it now also meets resistance. Ironically, the young Rawls rejected social contract liberalism for reasons that (...) anticipate many of the claims later made against him by secular and religious critics. The thesis and Rawls's late unpublished remarks on religion and World War II offer a new dimension to his intellectual biography. They show the significance of his humanist response to the moral impossibility of political theology. Moreover, they also reveal a kind of Rawlsian piety marginalized by contemporary debates over religion and liberalism. (shrink)

Cicero’s rhetorical theory offers an important critique of efforts to systematize persuasion. His resistance to this systematization is grounded in his reconception of the orator’s virtus, which, a...

Sheldon S. Wolin's theory of fugitive democracy has been both lauded and criticized for its radical departure from the mainstays of democratic theory: formal institutions, political offices and constitutional arrangements of power. For Wolin, democracy is correctly understood as an ephemeral event that appears unexpectedly when ordinary citizens, united by a shared grievance, collectively interrupt normal political proceedings and reject constitutionalism. This article critically analyzes Wolin's theory in light of a historical phenomenon in which citizens collectively interrupted politics: frontier vigilantism (...) in the American West from 1850 to 1900. Critical of Wolin's wholesale rejection of constitutionalism, the article reveals the potentially legalistic patterns of extra-legal collective action, and it argues for de-fetishizing democratic practice that occurs outside of institutional channels. (shrink)

Abstract:This essay seeks to defend the claim that political philosophy ought to be appropriately guided by the phenomenon of politics that it seeks to both offer a theory of and, especially in its normative guise, offer a theory for. It does this primarily through the question of political values. It begins by arguing that for any value to qualify as a value for the political domain, it must be intelligible in relation to the constitutive features of politics as a human (...) activity. It then examines the extent to which the preconditions for the realization of values in practice ought to figure in our considerations as to whether they are values that fit or belong to our social world. We can understand these parts of the essay as responding to two related questions, respectively: (i) Is this a political value at all? — which is to ask, is it a value that is appropriate for the political realm?; and then (ii) Is this a political value for us? The final section responds to the often-made complaint that political philosophy ought not to make any concessions to the actual world of politics as it really is, arguing that attending to the realities of politics, and in particular the constitutive conditions of political activity, gives meaning to the enterprise as the theorization of politics (and not something else). Furthermore those same conditions provide the limits of intelligibility beyond which ideals and values can no longer be, in any meaningful sense, ideals and values for the political sphere. (shrink)

Quentin Skinner's The Foundations of Modern Political Thought is primarily of interest to philosophers not for its excellent account of European thought about the state but for the self–conscious philosophy which has gone into it. It is a rare historian who pauses to get his philosophy in order before he embarks on a major enterprise, though such a policy is possibly less unusual in intellectual history than in other fields. In Skinner's case, however, this order of doing things has been (...) pushed so far that he counts as a philosopher in his own right, rather than as merely someone who is unusually careful to think about what he is doing. The publication of this major work thus provides a convenient opportunity to make a few remarks about the relation between historical theory and practice. (shrink)

Recent scholarship on the political thought of Niccolò Machiavelli has demonstrated the extent to which the latter's republicanism is of a populist type, and a potentially important resource for contemporary democratic theory. Although work has been produced on the constitutional form of the Machiavellian republic, less effort has been made to articulate the theoretical assumptions upon which the advocacy of such a republic is ethically grounded. Here, I attempt to locate the democratic ethical imperative in the affirmation of a fundamental (...) human difference. Influenced by the Epicurean tradition, Machiavelli's natural philosophy considers material entities as absolute singularities lacking internal teleological direction, their movement the productive result of contingent encounters. One cannot assume a natural or pre-social identity of desire between persons. Democracy is the ethically preferred regime because it is the one that is capable of facilitating the expression of this human uniqueness. (shrink)

Constellations, Volume 28, Issue 4, Page 555-569, December 2021.

Algunas formulaciones de la filosofía política reciente han descuidado el carácter históricamente indexado de conceptos como libertad política, propiedad o soberanía, propiciando un uso anacrónico e impreciso de su significado. No obstante, su posición académica y social dominante informa el «sentido común» filosófico- político de nuestra época. Locke constituye un ejemplo de cómo la coyuntura interpretativa liberal, que se desplegó en el siglo XIX y se consolidó en el XX, ha oscurecido una parte de la complejidad y pluralidad de las (...) tradiciones intelectuales y normativas que heredó. La reconstrucción de la filosofía política lockeana a partir de su concepción fiduciaria de la libertad política contribuye a hacer de nuevo visible el significado de algunas concepciones fundamentales para la teorización normativa presente. (shrink)

Artikkel käsitleb kriitiliselt üht viimaste kümnendite vastandust poliitilises filosoofias — ‘poliitilise liberalismi’ (Rawls) ja ‘radikaalse demokraatia’ (Laclau ja Mouffe) vahel. Artikkel püüab käivitada potentsiaalset dialoogi nende kahe näiliselt lahkneva lähenemise vahel. Kokkuvõttes näitab artikkel, et vastandus on möödarääkimine vähemalt ühes fundamentaalses mõttes: mõlemad lähenemised jagavad ühiskonnastmõtlemisel sama aluseetost. Artiklis nimetatakse seda ‘sattumuslikkuse eetoseks’ ning väidetakse, et see on kõige fundamentaalsem alusveendumus nii Laclau ja Mouffe’i ‘radikaalse demokraatia’ kui ka Rawlsi ‘õigluse kui ausameelsuse’ idee jaoks. Artikkel osutab ka ühele kesksele kitsaskohale (...) Laclau ja Mouffe’i lähenemises: nende suutmatusele kontseptualiseerida institutsioonilisi korraldusi tulenevalt nende ülemäärasest rõhuasetust demokraatia dekonstruktiivsele potentsiaalile. Selles suhtes osutatakse ka Rawlsi käsitluse ilmselgetele eelistele, kuna see pakub juhiseid organiseerimaks demokraatlikke institutsioone. The paper concentrates on a controversy in recent decades’ political thought between ‘political liberalism’ of Rawls and ‘radical democracy’ (represented in this paper by Laclau and Mouffe). The article tries to initiate a potential dialogue between these seemingly divisive approaches. In conclusion the paper maintains that the whole controversy is misguided in one fundamental respect: both approaches share the same underlying ethos in envisioning society—‘the ethos of contingency’. It is argued that it is the most fundamental tenet informing both Laclau and Mouffe’s theory of hegemony with its complementary idea of ‘radical democracy’, and justice as fairness conceived in terms of reciprocity with its accompanying idea of public justification and reflective equilibrium. _e article points to a central impasse in Laclau and Mouffe’s approach: its incapability to conceptualize institutional arrangements due to their overemphasis on the deconstructive potential of democracy. In this respect the obvious merits of Rawls’ conception are highlighted in view of his proposals for organizing democratic institutions. (shrink)

In this paper, I attempt to revamp Confucian democracy, which is originally presented as the communitarian corrective and cultural alternative to Western liberal democracy, into a robust democratic political theory and practice that is plausible in the societal context of pluralism. In order to do so, I first investigate the core tenets of value pluralism with reference to William Galston’s political theory, which gives full attention to the intrinsic value of diversity and human plurality particularly in the modern democratic context. (...) I then construct a political theory of Confucian pluralist democracy by critically engaging with two dominant versions of Confucian democracy—Confucian communitarian democracy and Confucian meritocratic democracy. My key argument is threefold: (1) the unity in Confucian democracy should be interpreted not as moral unity but as constitutional unity; (2) Confucian virtues should be differentiated (or pluralized) between moral virtues and civic virtues; (3) in Confucian democracy minorities have the constitutional right to contest public norms in civil society. (shrink)

: The history of modern feminist political theories is often framed in terms of the already existing theories of a number of radical nineteenth-century men philosophers such as James Mill, John Stuart Mill, Charles Fourier, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Engels. My argument takes issue with this way of framing feminist political theory by demonstrating that it rests on a derivation that remains squarely within the logic of malestream political theory. Each of these philosophers made use of a particular discursive trope (...) that linked the idea of women's emancipation with the idea of social progress. I argue that this trope reproduced the masculinist signification and symbolism inherent in their particular political philosophies. I argue for a more positive, less masculinist, account of the history of feminist political thought. (shrink)

In the recent critique of ‘Western metaphysics’ by post‐structuralist and postmodern theorists, there has emerged a distinctive line of thought which seeks to apply such critique to the domain of political theory. This paper approaches Hannah Arendt's conceptualisation of the political as a proto‐type of such a theorisation, deploying as it does key elements of the Heideggerian position so as to rethink the nature of the political. By delineating the specifically ‘post‐metaphysical’ moments of Arendt's theory and its corresponding critique of (...) political modernity, I endeavour to illuminate both the advantages and pitfalls of contemporary efforts at developing a philosophical conception of the political on the basis of a neo‐Heideggerian position. (shrink)

This article seeks to identify the political and ideological dimensions of the contemporary presence of information technology or infotech. This presence is experienced as the progressive unfolding of technology as the logic of the social itself. Rather than approaching these dimensions through their reduction to a ground, a symbolic totality or a specific interest, and argument is constructed from Laclau and Mouffe's concept of `antagonism' in conjunction with Claude Lefort's notion of `invisible ideology'. This gives the argument the advantage of (...) relating the constitution of ideology to a historically specific political formation, instead of positing a timeless relation to the constitution of an abstract subject as the ground of an explanation. The argument is that insofar as information technology appears as a substance that absorbs the dynamic of community, which I call autotechnopoiesis, then ideology constructs the identity of this space with itself. The political is understood as the failure of this self-presence. In conclusion, these issues are located in terms of the governmentality of the `performative state' which seeks the recruitment of subjects to the `promotion of the social' through an investment in the banality of communication. (shrink)

Although influential in philosophy and relevant to international political theory’s (IPT) key concerns, Donald Davidson has not received commensurate attention in IPT. I aim here to commence filling this gap. I explore Davidson’s insights which fruitfully challenge established disciplinary views. The notions of rationality, objectivity and truth, and, on the other hand, those of intersubjectivity, language and interpretation are often needlessly separated and constricted by seemingly alternative approaches. Davidson firmly reconnects these notions. He helps rethink the realist, strong post-positivist, but (...) also liberal, ‘thin’ constructivist and critical (not thoroughly contextualist) approaches. He bridges the normative cosmopolitan–communitarian distinction. Eventually, Davidson laid foundations for a perspective foregrounding possibilities for rational communication and agreement between very different contexts and also for the non-dogmatic, pluralist and dynamic nature of communication itself. (shrink)

A tension between acting morally and acting rationally is apparent in analyses of moral emotions that ascribe an inherent subjectivity to ethical thinking, leading thence to irresolvable differences between rational agents. This paper offers an account of emotional worthiness that shows how, even if moral reasons fall short of philosophical criteria of rationality, we can still accord reasonableness to them and recognize that the deliberative weight of social norms is sufficient to address the moral limitations of strategic rationality.

Neo-republicans position James Harrington as a seminal figure in a tradition that asks what set of institutions grant the individual freedom from domination. This article argues that th...

ABSTRACTNeoliberalism is a force that seeks to commodify the time of education. Time must be productive. We rank journals and reward scholars who produce work published in those highly ranked journals. In the process of commodifying the work of scholarship, we lose time to the logics of neoliberalism. In search of this lost time, we need allies and resources that allow us to resist and reclaim that which replenishes value. This paper makes the case that a vision of progress connected (...) to Dewey’s thought may preclude us from appreciating sources of value that deserve further attention. The paper is not an exercise in nostalgia and does not seek a return to values undergirded by tradition or traditional ways of thinking, but it does ask that we exercise vision so that we don’t turn our back on sources of resistance that lie waiting to be cultivated. (shrink)

Historically, American political science has rarely engaged popular culture as a central topic of study, despite the domain’s outsized influence in American community life. This article argues that this marginalization is, in part, the by-product of long-standing disciplinary debates over the inadequate political development of the American public. To develop this argument, the article first surveys the work of early political scientists, such as John Burgess and Woodrow Wilson, to show that their reformist ambitions largely precluded discussion of mundane activities (...) of social life such as popular culture. It then turns to Harold Lasswell, who produced some of the first investigations of popular culture in American political science. Ironically, however, his work – and the work of those who adapted similar ways of speaking about popular culture after him – only reinforced skepticisms concerning the American public. It has thus helped keep the topic on the margins of disciplinary discourse. (shrink)