Resumen En este documento, a partir de lo que desde la literatura especializada se registra como los puntos de acuerdo y como los avances en el campo de la teoría ética del desarrollo, se lleva a cabo una descripción de las ventajas y desventajas que se observan en tres mecanismos muy populares como vías para la realización de los postulados de la ética del desarrollo, en especial respecto a aquel que apunta a la necesaria erradicación de la pobreza extrema en (...) el mundo. Una vez realizado el estudio de la Ayuda Oficial para el Desarrollo, la tasa Tobin y la Renta Básica Universal, se analizan las propuestas económica y jurídica, respectivamente, de Thomas Piketty y Luigi Ferrajoli a fin de identificar los aportes teóricos que las mismas pueden realizar al campo de la ética del desarrollo y las ventajas que presentan frente a los mecanismos hasta ahora explorados.In this document, based on what is recorded on the specialized literature as the points of agreement and as the advances in the field of the ethical theory of development, a description is realized on the advantages and disadvantages that can be observed in three mechanisms that are very popular as avenues for the realization of the postulates of development ethics, especially with respect to the one that points to the necessary eradication of extreme poverty in the world. Following the study of the Official Aid for Development, the Tobin tax and the Universal Basic Income, the economic and legal proposals of Thomas Piketty and Luigi Ferrajoli are analyzed in order to identify the theoretical contributions that they can make to the field of development ethics and the advantages they present over the mechanisms explored so far. (shrink)

Contemporary (post-1945) liberalism functions analogously to Roman Catholicism in the decades after 1443. Both ideologies, in their respective periods, represent the hegemonic ideology of Western civilization, despite the fact that both comprise a miscellany of competing belief systems. Both ideologies are dominated by a single hegemonic power—the United States and the Renaissance papacy, respectively—which strives for doctrinal stability. All who reject official “doctrine,” however, are rendered liable to violent suppression. In this, papal Catholicism and American liberalism display an ultra-conservative outlook; (...) but they also evince a powerfully millenarian streak, as evidenced by their dual proclamations of the “end of history” and their zealous missionary responses to macro-historical events in the final decades of the fifteenth and twentieth centuries. For ideologues of both regimes, those events speak to an ultimate harmony of truth and value that only serves to entrench their own dogmatism. This, however, has dire consequences when it comes to war, as can be seen in the “crusading” character of contemporary liberal warfare. Ultimately, the Renaissance papacy proves unable to maintain its monopoly on Christian doctrine; and one has to wonder if a similar fate may befall America's perceived role as the champion of liberalism. (shrink)

This article questions the popular assumption that the concept of civilization that entered public discourse in a grand way with Samuel P. Huntington’s sensational article on a ‘clash of civilizations’ refers to any meaningful historical formations that can be identified across time and space in plural manifestations, apparently withstanding collapse, disintegration and a final withering away. Contrasting Huntington’s rather stable universe with A. J. Toynbee’s and Eric Voegelin’s radically different perspectives on an open-ended dynamics of civilizational processes makes it possible (...) to recognize that the sequence of institutional cycles and the succession of universes of symbolic meaning that accompany them may be limited. Civilizations are not natural phenomena but human constructs and have therefore limited timelines. Toynbee and Voegelin were facing an end of the history of traditional civilizations and all their pseudo-morphed variations. They envisioned something new would emerge out of the wasteland of meaning without clearly knowing what it would be. The political economy of globalization has certainly accelerated the terminal conditions of traditional civilizations that Toynbee and Voegelin had anticipated long before this modern endgame began. The signs of decay and death are overwhelming while the quests for a new universe of meaning are still in their infancy. (shrink)

Taiwan is a liminal site of modernity in Asia. It is a modern exemplar as a liberal democracy with a developed economy, but is mostly unrecognized as a nation-state in the international system. In its liminality, however, it traces contours of modern power and their epistemological expression. This paper presents an account of Taiwan as an object of knowledge and representation in instances of scholarship and policy, Taiwanese politics, urban development and art, arguing that the narratives through which Taiwan is (...) understood embed a lived experience as Taiwanese under forms of epistemological domination. The paper then explores Taiwanese responses of co-option and resistance in alternative sites of knowledge, and it concludes that the critical unexamined force in Taiwan’s experience of modernity is violence. (shrink)

This is my response to a book, Globalize Liberation, edited by David Solnit and published in 2004. Media activists James John Bell and Patrick Reinsborough sent me a copy and asked for my thoughts about it; the result turned into an essay of some length, which got a certain amount of exposure and discussion online. Looking at the travails of progressive activism since its publication, I find very little that needs revision, except the tone of relative optimism expressed toward the (...) end. (shrink)

For virtually all the major schools of Western opinion, the collapse of the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe and in the Soviet Union, between 1989 and 1991, represents a triumph of Western values, ideas, and institutions. If, for triumphal conservatives, the events of late 1989 encompassed an endorsement of “democratic capitalism” that augured “the end of history,” for liberal and social democrats they could be understood as the repudiation by the peoples of the former Soviet bloc of Marxism-Leninism in all (...) its varieties, and the reemergence of a humanist socialism that was free of Bolshevik deformation. The structure of political and economic institutions appropriate to the transition from post-Communism in the Soviet bloc to genuine civil society was, accordingly, modeled on Western exemplars—the example of Anglo-American democratic capitalism, of Swedish social democracy, or of the German social market economy— or on various modish Western academic conceptions, long abandoned in the Soviet and post-Soviet worlds, such as market socialism. No prominent school of thought in the West doubted that the dissolution of Communist power was part of a process of Westernization in which contemporary Western ideas and institutions could and would successfully be exported to the former Communist societies. None questioned the idea that, somewhere in the repertoire of Western theory and practice, there was a model for conducting the transition from the bankrupt institutions of socialist central planning, incorporated into the structure of a totalitarian state, to market institutions and a liberal democratic state. Least of all did anyone question the desirability, or the possibility, of reconstituting economic and political institutions on Western models, in most parts of the former Soviet bloc. (shrink)

This article explores Richard Rorty’s status in academic political theory in the decades after his conscious departure from disciplinary philosophy. Rorty found a receptive audience in this pluralistic field, and he became a point of orientation in a number of ongoing, research-agenda driving conversations, if often as an extreme example against which interlocutors could define themselves. In like fashion, Rorty refined his own self-conception as a patriotic liberal ironist in the course of his political theoretical engagements. I offer a sketch (...) of political theory’s landscape as a contrast to the reductivism and esotericism Rorty criticized in disciplinary philosophy, and survey his presence in the field over the years substantively, qualitatively, and quantitatively. (shrink)

How do we define Black politics conceptually? What is the conceptual jurisdiction from which it is framed as distinct from other political concepts? The concept of Black politics, I argue, operates as a force of refusal of the inevitability of liberalism as the ‘end of history.’ It repudiates what liberal politics routinely represents as pacific, universal, rational and inclusive to the field of politics. The concept of Black politics, then, is an anamorphic signifier that destabilises dominant conceptions of liberal politics (...) as inevitable. I make two arguments in this article: first, that liberalism is an anaemic singularity that excludes the imperial and racial assemblages in which it is implicated, and second, that the concept of Black politics is anamorphic in so far as it creates the possibility for emancipation that transcends this liberal obligation in its imperial and racial assemblages. (shrink)

Shifts in funding and a worldwide trend towards marketising higher education have led to a new emphasis on the quality of the student experience. In the UK this trend finds its strongest expression in recent policy proposals to simultaneously increase student fees and student choice so that students themselves become the drivers of higher education. We trace the policy developments of this shift over recent years and rehearse some of the criticisms against it. Accepting that there is good reason to (...) support improving the student experience, we then consider ways in which this might be achieved that foreground the relation of university teachers with their subject matter and students’ engagement in this. A higher education, we argue, should expose its students to disciplines whose standards are rightly contested and to a form of learning that intensifies or unsettles desires rather than simply aspiring to satisfy them. (shrink)

Este artículo se refiere a una línea de interpretación de la Fenomenología del Espíritu de Hegel que tiene en Alexandre Kojève a su exponente más conocido e influyente. En ella se privilegian los aspectos antropológico-existenciales e histórico-políticos por sobre los aspectos lógico-sistemáticos de la obra. La exposición se divide en dos partes. La primera está dedicada a la lectura de Hegel realizada por Kojève en su célebre curso dictado entre 1933-1939 en la École Practique des Hautes Études de París, y (...) la segunda se ocupa de su aporte a cinco filósofos directamente influidos por su interpretación. Finalmente concluye con una breve evaluación de estas lecturas. (shrink)

Isaiah Berlin is a classic name in political theory, but does he have anything to teach us about international relations? In the Cold War he was a realist disciple of the containment doctrine, indeed a more hawkish container than his friend George Kennan, at least until he saw what was happening in Vietnam. In the aftermath of the Cold War, confronted with an outburst of resurgent nationalism, he seemed more like a utopian idealist, dreaming with Herder of a world of (...) cultural harmony. But that dream is undermined by his own value pluralism, which points towards something more rigorous and interesting, a case for liberal internationalism in tension with its realist rival. From a value-pluralist point of view, realism tends towards moral monism, and liberal internationalism is normatively the more balanced view. However, liberals should still take seriously the central realist insight that security is an especially important value in the anarchic international context. (shrink)

This article explores the influence of Stoicism and religion on Adam Smith. While other commentators have argued either that the main influence on Smith was Stoicism or that it was religion, the two influences have not been explicitly linked. In this article I attempt to make such a link, arguing that Smith can be seen as belonging to the strand of Christian Stoicism chiefly associated with his teacher, Francis Hutcheson. Finally, some comments are made about the implications of this interpretation (...) for current understanding of the work of Adam Smith. (shrink)

Kegley asks whether in a culturally pluralistic global community it is possible to find a common normative principle that statesmen from diverse ethical traditions might embrace to discipline democratic behavior.

We extend the target authors' moral disciplining theory (MDT) by discussing signaling, proscriptive and prescriptive morality, and the dynamics by which signaling may operate in tandem with proscriptive and prescriptive forms of moral disciplining. We also suggest that MDT can help explain challenges to economic and social progress by revealing fundamental tensions between puritanical intuitions and liberal ideals.

Brown attempts to clarify Hegelian ideas of absolute knowledge and self-knowledge that lead to the model of the modern state as "the vehicle for the self-expression of spirit...governed only by the requirements of reason" upon which Hegel grounds international ethics.

This article explores the so-called `postsecular' turn from two different but intersecting angles. The first part of the argument offers a reasoned cartography of the postsecular discourses, both in general and within feminist theory. The former includes the impact of extremism on all monotheistic religions in a global context of neo-conservative politics and perpetual war. The context of international violence has dire consequences for the social space, which is increasingly militarized, but also for academic debates, which become more and more (...) restricted in scope and freedom. The article then shifts to mapping the intersection between feminism and the postsecular condition. The main argument is that the postsecular turn challenges European feminism because it makes manifest the notion that agency, or political subjectivity, can be conveyed through and supported by religious piety, and may even involve significant amounts of spirituality. This statement also implies that political agency need not be critical in the negative sense of oppositional and thus may not be aimed solely or primarily at the production of counter-subjectivities. Subjectivity is rather a process ontology of auto-poiesis or self-styling, which involves complex and continuous negotiations with dominant norms and values, and hence also multiple forms of accountability. The double challenge of linking subjectivity to religious agency, and disengaging both from oppositional consciousness and critique defined as negativity, is one of the main issues this article wants to address. In the conclusion the article raises the issue of the affirmative power of critical theory and the kind of ethical values it may be able to engender. (shrink)

For Frank Knight, the fact that we are free to engage in economic pursuits brings out what is both best and worst in human nature. The same competitive economy that liberates individuals to choose their own desired ends also provides them with socially undesirable wants and fosters habits potentially at odds with the demands of liberal democracy. Given Knight’s desire both to defend human liberty and his concession that liberty is likely to be abused, his version of liberalism must of (...) necessity be anticonsequentialist. Paradoxically, Knight’s philosophical pluralism?his insistence that there are any number of incommensurable perspectives on the good or just society?underlies both his criticism of the ?ethical? possibilities of the competitive order and his defense of human liberty against the dangers of social planning. (shrink)

The challenge from the sophists with whom Plato is confronted is: Who can prove that the just man without power is happy whereas the unjust man with power is not? This challenge concerns the basic issue of politics: the relationship between justice and happiness. Will the unjust man gain the exceptional happiness of the strong by abusing his power and by injustice? The gist of Plato’s reply is to speak not of justice but of intrinsic justice, i.e., the strength of (...) virtue which, in his account, is the fundamental good of man. Nevertheless, many contend that intrinsic justice is actually injustice, for the division of power in the state is undemocratic while in the soul, the suppression of desire by the reason. Plato’s advocacy of hierarchical, elite political system has enraged democrats, while his idea of philosopher king has enraged the aristocrats as well. So, who will appreciate Plato’s effort? (shrink)

Machine learning, and more broadly artificial intelligence (AI), is a fascinating technology and can be considered as the closest approximation to the Cartesian “thinking thing” that humans have ever created. Just as the industrial revolution required a new ethos, the age of intelligent machines will create its own, challenging the established moral, economic, and political presuppositions. This paper discusses the relationship between AI and society; it presents several thought experiments to explore the complexity of the relationship and highlights the insufficiency (...) of the current normative paradigm in addressing technological expansion. I argue that many of the externalities, such as security risks, loss of privacy, and economic instability will result from trying to fit the emerging technologies into the existing frame of efficiency and utility, by redefining the notions of human value, identity, autonomy, purity, and truth, among others. The age of the intelligent machine is elevating alienation to new levels, treating the individual as mere patterns in data—its primary commodity. I further argue that while the possibility of unintended consequences, due to the potential misuse of AI is ever present, the intelligent machine per se is unlikely to engage in a zero-sum game for power on its own initiative. I question whether singularity is at all attainable and argue that technology will forever remain a proxy for human interests. I conclude by posing questions for charting the path forward. Through this analysis, I aim to provide a more nuanced understanding of the complex relationship between the AI and humans. (shrink)

Fukuyama's 'The End of History' has referred to Kojeve's 'homogenous state' as some sort of conceptual container for the evolving idea of liberal democracy. This paper critically re-assess the homogeneity of state as final stage of liberal idea and defends civil society in terms of democratic governance. It also invites to discuss the role of scholars as public intellectuals and repels the ideological abuse of the scientific method.

This is a partly provocative essay edited as a humanitarian study in philosophy of science and social philosophy. The starting point is Isaac Asimov’s famous sci-fi novella “Profession” (1957) to be “back” extrapolated to today’s relation between Thomas Kuhn’s “normal science” and “scientific revolutions” (1962). The latter should be accomplished by Asimov’s main personage George Platen’s ilk (called “feeble minded” in the novella) versus the “burned minded” professionals able only to “normal science”. Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history” in post-Hegelian manner (...) is now interpreted to an analogically supposed “end of scientific history” without “scientific revolutions” any more. The relevant dystopia of the prolonged or even “eternal” period of normal science is justified to the contemporary institution of science due to mechanisms such as “peer-review”, “impact-factor rating”, the projects’ competition for funding, etc. Positive feedbacks forcing all scientists needing careers to be more and more orthodox are demonstrated therefore establishing for that dystopia to be the real state of contemporary science. Two counterfactual case studies based correspondingly on Feyerabend’s “Against method” (1975) if Galilei should make his discoveries today and Sokal’s hoax (1996) if he suggested a scientific masterpiece to be really rejected by journals are discussed. Still one case study considering the abundance of Kelvin’s “clouds” on the horizon of today’s physics (dark matter, dark energy, entanglement, quantum gravitation, phenomena refuting the Big Bang, etc.) serves to verify the aforementioned conjecture that science has already entered that dystopia of eternal normal science. The conception of “ontomathematics” implying “creation ex nihilo” being scandalous for the dominating paradigm is sketched as an eventual revolutionary way out. An imaginary and utopic “happy end” reinterpreting the analogical “happy end” of Asimov’s “Profession” finishes the essay “instead of conclusion” relying on the Internet and AI in an increasingly “fluid” and anti-hierarchical society. (shrink)

Through analysing different case studies in the Middle East, this section uses rooted cosmopolitanism as a theoretical lens to explore exported modernism and architecture between socialist and capitalist countries during the Cold War. This research analyses the circulation and local applications of urban development and modernisation paradigms in so-called ‘Third World’ countries. For assessing the socialist and capitalist-inspired modernisation processes in the Middle East, this chapter studies the cosmopolitan and trans-cultural architecture created by global and local influences. Comparing two types (...) of cosmopolitan architecture (socialist and capitalist) during the Cold War period in third-world contexts will help us to analyse and compare their relative rootedness and to learn from the interconnected, multifaceted, and multilayered planning transfers and architectural exportations. (shrink)

The book addresses the broad issue of sustainability of our civilization and seeks to contribute to the ongoing discussion of what many see as its systemic crisis. There is a broad agreement that new creative ideas, initiatives, and solutions are essential for dealing with the current problems. However, despite this recognition, we still know very little about the process of creation and how it works. As a result, our civilization fails to harness the enormous creative potential of humanity. This failure, (...) the book argues, is the main source of our current problems—languishing economy, deteriorating environment, continued violence, the deficit of democracy, and the lack of new fundamental breakthroughs in science. It examines some of these problems and demonstrates the connection between them and our failure to embrace the process of creation. The book offers a perspective that sheds light on the process of creation. It pays special attention to the theoretical contributions of Jean Piaget and the ongoing discussions of knowledge production that help us understand better how the process of creation works. The central argument of the book is that in order to solve our current problems and ensure the sustainability of our civilization well into the future we must embrace the process of creation and make it the central organizing principle of our social practice. Finally, the book provides an outline of the principal changes that the adoption of the new social practice organized around the process of creation will involve. (shrink)

To follow the legacy of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, a RUSA Sponsored One-Day Facutly Development Programme on “Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, Indian Constitution and Indian Society” organised by the Department of Philosophy and P.G. Department of Public Administation held on 20th January, 2016 was a creative and fruitful effort to bring together the scholars and academicians from several disciplines to participate in the deliberations related to the conceptual understanding and insights of the philosophy of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar.

One of the main problems of Albania since the overthrow of the communist dictatorship and the beginning of the transition in 1991 has been the consolidation of a functional constitutional democracy. Having a functional and applicable constitutional order by all institutions and mechanisms has been a significant challenge for Albania. Political parties are one of these mechanisms or vital elements in maintaining and improving the constitutional order in Albania. In democratic regimes, political parties continue to be the most important bridge (...) between the state and the mass of society. Political parties are the institutions that hold the position of a political leader in society, and democratic states cannot survive if they do not have political parties that fulfill their functions in consolidating, preserving, and improving democracy. The object of this study will be political parties in Albania and their role in the consolidation or not of the constitutional order during the period of democratic transition. In this study, the three main parties in Albania are taken as case studies, namely the Socialist Party of Albania, the Democratic Party of Albania, and the Socialist Movement for Integration. (shrink)

Marlene van Niekerk's 1994 Triomf is a plaasroman, or farm novel, without the farm; it formally resembles a nostalgic pastoral genre initiated by the collapse of Southern African agricultural economy around the time of the Great Depression, but removes even the symbol of the farm as aesthetic compensation for material loss. In the process, van Niekerk composes a post-apartheid tragicomedy of a lumpenproletariat white supremacist family coming into long-belated class consciousness, an epiphany which, surprisingly, survives the novel's translations from Afrikaans (...) to South African English to 'international' English. Crucially, this understanding is mediated by a critical tendency to appraise Triomf in the context of Faulkner and the Southern Gothic, a generic comparison which gets a lot wrong but is ultimately very revealing, less about Triomf than about the imperial world-system through which it circulates and is consecrated. Consequently, the novel stages globally what seems at first to be a parochial question: how is one supposed to imagine democratic reconciliation and integration after apartheid, when one of the classes to be reconciled lacks historical self-consciousness and has no obvious place in either the apartheid regime or the post-apartheid dispensation? By analyzing van Niekerk's novel and the institutions which consecrate it, the paper fleshes out critiques of world-literary hermeneutics, specifically for its naive handling of genre and context, and of post-apartheid 'reconciliation' under capital. (shrink)

The main thesis of my dissertation is that Kant has a just war theory, and it is universal just war theory, not a traditional just war theory. This is supported by first establishing the history of secular just war theory, specifically through a consideration of the work of Hugo Grotius, Rights of War and Peace. I take his approach, from a natural law perspective, as indicative of the just war theory tradition. I also offer a brief critique of this tradition, (...) suggesting some issues that are endemic to these kinds of theories. From this general understanding, the version of Kant’s just war theory present in Brian Orend’s work War and International Justice: A Kantian Perspective, is explored and rejected as another traditional just war theory. Orend attempts to shoehorn Kant into a tradition which Kant rejects as ineffective, and poorly grounded. Orend’s work is not without merit, and his view is reconceptualized in the last chapter. If not a traditional just war theory, then either a new category of just war theory needs to be established, or the thesis ought to be rejected. Thus, the next task is to defend against the claim that Kant does not have a just war theory at all, as claimed by Howard Williams in his work Kant and the End of War. This is rejected as insufficiently nuanced in its interpretation of Kant, and also for resulting in principles contrary to Kant’s moral theory. This view is also utilized in a new manner in the last chapter. Prior to describing the new category of just war theory, I consider the general approach Kant had to war. To do this, I explore his philosophical approach on ever more specific areas of philosophical investigation. I conclude that Kant has a dynamic and progressive understanding of the concepts he investigated, including philosophy, humanity, ethics, politics, and, eventually, war. In the penultimate chapter, I establish what I call a universal just war theory. I consider and name the traits of both a traditional just war theory and a universal just war theory, using Marxist Communism as an explanatory example of universal just war theory. This provides an intellectual space for Kant’s theory to reside, which is also consistent with his philosophical approach. The last chapter is devoted to the explanation and application of Kant’s universal just war theory. I offer an overarching principle for Kant’ view of conflict and defend it as a universal just war theory. I also revisit the place Orend and Williams views’ have in a proper understanding of Kant on just war. I end with an application of Kant’s universal just war theory to previous conflicts, as a demonstration of the practical value of this view. Thus, through first a negative argument against current conceptions of Kant’s views of just war theory, and then a positive argument for Kant’s general philosophical approach and a new category of just war theory, I offer an interpretation of Kant on just war theory. I argue this interpretation is superior to previous ones, and recommends real world applications for just war theorists to utilize. (shrink)

Il concetto introdotto dalla teorica femminista Kimberle Crenshaw, noto come “intersezionalità”, si è imposto nell’identificare e criticare i livelli di discriminazione esperiti dagli individui in base alle loro identità sociali, politiche ed economiche sovrapposte. È attraverso questo discorso intersettoriale che si può cominciare a comprendere i livelli di discriminazione e disuguaglianza che si sviluppano e che, a loro volta, vengono rafforzati dal modello politico liberale che domina la politica americana. Allo stesso modo, i problemi socioeconomici contemporaneiall’interno degli Stati Uniti sono (...) stati evidenziati sviluppando movimenti socialisti all’interno del paese, particolarmente a partire dallo storico oppositore del liberalismo, il marxismo. È possibile che i marxisti possano cooperare ideologicamente e praticamente con gli “intersezionalisti” per affrontare le questioni socioeconomiche contemporanee negli Stati Uniti?Questo saggio cerca di rispondere a questa domanda per mezzo di un confronto puntuale tra la teoria politico-economica marxista contemporanea e il pensiero intersezionale.A concept introduced by feminist theorist Kimberle Crenshaw known as “Intersectionality” has emerged, identifying and critiquing compounded levels of discrimination experienced by individuals based on their overlapping social, political, and economic identities. It is through this Intersectional discourse that one can begin to comprehend the levels of discrimination and inequality that is born and in turn reinforced by the Liberal political model that dominates U.S. politics. Likewise, contemporary socioeconomic problems within the U.S. have been highlighted by developing socialist movements within the country, particularly by thehistoric opponent of Liberalism, Marxism. Is it possible that Marxists can cooperate ideologically and practically with Intersectionalists in order to address contemporary socioeconomic issues within the U.S.? This paper seeks to answer this question through a side by side comparisonof contemporary Marxist political and economic theory with Intersectional thought. (shrink)

This PhD closely examines Marx's Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right (1843) in the light of the recently published Students' Notebooks: Vorlesungen Oben Naturrecht und Staatswissenshaft (0. Pöggeler: 1983), Die Philosophie des Rechts (K.-H. llfing: 1983), Philoso phie des Rechts (D. Henrich: 1983), together with the published version of Hegel's Rechtsphilosophie. The thesis demonstrates that Marx mistakenly took Hegel's project to be the defence of the reactionary' Prussian monarchy while in truth it was the philosophical reconstruction of the meaning of (...) the French Revolution as a means of calling for revolution in Germany. Further, the thesis argues that the most important contribution of Hegel's Political Philosophy is his discovery of multidimentionality of "imaginality" of the modern world and of modern mankind. • The first chapter examines Marx's ambivalence and ambiguity toward Hegel. • The second chapter examines Marx's motive and method applied in Critique. • The third chapter examines Marx's criticism of the inversion of the subjectpredicate in Hegel's Philosophy of Right. • The fourth chapter examines Hegel's theory of the Diversion of Political Power and of the constitutionary monarchy and Marx's theory of Democracy. • The fifth chapter examines Marx's criticism of Hegel's theory of Bureaucracy. • The sixth chapter examines Hegel's theory of Parliament and Marx's criticism. • The seventh chapter includes concluding remarks and practical implications of Heglianism. (shrink)

This dissertation addresses a debate about the proper relationship between democratic theory and institutions. The debate has been waged between two rival approaches: on the one side is an aggregative and economic theory of democracy, known as constitutional economics, and on the other side is deliberative democracy. The two sides endorse starkly different positions on the issue of what makes a democracy legitimate and stable within an institutional setting. Constitutional economists model political agents in the same way that neoclassical economists (...) model economic agents, that is, as self-regarding, rational maximizers; so that evaluations of democratic legitimacy and stability depend on the extent to which the design of institutional rules and practices maximize individual utility by promoting efficient schemes of collective choice. Deliberative democrats, on the other hand, understand political agents as communicative reason-giving subjects who justify their preferences and positions on issues that jointly affect them in a process of consensus-directed discourse, or deliberation; so that evaluations of democratic legitimacy and order depend on the degree to which institutional norms and practices promote deliberation and draw upon deliberated public judgment. I argue that despite the numerous incompatibilities between constitutional economics and deliberative democracy—which amount to a 'deep divide'—an opportunity to produce a genuine synthesis of the two approaches arises inasmuch as it is possible to overcome several points of opposition in their separate research programmes. The central thesis of the dissertation is that it is possible to construct a bridge spanning the divide between constitutional economists and deliberative democrats, and that Dewey and Bentley's transactional view can facilitate this bridge-building project. Pursuant to this end, the points of opposition between the v research programmes are mediated by way of five concepts which, on balance, favor deliberative democracy and its feasible institutionalization. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is examine the recent literature on the intersection between philosophical pragmatism and International Relations (IR), including IR theory and IR research methodology. One of the obstacles to motivating pragmatist IR theories and research methodologies, I contend, is the difficulty of defining pragmatism, particularly whether there is a need for a more generic definition of pragmatism or one narrowly tailored to the goals of IR theorists and researchers.

This dissertation seeks to reactivate the Marxist transition debate, by conceptualising transition as a problem in its own right, moving away from a stagist vision of the development of modes of production. Part I outlines the historical materialist parameters of the ontology of transition, and traces the concept across classical and western Marxism. This section draws from Althusserian theory to sketch out a conception of historical time as a multiplicity of dislocated trajectories. This is followed by a critique of post-Marxism, (...) based on the disappearance of the concept of transition in the discursive turn. It is argued that transition should be retained as a sociologically rigorous concept, and that among various strands of Marxist theory there is evidence of its efficacy. Part II analyses contemporary left theory and politics through the dichotomy of melancholy and utopia, and argues that they exemplify temporal complexity and illuminate current impasses on the left. Part III applies the findings of the preceding parts to strategic questions of demands, agency and strategy. This is achieved through a substantive discussion of postwork theory as a new postcapitalist vision, embodying issues of temporality, transition and utopia. The thesis concludes that the neglected problem of transition and the notion of multiple temporalities are important theoretical tools for addressing questions of historical epistemology and left strategy. Understanding transition as an embedded societal tendency is valuable to critical social theory, and provides the means to theorise postcapitalist futures. (shrink)

This dissertation examines the relationship that exists between two distinct and seemingly incompatible bodies of scholarship within the field of contemporary philosophy of technology. The first, as argued by postmodern pragmatist Barry Allen, posits that our tools and what we make with them are epistemically important; disputing the idea that knowledge is strictly sentential or propositional, he claims instead that knowledge is the product of a performance that is both superlative and artefactual, rendering technology importantly world-constituting. The second, as argued (...) by Heidegger and his inheritors, is that technology is ontologically problematic; rather than technology being evidence of performative knowledge, it is instead existentially threatening by virtue of the fact that it changes the tenor of our relationship with the world-as-given. Despite the fact that these claims seem prima facie incompatible, I argue that they may be successfully reconciled by introducing a third body of scholarship: the philosophy of photography. For it is the case, I argue, that although we, qua human beings, occupy lifeworlds that are necessarily constituted by technology, technology also induces a kind of phenomenological scepticism: a concern that mediated action precludes us from the possibility of authentic experience. Arguing in favour of the sentiment that photographs serve as a kind of phenomenal anchor—a kind of machine for living—I claim that photographic images provide a panacea to this existential concern: despite being epistemically problematic, it is this selfsame epistemic “specialness” of photographs that forces us to phenomenologically recommit, if only temporarily, to the world in a serious way. Consequently, it is my belief that an analysis of our artefacts and the way they function is fundamentally incomplete without an analysis of the epistemic and ontological problems introduced of the photographic image; as I will demonstrate, the photographic image casts an extremely long shadow over the philosophy of technology. (shrink)

The article aims to reveal the features of how the ideas of the end of history and post-history influence the contemporary political process. The adherents to the concept of the end of history, while considering the collapse of authoritarianism and totalitarianism and the withdrawal of any alternatives to liberalism from the historical scene, ignore the deep crisis of the liberal ideology and liberal-democratic regimes. The main fallacy of the adherents of the end of history and the post-history concepts is the (...) confusion of the sense of the end of history that has developed in the public consciousness with the completion of historical development. The way out of this situation is developing the paradigm of linear historical development, which can adequately respond to the current political crisis, rather than claiming the end of history. (shrink)

This thesis argues that the end of Soviet Marxism and a bipolar global political imaginary at the dissolution of the short Twentieth Century poses an obstacle for anti-systemic political action. Such a blockage of alternate political imaginaries can be discerned by reading the work of Francis Fukuyama and "Endism" as performative invocations of the closure of political alternatives, and thus as an ideological proclamation which enables and constrains forms of social action. It is contended that the search through dialectical thought (...) for a competing universal to posit against "liberal democracy" is a fruitless one, because it reinscribes the terms of teleological theories of history which work to effect closure. Rather, constructing a phenomenological analytic of the political conjuncture, the thesis suggests that the figure of messianism without a Messiah is central to a deconstructive reframing of the possibilities of political action - a reframing attentive to the rhetorical tone of texts. The project of recovering the political is viewed through a phenomenological lens. An agonistic political distinction must be made so as to memorialise the remainders and ghosts of progress, and thus to gesture towards an indeconstructible justice which would serve as a horizon for the articulation of an empty universal. This project is furthered by a return to a certain phenomenology inspired by Cornelius Castoriadis, Claude Lefort, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Ernesto Laclau. The thesis provides a reading of Jacques Derrida and Walter Benjamin as thinkers of a minor universalism, a non-prescriptive utopia, and places their work in the context of new understandings of religion and the political as quasi-transcendentals which can be utilised to think through the aporias of political time in order to grasp shards of meaning. Derrida and Chantal Mouffe's deconstructive critique and supplement to Carl Schmitt's concept of the political is read as suggestive of a reframing of political thought which would leave the political question open and thus enable the articulation of social imaginary significations able to inscribe meaning in the field of political action. Thus, the thesis gestures towards a form of thought which enables rather than constrains action under the sign of justice. (shrink)