This paper discusses the work of Noam Chomsky in the context of democracy, the media, and education. Through the analysis of selected works, a critical perspective emerges. This view demands that educators at all levels understand and confront the often deleterious effects the media can have on students' social and political views and further how the media can undermine democratic action in schools and society.

Metaphilosophy, Volume 53, Issue 1, Page 3-16, January 2022.

The ‘liberal-communitarian’ debate arose within anglophone political philosophy during the 1980s. This essay opens with an account of the main outlines of the debate, showing how liberals and communitarians tended to confront each other with opposing interpretations of John Rawls’ Theory of Justice (1999; originally published in 1971) and Political Liberalism (2005; originally published in 1993). The essay then proceeds to discuss four forms of ‘liberalism after communitarianism’: Michael Freeden’s account of liberalism as an ideology; Joseph Raz and Will Kymlicka’s (...) perfectionist liberalisms; the liberalism of value pluralists such as Isaiah Berlin and Bernard Williams; and Judith N. Shklar’s liberalism of fear. It concludes with the suggestion that there are times when liberals of every kind should set aside their ideology, even if only temporarily, in order to listen to their interlocutors with truly open minds. (shrink)

After the 2016 election of Donald Trump, many commentators latched on to the accusations Rorty levels at the American Left in Achieving Our Country. Rorty foresaw, they claimed, that the Left's preoccupation with cultural politics and neglect of class politics would lead to the election of a "strongman" who would take advantage of and exploit a rise in populist sentiment. -/- In this paper, I generally agree with these readings of Rorty; he does think that the American Left has made (...) the mistake of putting class on the political backburner. However, I suggest that this position follows from his view that economic security is vital for solidarity. Because economic security is under increasing threat in contemporary America, so too is solidarity. If greater solidarity is a goal of liberal democracy, then class politics, aimed at ending selfishness, ought to be as much a priority for the American Left as is cultural politics, aimed at ending sadism. (shrink)

When questioning whether political deception can be ethically warranted, two competing intuitions jump to the fore. First, political deception is a fact of human life, used in the realpolitik of governance. Second, the ethical warrant of truth asserts itself as inexorably and indefatigably preferable to falsehood. Unfortunately, a cursory examination of the history of philosophy reveals a paucity of models to marry these basic intuitions. Some thinkers (e.g., Augustine, Aquinas, Grotius, Kant, Mill, and Rawls) privilege the truth by neglecting the (...) realpolitik, i.e., the truth is inviolate. Others (e.g., Machiavelli, Bentham, and the often infamous caché of 20th century dictators) focus upon the realpolitik to the exclusion of the primacy of the truth. A third group of critical thinkers (e.g., Arendt and Bok) examine the topic but offer no positive, systematic treatment of deception. Lacking are theories which simultaneously recognize that political untruth is often necessary, but that untruth is only justified when a) truth is politically impossible, b) the necessity of untruth is demonstrable, and c) the truth can be replaced with a minimally injurious untruth. Plato offers one such account in the Republic, arguing that deceit must be applied medicinally to the city. However, his account is problematic in detail. One of Plato’s inheritors, the 10th century thinker al-Fārābī, advanced Plato’s theoretical account, arguing that political governance requires restrained political deception. This deception, the expression of philosophical truths through the symbols of religion, meets the criteria mentioned above, being necessary, demonstrably necessary, and minimally injurious. But while al-Fārābī provides a valuable model for what justified political deception could look like, the lengths to which he must go in order to create a viable model for political deception reveals the untenability of the notion of justified political deception writ large. One must orchestrate an entire cosmos around the notion, notably a cosmos that does not match our own. One must adopt very specific conceptions of human nature, association, and happiness, as well as a particular metaphysics and epistemology. For, while al-Fārābī shows that political deception can be justifiable, he also reveals its unjustifiability outside an idealized setting. (shrink)

Stories in the Zhuangzi detailing expert artisans and other extraordinary people are often read as celebrations of “skills” or “knacks.” In this paper, I will argue that they would be more accurately understood as “coping” stories. Taken as a celebration of one’s “skill” or “knack” they transform the Zhuangzi into an implicit advocate of conforming to, or even identifying with, one’s social roles. I will argue that the stories of artisans and extraordinarily skilled people are less about cultivating one’s talents (...) so as to “find one’s calling,” better fulfill social expectations, or achieve oneness with Dao, than they are concerned with developing strategies for coping with natural and social contingencies. Read in this way, there is much to learn from the Zhuangzi when reflecting on contemporary social and political issues, especially those related to meritocratic hubris. (shrink)

Democracy is crucially about inclusion: a theory of democracy must account for who is to be included in the democratic process, how, and on what terms. Inclusion, if conceived democratically, is fraught with tensions. This article identifies three such tensions, arising respectively in: (i) the inauguration of the democratic public; (ii) enabling equal participation; and (iii) the relationship between instrumental and non-instrumental accounts of democracy’s value. In each case, I argue, rather than seeking somehow to dissolve or avoid such tensions, (...) theories of democracy should allow us to live with their implications reflexively: to work with them. Such tensions are counter-democratic to the extent that they derail what Nancy Fraser calls “participatory parity,” under which citizens count as “full partners in social interaction.” But the extent to which they do this is not itself dependent on points of paradox in the very idea of inclusion. Such parity relies on complex factors, social and economic, which democratic institutions and procedures will not by themselves address. To achieve full democratic inclusion we must already have addressed such factors; no account of democracy itself, however finely-tuned, will do this. (shrink)

Anxieties stemming from rising inequalities have led significant sections of the world’s population to reject democratic practices and place their trust in politicians with fascist tendencies who promise to wrest control of their destinies from elites. Ironically, elite interests, far from being threatened, are bolstered by the rise of fascism, as discredited democratic institutions can be dismantled with impunity. The emerging alliance between the neoliberal project and fascist politics is a phenomenon that the business and society scholarship is ill-equipped to (...) confront as it remains trapped in the same neoliberal pro-elite paradigms that neglect meaningful attention to material equality and focus instead on ensuring a minimum floor of rights required for subsistence. Neglecting the concentration of wealth among the elite, particularly in countries with historic legacies of inequalities based on race, caste, ethnicity, and religion, creates ideal conditions for the eruption of fascisms premised upon programmatic denial of the full range of civil rights to one or more sections of the population, so that even the floor minimum becomes impossible to achieve for all. This paper argues that corporate collusions with fascism can be challenged only by a commitment to redistribution of wealth and creating critical citizens and by generating knowledge that can question authority: in other words, scholarship must become a subversive activity. (shrink)

As understood today, political correctness aims at preventing social discrimination by curtailing offensive speech and behaviour towards underprivileged groups of individuals. The core proponents of political correctness often draw on post-modernism and critical theory and are notorious for their scepticism about objective truth and scientific rationality. Conversely, the critics of post-modern political correctness uphold Enlightenment liberal principles of scientific reasoning, rational truth-seeking and open discourse against claims of relativism and oppression. Yet, both the post-modern proponents and their Enlightenment liberal critics (...) make up two sides of the same phenomenon of political correctness. Both sides intend to protect a liberal value system from illiberal truth-claims, which is the function of politically correct regulation. While post-modern advocates attempt to promote liberating tolerance, Enlightenment liberals place liberal values above the open-ended search for truth. Despite appearances to the contrary, this socio-academic debate is not about two sides favouring and opposing political correctness. In fact, it is a debate about the type of politically correct regulation that can better guard liberal values. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Volume 48, Issue 10, Page 1353-1368, December 2022. Rorty understands pragmatism in philosophy and social science, literature and art, to be intertwined with the political project of changing the world. Achieving Our Country, together with a lecture on the 150th anniversary of the Communist Manifesto, has become Rorty’s political testament. Rorty understands the leftist American project as the incomplete one of all those who fight for a classless society of boundless diversity. At the centre of Achieving (...) Our Country is the tragic division between old and new, social and cultural Left. Rorty’s patriotism is progressive and cosmopolitan. The American project can only be realized if the Left breaks the hegemony of the political Right. For that, America must be understood as a utopia that makes itself the avant-garde of global political, economic, social and cultural change. This utopia can be realized only by a new kind of unity between leftist centres in the university and leftist organizational power in the rest of society. In this respect, America could become a model for the rest of the world again. (shrink)

This paper revisits some of the arguments in Richard Rorty’s Achieving Our Country, twenty years after the book first appeared. Not only are many of Rorty’s diagnoses and predictions eerily prescient in the wake of the rise of Donald Trump to the US presidency, but there is also perceptive political advice in Rorty’s book that I argue the contemporary American Left would do well to heed. While many post-election commentators have tended to read Achieving Our Country as an admonishment of (...) so-called “identity politics” in favor of an “old Left” politics of redistribution and economic justice, I argue that the main distinction on which the analysis in Achieving Our Country hangs is between what Rorty calls “real politics” and “cultural politics”, a conclusion that is confirmed, I argue, by examining the three concrete suggestions for the American Left that together form the core positive argument in Rorty’s book. (shrink)

This article aims is to clarify two opposing interpretations of Charles Taylor’s philosophy against the backdrop of the current crisis of liberal capitalism. The first, de-radicalizing reading, ins...

The article focuses on the socially transforming aspect of American pragmatism. In particular, the article highlights the relevance and significance of Ralph Emerson’s transcendentalism and self-reliance for the information society. The key problem of the information society is defined as the general distrust about the truth. The culture of criticism displaces trust in others as seekers of the truth and, ultimately, eliminates self-trust.Based on Ralph Emerson’s essays and William James’ “Pragmatism”, the article distinguishes between two conceptions of truth: optimistic and (...) pessimistic. The first one is grounded on the pragmatist understanding of truth as the “theory that works”. The truth in the pragmatist understanding is not an ultimate and finished truth but the truth in making. Therefore, the truth is subject to amendments. However, this does not mean that uncompleted truth is not true, since it can already work and help us with our self-understanding and orientation in the world. Contrary to this, informational society is the society of spectatorship and criticism, left without the power of individuals to distinguish personally between true and false and take responsibility for such decisions. Informational society, in general, perceives truth as something absolute, unreachable and at the same time impossible to exist.The article considers Emerson’s idea of Man Thinking and the concept of Oversoul, addressing the problem of an autonomous individual in its relation to society and truth. Personality, being central for Emerson, cannot be understood separately at the same time, since an individual is a part of Nature and Society. In addition, in Emerson’s transcendental terminology, personality is the embodiment of the Oversoul of humanity while Oversoul in the world can act only through the actions of persons. Therefore, true self-reliance cannot be separated from the aspirations of an individual to reach Man Thinking through truth, and personally implement it in life. In such a way, self-reliance is also the basis for inter-subjective trust.Manuscript received 25.04.2020. (shrink)

Over the last 30 years, the self-determination efforts and objectives of Indigenous peoples in Canada have increasingly been cast in the language of ‘recognition’ — recognition of cultural distinctiveness, recognition of an inherent right to self-government, recognition of state treaty obligations, and so on. In addition, the last 15 years have witnessed a proliferation of theoretical work aimed at fleshing out the ethical, legal and political significance of these types of claims. Subsequently, ‘recognition’ has now come to occupy a central (...) place in our efforts to comprehend what is at stake in contestations over identity and difference in colonial contexts more generally. In this paper, I employ Frantz Fanon's critique of Hegel's master–slave dialectic to challenge the now hegemonic assumption that the structure of domination that frames Indigenous–state relations in Canada can be undermined via a liberal politics of recognition. Against this assumption, I argue that instead of ushering in an era of peaceful coexistence grounded on the Hegelian ideal of reciprocity, the contemporary politics of recognition promises to reproduce the very configurations of colonial power that Indigenous demands for recognition have historically sought to transcend. (shrink)

My considerations are organised into four sections. The first section provides a survey of some significant developments that determine contemporary philosophical discussion on the subject of ‘time’. In the second section, I show how the question of time and the issue of media are linked with one another in the views of two influential contemporary philosophers: Jacques Derrida and Richard Rorty. Finally, in the third section, the temporal implications of cultural practices which are developing in the new medium of the (...) Internet are analysed and, in the fourth section, related to the central theses of Derrida and Rorty. (shrink)

I have spent 40 years looking for a coherent and convincing way of formulating my worries about what, if anything, philosophy is good for. Richard Rorty had an unusually avid interest in metaphilosophy. Again and again he would return to questions about the practical uses (if any) to which philosophy might be put, about philosophy's role in intellectual culture, about what philosophy is or might become. His answers to these questions were famously negative: philosophy's practical uses are few, its cultural (...) role marginal. Philosophy is or will be whatever we make of it. Yet it is one thing to have given up on the idea of Philosophy as a Fach with a naturally occurring canon of problems, or in terms of the closely .. (shrink)

In this article I argue that hope is rightly numbered by Hesiod among the evils, as hope cannot be separated from an awareness of the inadequacy of one's current state. Political hope for democrats in particular is tied to the awareness that we have not yet realized ourselves, that, to paraphrase Pindar, we have not yet become who we are. I argue that, although Rorty comes close to articulating this in his book Achieving Our Country, his emphasis on pride ultimately (...) obscures more than it reveals. I conclude that Thoreau's anguished reflection in Walden on the failures of his fellow citizens is a better place to look for instruction on the question of political hope. (shrink)

This article discusses the ordinary, the existentialist, and the virtue‐ethics senses of the word ‘authenticity’. The term ‘authentic’ in ordinary usage suggests the idea of being ‘original’ or ‘faithful to an original’, and its application implies being true to what someone (or something) truly is. It is important to see, however, that the philosopher who put this technical term on the map in existentialism, Martin Heidegger, used the word to refer to the human capacity to be fully human, not to (...) being true to one's unique inner nature. Authenticity might also be thought of as a virtue, and interesting questions arise whether such a virtue should be regarded primarily as a personal or as a social virtue. (shrink)

This paper deals with Richard Rorty’s notion of solidarity and its limits. I contend that although Rorty makes an earnest attempt to expand on what is to be understood from being part of a “we-group,” he still perceives solidarity as a phenomenon confined principally within national borders. After presenting the theoretical shortcomings of Rorty’s idea of “national pride” in the aforementioned context, I critically investigate the possibility of a broader sense of solidarity without disregarding Rorty’s mostly cogent criticism of traditional (...) philosophy. (shrink)

Against the backdrop of the recent emergence of disturbing currents of populism in several countries, including the United States, this article argues for a conception of hope as a democratic civic virtue. In section 1, it offers a general overview of hope and sketches an initial conception of hope as a democratic civic virtue. In section 2, the stage is set for further theorizing of this conception in the present American context. Drawing on the work of Ghassan Hage, the article (...) makes the point that the United States is in the process of becoming a nation of worriers in part because of the failure of the government to distribute social hope. Section 3 fleshes out what hope as a democratic civic virtue could look like in the United States today. Section 4 concludes with brief comments about theorizing civic hope in the context of a modified pragmatism. (shrink)

In this article, we observe the possibility of ‘practicing’ cosmopolitanism in three distinct experiential spaces intrinsic to human existence: knowledge spaces, habitation spaces and marketplaces. Although cosmopolitanism has been overwhelmingly deliberated upon across multiple disciplines, it has been confined to ‘conceptualisms’ in the Western scholarship. On the other hand, we find that some of the works of thinkers, such as, Rabindranath Tagore’s Creative Unity, Aurobindo Ghosh’s The Ideal of Human Unity and Mikhail Bakhtin’s Rabelais and His World, open the possibilities (...) of experiencing cosmopolitanism in lived human spaces. Cosmopolitanism emerges through knowledge generation and exchanges in the academic vision of Tagore’s ideal Visva-Bharati, in the everydayness of city life through Aurobindo’s Auroville and in the cultural spaces of the Bakhtinian marketplace. Further, we find that cosmopolitanism in these thinkers interweaves the physical place with spaces of the mind. The individual emerges as a core of their cosmopolitan worldview. We argue that these thinkers not only pave the way for recognizing cosmopolitanism in real, lived spaces but also inspire a future vision, practicable in the society through academic institutions, human habitats and regular interactions at marketplaces. (shrink)

Critically engages the work of American philosopher Richard J. Bernstein.

The pragmatist revival of recent decades has in some respects obscured the radical emancipatory potential of Deweyan pragmatism. The author suggests that neo-pragmatists such as Richard Rorty have too often failed to grasp the ways in which Dewey's notion of social intelligence was bound up with the case for participatory democracy, and that recent efforts to bring out the potential of pragmatism for supporting certain forms of feminist and gay critical theory make for a more compelling reconstruction of pragmatism.

The article considers how Richard Rorty's writings on religion dovetail with his views on the philosophical significance of hope. It begins with a reconstruction of the central features of Rorty's philosophy of religion, including its critique of theism and its attempt to rehabilitate religion within a pragmatist philosophical framework. It then presents some criticisms of Rorty's proposal. It is argued first that Rorty's "redescription" of the fulfilment of the religious impulse is so radical that it is hard to see what (...) remains of its specifically religious content. This casts doubt on Rorty's claim to have made pragmatism and religion compatible. The article then offers an analysis of Rorty's key notion of "unjustifiable hope". Different senses of unjustifiable hope are distinguished, in the course of which a tension between the "romantic" and "utilitarian" aspects of Rorty's pragmatist philosophy of religion comes into view. (shrink)

The article enters a heated debate about the ideals and organization of the postmodern left. Hardt and Negri, two key figures in this debate, claim that their concept of the multitude — a revolutionary, proletarian body that organizes singularities — integrates the insights of Deleuze and Lenin. I argue, however, that Deleuze anticipated and resisted a Leninist appropriation of his political theory. This essay challenges the widely accepted assumption that Hardt and Negri carry forth Deleuze’s legacy. At the same time, (...) the essay advocates Deleuze’s concept of left assemblages — protean political bodies working for freedom and equality — as a valuable but underappreciated contribution to the liberal-democratic tradition. (shrink)

What is the cash value of Richard Rorty’s philosophy and politics of religion? This paper analyzes the political promise of Rorty’s shift from atheism to anticlericalism in the last decade of his life. It seeks to deliver primarily a concise summary of this shift, and of its transformative motivation. Then a critique of this shift is followed by the suggestion of a friendly amendment: its extension towards a pragmatic pluralism. The outlined Rortyan conception of a serene, and, at the same (...) time robust, politics of religion is proposed as a promising answer to the question of how secular liberal citizens should react to the “return of the gods.”. (shrink)

Liberal political theorists commend a comparatively orderly form of life. It is one in which individuals and groups who care about different things, and live in different ways, nevertheless share an overriding commitment to liberty and toleration, together with an ability to resolve conflicts and disagreements in ways that do not violate these values. Both citizens and states are taken to be capable of negotiating points of contention without resorting to forms of coercion such as abuse, blackmail, brainwashing, intimidation, torture (...) or other types of violence. In explaining what makes such a state of affairs possible, such theorists have tended to present the citizens of liberal polities as more or less rational individuals who are aware of the advantages of a pluralist, yet co-operative way of life, and understand what it takes to maintain them. Liberalism works best, they have suggested, when, and because, individuals understand its benefits, and therefore act broadly in accordance with the norms it prescribes. (shrink)

Acknowledging the negative impact poverty and violence can have on the educational process, I explore ways in which a pragmatic interpretation of hope can guide us in formulating preventive and responsive measures that are not intrusive on the normal curriculum. I draw on key pragmatic ideas presented by John Dewey to emphasize habits central to a pragmatic theory of hope. Equally important is the notion of a community of hope that fosters the development of hope's habits. A hopeful pedagogy enables (...) us to fund students with habits that help them resist the disconnection and despair that can come from living and learning amid impoverished or violent conditions. I argue that teachers can emphasize hope's relevance to achieving the goals of the curriculum; they can also promote students' self-knowledge through personal narratives that identify past accomplishments and explore possible means to desired goods. To begin ameliorating the tenacious conditions that foster poverty and violence, we need to look beyond the confines of the classroom and school to the resources and coordinated efforts made possible by the larger community. A pragmatic interpretation thus focuses our attention on individual and communal habits that help us secure desired goods. My discussion demonstrates at least some of the ways in which hope is a valuable resource for actively responding to circumstances that impede the educational process. (shrink)

In early work, I argued that Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States, often represented, in his political speeches and writings, a form of philosophical pragmatism with special relations to the University of Chicago and its reform tradition. That form of pragmatism, especially evident in the work of such early figures as John Dewey and Jane Addams, and such later figures as Saul Alinsky, Abner Mikva, David Greenstone, Richard Rorty, Danielle Allen, and Cass Sunstein, contributed greatly to the (...) intellectual atmosphere that Obama breathed during his many years in Chicago as a community organizer, senior lecturer in the University of Chicago Law School, and emerging figure in Illinois politics. And that form of pragmatism has, from Dewey to Obama, been keenly concerned to appropriate for its purposes the legacy of Abraham Lincoln. My purpose in this essay is to set out these filiations in ways more accessible to a global audience, and to carry the story forward through the opening moves of the Obama presidency. Key Words: Obama • pragmatism • optimism • pessimism • community • rhetoric • political philosophy. (shrink)

Richard Rorty's recent death has unleashed a strikingly mixed judgment of his philosophical legacy, ranging from claims to originality to charges of charlatanry. What is clear, however, is Rorty's role in articulating a distinctive American voice in the history of philosophy. He achieved this not only through his own wide-ranging contributions but also by repositioning the pragmatists, especially William James and John Dewey, in the philosophical mainstream. Rorty did for the United States what Hegel and Heidegger had done for Germany—to (...) portray his nation as philosophy's final resting place. He was helped by postwar German philosophers like Jürgen Habermas who were happy to defer to their American conquerors. Rorty's philosophical method can be understood as a sublimation of America's world-historic self-understanding: a place suspicious of foreigners unless they are willing to blend into the "melting pot." In retrospect, the breadth and confidence of Rorty's writing will come to symbolize the moment when the United States, for better or worse, came to be the world's dominant philosophical power. Key Words: Rorty • pragmatism • logical positivism • analytic philosophy. (shrink)

This paper explores the tension between pragmatism and utopia, especially in the concept of "realistic utopianism". It argues that historically, the pragmatic and gradualist rejection of utopia has been anti-utopian in effect, notably in the case of Popper. More recent attempts to argue in favour of "realistic utopianism" or its equivalent, by writers such as Wallerstein and Rorty are also profoundly anti-utopian, despite Rorty's commitment to "social hope". They co-opt the terminology of utopia to positions that are antagonistic to radical (...) alterity. But this is not a necessary response to the utopia/pragmatism tension: Unger, who is explicitly opposed to utopia, in fact proffers a more sympathetic resolution based on the merits of vision, social improvization and collective learning. These may lie closer to the core of the utopian project as a vehicle for the education of desire than Unger himself recognizes. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss the importance of practices of disidentification and imagination for democratic progress and change. To this end, I bring together certain aspects of Stanley Cavell’s and Richard Rorty’s reflections on democracy, aesthetics, and morality with Jacques Rancière’s account of the importance of appearance for democratic participation. With Rancière, it can be shown that any public–political order always involves the possibility (and often the reality) of exclusion or oppression of those who “have no part” in the current (...) order through a particular order of perceptibility, and that democratic action, therefore, requires rupturing acts of political agency on the part of self-proclaimed political actors through which disidentifications and constructions of difference against such existing orders become possible. With Cavell and Rorty, in turn, it can be shown that these rupturing moments, in order to actually become politically effective, require a responsive disposition and a willingness to engage in practices of imagination on the part of those who occupy dominant positions on existing orders, insofar as they must acknowledge the expression of others’ sense of injustice. The upshot of my discussion is that a comprehensive account of the aesthetic dimension of democratic politics must simultaneously address the interruption of political action on the one hand and responsiveness on the other, and that Rancière and the neo-pragmatists Rorty and Cavell complement each other insofar as they illuminate the blind spots of their respective approaches. (shrink)

In recent years much has been written on the political and social effects of the Internet on the public sphere, but comparatively little attention has been paid to its effects on the educational systems in Europe and beyond. More specifically, the effect of the shift in the locus of public communication to the private sphere, with everyone commenting on everything from their personal computers, tends to undermine and delegitimize the traditional institutions of education. New forms of communication need new educational (...) and behavioral standards. At the same time, not only individual citizens but especially public intellectuals and educators have to come to grips with the fact that there is less and less regulation of the new spaces and new publics they address. This article discusses what we can possibly expect our public education to achieve under these new conditions of local and global communication systems. (shrink)

This paper examines Honig’s use of Rancière in her book ‘Democracy and the Foreigner’. In seeking to clarify the benefits of ‘foreignness’ for democratic politics it raises the concern that Honig does not acknowledge the ways in which her own democratic cosmopolitanism may be more akin to Rancière’s police than politics. By challenging Honig’s assertion that democracy is usually read as a romance with the suggestion that it is more commonly read as a horror, I unpick the interstices of Honig’s (...) and Rancière’s work to separate foreignness from democratic cosmopolitanism. Instead, although I posit democratic cosmopolitanism’s potential as a police more conducive to politics I also suggest that the particular salience of Honig’s ‘foreigner’ figure is that it supplements Rancièrian politics, demonstrating a praxis of ‘looking anew’ at our ordinary social practices. By making these seem strange to us, we can discover a new critical perspective from which to question and subvert, thereby furthering the potential of Rancièrian democratic politics. (shrink)

In Two Faces of Liberalism, John Gray pursues the dual agenda of condemning familiar liberal theories for perpetuating the failed “Enlightenment project,” and promoting his own version of anti‐Enlightenment liberalism, which he calls “modus vivendi.” However, Gray's critical apparatus is insufficient to capture accurately the highly influential “political” liberalism of John Rawls. Moreover, Gray's modus vivendi faces serious challenges raised by Rawls concerning stability. In order to respond to the Rawlsian objections, Gray would have to reinstate the aspirations and principles (...) characteristic of Enlightenment theories of liberalism. (shrink)

Abstract: Pragmatism involves simultaneous commitments to modes of inquiry that are philosophical and historical. This article begins by demonstrating this point as it is evidenced in the historicist pragmatisms of William James and John Dewey. Having shown that pragmatism focuses philosophical attention on concrete historical processes, the article turns to a discussion of the specific historiographical commitments consistent with this focus. This focus here is on a pragmatist version of historical inquiry in terms of the central historiographical categories of the (...) object of historical inquiry and mode of historical periodization. After describing the basic historiographical consequences of pragmatism's historicism, the article moves to a discussion of the philosophical results of this historicism. The focus here is on the role that historical inquiry can play in the general philosophical perspective of pragmatism as well as on some recent texts that exemplify the dual pragmatist commitment to philosophy and history. (shrink)

In the article texts by John Dewey, JürgenHabermas and Richard Rorty are discussed in thelight of different meanings of the Public. Thisis done by discussing foundational andnon-foundational claims on a philosophy ofpragmatism and democracy, and by looking atdifferent meanings of intersubjectivity. Onecrucial difference I am pointing at, is thatwhile Dewey's intersubjectivity is stemmingfrom philosophical arguments as well aspolitical, Habermas's intersubjectivity isrestricted to the level of (an almostscientific) philosophical abstractargumentation without any concrete language ofpolitics. When it comes to Rorty I stress (...) thathe is far closer than Habermas to Dewey'spragmatism, especially his ambition to includethe specific individuals and to stressindividuality in a philosophy of communicationand public conduct. (shrink)

Critical realists argue that the condition of possibility of the sciences is that they are based on a correct set of ontological assumptions or definitions. The task of philosophy is to underlabor for the sciences, by ensuring that the explanations developed are congruent with the ontological condition of possibility of the sciences. This requires critical realists to justify their claims about ontology and, to do this, they turn to ontological assumptions that are held to obtain in natural scientific knowledge and (...) social agents’ lay knowledge. A number of problems with this approach are discussed and a problem-solving alternative is advocated. (shrink)