This article aims to question the anti-individualist stance in Carl Schmitt's concept of the political by uncovering the historical bias of Schmitt's anti-individualism, seen here as one of the main driving forces behind his argument. For Schmitt, the political can take place only when a collectivity is able to declare war to another collectivity on the basis of feeling existentially threatened by the latter. As such, Schmitt's framework implies the inescapable possibility of war, as the condition which (...) makes possible the political. Acknowledging the previous criticisms of Schmitt raised by John Rawls and Iris Marion Young, this article takes a different path by pointing to certain historically tacit assumptions in 1927 Germany which Schmitt took for granted, but which are not suitable for a contemporary political theory. The demonstration is done first by showing how the structure of interruption functions in the works of Schmitt, then showing how he conceives of the individual as a possible interruption of the political in history, and then placing this structure of interruption in the historical context of Schmitt's writing. (shrink)

This paper presents and defends Kant’s non-voluntarist conception of political obligations. I argue that civil society is not primarily a prudential requirement for justice; it is not merely a necessary evil or moral response to combat our corrupting nature or our tendency to act viciously, thoughtlessly or in a biased manner. Rather, civil society is constitutive of rightful relations because only in civil society can we interact in ways reconcilable with each person’s innate right to freedom. Civil society is (...) the means through which we can rightfully interact even on the ideal assumption that no one ever succumbs to immoral temptation. (shrink)

I seek to advance enquiry into the philosophical question of in virtue of what human beings have a dignity of the sort that grounds human rights. I first draw on values salient in sub-Saharan African moral thought to construct two theoretically promising conceptions of human dignity, one grounded on vitality, or liveliness, and the other on our communal nature. I then argue that the vitality conception cannot account for several human rights that we intuitively have, while the community conception can (...) do so. I conclude that, of plausible theories of human dignity with an African pedigree, the field ought to favour a community-based view and critically compare it in future work with the Kantian, autonomy-based view that dominates Western thinking about dignity. (shrink)

This paper develops an interpretation of what is essential to kant's doctrine of the highest good, Which defends it while also explaining why it is often rejected. While it is commonly viewed as a theological ideal in which happiness is proportioned to virtue, The paper gives an account in which neither feature appears. The highest good is best understood as a state of affairs to be achieved through human agency, Containing the moral perfection of all individuals and the satisfaction of (...) their permissible ends-I.E., One in which all act from the moral law and in doing so achieve their intended ends. The paper shows that the texts contain two distinct conceptions not distinguished by kant-Both a theological and a secular (political) notion. The standard objections apply to the theological, But the secular conception is consistent with kant's conception of moral conduct. Moreover, That the highest good is introduced as an end to be constructed out of the moral law indicates that the secular version is the essential notion. (shrink)

This article examines Gilles Deleuze’s concept of the simulacrum, which Deleuze formulated in the context of his reading of Nietzsche’s project of “overturning Platonism.” The essential Platonic distinction, Deleuze argues, is more profound than the speculative distinction between model and copy, original and image. The deeper, practical distinction moves between two kinds of images or eidolon, for which the Platonic Idea is meant to provide a concrete criterion of selection “Copies” or icons (eikones) are well-grounded claimants to the transcendent (...) Idea, authenticated by their internal resemblance to the Idea, whereas “simulacra” (phantasmata) are like false claimants, built on a dissimilarity and implying an essential perversion or deviation from the Idea. If the goal of Platonism is the triumph of icons over simulacra, the inversion of Platonism would entail an affirmation of the simulacrum as such, which must thus be given its own concept. Deleuze consequently defines the simulacrum in terms of an internal dissimilitude or “disparateness,” which in turn implies a new conception of Ideas, no longer as self-identical qualities (the auto kath’hauto), but rather as constituting a pure concept of difference. An inverted Platonism would necessarily be based on a purely immanent and differential conception of Ideas. Starting from this new conception of the Idea, Deleuze proposes to take up the Platonic project anew, rethinking the fundamental figures of Platonism (selection, repetition, ungrounding, the question-problem complex) on a purely differential basis. In this sense, Deleuze’s inverted Platonism can at the same time be seen as a rejuvenated Platonism and even a completed Platonism. (shrink)

This chapter draws upon Michael Freeden’s morphological theory of ideology to examine diverse conceptions of the State within the anarchist tradition. Its principal aim in so doing is twofold: first, to determine how and to what extent these conceptions serve to distinguish anarchism from other libertarian ideologies, and second, to explore the role they play in the formulation of diverse anarchist tendencies. As I shall argue, the particular meaning and degree of relative significance that a given conception assigns to the (...) State depends on the internal arrangement of its ‘micro-components’ and/or on its relation to other concepts within the ideological morphology. Both of these factors must be taken into account in order to understand anarchism’s internal diversity as well as its distinctiveness among ideologies. (shrink)

In his last works, John Rawls explicitly argued for an overlapping consensus on a family of reasonable liberal political conceptions of justice, rather than just one. This ‘Deep Version’ of political liberalism opens up new questions about the relationship between citizens’ political conceptions, from which they must draw and offer public reasons in their political advocacy, and their comprehensive doctrines. These questions centre on whether a reasonable citizen’s choice of political conception can be influenced by (...) her comprehensive doctrine. In this paper I present two models of the relationship, which give contrasting answers to these questions, and defend the model that is more permissive with regard to the influence of comprehensive doctrines. This has important implications for our understanding of Rawlsian political liberalism, and reduces the force of objections that have been offered by theorists sympathetic to religion. (shrink)

This paper argues that the critique of depoliticization in Mouffe’s agonistic political theory needs to be revised. This is because her account of the political does not succeed in filtering out undesirable forms of politicization such as science denialism and other types of post-truth politics. Mouffe's conception of the common symbolic space does not accomplish the task of limiting extreme pluralism in the absence of certain standards about how to correctly apply the fundamental notions of this space. By (...) drawing on a quasi-Wittgensteinian reading of linguistic normativity, I develop principled but non-universalist limits on politicization that are needed for a healthy, well-functioning democracy. (shrink)

In an era of digital revolution, artificial intelligence, big data and augmented reality, technology has shifted from being a tool of communication to a primary medium of experience and sociality. Some of the most basic human capacities are increasingly being outsourced to machines and we increasingly experience and interpret the world through digital interfaces, with machines becoming ever more ‘social’ beings. Social interaction and human perception are being reshaped in unprecedented ways. This book explores this technologisation of the social and (...) the attendant penetration of permanent liminality into those aspects of the lifeworld where individuals had previously sought some kind of stability and meaning. Through a historical and anthropological examination of this phenomenon, it problematises the underlying logic of limitless technological expansion and our increasing inability to imagine either ourselves or our world in other than technological terms. Drawing on a variety of concepts from political anthropology, including liminality, the trickster, imitation, schismogenesis, participation, and the void, it interrogates the contemporary technological revolution in a manner that will be of interest to sociologists, social and anthropological theorists and scholars of science and technology studies with interests in the digital transformation of social life. -/- Table of Contents -/- Introduction: The Technologisation of the Social: A 21st-Century Megamachine? Paul O’Connor -/- 1. Communication as Theatricalisation: Self-Presentation in the Digital Age Arpad Szakolczai -/- 2. Parasites of the Social: Digital Disruptions of the Labour Market Tom Boland -/- 3. Possessed by Technology: The Metastasis of Absence Agnes Horvath -/- 4. Technologisation of the Social: Symbiosis, Parasitism, or Predation? Daniel Gati -/- 5. J'accuse Zéro: The Technology of Zero and the Making of a Personal Void Ray Griffin -/- 6. Digital Affordances and the Liminal Stephen Turner -/- 7. The Smart Womb: Digital Technologies and the Maze of Trickster Politics Marius Ion Benta -/- 8. Brave New Industry? The Dark Side of Dematerialisation and Industry 4.0 Thomas S.J. Smith -/- 9. ‘What Have You Caught?’: Nannycams and Hidden Cameras as Normalised Surveillance of the Intimate Janos Mark Szakolczai -/- 10. Coercive Visibility: Discipline in the Digital Public Arena Paul O’Connor -/- Conclusion: Is There a Way Out of the Technologisation of the Social? Marius Ion Benta. (shrink)

Abstract:- Literature forms the bedrock of a society and helps in the socio-cultural development of a nation. It would also help in the creation of a society with the values of love and peace, empowering the age-old traditional practices of war and deprivation. Saudi Arabia is a country that has rich cultural history and has since ages gained a prestigious place in the globe, as the birthplace of both, the Islam and the Prophet of Islam, Muhammad- peace and blessings of (...) Allah be upon Him. Donning the pluralism in the diversity of literature, Arabian Novel holds a significant importance in raising the socio-cultural aspects of Arabian life. The peninsula would be sincerely accorded with the coining of the word ‘Peace,’ as the main source that the region has drawn its inspiration from, is ‘Al-Quran,’ the religious book of Islam, which makes it a moral obligation of a person to do justice and live in accordance with peace with all, friends as well as foes. The Gandhian notion of non-violence and the one coined by the Saudi novelists lies on the same values, and has no overall religious interference in them, in particular. Keywords: Novel, non-violence, Peninsula, casteism, war. (shrink)

A range of developing countries and international advocacy organizations have argued that wealthy countries, as a result of their greater historical contribution to human-induced climate change, owe a ?climate debt? to poor countries. Critics of this argument have claimed that it is incoherent or morally objectionable. In this essay we clarify the concept of climate debt and assess its value for conceptualizing responsibilities associated with global climate change and for guiding international climate negotiations. We conclude that the idea of (...) a climate debt can be coherently formulated, and that while some understandings of the idea of climate debt could lead to morally objectionable conclusions, other accounts would not. However, we argue that climate debt nevertheless provides an unhelpful frame for advancing global justice through international climate negotiations ? the only existing means of resolving political conflict over the collective action problems posed by human-induced climate change ? due to its retrospective and potentially adversarial emphasis, and to problems of measurement. (shrink)

The concept of vulnerability has been renewed in meaning and importance over recent decades. Scholars such as Judith Butler, Martha Fineman and Pamela Sue Anderson have endeavored to redeem vulnerability from its traditional signification as a negative individual condition, and to reveal the positive meaning of vulnerability as a transformative call for solidarity, equality and love. In this paper we examine the newly constructed positive understanding of vulnerability, and argue that the current way of pursuing this positive understanding affirms (...) a merely functional positivity. In the recent accounts, vulnerability is still a status to avoid, yet functions positively as a corrective force to the environment that produces vulnerability. We will try to find an essential way of designating the positivity of vulnerability by revisiting the philosophical discussion on vulnerability in Emmanuel Levinas. We will argue that Levinas’s notion of vulnerability is positive in a sense which goes beyond the purely functional; it is seen as essential for his definition of humanity. Yet compared to the contemporary discussion, Levinas’s notion of vulnerability lacks a direct social political meaning. We will tentatively explore how the essential positivity drawn from Levinas can provide a new way to construct the political significance of vulnerability. (shrink)

The concept and the logic of the political, the most notable Schmittian ideas, based on the friend/enemy distinction and his thought on political theology have been widely and critically discussed and actively appropriated with various interpretations. On the other hand, we find that there is certain definite momentum piercing through the theoretical structure of Husserl’s phenomenology in general both as a form of metaphysics and as a philosophical movement, which can also be called the political. In (...) this circumstance, we find the Schmittian logic of the political together with his idea of political theology specifically serviceable for an effective visualization of the political characteristically structured in Husserl’s system, particularly in the concepts of transcendental subjectivity and universal critique. This paper argues that Husserl’s phenomenological critical subject is fundamentally a politico-theological subject and is an attempt to show to what extent and in what way Schmitt can be strategically utilized to make manifest the politicality that we discover as something that structurally inheres in Husserlian notion of subjectivity and critique. *. (shrink)

Contrary to the received view, I argue that Kant, in the “Doctrine of Right”, outlines a third, republican alternative to absolutist and voluntarist conceptions of political legitimacy. According to this republican alternative, a state must meet certain institutional requirements before political obligations arise. An important result of this interpretation is not only that there are institutional restraints on a legitimate state's use of coercion, but also that the rights of the state (‘public right’) are not in principle reducible (...) to the rights of individuals (‘private right’). Thus, for Kant, political obligations are intimately linked to the existence of a certain kind of republican institutional framework. (shrink)

This thesis focuses on Carl Schmitt’s political theory of the strong state and the way his own concept of the political justifies strong coercive methods to de-politicise the economy. According to Schmitt, the strong state should have the legitimate capacity to counter democratisation of the economy and limit the possibility of social movements from “confounding” (Verwirrung) or “confusing” (Vermischung) the state and economy. Unlike many, who argue that Schmitt was in this extent (an economic) liberal, as he (...) sought to uphold a distinction between politics and economy, I argue that behind Schmitt’s institutional distinction between state and economy lies an explicitly anti-liberal conceptual distinction between the political and social. It is the task of this conceptual distinction to justify strong coercive means to counter socialist demands for economic justice. The distinction is anti-socialist or anti-democratic as it tries limit the “uncontrollable” expansion of the state into the economy by establishing the autonomy of the political from the economy. This enables him to accuse democratic forces of illegitimately “politicising” the economy in a way that contradicts this necessary autonomy. On the other hand, the distinction is anti-liberal as it does not argue for the autonomy of the economy, but its relative dependence on the strong state to uphold social order necessary for capitalist system of production. I have decided to use the term “authoritarian distinction” to define Schmitt’s conceptual distinction and its normative implications. The authoritarian distinction between the political and social is not simply a conceptual distinction but it establishes a normative basis for re-organising the relationship between the state and economy. In order to flesh out the specific nature of Schmitt’s authoritarian distinction, I have connected his thought with other theories of sovereignty and how they support the state’s authoritarian relationship with the economy. The thesis has three objectives. First, I want to develop a form of analysis of Schmitt’s work that connects his theoretical work with political struggle. To engage in political theory and conceptual work means to take part in politics. The concept of the political is no different, and it cannot be detached from political and normative entailments as it seeks to transform the way we perceive politics. In contrast to those who argue that Schmitt’s work on the concept of the political can be abstracted from his own political objectives, I analyse his conceptual work in tandem with his texts that explicitly engage in the politics of his time. On the basis of this analysis, I show that Schmitt’s abstract work takes part in the class struggle that was prevalent in the Weimar Republic. The conceptual distinction between the political and social is at the heart of his attempt to authorise exceptional measures to counter the labour movement of his time. Second, it is far too often that all distinction of the state and economy are reduced to analyses of liberalism. This has meant that Schmitt, too, has been claimed to adhere to a version of liberalism simply because his theory justifies limiting the politicisation of the economy. To me it seems that the focus on the liberal side of de-politicisation has produced a very one-sided narrative. In order to argue this, I discuss to an extent other theorists of sovereignty, namely Hobbes and Rousseau, and point out that even they sought to establish a distinction between the state and economy in a way that contradicts liberalism but still leaves capitalist means of production intact. To reduce Hobbes or Schmitt to a role of a precursor to liberalism means to look aside the specific nature of their theory – and, for that matter, the specificity of liberalism. Furthermore, I discuss to an extent how both liberals and these various theories of sovereignty are similar in so far as they accept the modern development of the economy as its separate sphere from politics. Third, I want to criticise the recent attempts to appropriate Schmitt’s concept of the political on the left. Many have argued that Schmitt’s concept of the political as autonomous to the social is useful in overcoming traditional Marxism and use for radicalising democracy. However, my thesis suggests that this strategy needs to be problematised, as Schmitt’s conceptual distinction cannot be separated from his anti-democratic and -socialist economic policies. In the future, I hope to further explore this need to re-think the relationship between the political and social, and whether or not we should return to a more standard Marxist understanding of this relationship. (shrink)

This paper presents a paradox of the concept of the right wing, because it groups together significantly different political philosophies, in terms of premises and conclusions – ones that recommend a minimal state and ones oriented towards preserving the traditions of a community. It also presents a meta-paradox: everyone has noticed this and yet it is my paradox!

Pregnant women and persons engaging in homosexual practices compose two groups that have been and still are amongst those most severely subjected to coercive restrictions regarding their own bodies. From an historical point of view, it is a recent and rare phenomenon that a woman’s right to abortion and a person’s right to engage in homosexual interactions are recognized. Although most Western liberal states currently do recognize these rights, they are under continuous assault from various political and religious movements. (...) Moreover, though liberal theories of justice typically defend women’s rights to abortion and people’s rights to homosexual activity, these theories often struggle to capture the fundamental ground for these rights. For example, it appears hard for the liberal to say why and when only the woman and not the embryo/fetus has rights and why the right to certain sexual practices is not on par with rights to other preferences. Contemporary liberal theories of justice, therefore, have a hard time identifying what distinguishes questions of abortion and sexual activities from other questions of right and thereby also have difficulty capturing the gravity of the wrongdoing involved in coercively restricting homosexual interactions and abortion as such. I argue that Kant’s theory of justice succeeds on both counts, because it can locate the fundamental ground for these rights in an understanding of the bodily integrity of the person. Just states will neither permit nor outlaw all abortions or sexual interactions, but rather will require all such laws to be reconcilable with the protection of each person’s right to freedom. (shrink)

Current radical democratic politics is characterized by new participatory spaces for citizens’ engagement, which aim at facilitating the democratic ideals of freedom and equality. These spaces are, however, situated in the context of deep societal inequalities. Modes of discrimination are carried over into participatory interaction. The democratic subject is judged by its physically embodied appearance, which replicates external hierarchies and impedes the freedom of self-expression. To tackle this problem, this article seeks to identify ways to increase the freedom of the (...) subject to explore its multiple self. Understanding the self as inherently fugitive, the article investigates participatory, deliberative and agonistic concepts of self-transformation. As all of them appear limited, it introduces a transformative perspective in democratic thought. Enriching the transformative perspective with queer and gender theory, the article generates the concept of a politics of becoming, which, through radical democratic practices of disidentification, advances the freedom of the subject to change. (shrink)

What would it mean to have a suitably ‘realistic’ account of political liberty? On the one hand, I don’t think we can properly understand liberty without an underlying account of personhood or agency.2 In making sense of liberty, we need to ask: What kind of agency does it presuppose or promote? What kind of independence do we care most about? What does it mean to exercise control, or to be self-guiding, in the kind of world we live in today? (...) At the same time, a conception of moral and political personhood needs to be appropriately ‘realistic’: It shouldn’t be over-idealized (or over-simplified), nor demand more than can be reasonably expected, given the kind of creatures we are. (shrink)

Trata-se de mostrar em que sentido a concepção normativa de pessoa em John Rawls pressupõe uma transformação semântica da concepção kantiana de subjetividade transcendental, em particular do seu ideal de personalidade. Uma reinterpretação kantiana da concepção normativa de pessoa logra explicar o dispositivo procedimental do equilíbrio reflexivopara responder a críticas comunitaristas em defesa do individualismo inerente ao liberalismo político, concebido não mais como uma doutrina abrangente da auto-identidade mas como um construtivismo, num modelo coerentista dejustificativa epistêmico-moral.The article seeks to show (...) in which sense Rawls’s normative conception of the person does presuppose a semantic transformation of the Kantian conception of transcendental subjectivity, particularly of his ideal of personhood . A Kantian reinterpretation of the normative conception of the person succeeds in accounting for the procedural device of reflective equilibrium so as to address communitarian criticisms in defense of the individualism inherent in political liberalism, conceived no longer as a comprehensive doctrine of self-identity but as a constructivism, within a coherentist model of moral epistemology. (shrink)

Does a political conception of human rights dictate a particular view of corporate human rights obligations? The U.N. “Protect, Respect, and Remedy” Framework and Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights hold that corporations have only a responsibility to respect human rights. Some critics have argued that corporations should be responsible for a wider range of human rights obligations, beyond merely an obligation to respect such rights. Furthermore, it has been argued that the Framework relied on a political (...) conception of human rights, and this is what led to limiting corporate obligations to mere respect for human rights. In this paper, I explore and critically assess this general claim about political conceptions of human rights. This involves distinguishing different types of political conceptions of human rights, as well as specifying what makes a theory of human rights a “political conception.” In light of this clarificatory discussion, I argue that the general thesis is false; the mere fact that a theory offers a political conception of human rights does not necessarily entail any certain range of corporate human rights obligations. Finally, I identify some of the other aspects of a theory of human rights that do affect the range of corporate obligations it will prescribe. (shrink)

Tourism is one of the socio-economic trends that significantly contributes to the shift of the planetary system into the Anthropocene regime. At the same time, it is also a socio-cultural practice characteristic of the imperial mode of living, or consumerism. Thus, it is a form of commodification of nature, also a way of deepening social inequalities between a privileged minority of the global population and an exploited majority providing services to those whose socio-economic status allows them to travel for fun (...) and commoditised “experience”. This is not an inevitable activity, an activity in which environmental costs (carbon footprint, water footprint, energy consumption, and waste production) are necessary to ensure the basic resources of life. Tourism is therefore a form of luxury consumption. For any tourism model to be, not only, environmentally sustainable but also socially just, or at least acceptable, it would have to be accessible to all people. Ecotourism should also have to meet the criterion of a solidarity mode of living referred to as sufficiency. This is hardly conceivable in the climatic, demographic, and political regime of the Anthropocene. The latter is likely to be characterized by, among other things, mass migration of climate or environmental refugees on the one hand and climate apartheid of the states of the global North on the other. Ecotourism, accessible to an even smaller proportion of the world`s population than the current mass tourism, will thus be more likely to accentuate the social and environmental inequalities of which it is already a significant manifestation. Therefore, the question is whether the concept of ecotourism is not just another manifestation of greenwashing, i.e. an attempt to legitimize economic, social, and cultural activities that devastate the social and environmental environment. (shrink)

Online technologies enable vast amounts of data to outlive their producers online, thereby giving rise to a new, digital form of afterlife presence. Although researchers have begun investigating the nature of such presence, academic literature has until now failed to acknowledge the role of commercial interests in shaping it. The goal of this paper is to analyse what those interests are and what ethical consequences they may have. This goal is pursued in three steps. First, we introduce the concept (...) of the Digital Afterlife Industry, and define it as an object of study. Second, we identify the politico-economic interests of the DAI. For this purpose, we develop an analytical approach based on an informational interpretation of Marxian economics. Third, we explain the practical manifestations of the interests using four real life cases. The findings expose the incentives of the DAI to alter what is referred to as the “informational bodies” of the dead, which in turn is to be seen as a violation of the principle of human dignity. To prevent such consequences, we argue that the ethical conventions that guide trade with remains of organic bodies may serve as a good model for future regulation of DAI. (shrink)

Our understanding of body–world relations is caught in a curious contradiction. On one side, it is well established that many concepts that describe interaction with the outer world – ‘plasticity’ or ‘metabolism’- or external influences on the body - ‘environment’ or ‘milieu’ – appeared with the rise of modern science. On the other side, although premodern science lacked a unifying term for it, an anxious attentiveness to the power of ‘environmental factors’ in shaping physical and moral traits held sway in (...) nearly all medical systems before and alongside modern Europe. In this article, I build on a new historiography on the policing of bodies and environments in medieval times and at the urban scale to problematize Foucault’s claim about biopolitics as a modern phenomenon born in the European eighteenth-century. I look in particular at the collective usage of ancient medicine and manipulation of the milieu based on humoralist notions of corporeal permeability (Hippocrates, Galen, Ibn Sīnā) in the Islamicate and Latin Christendom between the 12th and the 15th century. This longer history has implications also for a richer genealogy of contemporary tropes of plasticity, permeability and environmental determinism beyond usual genealogies that take as a starting point the making of the modern body and EuroAmerican biomedicine. (shrink)

Conceptual engineering is thought to face an ‘implementation challenge’: the challenge of securing uptake of engineered concepts. But is the fact that implementation is challenging really a defect to be overcome? What kind of picture of political life would be implied by making engineering easy to implement? We contend that the ambition to obviate the implementation challenge goes against the very idea of liberal democratic politics. On the picture we draw, the implementation challenge can be overcome by institutionalizing control (...) over conceptual uptake, and there are contexts—such as professions that depend on coordinated conceptual innovation—in which there are good reasons to institutionalize control in this fashion. But the liberal fear of this power to control conceptual uptake ending up in the wrong hands, combined with the democratic demand for freedom of thought as a precondition of genuine consent, yields a liberal democratic rationale for keeping implementation challenging. (shrink)

In his Education of a Christian Prince Erasmus applies ancient and Christian virtues to the functions of a Christian prince. Slovak humanist writer Ján Milo- chovský , who new Erasmus’s work, expanded in his Ornamentum Magistratus Politici the scope of the ethical and moral functions of a prince, focusing on three fundamental virtues: piety, justice and tolerance.The paper offers an analysis of Erasmus’s political ethics and examines the impact of the latter on the Slovak humanism of the second half (...) of the 17th century, especially in the writings of Ján Milochovský. (shrink)

This article is intended as a contribution to the current debates about the relationship between politics and the philosophy of science in the Vienna Circle. I reconsider this issue by shifting the focus from philosophy of science as theory to philosophy of science as practice. From this perspective I take as a starting point the Vienna Circle’s scientific world-conception and emphasize its practical nature: I reinterpret its tenets as a set of recommendations that express the particular epistemological attitude in which (...) both the Vienna Circle’s (doing) philosophy of science and its political engagement were rooted. -/- Regarding politics, and referring to new primary sources, I reconstruct how the scientific world-conception placed the Vienna Circle within a neoliberal-socialist political network that pursued concrete political aims. In light of my reconstruction I shall argue that neither the Vienna Circle’s alleged ethical noncognitivism nor its alleged adhesion to the Weberian ideal of a value-free science rules out the possibility of ascribing to the Vienna Circle a politically engaged philosophy of science: the case of the Vienna Circle shows how philosophy of science, as a public activity, can itself become a form of political engagement, even without necessarily entailing a theory of objective values. (shrink)

This paper aims to advance our understanding of Heidegger's politics as it is laid bare within the 'Schwarze Hefte'. Yet my interest is not in Heidegger's first order political views, but rather in his conception of the political sphere per se. Beginning from a close analysis of the earliest volume of the notebooks, Gesamtausgabe Bd.94, I suggest that the dominant characterisation of the political space within Heidegger's text is as a threat-to philosophy and to ontology. Underlying that (...) characterisation, however, it is simultaneously possible to identify another pattern, one on which the political is itself gradually suppressed or occluded by the ontological. This tacit occlusion has, I suggest, a number of deeply problematic consequences. I close by indicating how the argument might be extended to the question of a Heideggerian ethics. (shrink)

Sartori (1970) warned a long time ago of the danger of concept stretching for effective and cumulative theory building. Such concept stretching has happened with regard to deliberation, which has become a very faddish term. For theoretically well-founded empirical research it is better conceptually to distinguish clearly between strategic bargaining and deliberation, although in the empirical political world the two concepts are usually heavily intertwined. Keywords deliberation; concept stretching; strategic bargaining.

Human nature is a concept that transgresses the boundary between science and society and between fact and value. It is as much a political concept as it is a scientific one. This chapter will cover the politics of human nature by using evidence from history, anthropology and social psychology. The aim is to show that an important political function of the vernacular concept of human nature is social demarcation (inclusion/exclusion): it is involved in regulating who (...) is ‘us’ and who is ‘them.’ It is a folk concept that is used for dehumanization, for denying (a) membership in humankind or (b) full humanness to certain people in order to include or exclude them from various forms of politically relevant aspects of human life, such as rights, power, etc. (shrink)

One of the most important elements of Hegel’s philosophical anthropology is his moral psychology. In particular, his understanding of the relation between motivations and reason plays a crucial intermediate role in connecting his anthropological meditations on the complete nature of the human being with his political theory of actualized freedom. Whereas recent important work on Hegel’s moral psychology has detected a Kantian distinction between natural desires and the rational perspective, the activity of practical reason actually takes place within motivations (...) themselves on Hegel’s view. The exercise of the free, rational will is best understood in terms of its role in shaping the experience of malleable, indeterminate motivations. Rather than stepping back, the free agent on Hegel’s account delves further into the motivation, acting on it in the dual sense of being guided by and transforming it. This is what it means for Hegel to conceive of agency as self-expression while maintaining the centrality of reason for Free Will. Hegel says that when we go further into the motivations in this way, we should stop speaking of motivation in terms of drives and instead begin speaking of character. (shrink)

This study focuses on the ideas of Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, the most influential thinkers of recent period, about the concepts of the Empire, Multitude and Biopolitical production. These concepts being at the center of contemporary political discussions problematise the ideaitonal foundations of the idea of Empire evaluated as a new form of sovereignty, the economic transformation in the contemporary capitalism and the new form of subjectivity in this age. To Negri and Hardt, Empire is seen as a (...) logic of network operating at global level and a new logic of sovereignty and governance going beyond the political boundaries of nation states as form of sovereignty. In this regard, multitude is evaluated as a collective and joint social subject against the power and command forms of empire. As for biopolitical production, it is defined as the production of life in which feelings, symbols, communication and cooperation go beyond the understanding that centers the production of tangible goods within the capitalist production and work organization. These three concepts draw an important framework in terms of understanding the economic, political transformation of the contemporary world. In this study, it was aimed at interpreting the nature of global changes brought forward by the Negri and Hardt thought within the boundaries of these three concepts. (shrink)

According to the “internal” conception (Quong), political liberalism aims to be publicly justifiable only to people who are reasonable in a special sense specified and advocated by political liberalism itself. One advantage of the internal conception allegedly is that it enables liberalism to avoid perfectionism. The paper takes issue with this view. It argues that once the internal conception is duly pitched at its fundamental, metatheoretical level and placed in its proper discursive context, it emerges that it comes (...) at the cost of public dogma. The paper examines this problem and argues that a plausible response to this problem is to go beyond the internal conception and adopt a more inclusive, dynamic conception. But this calls for a form of perfectionism. Thus, the internal conception of political liberalism, far from showing how liberalism can be had without perfectionism, effectively calls for perfectionism as a remedy for its problems. (shrink)

This study focuses on the ideas of Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, the most influential thinkers of recent period, about the concepts of the Empire, Multitude and Biopolitical production. These concepts being at the center of contemporary political discussions problematise the ideaitonal foundations of the idea of Empire evaluated as a new form of sovereignty, the economic transformation in the contemporary capitalism and the new form of subjectivity in this age. To Negri and Hardt, Empire is seen as a (...) logic of network operating at global level and a new logic of sovereignty and governance going beyond the political boundaries of nation states as form of sovereignty. In this regard, multitude is evaluated as a collective and joint social subject against the power and command forms of empire. As for biopolitical production, it is defined as the production of life in which feelings, symbols, communication and cooperation go beyond the understanding that centers the production of tangible goods within the capitalist production and work organization. These three concepts draw an important framework in terms of understanding the economic, political transformation of the contemporary world. In this study, it was aimed at interpreting the nature of global changes brought forward by the Negri and Hardt thought within the boundaries of these three concepts. (shrink)

This article examines the methodology of a core branch of contemporary political theory or philosophy: “analytic” political theory. After distinguishing political theory from related fields, such as political science, moral philosophy, and legal theory, the article discusses the analysis of political concepts. It then turns to the notions of principles and theories, as distinct from concepts, and reviews the methods of assessing such principles and theories, for the purpose of justifying or criticizing them. Finally, it (...) looks at a recent debate on how abstract and idealized political theory should be, and assesses the significance of disagreement in political theory. The discussion is carried out from an angle inspired by the philosophy of science. (shrink)

This paper examines philosophical debates about concepts of biodiversity, making the case for conceptual pluralism. Taking a pragmatist perspective, I argue that normative concepts of biodiversity and eco-centric concepts of biodiversity can serve different purposes. The former would help stress the values of local communities, which have often been neglected by both early scientific approaches to conservation, and by policy makers prioritizing the political or economic interests of specific groups. The latter would help build local research programs independent of (...) pressures from economic or political actors. I employ a case study on environmental research on walnut forests in Kyrgyzstan in support of my argument. Against tendencies to frame different understandings of biodiversity in terms of geographical areas, I propose an interpretation drawing on the philosophy of ecology. Adherence to environmental pragmatism enables a sufficiently complex picture of developing environmental research in the area, capturing issues about scientific framings and local understandings. (shrink)

What justifies the allocation of funding to research in physics when many would argue research in the life and social sciences may have more immediate impact in transforming our world for the better? Many of the justifications for such spending depend on the claim that physics enjoys a kind of special status vis-a-vis the other sciences, that physics or at least some branches of physics exhibit a form of fundamentality. The goal of this paper is to articulate a conception of (...) fundamentality that can support such justifications. I argue that traditional conceptions of fundamentality in terms of dynamical or ontic completeness rest on mistaken assumptions about the nature and scope of physical explanations. (shrink)

This article takes as its subject matter the juridico-political space of the prisoner of war (POW) camp. It sets out to determine the nature of this space by looking at the experience of war captivity by Jewish members of the Western forces in World War II, focusing on the experience of Emmanuel Levinas, who spent 5 years in German war captivity. On the basis of a historical analysis of the conditions in which Levinas spent his time in captivity, it (...) argues that the POW camp was a space of indifference that was determined by the legal exclusion of prisoners from both war and persecution. Held behind the stage of world events, prisoners were neither able to exercise their legal agency nor released from law into a realm of extra-legal violence. Through a close reading of Levinas’s early concept of the ‘there is’ [il y a], the article seeks to establish the impact on prisoners of prolonged confinement in such a space. It sets out how prisoners’ subjectivity dissolved in the absence of meaningful relations with others and identifies the POW camp as a space in which existence was reduced to indeterminate, impersonal being. (shrink)

Within the literature in green political theory on global environmental threats one can often find dissatisfaction with liberal theories of justice. This is true even though liberal cosmopolitans regularly point to global environmental problems as one reason for expanding the scope of justice beyond the territorial limits of the state. One of the causes for scepticism towards liberal approaches is that many of the most notable anti-cosmopolitan theories are also advanced by liberals. In this paper, I first explain why (...) one of the strongest expressions of liberal anti-cosmopolitanism cannot simply be dismissed because it may fail to support desired environmental ends. The political conception of justice represents one of the most important challenges to cosmopolitanism generally and is thus a serious challenge to viewing global environmental problems in terms of cosmopolitan justice. Second, I will show through the case of anthropogenic global warming that the political conception of justice under current conditions does have clear cosmopolitan implications despite its proponents' claims. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to present the main contributions to peace, democracy, and the philosophy of education in Colombia, made by philosopher Guillermo Hoyos-Vásquez (Medellín, 1935 – Bogotá, 2013). The work of this Colombian philosopher stands out for its important contributions to political philosophy as the vital, supportive, and responsible exercise of thought concerning the public interest. Using Kant’s concept of practical reason, Husserl’s lifeworld [Lebenswelt], and Habermas’s communicative action as starting points, Hoyos-Vásquez succeeded in going (...) beyond these political philosophers by trying to apply their ideas in the midst of the difficult context of corruption, drug trafficking and armed conflict in Colombia over the past five decades. At the same time, Hoyos-Vásquez developed throughout his life a varied public activity as a thinker and educator, belying the myth of the theoretical distance between the philosopher and his/her political present or historical reality. The thought of Guillermo Hoyos-Vásquez, and his public action as an educator, represent a substantial contribution to contemporary political and educational philosophy, maintaining a close connection between theory and practice. (shrink)

This paper challenges the first Gettier counterexample to the tripartite account of knowledge. Noting that 'the man who will get the job' is a description and invoking Donnellan's distinction between their 'referential' and 'attributive' uses, I argue that Smith does not actually believe that the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket. Smith's ignorance about who will get the job shows that the belief cannot be understood referentially, his ignorance of the coins in his pocket (...) shows that it cannot be understood attributively. An explanation for why Smith appeared to have justified true belief is given by distinguishing between 'belief' and 'belief in truth'. Smith believes the sentence 'the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket' to be true (he mistakenly believes that Jones will get the job, of whom he knows that he has ten coins in his pocket) (hence his 'belief'), the sentence is true (hence 'truth'), and he has sufficient reason to assent to it (hence his 'justification'). But he does not believe the proposition expressed. Hence he does not know it either. (shrink)

The years that followed the fall of the Berlin wall and various authoritarian regimes in different regions of the world, witnessed the growth of a wide literature on democratization, which was influenced more and more by the paradigm of transition and the “consolidation” of democracy. Since then, evaluations as well as perspectives through which were seen various regimes (the new democracies “with problems”) are developed mainly through the theoretical lens of consolidation paradigm, according to which full democratic consolidation was the (...) endpoint of regime transitions. But it has become clear today that in many countries, in which more than three decades have passed since the fall of authoritarian regimes, the issue of “completion” of democracy in their social and political context is still far from being a happy reality. The purpose of this paper is to criticize both in the theoretical and the empirical level, the concept of “consolidation of democracy”, seeing it as a non-valid concept for the study of democratization. This paper will argue that essentially the concept of consolidation is teleological and problematic in the sense that democracy is seen not as a process but an endpoint product. (shrink)

Orson Scott Card and his Ender Series have had a profound impact on the genre of contemporary science fiction, meriting an academic analysis of some of his more theoretical ideas. I have chosen to analyze his concept of “Center” and “Edge” nations found in Xenocide and Children of the Mind through the lens of international relations, sociological, and political theory, in order to bring nuance to an underdeveloped theory that many non-academics may be familiar with. Ultimately, we must (...) conclude that Card’s concept of “Center” and “Edge” nations is too stagnant and does not account for social and hegemonic change, which influences the justifications of why these “nations” may be considered “Center” in the first place. (shrink)

This paper explores the incongruence between white South Africans’ pre- and post-apartheid experiences of home and identity, of which a wave of emigration is arguably a result. Among the commonest reasons given for emigrating are crime and affirmative action; however, this paper uncovers a deeper motivation for emigration using Charles Taylor’s concept of the social imaginary and Martin Heidegger’s concept of dwelling. The skewed social imaginary maintained by apartheid created an unrealistic sense of dwelling for most white South (...) Africans. After 1994, the conditions supporting this imaginary disintegrated. Many white South Africans feel so strong a sense of unease they can no longer dwell in the country. Many try to escape through emigration, but carry unresolved questions of identity and belonging to their new “homes.”. (shrink)

The article is based on an analysis of the works of the French historian Pierre Nora, who, trying to find a "true" history, comes to the opposition of history and memory. Outright political agitation and national imperatives are dominated in History, therefore history cannot be correct and objective. Instead of history, the philosopher believes, we should focus on the right memory. But when memory itself has been torn apart, it can only exist on the basis of "memory places" - (...) mnemonic places. The power of memory is preserved now in the places of memory that accumulate and preserve history. Places of memory have lost their physical or geographical meanings. Meaning and sense are made places of memory, important place for history. Due to the nature of the memory places, the multiplicities of their interpretations are the normal. And the past, therefore, became a poly semantic space, focused on the co-presence of many different versions of the interpretation of the same memorial structures (monuments, historical facts and events, texts of the past). Contrasting memory and history, P. Nora concludes about "the tyranny of memory (it is reminiscent of Reeker's statement). In his opinion, at any moment the memory is ready to lift history under itself, to "memorize" it, it deeply and dangerously distorts the meaning of words. Precisely because there is no collective memory, the places of memory appear that designed to compensate for its absence. When the space of memory disappears, mnemonic places appear. It is through mnemonic places (places of memory) as spaces that provide access to traditions, Nora moves from the present to the past. But the noble goal of finding the truth, of recreating traditions, has turned into honoring memory for political purposes, where the past has become the rhetorical construct of the present. Hence, the perception of truth is changing. Now, the truth is not in the "factuality" of the data, but in their "relevance". In the end, Nora makes a rather devastating conclusion for history- that the past has lost its meaning, the present historical consciousness gives meaning to all possible and valid versions of the past, and that official memory (politics of memory) is associated with practices of selective forgetting or memory. (shrink)

The Politics of Military Force uses discourse theory to examine the dynamics of discursive change that made participation in military operations possible against the background of German antimilitarist culture. Once considered a strict taboo, so-called out-of-area operations have now become widely considered by German policymakers to be without alternative. The book argues that an understanding of how certain policies are made possible (in this case, military operations abroad and force transformation), one needs to focus on processes of discursive change that (...) result in different policy options appearing rational, appropriate, feasible, or even self-evident. Drawing on Essex School discourse theory, the book develops a theoretical framework to understand how discursive change works, and elaborates on how discursive change makes once unthinkable policy options not only acceptable but even without alternative. Based on a detailed discourse analysis of more than 25 years of German parliamentary debates, The Politics of Military Force provides an explanation for: (1) the emergence of a new hegemonic discourse in German security policy after the end of the Cold War (discursive change), (2) the rearticulation of German antimilitarism in the process (ideational change/norm erosion) and (3) the resulting making-possible of military operations and force transformation (policy change). In doing so, the book also demonstrates the added value of a poststructuralist approach compared to the naive realism and linear conceptions of norm change so prominent in the study of German foreign policy and International Relations more generally. (shrink)

A common objection to a proposal or theory in political philosophy is that it is not feasible to realise what it calls for. This is commonly taken to be sufficient to reject a proposal or theory: feasibility, on this common view, operates as a straightforward constraint on moral and political theory, whatever is not feasible is simply ruled out. This paper seeks to understand what we mean when we say that some proposal or outcome is or is not (...) feasible. It will argue that no single binary definition can be given. Rather, there is a whole range of possible specifications of the term ‘feasible’, each of which selects a range of facts of the world to hold fixed. No single one of these possible specifications, though, is obviously privileged as giving the appropriate understanding of ‘feasibility’ tout court. The upshot of my account of feasibility, then, will be that the common view of feasibility as a straightforward constraint cannot be maintained: in order to reject a moral theory, it will not be sufficient simply to say that it is not feasible. (shrink)