In this paper I analyse and critically assess Jacques Derrida’s political reading of Nietzsche. Derrida’s reading of Nietzsche’s multiple styles and their ramifications for how we read philosophical texts is well known. But Derrida also maintained that Nietzsche’s addresses to an unknown future readership evidenced a democratic aspect to Nietzsche’s work. Derrida’s is a heretofore unexamined interpretation, and in this paper I aim to show that his emphasis on the democratic style of Nietzsche’s writing raises different questions about the kind (...) of political values that support Nietzsche’s critique of modernity. I argue that Derrida’s reading merits discussion, particularly in virtue of its intriguing account of what it means to experience the future democratically. However, I think Derrida’s reading has its own exegetical and philosophical problems. In sections one and two I explain why Derrida thought that Nietzsche’s hopes for the future of Europe constitute a democratic comportment; in section three I show how this reading of Nietzsche can be defended against a philosophical objection to its plausibility; and in section four I suggest exegetical reasons for questioning Derrida’s interpretation. I will end by drawing on Nietzsche’s work to raise an objection to the political quietism of democracy to come. (shrink)

Reflecting on the political nature of literature and its relation to modern democracy, the essay begins by problematizing any notion of commitment in literature. However, irresponsibility found in literature, far from undermining the political process, is what animates the political field seen as an endless contestability of our social practice. The way our notion of modern democracy informs our understanding of literary practice is explored through a selection of Derrida’s writings where democracy emerges as the possibility of (...) imagining alternatives to the world and “of thinking life otherwise,” as Derrida says, which is to say that democracy cannot be thought without the possibility of literature. Democracy implies not political stability but a continuous call for unrest that prevents its atrophy, and literature, in its unconditional right to call everything to account, is its rearguard work as it were, keeping democracy forever open, for better or for worse. (shrink)

I argue that a distinction between three autoimmunities is implied in Derrida’s _Rogues_. These are the autoimmunities of democracy as a regime of power, of democracy to come and of sovereignty. I extrapolate the relations between three different autoimmunities using the figure of the internal enemy in order to argue for an agonistic conception of democracy.

In lieu of Abstract: With inequality of various sorts ballooning worldwide, a critique of democracy has come of age, and a change of political ethos is underway. Against this background, the critique of democracy becomes not only possible but also popular, and examples in China and many Western democracies abound. It is no exaggeration to say, in this context, that sufficient momentum has gathered to qualify the situation as "democratic recession," despite people may have different understandings as (...) to the exact nature of this recession and how long it will last. Accompanying this recession, Confucian political meritocracy, whose aim is to correct the wrongs of democracy, is constructed as an alternative to liberal democracy. Many argue that the end of history is not nigh but will continue in and by Confucian political meritocracy... (shrink)

This chapter explores the influence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on digital democracy, focusing on four main areas: citizenship, participation, representation, and the public sphere. It traces the evolution from electronic to virtual and network democracy, underscoring how each stage has broadened democratic engagement through technology. Focusing on digital citizenship, the chapter examines how AI can improve online engagement while posing privacy risks and fostering identity stereotyping. Regarding political participation, it highlights AI's dual role in mobilising civic actions and (...) spreading misinformation. Regarding representation, AI's involvement in electoral processes can enhance voter registration, e-voting, and the efficiency of result tabulation but raises concerns regarding privacy and public trust. Also, AI's predictive capabilities shift the dynamics of political competition, posing ethical questions about manipulation and the legitimacy of democracy. Finally, the chapter examines how integrating AI and digital technologies can facilitate democratic political advocacy and personalised communication. However, this also comes with higher risks of misinformation and targeted propaganda. (shrink)

In Politics of Friendship, the aporias of friendship transposed to democracy indicate that if democracy is a promise of the universal inclusiveness of each singular one counting equally, and if its fraternal or national limitation naturalizes the ineluctable decision of inclusion and exclusion, then true friendship requires dis-proportion. It demands a certain rupture in reciprocity and equality, as well as the interruption of all fusion between the you and the me. In this way democracy remains an un-fulfillable (...) promise. In what follows, an imaginary voyage to Europe inspired by the so-called Syracuse-paradigm, by means of a close reading of Derrida‘s The Other Heading: Reflections on Today's Europe, a sort of ’untimely meditation’ a la Nietzsche, I critically argue that Derrida’s idea of European identity, begotten by the irruption of the other, involves the radical other as a force that shows the limits of identity and of the self. Re-viewed, revisited and re-thought in the optic of the deconstructive standpoint, The Other Heading acquires a new light focusing on the possible/impossible relation between the political and the ethical (the Other Heading, i.e. democracy to come, Europe to come). The deconstructive standpoint I use here falls within the well known Derrida’s binary conception that undergird his way of thinking: presence/absence, speech/writing, and so forth. (shrink)

Perhaps nowhere better than, "On the Names of God," can readers discern Laclau's appreciation of theology, specifically, negative theology, and the radical potencies of political theology. // It is Laclau's close attention to Eckhart and Dionysius in this essay that reveals a core theological strategy to be learned by populist reasons or social logics and applied in politics or democracies to come. // This mode of algorithmically informed negative political theology is not mathematically inert. It aspires to relate a (...) fraction or ratio to a series ... It strains to reduce the decided determinateness of such seriality ever condemned to the naive metaphysics of bad infinity. // It is worth considering that it is the specific 'number' of Dionysius in differential identification with an ineffable god (and, as such, a singular becoming between theology and numbers) that is floating in at least two dimensions [of signification] (be it political Demand on the horizontal dimension or theological Desire on [a] floating dimension) that cannot but *perform the link that relinks* names of god with any political life, populist reason, social justice, or radical democracy straining toward peace. (shrink)

The presence and absence of autonomy in Joseph Chan’s democratic Confucianism loom large, but not always in the ways that he maintains. Although Chan claims that his reconstruction of Confucianism for modern democracy can accept some forms of moral autonomy, what he presents does not constitute genuine moral autonomy, and the absence of that autonomy sits in tension with some other aspects of his model. When it comes to personal autonomy, it is the opposite: Chan says that the exercise (...) of personal autonomy can be part of a life well-lived but is not strictly necessary and can be outweighed by perfectionist considerations of well-being and ethics; however, his model incorporates and relies on the exercise of personal autonomy and leaves room for its intrinsic value. (shrink)

If political decision-making aims at getting a particular result, like identifying just laws or policies that truly promote the common good, then political institutions can also be evaluated in terms of how often they achieve these results. Epistemic defenses of democracy argue that democracies have the upper hand when it comes to truth, identifying the laws and policies that are truly just or conducive to the common good. A number of epistemic democrats claim that democracies have this beneficial connection (...) to truth because of the type of deliberative environment created by democratic political institutions. Democratic political cultures make it easier to exchange and give reasons, ultimately improving the justification that citizens have for their political beliefs. With this improved justification comes a better chance at truth, or so the story goes. In this paper, I show that attempts to forge a connection between justification and truth in epistemology have encountered numerous difficulties, making the case that this causes trouble for deliberative epistemic defenses of democracy as well. If there is no well-defined connection between truth and justification, then increasing the justification that citizens have for their beliefs may not also increase the likelihood that those beliefs are true, revealing a serious flaw in charting a connection between political justification and political truth. (shrink)

ABSTRACT A new ‘political philosophy’ is indispensable to the ‘post-Corona world,’ and this paper tries to analyze the future of ‘liberal democracy’ in it. It shows that ‘liberal democracy’ faces a ‘global crisis’ that has begun before, but the ‘novel Coronavirus pandemic,’ as a setback for it, strongly encourages that crisis. ‘Liberalism’ and ‘democracy,’ which had long been assumed by ‘political philosophers’ to go together, are now becoming decoupled, and the ‘liberal values’ of ‘democracy’ are eroding. (...) To find why and how, this paper analyzes ‘authoritarianism,’ ‘totalitarianism,’ and the evils and propensities of ‘democracy’ that bring about further erosions of ‘liberal values.’ There may be difficult trade-offs to be made between ‘liberal’ and ‘authoritarian’ ‘values’ - and, after the experience of ‘Coronavirus,’ this paper shows the ‘illiberal or authoritarian democracy’ may become stronger. -/- KEYWORDS: democracy, liberalism, liberal democracy, illiberal democracy, the novel Coronavirus pandemic, Covid-19, authoritarianism, totalitarianism. -/- EXTENDED ABSTRACT For almost a century in West, ‘democracy’ has meant ‘liberal democracy’-a political system marked not only by ‘free and fair elections,’ but also by ‘liberal values.’ ‘Liberalism’ applied to the problem of the limits of the criminal law would require commitment to the presumption in favor of ‘liberty.’ If the word ‘liberal’ is to have any utility in this context, it should refer to one who has so powerful a commitment to ‘liberty’ that she is motivated to limit the number of acknowledged liberty-limiting or coercion-legitimizing principles as narrowly as possible. So, she only believes in ‘harm-principle’ as the morally relevant reason for criminal prohibitions. ‘Offense principle’ and ‘paternalistic’ and ‘moralistic’ considerations, when introduced as support for penal legislation, have no weight at all. So, it means ‘autonomy’ and ‘self-regarding vs. other-regarding actions distinction’ based on which the human is the owner of her mind and body and everything consenting adults do is beyond the realm of morality and law. It leads to ‘individual’ ‘basic rights and liberties’ such as ‘basic rights and liberties’ of ‘speech,’ ‘religion,’ and ‘property’ and ‘collective’ ‘basic rights and liberties’ such as ‘basic rights and liberties of assembly,’ ‘civil society,’ ‘political pluralism,’ ‘democratic institutions,’ and ‘non-governmental organizations.’ ‘Liberalism’ also believes in ‘equality of conditions, ‘equal and free participatory rights in political decision making,’ and ‘collective self-governance.’ It also believes in the ‘rule of law,’ a ‘separation of powers,’ and ‘checks and balances.’ However, even under fair and free elections, the elected leaders can be ‘populists,’ ‘ultra-nationalists,’ ‘racists,’ ‘fascists,’ and ‘authoritarians’ who do not respect ‘inviolable basic rights and liberties,’ and suppress ‘minorities.’ Democratically elected leaders can routinely ignore constitutional limits on their power and deprive their citizens of ‘basic rights and liberties.’ The two strands of ‘liberal democracy’ have been coming apart in the world, and the ‘liberal’ elements of ‘democracy’ have been fraying and eroding even before the ‘novel Coronavirus pandemic.’ Even before the Coronavirus hit, there was already much discussion of a crisis of ‘liberal democracy.’ In particular, there has been a debate about whether ‘liberalism’ and ‘democracy,’ which had long been assumed to go together, were becoming decoupled. This paper shows ‘liberal democracy’ faces a ‘global crisis’ that had begun before the ‘novel Coronavirus pandemic.’ It also analyzes ‘authoritarianism,’ ‘totalitarianism,’ ‘liberalism,’ and ‘democracy’ and shows that Covid-19 is a setback for ‘liberal democracy.’ What is striking about the current moment is that many of the ‘liberal’ elements of ‘democracy’ are so far holding up under immense pressure. ‘Illiberal democracies’ seemed to be emerging in many countries. This model of ‘illiberal democracy,’ in which elections continue to be held but some individual rights and liberties are curtailed, may emerge stronger from this new crisis. In that sense, the ‘pandemic’ may become a challenge not only to ‘democracy’ as such but also to ‘liberal democracy’ in particular – in other words, a system of popular sovereignty together with guaranteed basic rights, such as freedom of association and expression and checks and balances on executive power. ‘Authoritarian’ procedures may succeed in mitigating the spread of the ‘Coronavirus,’ but the world now faces another problem: that when the virus recedes, many ‘liberal democracies’ will be far less ‘liberal’ or ‘democratic’ than they were before. In times of crisis, ‘liberal values’ have been ignored temporarily in the name of executive power. However, the ‘temporary’ can become ‘permanent.’ In addition, if citizens lose their faith in the legitimacy of ‘liberal democracy’ as the best form of government, and think ‘liberal democracy’ cannot function effectively during a crisis, and ‘authoritarian regimes’ manage the crisis more decisively, the world will slide towards ‘illiberal or authoritarian democracy,’ and many ‘liberal democracies’ will be at grave risk of failure. There may now be difficult trade-offs to be made between those basic rights and security - and, after the experience of Covid-19, many citizens may choose security. (shrink)

Must privacy and freedom of expression conflict? To witness recent debates in Britain, you might think so. Anything other than self-regulation by the press is met by howls of anguish from journalists across the political spectrum, to the effect that efforts to protect people’s privacy will threaten press freedom, promote self-censorship and prevent the press from fulfilling its vital function of informing the public and keeping a watchful eye on the activities and antics of the powerful.[Brown, 2009, 13 January]1 Effective (...) protections for privacy, from such a perspective, inevitably pose a threat to democratic government via the constraints that they place on the press. Such concerns with privacy must be taken seriously by anyone who cares about democratic government, and the freedom, equality and wellbeing of individuals. But if it is one thing to say that privacy and freedom of expression cannot always be fully protected, it is another to suppose that protections for the one must always come at the expense of the other. After all, the economics of contemporary politics and journalism would seem to be partly responsible for our difficulties in protecting personal privacy while sustaining robust and informative forms of public discourse. [Moore, 2010, 10 -141]2 Most newspapers are loss-making businesses and the need to reduce those losses and, if possible, to turn a profit, make investigative journalism an increasingly expensive proposition as compared to both “comment” and more or less elevated forms of gossip. At the same time, politics has increasingly become the prerogative of a narrow group of people with access to the large sums of money necessary successfully to compete for high office. In those circumstances, the need for critical scrutiny is as important as it is difficult. Revising our ideas about privacy and its protection cannot alone reduce the tensions between freedom of expression and personal privacy typical of our societies, necessary though such revision may be. Moreover, this paper can only touch on some aspects of the ways in which we need to rethink our interests in privacy, in order adequately to reflect people’s diverse interests in freedom of expression, and the important role of a free press to democratic government. Nonetheless, I hope to suggest ways of thinking about people’s claims to privacy which can be generalised fairly readily, and can help us to think constructively about the nature, causes and solutions to some important social and political problems, even if, in its nature, philosophical analysis rarely tells us what to do. More specifically, this paper argues that people are entitled to keep some true facts about themselves to themselves, should they so wish, as a sign of respect for their moral and political status, and in order to protect themselves from being used as a public example in order to educate or to entertain other people. The “outing” - or non-consensual public disclosure - of people’s health records or status, or their sexual behaviour or orientation is usually unjustified, even when its consequences seem to be beneficial. Indeed, the paper claims, the reasons to reject outing, as inconsistent with democratic commitments to freedom and equality, are reasons to insist on the importance of privacy to freedom of expression. While a free press is of the utmost importance to democratic government, it is not identical with the free expression of individuals and, on occasion, the former may have to be constrained in order to protect the latter. [Barendt, 2007, 231]. Hence, the paper concludes, we should distinguish the claims of individuals to publish reports about their lives – even if this necessarily involves revealing the private lives of others – from journalistic claims to publish information about the sex lives of consenting adults. I will start by briefly situating my argument within a democratic approach to privacy, before using the “outing” of Oliver Sipple to examine people’s claims to privacy and their implications for freedom of expression and of the press. I will be assuming that some forms of privacy are legitimate, in order to focus more closely on the question of what information, if any, people may keep to themselves. (shrink)

Construed as a theory of justice, relational egalitarianism says that justice requires that people relate as equals. Construed as a theory of what makes democracy valuable, it says that democracy is a necessary, or constituent, part of the value of relating as equals. Typically, relational egalitarians want their theory to provide both an account of what justice requires and an account of what makes democracy valuable. We argue that relational egalitarians with this dual ambition face the justice- (...) class='Hi'>democracy dilemma: Understanding social relations in such a way that renders relational egalitarianism plausible as an answer to what makes democracy valuable comes at the price of understanding social relations in a way that makes it less plausible as a theory of justice, and vice versa. We also argue that there is no easy way out of the dilemma and that relational egalitarians, who want relational equality to provide both accounts mentioned, may simply have to set their ambitions lower on behalf of relational equality. (shrink)

In Western political philosophy, democracy is generally the dominant view regarding what the best form of government is, and this holds even in respect to promoting minority rights. However, I argue that there is a better theory for satisfying minority interests and rights. I amass numerous studies from the social sciences demonstrating how democracy does poorly in accounting for minority interests. I then contend that a particular hybrid view that fuses a meritocracy with democracy can do a (...) better job than democracy in accounting for minority interests and in having more equal rights and fair policies coming from the legislative and executive branches. Finally, I defend this thesis from numerous counters. (shrink)

One determining characteristic of contemporary sociopolitical systems is their power over increasingly large and diverse populations. This raises questions about power relations between heterogeneous individuals and increasingly dominant and homogenizing system objectives. This article crosses epistemic boundaries by integrating computer engineering and a historicalphilosophical approach making the general organization of individuals within large-scale systems and corresponding individual homogenization intelligible. From a versatile archeological-genealogical perspective, an analysis of computer and social architectures is conducted that reinterprets Foucault’s disciplines and political anatomy to (...) establish the notion of politics for a purely technical system. This permits an understanding of system organization as modern technology with application to technical and social systems alike. Connecting to Heidegger’s notions of the enframing (Gestell) and a more primal truth (anfänglicheren Wahrheit), the recognition of politics in differently developing systems then challenges the immutability of contemporary organization. Following this critique of modernity and within the conceptualization of system organization, Derrida’s democracy to come (à venir) is then reformulated more abstractly as organizations to come. Through the integration of the discussed concepts, the framework of Large-Scale Systems Composed of Homogeneous Individuals (LSSCHI) is proposed, problematizing the relationships between individuals, structure, activity, and power within large-scale systems. The LSSCHI framework highlights the conflict of homogenizing system-level objectives and individual heterogeneity, and outlines power relations and mechanisms of control shared across different social and technical systems. (shrink)

As Filipinos are in search for solutions to their nation's problems of corruption, poverty, inequality, and different forms of injustice, Kusaka's Moral Politics in the Philippines: Inequality, Democracy and the Urban Poor takes a step back from seeking remedies to these problems and reexamines how these issues are commonly articulated. The book investigates moral politics, a discursive framework, to come to terms with how citizens form their understanding of social problems through their notions of good and evil. Under (...) moral politics' frame, citizens view their nation's maladies as caused by morally wrong actions done by an individual (e.g. public leader) or a group of people (e.g. street vendors). By grasping how moral politics works, Kusaka's text shows how it prevents Filipinos from attaining significant social improvements. There are many notable themes in Kusaka's work, but this review highlights only two points: first, Kusaka's examination of how neoliberalism takes effect in the country, especially in view of the shaping of the subjects, and second, his examination of how moral politics contributes or deters the development of democracy in the Philippines by identifying how moral politics prevents Filipinos from grasping the real issues. By emphasizing both insights, Kusaka not only shows how moral politics is formed but also extends the argument by showing that this kind of politics has a profound effect on the community. (shrink)

This study focuses on the concept of people developed by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe in the context of radical theories of democracy and populism. People is defined as a subjectivity established as a contingency in the conflictual environment of politics. The construction of the people is a condition of the existence of populist politics as a form of subject that enables the division of politics and social into two camps in the form of friend/enemy and the formation of (...) antagonisms. The article seeks to answer the question of how to create a political order in Laclau and Mouffe's conception of the people in a pluralistic society, in order to cleanse politics from antagonistic (struggle between enemies) relations and transform it into agonistic (struggle between adversaries) relations, despite the danger of eliminating each other through a friend-enemy relationship. In this study, it will be discussed whether the antagonism that constitutes the foundation of politics and society is indestructible and whether it is a subject figure in which the people is organized as a counter-hegemonic subject against certain kinds of antagonisms and whether those who are partners can come together agonistically. (shrink)

The transformation of universities from public institutions to transnational business enterprises has met with less resistance in Australia than elsewhere. Yet this transformation undermines the founding principles of Australian democracy. This democracy emerged in opposition to the classical form of free market liberalism that the neo-liberals have revived. The logical unfolding of social liberalism in Australia underpinned the development of both the system of wage fixing and the idea of public education as conditions for democracy. The lack (...) of resistance to the destruction of democracy, as it was originally understood in Australia, by successive neoliberal governments has been due largely to the decadent state of Australian universities. These had come to be dominated by a crude form of empiricist utilitarianism, making Australia peculiarly vulnerable to the ideologues of global free markets and the power of transnational corporations who have sought to transform language to equate the dominance of all facets of life by markets as a defence of democracy. Only through a recovery of the philosophical tradition upon which Australia was founded and the development of this tradition through process metaphysics, it is argued, can genuine democracy and Australia’s public institutions, be defended. (shrink)

This paper is a discussion of the ways in which the notion of public reason has come to manifest itself in recent Islamic writings. The discussion is part of an effort to discover a common language in terms of which Islamic and liberal/secular discourses about democracy and public debate can be understood. The difficult question we are left with is whether it is permissible to speak of “public reason” sans phrase, or whether the notion must always be qualified (...) by reference to culture and religion. (shrink)

This paper explores the relationship of mourning and the gift in the work of Jacques Derrida. I argue that mourning is not a Derridean gift, but mourning does open us to the gift. Reading the works of Aristotle, Cicero, and Kierkegaard on friendship and love to the dead in the wake of Derrida’s Politics of Friendship makes this relation among mourning and the gift apparent for he presents mourning as the opening to a democracy to-come whose logic is (...) the gift. Through these accounts, I maintain that in preparing us for the gift, mourning the dead other can help us to relate better with the living other in ethical, political, and ontological terms. (shrink)

John Rawls was a major 20th-century political philosopher, and his work was animated by his loathing of the fact that many of the circumstances of human lives were due to fortune. Why should there be inequalities among men, he asked, that were produced by mere blind luck? To support his intuition, he came up with a version of social contract theory built around the device of the "original position." We imagine that people gather up for a discussion of what social (...) institutions are best, but they forget, in order not to be swayed by their own personal interests, who they are in the actual society. They do not know their religion, social position, wealth and income, their particular ends, or anything else that might prejudice their judgment. Under this veil of ignorance, they – or rather the philosopher who is shattered into numerous ghostly persons – seek to come to an agreement regarding the just basic structure of society. This book demolishes Rawls' every argument in support of his egalitarianism and shows that the original position, to the extent that it is not completely sterile, outputs libertarianism and laissez-faire capitalism. It defends the view of justice as either a virtue or a legal system that promotes harmony and progress in human affairs. (shrink)

Political polarization is on the rise, undermining the shared space of public reason necessary for a thriving democracy and making voters more willing than ever to dismiss the perspectives of their political opponents. This destructive tendency is especially problematic when it comes to issues of race and gender, as informed views on these topics necessarily require engaging with those whose experiences may differ from our own. In order to help our students combat further polarization, we created a course on (...) "The Philosophy of Race, Class, and Gender" that incorporated intergroup dialogues - small, diverse, semester-long discussion groups-that focused on building the civic virtues of toleration, egalitarianism, and solidarity. In this article, we describe our approach, including the evidence that intergroup dialogue can act as a catalyst for democratic dialogue. We hope that the practice of intergroup dialogue can help other instructors cultivate the civic virtues in their philosophy classrooms as well. (shrink)

With the stunning spread of democracy over large swathes of the globe since 1975 seemingly coming to a halt and perhaps receding in recent years, we revisit the question of whether democracy is really compatible with all types of cultures and philosophies, particularly those from Asia, where nearly two-thirds of the world’s population lives. Joseph Chan’s *Confucian Perfectionism: A Political Philosophy for Modern Times* (Princeton University Press, 2014) reconstructs Confucianism in order to meld it with democracy in (...) a mutually advantageous marriage. Democracy can address the dangerous problem of the lack of accountability — the historical record is quite clear about what happens when rulers, even those who are wise and well-meaning, are unconstrained. This, unfortunately, is a problem that Confucianism shares. On the other hand, Confucianism can bring to the table not just virtues in general, but particular virtues that are often sadly lacking and sorely needed in democratic politics such as civility, benevolence, integrity, knowledge, and honesty. (shrink)

This collection stands out from what has come to resemble a cottage industry of volumes on global democracy and cosmopolitanism. Tan and Whalen-Bridge’s collection has the distinction of exploring whether Deweyan democracy, or the account of democracy inspired by Dewey’s writings and embraced by contemporary Deweyans, can be disseminated globally and across diverse cultures. According to the collection’s editors, the eleven essays share a single approach: ‘By examining the implications for conceiving of democracy as culture, (...) rather than as something that precedes or follows from cultural formations, the essays in this volume consider Dewey’s adumbrations of democracy as one face of globalization’ (1). Since the volume is dedicated to the late Richard Rorty, it is unsurprising that the relevance of Rorty’s neopragmatism to Dewey’s pragmatism also emerges in several of the essays. (shrink)

This article paradoxically tries to come closer to an idea of justice with the help of the destructive — anything but nihilistic — criticism thereof by Hans Kelsen. It argues that his relativistic approach, in which this idea undergoes a metamorphosis to become a realisable value of a social order, brings us closer to an obvious and objective form of justice that is almost taken for granted. Just in our liberal and plural democracy this approach might prove to (...) be of more value than a transcendental theory that passes speculative judgements on the essence of absolute justice, about which we are unable to come to an agreement. (shrink)

We are often told that public hate speech is something that deviates from what is standard in contemporary liberal democracies. So far, much of the literature has focused on the allegedly bad effects of such deviations as well as on measures to bring liberal democracies back to the normal course of events. Less has been said on the fundamental assumption that at a certain moment in time, and within that political context, hate speech is out of the ordinary. In this (...) paper, drawing upon pragmatics, I contend that often public hate speech responds to a supply-demand logic, where speakers fulfill expectations by attacking target groups. Within this scheme, hate speech would be an answer to what a certain audience is ready to listen. At that moment of time, and within that political context, therefore, I argue in this article, hate speech is ordinary. (shrink)

The author, for a long time director of the BBC, underlines the importance of effective, non-aseptic communication, to contrast the fake news and the demagogy that the Internet favors.

Sarah Hammerschlag en su obra Broken Tablets: Levinas Derrida and Literary Afterlife of Religion, editada por Columbia University Press, incursiona en el terreno de los estudios religiosos a partir de dos importantes referentes: Emmanuel Levinas y Jacques Derrida. El orden de la presente exposición será mediado por la estructura misma de la obra, esbozando una serie de consideraciones capitulares y finiquitando con breves consideraciones generales. El texto se compone de las siguientes secciones: Preface (0), What must a Jewish thinker be (...) (1), Levinas, Literature and the run of the world (2), Between the Jew and writing (3), To lose one’s head: Literature and the democracy to come (4), Literature and the political-theological remains (5), Epilogue: There is not a pin to choose between us (6). (shrink)

The main purpose of this article is to tackle the problem of living together – as dignified human beings – in a certain territory in the field of social philosophy, on the theoretical grounding ensured by some remarkable exponents of the Austrian School − and by means of the praxeologic method. Because political tools diminish the human nature not only of those who use them, but also of those who undergo their effects, people can live a life worthy of a (...) human being only as members of some autarchic or self-governing communities. As a spontaneous order, every autarchic community is inherently democratic, inasmuch as it makes possible free involvement, peaceful coordination, free expression and the free reproduction of ideas. The members of autarchic communities are moral individuals who avoid aggression, practice self-control, seek a dynamical efficiency and establish a democratic public discourse. (shrink)

The essay deals with the question whether Fichte’s socio-economic model which based both on the experiences and ideas of his time. Additionally, it explores how his socio-economic theorems stood out against cameralistic and feudal-conservative discussions and to what extent they can be described as an early critique of capitalism. Is the essence of Fichte’s socio-economic ideas to be seen in his model of state regulation or rather in his methodological claim of genetically developing the phenomena by showing their mediating links? (...) What is however still relevant today is Fichte’s idea that human beings are not the objects or means of social relations but their subjects and aims. For this purpose, Fichte developed a concept of justice that is constitutive for his notion of society. Democracy aiming at an active use of reason and social justice are the two moments which depend on each other. (shrink)

Corporations are increasingly asked to specify a ‘purpose.’ Instead of focusing on profits, a company should adopt a substantive purpose for the good of society. This chapter analyses, historicises, and radicalises this call for purpose. It schematises the history of the corporation into two main purpose/power regimes, each combining a way of thinking about corporate purpose with specific institutions to hold corporate power to account. Under the special charter regime of the seventeenth to mid-nineteenth centuries, governments chartered companies to pursue (...) specific public purposes. Under criticism for corruption and lack of competition, the special charter regime gave way to the contemporary general incorporation regime, under which no particular purposes are demanded of corporations, and profit-seeking has become the norm. This regime has now come under criticism, with calls for a new social purpose regime. The analysis of these three regimes focuses on politicisation. The chapter argues that orienting companies to substantive social purposes requires politicising the business corporation, creating meaningful accountability mechanisms to align companies with the goals of the public. The purpose paradigm must overcome its political timorousness and be more institutionally radical. The difficulty is doing this without unacceptable corruption and inefficiency. A form of ‘proper politicisation’ is needed. At the end of the chapter, some directions for reform are discussed, which may deliver on that desideratum. (shrink)

The concept of ‘Ethnicity’ still enjoys some currency in the historical and social science literature. However, the cogency of the idea remains disputed. First coming to prominence in the 1980s, the word is often used to depict the character of social relations in the context of conflicts over sovereignty. The case of Northern Ireland presents a paradigmatic example. This article is a rejoinder to Ian McBride’s contention that my scepticism about the notion lacks justification. With reference to disputes over the (...) state, I show in response that ‘ethnicity’ in effect means nationality. I further claim that the nation state is a successor to the dynastic state. In clarifying the meaning of this arrangement, the article brings out how the nation is a juridical rather than empirical category. More specifically, it derives from the notion of corporate personality in law. For this reason, its retrospective integrity is a matter of fabrication, depending on the fiction of ancestral continuity. At the same time, its future-oriented cohesiveness means that it must be invested with a unifying will. I conclude that the legitimacy of a nation state rests on its democratic will, whose coherence is expressed in the action of its government. (shrink)

Grey zone attacks tend to paralyze response for two reasons. First, they present us with choice scenarios of inherently dilemmatic structure, e.g., Prisoners’ Dilemmas and games of chicken, complicated by difficult conditions of choice, such as choice under risk or amid vagueness. Second, they exploit our uncertainty about how much we do or should care about the things under attack¬—each attack is small in effect, but their effects accumulate: how should we decide whether to treat a given attack as something (...) meriting a serious response rather than a mere irritation to be ignored? This chapter brings standard decision theoretic tools to bear on the issues, tools such as the maximization of expected utility principle, and the precautionary principle. But it also develops three innovations. It shows that seeing it as possible to make choices not just of actions given our values, but also choices of values themselves, can extricate us from certain kinds of decision paralysis. It shows how we can rationally regard ourselves as having bright decision lines even when nothing in the circumstance of choice has these lines in its structure. And it shows how certain conflict escalation risks from the former two strategies can be managed by both parties seeing that cooperation can yield a sharable surplus of goods, and that cooperation can be rational upon a rationally defensible change in their values so that each comes to derive utility from the success of both parties. This yields cooperative solutions to what amount to Prisoners’ Dilemmas. The Cold War was prosecuted on the logic of strategic rationality and that part of game theory that is deterrence theory. We need a new logic from decision theorists for the games that constitute grey zone conflict. (shrink)

This paper sketches some elements that define the pedagogical significance of play for the construction and the conservation of a democratic community. Starting from the main principles of Dewey's pedagogy, the discourse focuses on play, intended as the philosophic category of the ludic, first, in connection to doing and experience, two fundamental notions of Dewey’s thought and his philosophy of education; then, it moves towards the relationship between play and work to come, finally, to play in connection to the (...) social and political sphere. Along this path, it will be highlighted the central place occupied by the aesthetic side and affective element, concentrated especially in the definition of emotion given by Dewey, in order to show the link that connects play and democracy. (shrink)

Some years ago I reached the point where I can usually tell from the title of a book, or at least from the chapter titles, what kinds of philosophical mistakes will be made and how frequently. In the case of nominally scientific works these may be largely restricted to certain chapters which wax philosophical or try to draw general conclusions about the meaning or long term significance of the work. Normally however the scientific matters of fact are generously interlarded with (...) philosophical gibberish as to what these facts mean. The clear distinctions which Wittgenstein described some 80 years ago between scientific matters and their descriptions by various language games are rarely taken into consideration, and so one is alternately wowed by the science and dismayed by its incoherent analysis. So it is with this volume. -/- If one is to create a mind more or less like ours, one needs to have a logical structure for rationality and an understanding of the two systems of thought (dual process theory). If one is to philosophize about this, one needs to understand the distinction between scientific issues of fact and the philosophical issue of how language works in the context at issue, and of how to avoid the pitfalls of reductionism and scientism, but Kurzweil, like nearly all students of behavior, is largely clueless. He, is enchanted by models, theories, and concepts, and the urge to explain, while Wittgenstein showed us that we only need to describe, and that theories, concepts etc., are just ways of using language (language games) which have value only insofar as they have a clear test (clear truthmakers, or as John Searle (AI’s most famous critic) likes to say, clear Conditions of Satisfaction (COS)). I have attempted to provide a start on this in my recent writings, such as The Logical Structure of Consciousness (behavior, personality, rationality, higher order thought, intentionality) (2016) and The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language as Revealed in the Writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle (2016). Those interested in all my writings in their most recent versions may consult my e-book Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization - Articles and Reviews 2006-2016 662p (2016). I will give a very brief presentation of this framework since I have described it in great detail in many recent papers and several books, available on this site and others. -/- Also, as usual in ‘factual’ accounts of AI/robotics, he gives no time to the very real threats to our privacy, safety and even survival from the increasing ‘androidizing’ of society which is prominent in other authors (Bostrum, Hawking etc.) and frequent in scifi and films, so I make a few comments on the quite possibly suicidal utopian delusions of ‘nice’ androids, humanoids, democracy, diversity, and genetic engineering. -/- I take it for granted that technical advances in electronics, robotics and AI will occur, resulting in profound changes in society. However, I think the changes coming from genetic engineering are at least as great and potentially far greater, as they will enable us to utterly change who we are. And it will be feasible to make supersmart/super strong servants by modifying our genes or those of other monkeys. As with other technology, any country that resists will be left behind. But will it be socially and economically feasible to implement biobots or superhumans on a massive scale? And even if so, it does not seem remotely possible, economically or socially to prevent the collapse of industrial civilization. So, ignoring the philosophical mistakes in this volume as irrelevant, and directing our attention only to the science, what we have here is another suicidal utopian delusion rooted in a failure to grasp basic biology, psychology and human ecology, the same delusions that are destroying America and the world. I see a remote possibility the world can be saved, but not by AI/robotics,CRISPR, nor by democracy and equality. -/- Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems view may consult my book ‘The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle’ 2nd ed (2019). Those interested in more of my writings may see ‘Talking Monkeys--Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet--Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 3rd ed (2019), The Logical Structure of Human Behavior (2019), and Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2019). (shrink)

Hannah Arendt argues that a revolution must not only tear down, but build up a new government. That new government needs authority and it gets its authority from its founding moment, when peers come together in mutual promise, agreeing to treat each other as equals and obeying laws which they legislate for themselves. The paper then looks at the recent attempts of the U.S. government and its allies to bring democracy to Iraq. The paper argues that given the (...) dynamics necessary at the founding moment, U.S. heavy-handedness in setting up Iraq's new government was counterproductive. Also, while the U.S., through subcontracting with Research Triangle Institute, hoped to give Iraq a pyramid-shaped local governance structure, its diversions from Arendt's model make its success unlikely. (shrink)

For me, Spinoza deserves our respect, not for the fact that he fought against religious suppression and for democracy and peace (which are noble deeds, indeed), but for the fact that he sees rationalism as the solution to human strife. We should use our intellect to try to come closer to the truth, to guide our actions and to consider the best option for all parties involved. This idea-using reason to increase humanity, dignity and peace-is enough to make (...) Spinoza one of the most enlightened thinkers, ever. Spinoza is a staunch defender of democracy, albeit not in an Ancient Greece-like form, but in a representative form. One of his strongest arguments in favor of democracy is that the people and the government are near-identical. This leads to broad support for the state's power and therefore to peace. (shrink)

This article offers a review of Richard Rorty’s attempts to come to terms with the role of religion in our public and intellectual life by tracing the key developments in his position, partially in response to the ubiquitous criticisms of his distinction between private and public projects. Since Rorty rejects the possibility of dismissing religion on purely epistemic grounds, he is determined to treat it, instead, as a matter of politics. My suggestion is that, in this respect, Rorty’s position (...) is best construed as that of a humanist rather than a post-modernist. Ultimately, it appears that, in his view, the positive element of religion—i.e. the idea of religion as a social gospel—has been absorbed and transformed into a utopian striving which humanists associate with the ideal of democracy. Hence, in this regard, religion can be considered obsolete. Yet, without explicitly invoking the usual epistemic grounds, Rorty’s arguments for excluding religion from the public sphere remain rather thin, and an interest in reforming rather than excluding religion would have been more consistent with his general outlook. (shrink)

In this essay I recount how I have been hoping to see more ubuntu in South Africa’s institutions than had been present in the two dominant socio-politico-economic models across the world in the 20th century. I haven’t been expecting utopia from the past 20 years of democracy; I’ve just wanted something new to come out of Africa. I here relate my experience of learning that it is not always forthcoming, at least not as quickly as I would have (...) liked. However, I conclude by indicating that the promise remains, suggesting several concrete and attractive ways that South Africa could apply traditional values of ubuntu to a contemporary setting. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to chart what I see as parallels between the ontology of self in Charles Taylor’s work and that of various Buddhist ‘no-self’ views, along with parallels between Taylor’s commitment to reviving republican ideas and some aspects of Buddhist ethics. I see key resemblances and overlaps at the level of metaphysics as well as ethics. For Taylor, the sorts of atomistic accounts of self that have come to be accepted as natural and unquestionable in (...) the West are deeply misguided. The dominant Hobbesian-Lockean procedural picture of selfhood blinds us to the intrinsic relatedness of self to others and has profoundly negative consequences for the kinds of shared conceptions of the good necessary for viable and functioning democracies to survive and flourish. For Taylor, we thus need to retrieve and rearticulate a more accurate understanding of the self (Taylor 1985a, c, d, 1989, 1995a, b, 2003). This conception acknowledges that the self is located in a web of locution, conversation, and social interconnected- ness, a sense that gives rise to an expanded notion of our moral and political duties. I argue that such an understanding of the self and ethics has strong resemblances to the kinds of views of the self and ethics as articulated by various schools of Buddhism. Conceptions of anātman or no-self and pratītya-samutpāda (intercon- nectedness) similarly broaden the scope and domain of our moral concern to be more inclusive by interrogating perspectives that conceive of the self as a separate and isolated individual. This is illustrated by, for example, the Dalai Lama (1999), who argues that a more accurate understanding of the self as empty of inherent and separate existence leads to adopting a more compassionate ethical stance towards others. I would suggest that, along the same lines, this understanding is required for a sustainable future for not only our communities, but that of an increasingly inter-related and inter-dependent world. (shrink)

Procedural justifications of democracy emphasize inclusiveness and respect and by doing so come into conflict with instrumental justifications that depend on voters’ competence. This conflict raises questions about jury theorems and makes their standing in democratic theory contested. We show that a type of no-regret learning called meta-induction can help to satisfy the competence assumption without excluding voters or diverse opinion leaders on an a priori basis. Meta-induction assigns weights to opinion leaders based on their past predictive performance (...) to determine the level of their inclusion in recommendations for voters. The weighting minimizes the difference between the performance of meta-induction and the best opinion leader in hindsight. The difference represents the regret of meta-induction whose minimization ensures that the recommendations are optimal in supporting voters’ competence. Meta-induction has optimal truth-tracking properties that support voters’ competence even if it is targeted by mis/disinformation and should be considered a tool for supporting democracy in hyper-plurality. (shrink)

In this paper we critically review Correia’s and Rosenkranz’s Nothing to Come. A Defence of the Growing Block Theory of Time, published by Springer in 2018. By taking into account the essential reliance of the book on tense logic, we bring out the existence of a conflict between their logical axioms, that presuppose truth bivalence even for statements concerning future contingents, and the principle of groundedness that they also advocate. According to this principle, a proposition Q is now groundedly (...) true as long as sometimes in the future it will be the case that there exists something that makes Q true. However, if the events that occur in 2060 do not exist unrestrictedly (for us, here in 2021), what, in reality, can possibly ground the truth (or falsity) of Q? In the second part of the paper, we concentrate on some conceptual difficulties raised by their brilliant attempt to adapt the growing block view of reality to a relativistic setting, based on what they call bow-tie presentism, according to which for each spacetime point s only s plus the spacelike-related region with respect to s exists. By extending temporal logic into a relativity-friendly spatiotemporal logic, we conclude by noting that Correia and Rosenkranz’s Nothing to Come makes very important strides in showing that there are technical ways to develop the growing block of reality into an ontology that coheres with relativity theories perfectly well, while retaining most of the distinctive content of classical growing block theory. (shrink)

Liberal democracy aims to treat all adult citizens as politically equal, at least in ideal cases: Once a citizen is over the age of majority, she is deemed a full-fledged member of the community and in theory has equal standing with all other adult citizens when it comes to making policy and participating in the political realm in general. I consider three questions: (1) Is there any plausible alternative to a standard "all adult citizens have equal political standing" model (...) of democracy that could be drawn from a specifically Confucian valuing of elder members of the community? (2) Insofar as there is a plausible alternative, what might it reveal about differences between how liberalism and Confucianism think of human selves as located in time? (3) What sort of difference would it make if the Confucian valuing of age were implemented via informal social norms, on the one hand, or via explicit institutional mechanisms and procedures, on the other? (shrink)

AI technology promises to be both the most socially important and the most profitable technology of a generation. At the same time, the control over – and profits from – the technology is highly concentrated to a handful of large tech companies. This chapter discusses whether bringing AI technology under collective ownership and control is an attractive way of counteracting this development. It discusses justice-based rationales for collective ownership, such as the claim that, since the training of AI systems relies (...) on a form of enclosing of the data commons, the value created by those systems should be fairly distributed. It also considers democracy-based rationales, like the suggestion that collective ownership is needed to ensure democratic control over the way this crucial technology is being developed and deployed. The paper also discusses possible forms of collective ownership, like publicly funded advanced AI research and democratically controlled AI companies. It concludes that the case for shifting to a model with collective ownership is the most compelling when based on the concern that the private model could come to concentrate economic and political power to such a degree that it threatens institutions designed to promote justice and democracy. (shrink)

With what modes of mentality can we build a visceral, subjective sense of being in some specific mass-political society? Theorists and political cultivators standardly call upon the imagination – the kind prompted by symbols and rituals, for example. Could perception ever play such a role? I argue that it can, but that perceptions of mass-political publics come with costs of cruelty and illusion that neither democratic theorists nor participants should be willing to pay. The clearest examples of such perceptions (...) are found in fascist political culture. My discussion aims to illuminate what it is about publics, perception, and democracy that makes this so. -/- . (shrink)

The history of philosophy is replete with attempts at invoking rationality as a means of directing and even subduing human desire and emotion. Understood as that which moves human beings to action, desire and emotion come to be associated with human freedom and rationality as a means of curbing that freedom. Plato, for instance, takes for granted a separation between thought and action that drives a wedge between our rational ability to exercise self-discipline and the free expression of desire (...) and emotion. Hobbes, on the other hand, replaces our internal ability for rational self-control with the external authority of the political State. So long as freedom and control are pitted against one another, human beings are incapable of attaining a symbiosis of these two elements of human action so essential to realizing true democracy. Unlike Plato, John Dewey sees in democracy the greatest potential for individual and social life. The purpose of this dissertation is to demonstrate how the educational philosophy of Dewey, which culminates in an educational aesthetic, appeals to and makes the most of the symbiosis of freedom and self-control, emotion and reason. Dewey’s educational aesthetic not only offers an alternative to traditional methods of education, but also demonstrates how the goal of a democratic way of life is made feasible by means of intelligently guided self-discipline—a form of self-control guided by intelligence that is not a constraint upon freedom, but instead embodies greater opportunity for freedom. I trace the basis for this synthesis, in the social-political and pedagogical principles of John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Both Locke and Rousseau offer educational theories that begin turning our attention toward the essential partnership required of rationality and emotion. Dewey's educational aesthetic is then considered as a response to alienating forms of education that continue to pit control and freedom against one another, and which thwart the intellectual and emotional development necessary for autonomy and democratic forms of social organization. (shrink)

If pursued with serious intent, Pre-distribution has the capacity to create an exciting and radical new agenda for social democracy. But the politics of Pre-distribution cannot be innocuous or uncontroversial. -/- In its more radical forms, predistribution is a potentially radical and inspiring project for social democrats who have come to see the limitations of the old ways of doing things. It’s a project that promises a strategy to deliver abundantly on values of social justice, economic freedom, and (...) equality of opportunity. But it’s a project that involves going head-to-head with entrenched interests, breaking up existing concentrations of wealth and economic power. The politics of Pre-distribution, if taken seriously, simply cannot be a politics without enemies. Labour must decide whether its engagement with pre-distribution is to be limited to tinkering at the edges of neoliberalism, or whether it will instead fully embrace the opportunities of the present moment, decide to be radical, and realise the full promise of the politics of predistribution. -/- . (shrink)

Wittgenstein taught us that there could not be a logically private language— a language on the proper speaking of which it was logically impossible for there to be more than one expert. For then there would be no difference between this person thinking she was using the language correctly and her actually using it correctly. The distinction requires the logical possibility of someone other than her being expert enough to criticize or corroborate her usage, someone able to constitute or hold (...) her to a standard of proper use. I shall explore the possibility of something opposite- sounding about laws, namely, that there could in principle be laws whose existence, legitimacy, goodness, and efficacy depend upon their being private, in this sense: their existence is kept secret from those who legitimately benefit from the laws and yet who would misguidedly destroy them were they to come to know of them; and it is kept secret from those who would illegitimately benefit from being able to circumvent the laws, and who could circumvent them if they knew of them. The secrecy of the laws increases their efficacy against bad behavior, and since were the public to come to know of these laws the public would lose its nerve and demand that the laws be rescinded, it prevents the public from destroying laws that are in fact in the public interest. These laws are therefore in a way logically private: they cannot at the same time exist, have the foregoing virtues, and be public. After proposing conditions under which such laws ought to be enacted, I moot logical objections to the very idea that there could be such laws, practical objections to their workability, and moral objections to their permissibility. I conclude by suggesting that, while we normally think of secret laws as creatures of the executive branch, things functionally equivalent to secret laws could also be created by other branches of government and societal institutions, and that all of this would be compatible with the form of sovereignty that is democratically grounded in the will and interests of the people. (shrink)

Excerpts from Giovanbattista Tusa's lecture “Foucault's Monsters. Reflections on the dispositif.” Foucault World Congress: 40 years after - Lisbon June 6-7, 2024.

What does it mean to treat people as equals when the legacies of feudalism, religious persecution, authoritarian and oligarchic government have shaped the landscape within which we must construct something better? This question has come to dominate much constitutional practice as well as philosophical inquiry in the past 50 years. The combination of Second Wave Feminism with the continuing struggle for racial equality in the 1970s brought into sharp relief the variety of ways in which people can be treated (...) unequally, while respecting the formalities of constitutional government. Most obviously, the content of laws can mistreat them by wrongfully assuming that they are either threats to others, or that, like children, they need to be protected from harm through paternalistic limitations on their freedom of action. Or, as those concerned with class inequality have long noted, formal equality can create legal requirements, permissions, and prohibitions whose burdens fall predictably, and often solely, on groups who are already marginalised, and most in need of state protection. (Kairys, David 1990) Above all, what these two great political movements made plain, is that a concern for group inequality and, specifically, group injustice must figure in the formulation and adjudication of individual rights, if legal protections for equality are adequately to combat the causes of inequality. Getting to grips with that challenge, it became obvious, required going beyond the familiar analyses of inequality inherited from Liberalism and Marxism, given the many different ways in which people can be equal or unequal.(Hackett and Haslanger 2006, 3 - 15) In the first part of this chapter, I will seek to illustrate these claims, by focusing on efforts to reframe the theory and practice of constitutional equality given demands for sexual and racial equality. I will then show that analytic philosophy has also come to recognise the various non-reducible dimensions of equality in ways that reinforce the claims of critical legal theory, even as philosophers highlight their disconcerting consequences. If equality has multiple irreducible dimensions, conflicts between the legitimate demands of equality are unavoidable features of law and politics, even in the best possible world, and are likely to be particularly painful when set against a background of historical injustice. The chapter concludes with the challenges to democratic constitutionalism, and the scope for constructive responses to those challenges, which the rapprochement between critical and analytic thinking on equality suggests. (shrink)