Using Australia to illustrate the case, in this paper it is argued that the transformation of universities into businesses and the undermining of the liberal arts is motivated by either contempt for or outright hostility to democracy. This is associated with a global managerial revolution that is enslaving nations and people to the global market and the corporations that dominate it. The struggle within universities is the site of a struggle to reverse the gains of the Radical Enlightenment, the (...) tradition of Enlightenment that, committed to upholding and developing the civic humanism of the Renaissance, strove for liberty, understood as democratic self-governance. The central place the liberal arts had in upholding this liberty is shown. Inspired by the Ancient Greek notion of paideia, the liberal arts, which originated in republican Rome, was the form of education required designed for free people, in opposition to the specialist education appropriate for slaves, to inspire them to maintain their liberty and enable them to govern themselves. While not always upholding this ideal, it is argued in this paper that the liberal arts always kept alive this quest for liberty, bequeathing this quest to the Renaissance philosophers and to the proponents of the Radical Enlightenment. With managerialism and the undermining of democracy, such education and the questioning, creative people it produced, are now seen as a threat to the new global corporatocracy who, to achieve cultural hegemony, have coöpted university managers and academics to impose their agenda to cripple the liberal arts. Their goal, never fully articulated as such but successfully prosecuted, is a dumbed-down population. (shrink)

A philosophical genealogy of the development of liberal 'arts of government' through the work of John Locke and Michel Foucault.

Public reason liberalism is the political theory which holds that coercive laws and policies are justified when and only when they are grounded in reasons of the public. The standard interpretation of public reason liberalism, consensus accounts, claim that the reasons persons share or that persons can derive from shared values determine which policies can be justified. In this paper, I argue that consensus approaches cannot justify fair educational policies and preserving cultural goods. Consensus approaches can resolve some controversies about (...) teaching values in the educational system, such as curriculum choice. But they cannot determine which culture goods, e.g., architecture, artwork, or language ought to be preserved in the education system. Consensus approaches cannot fairly resolve competing claims about these kinds of disputes. -/- I propose that convergence accounts of public reason, which allow individuals to draw on their own comprehensive doctrines in limited ways, can remedy these weaknesses in the mainline public reason tradition. The convergence approach can justify a pluralist state that can advance valuable community goods. John Henry Newman’s advocacy of liberal arts education finds resonance in other cultures, notably among Confucians, illustrating that there can be a shared moral vision and inquiry into the good life across deep substantive disagreements about educational values and policies, once we expand our notion of justification to be more inclusive. (shrink)

Mixing methods is a well-known innovative meth- odologic proposal for research in the second half of the 20th century social sciences. Reading literature about it, I observed the aspect that justifies this paper: Authors of theoretical contributions on mixing methods recognized that this was known to be a practice already in use many centuries ago. Some of them even have re-examined the whole history of the scientific method to search precedents. They are however individual and theoretical precedents. I add in (...) this paper the practical projection of these and other methodological theories on people’s training from Greek classical times. My hypothesis is that liberal arts was the basic syllabus in Western -and westernized- educaion for more than a millennium in such a way that results of their training precisely involved to mixing methods. In return, to understand the liberal arts in the light of mixing methods shows new aspects of their historical interest. I study the theoretical basis of this syllabus from Cicero to Alcuin. More important for future research, I conclude that Alcuin’s thesis about the correspondence between the gifts of the Holy Spiritu and the seven liberal arts can be extended to the Aristotelian dianoethics habits and to Dilthey’s 20th-century sciences of mind. (shrink)

A study of the psychology of demoralization affecting university faculty in the liberal arts. This form of demoralization is not adequately understood in terms of the concept of career burnout. Instead, demoralization that affects university faculty in the liberal arts requires a broadened understanding of the historical and psychological situation in which these professors find themselves today.

This paper examines a largely unrecognized mental disorder that is essentially a disability of values. It is their daily contact with this pathology that leads many university liberal arts faculty to demoralization. The deeply rooted disparity between the world of the traditional liberal arts scholar and today’s college students is not simply a gulf across which communication is difficult, but rather involves a pathological impairment in the majority of students that stems from an exclusionary focus on work, money, (...) and the acquisition of things. It is argued that this state of mind constitutes a self-disabling mental illness, which for a society becomes pathological ideology, and for the individual takes the form of clinical narcissism. (shrink)

Part of John Andrew Rice’s legacy, besides being a founder of Black Mountain College, is his vision of what a small liberal arts college curriculum should be. This vision helps shed light on some possible avenues by which to answer the following important questions: What implications do John Dewey’s progressive educational ideas have for experimenting with curricular design at small colleges? Does the college teacher’s struggle for improvement or growth depend on her having a belief that there is an (...) ideal liberal arts college curriculum? Probably the best known of such ready-made curricula is the Great Books Program, which employs a list of classic primary-source texts as the entry point into highly engaged dialogue, scholarship and learning guided by a teacher or tutor. In order to answer these questions, the paper turns to the historical debate between John Dewey and Robert Maynard Hutchins over the relative merits of progressive educational ideals and the Great Books approach. Most who have commented on this debate emphasize the differences between Dewey and Hutchins’ views.[ii] While Dewey emphasized learning through practical problem solving, in a dynamic mix of subject matter and method, Hutchins stressed exposure to and discussion of at least one-hundred primary texts in the Western canon, from Plato and Aristotle to Emerson and J.S. Mill. Hutchins resisted what he saw as the progressive educator’s push to transform the proper end of educating the whole person into training her for a particular vocation. In response, Dewey criticized Hutchins’ insistence that there existed a “hierarchy of truths” and that higher learning should remain aloof to the concerns of everyday life. Few commentators, however, mention the significant areas of agreement between the pedagogical approaches of Dewey and Hutchins, as well as other Great Books scholars. Since Rice praised the ideas of at least one Great Books proponent (Stringfellow Barr of St. John’s College), a more positive reconstruction of the Dewey-Hutchins exchange helps us to see how Dewey’s ideas informed Rice’s vision for the experimental college at Black Mountain—or so I argue.[iii]. (shrink)

This article considers whether the international legal human rights system founded on liberal individualism, as endorsed by liberal theorists, can function as a fair universal legal regime. This question is examined in relation to the collective right to self-determination demanded by indigenous peoples, who are paradigmatic decent nonliberal peoples. Indigenous peoples’ collective right to self-determination has been internationally recognized in the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which was adopted by the United Nations in 2007. This historic (...) event may seem to exemplify the international legal human rights system’s ability to function as a truly global legal regime applicable cross-culturally to all well-ordered societies, whether liberal or nonliberal. The article argues, however, that the collective right to self-determination advocated by indigenous peoples for the sake of cultural integrity is inconsistent with the international legal human rights system founded on liberal individualism. By showing the plausibility of indigenous peoples’ defense of their cultural integrity, this article suggests that the international legal human rights system ought to be reconceptualized to reflect a genuine international consensus on human rights among all well-ordered societies if it is to function as a just mechanism for global governance. (shrink)

Beginning from Hegel's notion of ethical life (Sittlichkeit) as a mode of consciousness governed by the norms of a historical community, this essay examines the role of education in shaping contemporary communities of autonomous people. It does so by defending a version of the idea that an educator has, among her other tasks, the role of helping her students appreciate the values that are shared across her community. In the course of the examination I relate this idea to trends in (...) the European Enlightenment, and I draw on research concerning political polarization in Europe and North America today and its impact on the academy. In the process I argue that the modern university educator has the task of cultivating in her students an attitude of critical inquiry whose results are not coerced by the social conditions under which that inquiry takes place, and I offer some pedagogical proposals for the university educator facing the situation we are today. (shrink)

On the differing practices and assumptions in the academic specialisms of environmental studies and STS.

The central task of this book is to map a subtle but significant addition to the political discourse on liberty since the early modern period; a gradual shift of focus form the individual secure in spheres of non-interference, or acting in accordance with authentic desires and beliefs, to the actions of a self at liberty. Being free stands opposed, classically, to being in someone else’s power, being subject to the will of another – in particular, to being constrained by the (...) intentional actions of others. “Constrained” usually means having choices or opportunities taken away or limited by the designs of others. But what if we press the connection between intentions and constraints a bit further, focusing less on negative constraints and more on enabling ones? Constrained or unfree, that is, not simply through a limitation of choices or options, but where free choices and intentions themselves become the object of theoretical and practical attention. What does it mean to be free or unfree in relation to these kinds of “constraints”? (shrink)

This book is an anthology with the following themes. Non-European Tradition: Bussanich interprets main themes of Hindu ethics, including its roots in ritual sacrifice, its relationship to religious duty, society, individual human well-being, and psychic liberation. To best assess the truth of Hindu ethics, he argues for dialogue with premodern Western thought. Pfister takes up the question of human nature as a case study in Chinese ethics. Is our nature inherently good (as Mengzi argued) or bad (Xunzi’s view)? Pfister ob- (...) serves their underlying agreement, that human beings are capable of becoming good, and makes precise the disagreement: whether we achieve goodness by cultivating autonomous feelings or by accepting external precepts. There are political consequences: whether government should aim to respect and em- power individual choices or to be a controlling authority. Early Greek Thinking: Collobert examines the bases of Homeric ethics in fame, prudence, and shame, and how these guide the deliberations of heroes. She observes how, by depending upon the poet’s words, the hero gains a quasi- immortality, although in truth there is no consolation for each person’s inevi- table death. Plato: Santas examines Socratic Method and ethics in Republic 1. There Socrates examines definitions of justice and tests them by comparison to the arts and sciences. Santas shows the similarities of Socrates’ method to John Rawls’ method of considered judgments in reflective equilibrium. McPherran interprets Plato’s religious dimension as like that of his teacher Socrates. McPherran shows how Plato appropriates, reshapes, and extends the religious conventions of his own time in the service of establishing the new enterprise of philosophy. Ac- cording to Taylor, Socrates believes that humans in general have the task of helping the gods by making their own souls as good as possible, and Socrates’ unique ability to cross-examine imposes on him the special task of helping others to become as good as possible. This conception of Socrates’ mission is Plato’s own, consisting in an extension of the traditional conception of piety as helping the gods. Brickhouse and Smith propose a new understanding of Socratic moral psychology—one that retains the standard view of Socrates as an intellectualist, but also recognizes roles in human agency for appetites and passions. They compare and contrast the Socratic view to the picture of moral psychology we get in other dialogues of Plato. Hardy also proposes a new, non-reductive understanding of Socratic eudaimonism—he argues that Socrates invokes a very rich and complex notion of the “Knowledge of the Good and Bad”, which is associated with the motivating forces of the virtues. Rudebusch defends Socrates’ argument that knowledge can never be impotent in the face of psychic passions. He considers the standard objections: that knowledge cannot weigh incom- mensurable human values, and that brute desire, all by itself, is capable of moving the soul to action. Aristotle: Anagnostopoulos interprets Aristotle on the nature and acquisition of virtue. Though virtue of character, aiming at human happiness, requires a complex awareness of multiple dimensions of one’s experience, it is not properly a cognitive capacity. Thus it requires habituation, not education, according to Aristotle, in order to align the unruly elements of the soul with reason’s knowledge of what promotes happiness. Shields explains Aristotle’s doctrine that goodness is meant in many ways as the doctrine that there are different analyses of goodness for different types of circumstance, just as for being. He finds Aristotle to argue for this conclusion, against Plato’s doctrine of the unity of the Good, by applying the tests for homonymy and as an immediate cons- equence of the doctrine of categories. Shields evaluates the issue as unresolved at present. Russell discusses Aristotle’s account of practical deliberation and its virtue, intelligence (phronesis). He relates the account to contemporary philo- sophical controversies surrounding Aristotle’s view that intelligence is neces- sary for moral virtue, including the objections that in some cases it is unnecessary or even impedes human goodness. Frede examines the advantages and disadvantages of Aristotle’s virtue ethics. She explains the general Greek con- ceptions of happiness and virtue, Aristotle’s conception of phronesis and compares the Aristotle’s ethics with modern accounts. Liske discusses the question of whether the Aristotelian account of virtue entails an ethical-psy- chological determinism. He argues that Aristotle’s understanding of hexis allows for free action and ethical responsibility : By making decisions for good actions we are able to stabilize our character (hexis). Hellenistic and Roman: Annas defends an account of stoic ethics, according to which the three parts of Stoicism—logic, physics, and ethics—are integrated as the parts of an egg, not as the parts of a building. Since by this analogy no one part is a foundation for the rest, pedagogical decisions may govern the choice of numerous, equally valid, presentations of Stoic ethics. Piering interprets the Cynic way of life as a distinctive philosophy. In their ethics, Cynics value neither pleasure nor tradition but personal liberty, which they achieve by self-suffi- ciency and display in speech that is frank to the point of insult. Plotinus and Neoplatonism: Gerson outlines the place of ordinary civic virtue as well as philosophically contemplative excellence in Neoplatonism. In doing so he attempts to show how one and the same good can be both action-guiding in human life and be the absolute simple One that grounds the explanation of everything in the universe. Delcomminette follows Plotinus’s path to the Good as the foundation of free will, first in the freedom of Intellect and then in the “more than freedom” of the One. Plotinus postulates these divinities as not outside but within each self, saving him from the contradiction of an external foundation for a truly free will. General Topics: Halbig discusses the thesis on the unity of virtues. He dis- tinguishes the thesis of the identity of virtues and the thesis of a reciprocity of virtues and argues that the various virtues form a unity (in terms of reciprocity) since virtues cannot bring about any bad action. Detel examines Plato’s and Aristotle’s conceptions of normativity : Plato and Aristotle (i) entertained hybrid theories of normativity by distinguishing functional, semantic and ethical normativity, (ii) located the ultimate source of normativity in standards of a good life, and thus (iii) took semantic normativity to be a derived form of normativity. Detel argues that hybrid theories of normativity are—from a mo- dern point of view—still promising. Ho ̈ffe defends the Ancient conception of an art of living against Modern objections. Whereas many Modern philosophers think that we have to replace Ancient eudaimonism by the idea of moral obligation (Pflicht), Ho ̈ffe argues that Eudaimonism and autonomy-based ethics can be reconciled and integrated into a comprehensive and promising theory of a good life, if we enrich the idea of autonomy by the central elements of Ancient eudaimonism. Some common themes: The topics in Chinese and Hindu ethics are perhaps more familiar to modern western sensibilities than Homeric and even Socratic. Anagnostopoulos, Brickhouse and Smith, Frede, Liske, Rudebusch, and Russell all consider in contrasting ways the role of moral character, apart from intellect, in ethics. Brickhouse / Smith, Hardy, and Rudebusch discuss the Socratic con- ception of moral knowledge. Brickhouse / Smith and Hardy retain the standard view of the so called Socratic Intellectualism. Shields and Gerson both consider the question whether there is a single genus of goodness, or if the term is a homonym. Bussanich, McPherran, Taylor, and Delcomminette all consider the relation between religion and ethics. Pfister, Piering, Delcomminette, and Liske all consider what sort of freedom is appropriate to human well-being. Halbig, Detel, and Ho ̈ffe propose interpretations of main themes of Ancient ethics. (shrink)

Very little attention has been paid towards examining John Rawls’s liberal principle of legitimacy as a self-standing theory. Nevertheless, it offers a highly original way of thinking about state legitimacy. In this paper, I will offer a sketch of what such an account might look like. At its heart is the idea that the legitimacy of the state resides not in the consent of the governed, nor in the state’s conformity with the appropriate principles of justice, but rather in (...) citizens’ endorsement of the state and its underlying constitutional principles on the basis of their own comprehensive conceptions of justice. Such an account offers a stable middle ground between popular alternatives, and has a way of not just solving, but dissolving, the problem of legitimacy. (shrink)

At the heart of Kant’s legal-political philosophy lies a liberal, republican ideal of justice understood in terms of private independence (non-domination) and subjection to public laws securing freedom for all citizens as equals. Given this basic commitment of Kant’s, it is puzzling to many that he does not consider democracy a minimal condition on a legitimate state. In addition, many find Kant ideas of reform or improvement of the historical states we have inherited vague and confusing. The aim of (...) this paper is to untangle both puzzles by exploring Kant’s idea of self-governance. I argue that Kant’s idea of self-governance gives us a very good starting point for thinking about how to leave room for a variety of political systems—different ideals—that have grown out of and responding to different contingent historical and cultural circumstances. It also helps us identify those areas where we want to take extra care to build in safeguards to secure stability and to take sufficiently seriously humankind’s truly nasty sides. (shrink)

Some of our reasons for action are grounded in the fact that the action in question is a means to something else we have reason to do. This raises the question as to which principles govern the transmission of reasons from ends to means. In this paper, we discuss the merits and demerits of a liberal transmission principle, which plays a prominent role in the current literature. The principle states that an agent has an instrumental reason to whenever -ing (...) is a means for him to do what he has intrinsic reason to do. We start by discussing the objection that this principle implies counterintuitive reason statements. We argue that attempts to solve this “too many reasons problem” by appealing to pragmatic strategies for debunking intuitions about so-called negative reason existentials are questionable. Subsequently, we discuss three important arguments in favor of Liberal Transmission, and argue that they fail to make a convincing case for this principle. In the course of the discussion, we also provide alternative, less liberal transmission principles. We argue that these alternative principles allow us to accommodate those phenomena that seem to support Liberal Transmission while avoiding its problems. (shrink)

Respect for victims requires that we have social systems for punishing and condemning (reproving) serious crimes. But, the conditions of social marginalization and political subordination of the communities from which an overwhelming number of prisoners in the United States come place serious barriers in the face of effective reprobation. Mass incarceration makes this problem worse by disrupting and disrespecting entire communities. While humanities education in the prisons is far from a total solution, it is one way to make reprobation meaningful, (...) so long as the prison classroom is a place where the educators’ values are also put at risk. (shrink)

This essay begins with the claim that intercultural dialogue is an art rather than a science or technique and it attempts to point out what it takes to learn the art of intercultural dialogue. In PART ONE some basic forms of intercultural dialogue are presented which correlate to some basic forms of human life, such as family, politics, economy, science, art and religion. Also a few common traits about how intercultural dialogue is practised today are specified. PART TWO is pointing (...) out that cultural pluralism is not merely a political ideology, but rather a realistic political attitude towards the social realities in all cultures. Cultural pluralism means to accept that a certain variety of different forms of life is existing already within every culture, country or nation. Further it it argued that any society whether it is governed by a modern democracy or by a more traditional political system, such as a monarchy, needs some ethical, legal and political orientation in order to guarantee civil liberties, but also to limit civil, economic and political freedom. A common normative orientation being based on ethical ideals, principles, norms and values can only be established by philosophy and jurisprudence and neither by science nor by religion and neither by democracy nor by economy alone. Finally, PART THREE presents and discusses shortly a few reflections about three philosophical models of dialogue by Buber, Jaspers and Gadamer which are relevant to intercultural dialogue, to interreligious dialogue and last, but not least to philosophical dialogue. (shrink)

For many philosophers, the relation of medicine to health is exemplary for understanding the relation of human power to nature in general. Drawing on Heidegger and Aquinas, this paper examines the relation of art to nature as it emerges in the second book of Aristotle’s Physics, and it does so by articulating the duality of efficient causality. The art of medicine operates as a dispositive cause rather than as a perfective cause; it removes obstacles to the achievement of health, but (...) it does not impose health. Medicine, on this conception, aids the efficient causality of the natural body rather than substituting for it. The loss of dispositive causality makes efficient causality an imposition of force that bypasses the natural power to achieve natural goods. The paper concludes, with Plato, by arguing that dispositive causality offers a way to understand not only medicine but also governing, teaching, and parenting. (shrink)

My aim in this discussion is to argue, not only that government should provide funding for the arts, but a fortiori that it should provide funding for unconventional, disruptive works of art.

The modern form of government resort their legitimacy to democracy and Republican concept. In any viable way, the political power no longer entertains the dynasty or any divinity from the religion. Then who are responsible to make us fateful if we are any kind of citizen in a polity. Often it is true that the government has to be an amalgam of power elites, and divided for a limited government. The modern democratic constitutionalism considered this aspect any (...) most in primacy to defend or promote their privileges or vision. This root context of civil interaction around 17th and 18th centuries has underlain the modern form of democratic state. Within the concern of these two points, the paper has explored the main feature of limited government in the liberal constitutionalism, which deals with the separation of powers principle, distribution of governmental powers and some of controversies involving the social legislation and role of public officers. I hope that it could be a lesson for the public officer of both camps, one as realistically and the other in the context of analogical insights. Hopefully, I may expect that the following research may be bred in socialist tension of states about how the public officers are structured to act and could liberate themselves to progress. (shrink)

The global ecological crisis is the greatest challenge humanity has ever had to confront, and humanity is failing. The triumph of the neo-liberal agenda, together with a debauched ‘scientism’, has reduced nature and people to nothing but raw materials, instruments and consumers to be efficiently managed in a global market dominated by corporate managers, media moguls and technocrats. The arts and the humanities have been devalued, genuine science has been crippled, and the quest for autonomy and democracy undermined. The (...) resultant trajectory towards global ecological destruction appears inexorable, and neither governments nor environmental movements have significantly altered this, or indeed, seem able to. The Philosophical Foundations of Ecological Civilization is a wide-ranging and scholarly analysis of this failure. This book reframes the dynamics of the debate beyond the discourses of economics, politics and techno-science. Reviving natural philosophy to align science with the humanities, it offers the categories required to reform our modes of existence and our institutions so that we augment, rather than undermine, the life of the ecosystems of which we are part. From this philosophical foundation, the author puts forth a manifesto for transforming our culture into one which could provide an effective global environmental movement and provide the foundations for a global ecological civilization. (shrink)

This paper aims to reevaluate Aristotelian political theory from an egalitarian perspective and to pinpoint its legacy and relevance to contemporary political theory, demonstrating its importance for contemporary liberal democracies in a changing world, suggesting a new critique of liberal and neoliberal political theory and practice, and especially the improvement of our notion of the modern liberal-democratic state, since most contemporary representative liberal democracies fail to take into account the public interest of the many and do (...) very little in order to advance it. The paper will focus on key aspects of Aristotle’s thought, such as his notions of justice (δικαιοσύνη/dikaiosunē and ἁπλῶς δίκαιον/aplōs dikaion), concord (ὁμόμοια/homonoia), friendship (φιλία/philia) and the art of ruling (τέχνη τοῦ ἄρχειν/technē tou archein), arguing that Aristotle’s theory requires us to have concern for our fellow citizens; ‘concern for others’ as opposed to the mere ‘respect for others’ that contemporary neo-Kantian liberalism advocates . Hence, I will examine these aspects of Aristotle’s philosophy that have not so far been adequately discussed, in relation to his conception of the ‘common or public interest’ (τὸ κοινῇ συμφέρον/to koinē sympheron) which is essential in order to understand the Aristotelian vision for ‘the art of politics’ (τέχνη τοῦ ἄρχειν) which should always aim towards the interest of the many, i.e., the people (πλῆθος/plēthos). (shrink)

Latin American religious political thought includes colonial Spanish and Portuguese ideologies that preceded independence but have survived into the post-independence era, authoritarian ideologies supportive of military governments in the twentieth century, and progressive liberation theologies. In this article, I present a distinct tradition: a version of classical liberal thought. This tradition is skeptical of big government, opposed to caste systems, supportive of a high degree of federalism, uneasy with militarism, and supportive of democratic institutions while affirming religious social (...) norms. This ideology was developed in northeastern Brazil in the early nineteenth century by a Carmelite activist named Frei Caneca (Brother Mug), who published a newspaper titled the Typhis Pernambucano (Tiphys of the State of Pernambuco). (shrink)

This article aims to explore the connection between freedom and language in T.W. Adorno's Notes to Literature, presenting freedom as a liberation of our way of thinking that has the potential to arrive at an unrestrained interpretation of art and representation of the intellectual experience. I also attempt to show some of Adorno's insights into language and freedom in The Essay as a Form and their role in his essays about Valéry and Proust. Namely I focus on the problematics of (...) the suspension of the subject of the artist within the production of the work of art. Through showing the connection between Adorno's insights into problematics of language, freedom and suspension of subject I hope to contribute to the explication of one of the constructive steps of Adorno's philosophy. (shrink)

Across a wide range of cultural forms, including philosophy, cultural theory, literature and art, the figure of the clock has drawn suspicion, censure and outright hostility. In contrast, even while maps have been shown to be complicit with forms of domination, they are also widely recognised as tools that can be critically reworked in the service of more liberatory ends. This paper seeks to counteract the tendency to see clocks in this way, arguing that they have many more interesting possibilities (...) than they are usually given credit for. An analysis of approaches to clocks in continental philosophy critiques the way they have too often been dismissed as unworthy of further analysis, and argues that this dismissal is based upon an inadequate understanding of how clocks operate. Seeking to move towards more critical and curious approaches, the paper draws inspiration from critical cartography in order to call for the development of a ‘critical horology’ which would emphasise both the fundamentally political nature of clocks, and the potential for designing them otherwise. A discussion of temporal design provides a range of examples of how clocks might open up new horizons within the politics of time. (shrink)

How Propaganda Became Public Relations pulls back the curtain on propaganda: how it was born, how it works, and how it has masked the bulk of its operations by rebranding itself as public relations. Cory Wimberly uses archival materials and wide variety of sources — Foucault’s work on governmentality, political economy, liberalism, mass psychology, and history — to mount a genealogical challenge to two commonplaces about propaganda. First, modern propaganda did not originate in the state and was never primarily located (...) in the state; instead, it began and flourished as a for-profit service for businesses. Further, propaganda is not focused on public beliefs and does not operate mainly through lies and deceit; propaganda is an apparatus of government that aims to create the publics that will freely undertake the conduct its clients’ desire. Businesses have used propaganda since the early twentieth century to construct the laboring, consuming, and voting publics that they needed to secure and grow their operations. Over that time, corporations have become the most numerous and well-funded apparatuses of government in the West, operating privately and without democratic accountability. Wimberly explains why liberal strategies of resistance have failed and a new focus on creating mass subjectivity through democratic means is essential to countering propaganda. This book offers a sophisticated analysis that will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in social and political philosophy, Continental philosophy, political communication, the history of capitalism, and the history of public relations. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence has arrived. In the online world it is already a part of everyday life, sitting invisibly behind a wide range of search engines and online commerce sites. It offers huge potential to enable more efficient and effective business and government but the use of artificial intelligence brings with it important questions about governance, accountability and ethics. Realising the full potential of artificial intelligence and avoiding possible adverse consequences requires societies to find satisfactory answers to these questions. This (...) report sets out some possible approaches, and describes some of the ways government is already engaging with these issues. (shrink)

Liberal multicultural theories developed in late twenty-first century aims to ensure the rights of the minorities, social justice and harmony in liberal societies. Will Kymlicka is the leading philosopher in this field. He advocates minority rights, their autonomy and the way minority groups can be accommodated in a liberal society with their distinct cultural identity. Besides him, there are other political theorists on the track and Galston is one of them. He disagrees with Kymlicka on some crucial (...) points, particularly regarding the scope of civil rights of the minority groups and the responsibilities of both majority and minority groups for the sake of social harmony and justice. He tries to develop a moral theory of mutualism based on inter-community toleration and constitutionalism. Considering toleration as one of the fundamental liberal virtues he contends that the majority government has the responsibility to make arrangement both for the members of majority and minority groups so that they can build inter personal relation and learn toleration. The paper critically justifies the feasibility of his theory in a liberal society and claims that although Galston’s theory has a higher possibility to be accommodated in liberal societies, it eventually fails. (shrink)

Since 1987, the Brazilian government has implemented a no-contact policy, which prevents contact between isolated indigenous tribes in the Amazon and members of the general public, including state officials. The government justifies this policy on the grounds that contact would expose members of isolated tribes to dangerous illnesses as well as violate their right to determine their own life processes. In this essay, I bring liberal theory to bear on the question of whether Brazil's treatment of isolated (...) indigenous tribes is justified. I argue that the current policy actually fails to treat isolated indigenous persons as free and equal. (shrink)

Cinema is neither neutral nor a universal medium. Particularly in African contexts, cinema contributes to European exceptionalism, imposes European values as the norm, and acts as an instrument of cultural and psychological control. It seems that African cinema is ontologically, politically, and aesthetically Eurocentric. By introducing an intercultural philosophical approach to the realm of cinema, we aim to move away from Eurocentrism in African cinema towards a more intercultural and dialogical orientation as an input for the liberation of humanity. Based (...) on findings from a dramaturgical analysis of five films, we argue that African cinema shows a deficiency in communicating liberation and it often fails to portray African people’s values, will, and interests as it has been alienated from its nature and purpose. Overall, African cinema seems to be either in a state of assimilation or confusion. By exploring aesthetics of liberation in African cinema and art (as described in African and intercultural philosophy,) we search for alternative film aesthetics and a mode of filmmaking that seeks to liberate the image and the minds of the filmmakers and spectators of African cinema. Inspired by Kimmerle’s aesthetic-ethic alternative ‘Living (with) art’, we propose an alternative for critical filmmaking based on aesthetics of liberation with an intercultural orientation: Living cinema. Living cinema is a dialogical and liberational cinema with aesthetics of liberation at its core. Based on aesthetic-ethic principles of African philosophy and interculturality, the liberating function of living cinema can be found in reconnecting the aesthetics and filmmaking with African values. Simultaneously, it might be contributing to the liberation of world cinema as it has an impact on both the hegemonic and the suppressed cinema. (shrink)

Ambient assisted living technologies are increasingly presented and sold as essential smart additions to daily life and home environments that will radically transform the healthcare and wellness markets of the future. An ethical approach and a thorough understanding of all ethics in surveillance/monitoring architectures are therefore pressing. AAL poses many ethical challenges raising questions that will affect immediate acceptance and long-term usage. Furthermore, ethical issues emerge from social inequalities and their potential exacerbation by AAL, accentuating the existing access gap between (...) high-income countries and low and middle-income countries. Legal aspects mainly refer to the adherence to existing legal frameworks and cover issues related to product safety, data protection, cybersecurity, intellectual property, and access to data by public, private, and government bodies. Successful privacy-friendly AAL applications are needed, as the pressure to bring Internet of Things devices and ones equipped with artificial intelligence quickly to market cannot overlook the fact that the environments in which AAL will operate are mostly private. The social issues focus on the impact of AAL technologies before and after their adoption. Future AAL technologies need to consider all aspects of equality such as gender, race, age and social disadvantages and avoid increasing loneliness and isolation among, e.g. older and frail people. Finally, the current power asymmetries between the target and general populations should not be underestimated nor should the discrepant needs and motivations of the target group and those developing and deploying AAL systems. Whilst AAL technologies provide promising solutions for the health and social care challenges, they are not exempt from ethical, legal and social issues. A set of ELSI guidelines is needed to integrate these factors at the research and development stage. (shrink)

Despite the end of the Cold War and the ascendancy of liberal democracy celebrated by Francis Fukuyama as “the end of history”, a growing number of scholars and political activists point to its inherent shortcomings. However, they have tended to dismiss it on the basis of one or two of its salient weaknesses. While this is a justifiable way to proceed, it denies the searching reader an opportunity to see the broad basis for the growing rejection of liberal (...) democracy among African political theorists. Consequently, in this article, I argue that from an African perspective, the almost hegemonic status of liberal democracy can be challenged on at least five grounds, namely, logical inconsistency, impracticability due to the largely communalistic outlook of many africans, inconsistency between affirmation and action, violation of the right to ethnic identity, and the moral imperative to assert the right to cultural emancipation. -/- I conclude by calling upon African and Africanist political theorists to utilise indigenous African political thought, coupled with emancipatory aspects of political thought from other parts of the world, to design practicable models of democracy for contemporary African states. I further conclude that in order to promote genuine inter-cultural dialogue on democratisation, people from Western cultures ought to acknowledge the equality of all cultures, and to recognise that systems of governance are part and parcel of those cultures. (shrink)

Contemporary post-aesthetic art implies an expanded concept of the work of art that also includes political functions. Beuys’s concept of social sculpture and Marcuse’s idea of society as a work of art can be complemented by Abreu’s project of a musical orchestra as a social ideal and the Neue Slowenische Kunst transnational state formed from the core of art. These concepts are close to the views of Hakim Bey, with D’Annunzio also touching upon them with his State of Fiume, for (...) which he wrote the constitution and defined music as its central governing principle. Although the art state is a utopian project, art can serve a variety of emancipatory functions even in the dystopian present to intervene in and change the political. In this article, we also discuss the case of art activism in Slovenia, where culture has become a central part of civil society oriented towards social change. Art activism contributes to an expanded concept of the political, which includes new subjects and new forms of antagonisms. Likewise, such repurposing of art emphasises its role in research. (shrink)

My aim in this chapter is to push back against the tendency to emphasize Mill’s break from Bentham rather than his debt to him. Mill made important advances on Bentham’s views, but I believe there remains a shared core to their thinking—over and above their commitment to the principle of utility itself—that has been underappreciated. Essentially, I believe that the structure of Mill’s utilitarian thought owes a great debt to Bentham even if he filled in that structure with a richer (...) conception of human nature and developed it in more liberal directions. This commonality is revealed, in particular, in Mill’s own institutional designs and practical reform proposals in Considerations on Representative Government and related writings. If this is right, then the tendency of interpreters to highlight their differences rather than their similarities has been to the detriment of both Mill and Bentham scholarship, and so to our understanding of the rise of liberal utilitarianism. (shrink)

The nature of state governance in consolidated liberal democracies has important implications for the ideal theory debate. The states of these societies are polycentric. Decision-making power within them is disaggregated across multiple sites. This rules out one major justification for ideal theory. On this influential view, the ideal furnishes a blueprint of the morally perfect society that we should strive to realise. This justification is not viable in consolidated liberal democracies because their states lack an Archimedean point from (...) which the institutional structure as a whole can be designed to accord with the true ideal – whichever it might be. However, knowledge of the ideal can still aid agents in those societies to determine the worth of more modest political objectives other than the ideal itself. (shrink)

This article reflects on an in‑depth reading of a publication exploring the question of transsexualism and transsexuals in Poland, as well as the experiences resulting from the medical care of such individuals. The first part of the text is a supplement with essential information from the medical field, which to a large degree is uncovered in the book under review. The second part presents critical comments relating to the book’s contents both in terms of the information it contains (on a (...) theoretical level) and equally in terms of its research (on an empirical level). In the conclusion, both the overall positive aspects of the publication as well as its weaker points are summed up in general terms. (shrink)

What is reality? It is postmodern or poststructuralist philosophers like Roland Barthes, who realized that it only seems that the media present reality in the form of facts, because they actually spread myths. Accordingly, Jacques Derrida made it clear that communication via media is not based on logic, but is characterized by a significant “différance” between a “marque” (trace) of the past and the expectations of the future. Both agreed, that the initial misunderstanding of the concept of reality must be (...) uncovered or "deconstructed". This is more than necessary for them, because media, be it pictures or language, in truth convey values that are culturally and socially significant. They ‘iterate’ these values subliminally, because what shows up are only placeholders and thus mere forms (“structures of graphematic”) that are superficially realised as facts (“stereotypes”). In this way, according to Barthes, we all accept without question the values hidden behind them, so that they can gain a normative power that unconsciously guides our thinking, our decisions and our actions. Afterwards, it is Judith Butler who critically asked: How can we ever escape from this? Given the power of the subliminal dominant discourses, she saw the only effective solution “im Umdeuten” (in reinterpretation) of their subliminal values. In order to finally escape this “parasitic existence at the ritual”, the media philosopher Walter Benjamin already suggested to trigger "Chockwirkungen” (shock effects) in the viewer. It is the German painter Karin Kneffel, so it shall be shown, who has realized this with her series Fruits and Interiors in the most beautiful photorealistic strategy. (shrink)

Worsening energy crises and the growing effects of climate change have spurred, among other things, concerted efforts to tackle global problems through what the United Nations calls Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These are in turn argued to be best achieved via the adoption of environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) as the vehicle for guiding our efforts. However, though these things are often presented as the solution to global issues, they are increasingly being used as a means to centralize power (...) and exacerbate growing authoritarian trends. This article aims to demonstrate how the narratives surrounding ESG mask this reality, taking as a solution one of the foundational causes of global wealth and power disparity. (shrink)

This essay revisits the topic of how we should measure the things that matter, at a time when we continue to mismeasure our lives, as we hold fast to outworn myths of usefulness, popularity, and the desire to influence others. /// Three central, unquestioned presumptions have come to govern much of contemporary society, education, and the professions. They are: the high value placed on usefulness, on the passion to achieve popularity, and on the desire to influence others. In this essay, (...) the psychologist-philosopher author makes the case against these presumptions, presumptions which lead to exclusionary commitments that stand in the way of human cultural development. (shrink)

This article aims to address the widespread thesis according to which medieval scholastics would not handle the idea of fine art. Based on a suggestion by Anzulewicz, the author shows how Albert the Great did understand the peculiarity of fine arts and put them in close relationship with liberal arts. There are fine arts, such as music, which are sought after for their own sake and can, therefore, be considered as fully liberal. In contrast to them, there are (...) other arts called mechanical, whose purpose is utilitarian. In the third place, there are other arts which, although also possessing some utility, are chosen for their own sake and are therefore partly liberal; we should place fine arts such as architecture in that group. The more art participates in reason and the beauty of the soul, the more it will be fine and liberal. The product is called to be a metaphor for the honest good of virtue. The very contemplation of this beauty embodied by art evokes an aesthetic enjoyment. In this way, we can see that Albert, no less than Aquinas, speaks of the pleasure linked to the contemplation of beauty. (shrink)

Human Flourishing, Liberal Theory, and the ArtsMAUTNERMENACHEM routledge. 2018. pp. 198. £125.

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)

An object being non-art appears only trivially informative. Some non-art objects, however, could be saliently 'almost' art, and therefore objects for which being non-art is non-trivially informative. I call these kinds of non-art objects 'failed-art' objects—non-art objects aetiologically similar to art-objects, diverging only in virtue of some relevant failure. I take failed-art to be the right sort of thing, to result from the right sort of action, and to have the right sort of history required to be art, but to (...) be non-art by having failure where being art requires success. I assume that for something to be art that thing must be the product of intention-directed action. I then offer an account of attempts that captures the success conditions governing the relationship between intention-directed actions and their products. From this, I claim that to be failed-art is to be the product of a failed art-attempt, i.e., to be non-art as the result of the particular way in which that art-attempt failed. An art-attempt I take to be an attempt with success conditions, that, if satisfied, entail the satisfaction of the conditions for being art—whatever those may be. To be art, then, is to be the product of a successful art-attempt. As such, any art theory incompatible with my account of failed-art is an art theory for which the notions of success and failure do not matter, and therefore an art theory for which being art needn't be substantively intention-dependent. So, any theory of art unable to accommodate my account of failed-art is _ipso facto_ false. (shrink)

In this article, I first show in what way Augustine's 'De doctrina Christiana' actually concerns liberal education, or at least includes it within its scope. Second, I articulate the new 'modus' of education, its new “mode” or “measure,” presented in 'De doctrina'. Third, I exemplify the modification of education by briefly considering Augustine’s treatment of rhetoric in Book IV of 'De doctrina'. Fourth and finally, I conclude with general remarks that attempt to situate the sort of education of which (...) Augustine speaks in 'De doctrina' among some current alternatives with which we are familiar. (shrink)

(Winner of The Res Publica Essay Prize) This article defends a moderate version of state perfectionism by using Gerald Gaus’s argument for liberal neutrality as a starting point of discussion. Many liberal neutralists reject perfectionism on the grounds of respect for persons, but Gaus has explained more clearly than most neutralists how respect for persons justifies neutrality. Against neutralists, I first argue that the state may promote the good life by appealing to what can be called “the qualified (...) judgments about the good life,” which have not been considered by liberal perfectionists including Joseph Chan and Steven Wall. Then I clear up several possible misunderstandings of these judgments, and argue that: (a) moderate perfectionism does not rely on controversial rankings of values and is committed to promoting different valuable ways of life by pluralistic promotion; and (b) moderate perfectionism requires only an indirect form of coercion in using tax money to support certain moderate perfectionist measures, which is justifiable on the grounds of citizens’ welfare. Thus, I maintain that moderate perfectionism does not disrespect citizens, and is not necessarily unfair to any particular group of people. It is, in fact, plausible and morally important. The defence of moderate perfectionism has practical implications for the state’s policies regarding art development, drug abuse, public education, and so on. (shrink)

Activist artists often face a difficult question: is striving to change the world undermined when pursued through difficult and experimental artistic means? Looking closely at Adrian Piper's 'Four Intruders plus Alarm Systems' (1980), I will consider why this is an important concern for activist art, and assess three different responses in relation to Piper’s work. What I call the conciliatory stance recommends that when activist artists encounter misunderstanding, they should downplay their experimental artistry in favor of fitting their work to (...) their audience's appreciative capacities. What I call the steadfast stance recommends that activist artists have reason to use their privilege of artistic exceptionalism to challenge their audience's expectations, even if this leads to misunderstanding. I claim that a middle position that I call liberal conciliation best balances the demands for actual change placed on activism and the experimental means that artists bring to activism. (shrink)

Aesthetic value empiricism claims that the aesthetic value of an object is grounded in the value of a certain kind of experience of it. The most popular version of value empiricism, and a dominant view in contemporary philosophical aesthetics more generally, is aesthetic hedonism. Hedonism restricts the grounds of aesthetic value to the pleasure enjoyed in the right kind of experience. But hedonism does not enjoy any clear advantage over a more permissive alternative version of value empiricism. This alternative is (...) aesthetic liberalism. On this view, an object’s aesthetic value is fully grounded in any value—not just the hedonic value—of a correct and complete experience of its sensory features. To demonstrate the advantages of liberalism over hedonism, I apply both views to analyze the aesthetic value of the Spring Temple Buddha and Anselm Kiefer’s Seraphim. I detail four advantages of liberalism over hedonism, and I conclude by defending liberalism from two kinds of objection. (shrink)

We argue that while the new opposition in Azerbaijan between 2005 and 2013 did not realize all the goals set, it influenced a new generation of young activists who became the loudest supporters of democratic and secular values in Azerbaijan. This grassroots activation of the youth brought noticeable changes to some parts of Azerbaijani society by questioning the authority of traditional values. Many young people, especially students found a platform to discuss their problems concerning everyday basic issues such as intimate (...) relationships as well as their freedom to live in accordance with their personal choices and desires without the family interference in the light of theoretical questions such as the importance of liberal democratic values, individual liberties, and the rule of law. The successfully established connections between material problems and transcendental ideals encouraged some young people to participate in the open discussions and seminars organized by the new opposition. Because of the emergence of this new generation of active youth, the government was forced to incorporate some elements of this new discourse at least by making some cosmetic changes within its structures. The government became successful in its attempts of weakening the new opposition by hijacking its ideas and creating similar but pro-government organizations; neutralizing or buying some well-known opposition figures such as writers and journalists; and finally, persecuting the leading members of the youth organizations. (shrink)

WHAT is art? Classificatory disputes.. Classificatory disputes about what is art Art historians and philosophers of art have long had classificatory disputes about art regarding whether a particular cultural form or piece of work should be classified as art. Disputes about what does and does not count as art continue to occur today -/- Defining art is difficult if not impossible. Aestheticians and art philosophers often engage in disputes about how to define art. By its original and broadest definition, art (...) (from the Latin ars, meaning “skill” or “craft”) is the product or process of the effective application of a body of knowledge, most often using a set of skills; this meaning is preserved in such phrases as “liberal arts” and “martial arts”. However, in the modern use of the word, which rose to prominence after 1750, “art” is commonly understood to be skill used to produce an aesthetic result (Hatcher, 1999). (shrink)