Beyond the Anthropocene Ark Ecology of Climate Havens and Spaceships

Explores the foundations of political community as understood in two complementary ways: first, in contemporary normative political and social theory. Second, in the history of politics and in the history of philosophy. Particular attention is given to David Hume, Adam Smith, and Edmund Burke, as well as their relationship to contemporary political philosophers like Bernard Williams, John Rawls, Jeremy Waldron, Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Mills. Using Wittgenstein’s concept of a form of life (lebensform) in the Philosophical Investigations, argues that there is a family within the history of political thought whose members share the understanding that a shared form of life, which develops organically and historically, is a necessary condition for a free society to work well. Examines how political and social obligation, trust and commerce, as well as sympathy and concepts of rights, all require interdependence and shared assumptions and expectations. This family balances the impulses of political realism and political idealism, though is somewhat more anti-idealist than pro-realist. Bottom-up thinking that doesn’t fall in to the trap of idealism or of rationalism, due to a commitment to epistemological limits and the recognition of our finite capacities. In particular, I am interested in how we can combine the seemingly competing forces of culture and tradition (ways we have been doing things, one might say) with the necessary desire for change, reform, and progress. My approach to these questions can help shape the way we think about the size of states, if and when foreign intervention makes sense, the pace of change, and the necessary variety of political and social orders suited to a varying world.

本文旨在探究在阿甘本的著作中，詩學藝術如何作為生命－形式（form-of-life）之典範（paradigm），指引生命的「恆餘」對抗主權「暴力」的可能。本文分成六部分：頭兩部分先說明阿甘本著作中，「生命」與「餘」之間的兩種不同關連，勾勒其所謂生命－形式、典範等概念，並解釋生命－形式如何也是某種「典範生命」（paradigmatic life），因此可以成為某種生命恆餘。再來，則回顧阿甘本對亞里斯多德（Aristotle）與但丁（Dante Alighieri）的閱讀，以釐清西方思想中能力（potentiality）與作為（activity）兩者與生命政治問題的關係，並藉此提出某種得以呈現、保存餘力的生命－形式運作。第四部分回到阿甘本對於現代性美學與語言能力的討論，說明詩學對於生命－形式實踐的重要性。接著，本文聚焦詩學經驗如何對生命產生質變，發展出某種詩學公共生命，抗衡主權的暴力機制。最後，本文將略談阿甘本論述中烏托邦傾向的問題，說明其政治構想其實是種「非－非烏托邦」（non-non-utopian）。

Can societies fall ill? Can institutions die, or social practices degenerate? Must social norms be embodied? To what extent is social action habitual? Is social life part of nature or does it transcend it? This book explores the meaning and many facets of naturalism in social philosophy. It investigates the consequences of concepts such as 'second nature' and 'forms of life' for social philosophy. It analyses the ways in which social action, gender, work and morality are embodied. It surveys the conceptions of nature at play in social criticism. It provides students and experts of social philosophy with both an overview and critical analyses of the many facets of naturalism in social philosophy from Hegel to contemporary critical theory. Contributors: Louis Carré, Fabian Freyenhagen, Martin Hartmann, Axel Honneth, Thomas Khurana, Steven Levine, Sabina Lovibond, Arvi Särkelä, Barbara Stiegler, Mariana Teixeira, Italo Testa

Can societies fall ill? Can institutions die, or social practices degenerate? Must social norms be embodied? To what extent is social action habitual? Is social life part of nature or does it transcend it? This book explores the meaning and many facets of naturalism in social philosophy. It investigates the consequences of concepts such as 'second nature' and 'forms of life' for social philosophy. It analyses the ways in which social action, gender, work and morality are embodied. It surveys the conceptions of nature at play in social criticism. It provides students and experts of social philosophy with both an overview and critical analyses of the many facets of naturalism in social philosophy from Hegel to contemporary critical theory. Contributors: Louis Carré, Fabian Freyenhagen, Martin Hartmann, Axel Honneth, Thomas Khurana, Steven Levine, Sabina Lovibond, Arvi Särkelä, Barbara Stiegler, Mariana Teixeira, Italo Testa

Bernstein's Distorting Mirrors: A Rejoinder

Reviewed by: Practice, Judgement, and the Challenge of Moral and Political Disagreement: A Pragmatist Account by Roberto Frega Torjus Midtgarden Roberto Frega. Practice, Judgement, and the Challenge of Moral and Political Disagreement: A Pragmatist Account. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2012. 238 pp. Index. Roberto Frega’s Practice, Judgement, and the Challenge of Moral and Political Disagreement is exegetically, as well as systematically, ambitious: it explores several key texts of Charles Peirce and John Dewey in order to develop a pragmatist conception of practical rationality in the context of contemporary moral and political philosophy. Frega’s book differs from other recent comparable contributions, such as those of Cheryl Misak, Eric MacGilvray, and Robert Talisse, by drawing most heavily on Dewey’s works. Yet, similar to Misak, MacGilvray and Talisse, Frega puts pragmatism to the test by applying it to deep moral disagreements in modern societies and does so without relying on facts about American cultural and political history in particular. What is thus proposed is a pragmatist conception of practical rationality that is relevant well beyond the American context and beyond the 19th and 20th century. The book has three parts, and the first turns to Peirce’s and Dewey’s theories of inquiry. Frega explores how Peirce’s classical text “The Fixation of Belief” may serve as the starting point for what he calls “a practice-based conception of rationality”, and for the naturalistic account on which such conception rests, viewing rationality’s ‘evolutionary aim’ to be ‘control over action’ (23). The reading strategy is thus to take Peirce’s notion of inquiry as a valid starting point, with its emphasis on action control, but without taking on board Peirce’s priority of science’s search for truth as the privileged form of belief fixation. It is in Dewey’s theory of inquiry, however, that Frega finds the most satisfactory, naturalistically based idea of practical rationality. The essentials of the theory, Frega points out, is presented already in Dewey’s 1915 essay “The Logic Judgement of Practice” where judgement is taken in a non-representational and holistic sense to concern a ‘situation as a complex whole that includes the agent and his deeds’ (51). Frega shows how judgement cannot be reduced to ‘canonical forms of analysis and synthesis’ (52) but has ‘an articulative and transformative nature’, involving a ‘self-expressive and [End Page 112] self-transformative dimension’ (52). Reasoning has a role to play, but is now seen as ‘the controlling factor that qualifies human agency’ (56) through articulation of a situation, and accomplishing a “(self)transformation” through forming ‘a standard of valuation’ (63) adequate for the situation at stake. The evaluative aspect of judgement, instituting, not merely applying, standards, further concerns how actual or possible consequences of action are assessed: consequences are not simply assessed according to fixed or given ends, interests and desires; ends, interest and desires are rather (re)shaped through reflecting on, and articulating, practical consequences (62–3). In the second part of the book, the author develops his conception of practical rationality by complementing Dewey’s contribution through current thinkers such as Stanley Cavell and Charles Taylor. Dewey’s account of the holistic, articulative nature of judgement is thus developed in terms of expressive inquiry: a process of expressing one’s moral beliefs and attitudes which is typically occasioned by moral disagreement. Articulation and self-expression in a situation of moral disagreement may be qualified as rational since, as Cavell’s analysis shows, agents may succeed in articulating ‘a shared system of presuppositions’ (84), or, in less happy cases, be lead to ‘accept disagreement as the result of a difference in forms of life’ or go on to ‘critically revise’ their moral attitudes and beliefs (85). In the last section of part two, in chapter four, the author makes a bold transition to the political sphere: the conception of expressive inquiry is adapted and applied to normative conflicts that emerge on a larger scale and that concern relations between groups or sections of society. This move facilitates a return to Dewey’s work and to The Public and Its Problems in particular. Through a sweeping yet pointed comparison Frega defends a Deweyan understanding of...

Inspired by Charles Taylor’s Political Philosophy, the author will argue that to become a meaningful society, Indonesian society first of all has to respect various forms of life in the society. The various forms of life have to live authentically according to its identity, value, and customs in relation with other forms of life that co-exist in the society. The author will also try to apply Taylor’s political philosophy in the context of Indonesian society. In the end, Indonesian context can give certain critical remarks to the development of Taylor’s philosophy

Wittgenstein often used examples of strange and unfamiliar forms of life to unsettle our assumptions. For example, he wrote: reply could I make to the adults of a tribe who believe that people sometimes go to the moon (perhaps that is how they interpret their dreams)?' These examples raise the implicit question, What would it be like to encounter such people? Would we be able, as Wittgenstein put it, to find our feet with them?2 Many of the essays in the two helpful, stimulating volumes under review raise a related question: What is it like to meet--or be--Wittgensteinians? One version of that question asks what attitude we ought to take toward our own form of life. Ought we to take the pragmatist view that our form of life is a solid if unjustified ground for our arguments and judgments, or the deconstructivist view that our form of life is inevitably shot through with contradictions, aporias, and instabilities? It is this question that the nine essays in The Legacy of Wittgenstein address.3 Similarly, ought we to interpret Wittgenstein as a conservative, grounding meaning in the brute given of our cultural tradition,4 as a relativist claiming that forms of life cannot be criticized from the outside,5 as a tolerance-promoting skeptic,6 or as a perfectionist liberal?7 What consequences for our own ideas and actions

Drawing on the book Bianco e nero. Storia dell'identita razziale degli Itallani, this lecture traces the political, cultural and visual history of Italian racial identity from unificaiton to the economic boom, through Fascism and the post-war era. Gaia Giuliani uses analytical categories derived from political philosophy, critical race theory, whiteness studies and postcolonial studies, and examines political theories of race, scientific literature and legislation related to emigration in order to trace the different processes of self-racialisation in the political discourse from the unification period up to 1936. The lecture also looks at contemporary Italian racism, analysing mass culture products (1980s-2007), TV coverage of racist incidents (2010-2012), and the intertwining of masculinity, virility, whtieness and race in Berlusconi's sexual scandals.

Democratic faith. A philosophical profile of Richard J. Bernstein

Writing Africa into the World and Writing the World from Africa:

The Sacredness of Nature: Response to Six Objections to Religious Naturalism

THE ARTICLE DISCUSSES such questions as relations between political thought and political behavior culture, curiosities of historical politics, political thinking and decision process in the area of historical politics, the reasons of State, their requirements and taking decisions in historical politics, as well as the question of scientific reflection on political history. There is a relation between political thought and political culture, and historical politics which depends on referring to the knowledge of the past. Advocates of retrogressive thinking who approve of traditional, or closed and even parochial political culture demonstrate a tendency to use a historical argument. The expression historical politics is mainly understood as “the politics of memory”. It is most frequently used not only as a political science category, but rather as a journalistic expression which is quite freely interpreted. A lot of misunderstandings and controversies arose about it leading to polarization of attitudes: approving and negating, which is largely reflected in the views of many professional historians and political scientists. Historical politics may be examined in the national dimension as well as in international relations, often polarizing ethnic communities. It is conducted in different ways by particular countries depending on their systems: democratic, autocratic or totalitarian. References to the past are frequently made in reflections on the reasons of State when gaining independence is concerned, or due to stimulating evolutionary processes of changes accelerated by new geopolitical decisions. Then, the historical and situation-geopolitical aspect of the reasons of State requirements turns out to be very important. This may determine the choice of a definite concept of historical politics. Historical politics problems are frequently the topic of heated political discussions in Poland in which professional historians and political scientists, as well as journalists who formulate subjective opinions take part, because there are historians who are involved in current historical discourse. Some of them, taking roles of lobbyists of one or another political option, outline a definite direction of historical politics.

Bernard Shaw as Political Writer

Much mainstream legal comment on human rights law presents an unhelpfully crude picture of disagreement concerning the significance that should be attached to human rights in particular cultural co...