Politics through conflict

Modern Dystopian Fiction and Political Thought: Narratives of World Politics

Sungmoon Kim’s <i>Democracy After Virtue</i>

이 글의 목적은 정치철학을 ‘정치철학적’으로 이해하고 가르쳐야 한다고 주장하는 것이다. 정치철학의 ‘정치철학적’ 이해는 역사적, 철학적, 그리고 정치적 이해를 포함하지만 거기에만 국한되지 않는다. 그것은 중요한 개념과 이론들을 정치적인 문제를 중심으로 이해하는 것이다. 이 글은 ‘정치철학적’으로 정치철학을 논의해야 하는 필요성을 검토한 후 역사적, 철학적, 그리고 정치적 정치철학의 이해가 보여주는 한계를 설명함으로써 ‘정치철학적’ 정치철학을 주장한다. 나아가 ‘정치철학적’으로 정치철학을 이해한다는 것은 무엇인지 논의한다. 결론적으로 말해, 정치적인 문제들을 중심으로 정치철학을 이해하고 가르칠 때 정치철학이 여전히 유용하며 지속될 수 있다고 주장한다.

In the course of a long digression within his famous inspection of Plato’s political philosophy, Karl Popper (1945: 121) argues that “the problem of politics” is the following: “How can we so organize political institutions that bad or incompetent rulers can be prevented from doing too much damage?” Popper’s answer is: “the theory of checks and balances”, which he defines as the striving to establish “institutional control of the rulers by balancing their powers against other powers” (122). From that general approach to “the problem of politics”, it follows that democracy is definitely not the rule of the majority, or the sovereignty of the people (a conception that entails various paradoxes). It is a system in which “we can get rid of [governments] without bloodshed — for example by way of general elections”, i.e. a system in which the “social institutions provide means by which the rulers may be dismissed by the ruled”. Thus, although we can have systems of checks and balances without democracy, all democracies are systems of checks and balances, first of all by definition.1 KeywordsPublic ChoiceWelfare StateInternational OpennessOpen SocietyPublic TransferThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Reviewed by: Imagining World Order: Literature and International Law in Early Modern Europe, 1500–1800 by Chenxi Tang Andrea Gadberry Chenxi Tang, Imagining World Order: Literature and International Law in Early Modern Europe, 1500–1800 (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 2018). Pp. 360; 4 b&w half-tones. $59.95 cloth. In response to Hegel's proviso "that all the great events and characters of world history occur twice, so to speak," Marx located an error: Hegel "forgot to add: the first time as high tragedy, the second time as low farce."1 Chenxi Tang's Inventing World Order: Literature and International Law in Early Modern Europe, 1500–1800 requires the addition of still further genres to Marx's maxim, at least when it comes to characterizing the world-historical emergence of the early modern European international legal order. In Tang's erudite book, the matter of "world order"—"as much a literary as a legal or political problem" (1)—requires that tragedy and farce make room for epic poetry, political romance, the chronicle, the mirror for princes, the tragicomedy, the sentimental novel, the Bildungsroman, and many other genres along the way.2 Inventing World Order is a generous guide through European legal and literary history. It is also an athletic performance: the book spans three centuries and, by my count, at least eight national traditions (Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, French, German, English, and Swedish—King Gustavus Adolphus makes an early appearance on behalf of Scandinavia (13)—not to mention the lingua franca of Latin!) and analyzes examples too abundant to recount in full here as it portrays both nascent international legal theory and emergent, revived, and reinvented literary genres. The book's range makes it a welcome resource for many potential readers, especially for specialists of one of the book's time periods or linguistic traditions in search of a wider historical and comparative view. In brief, across the book's introduction, six chapters, and epilogue, Tang examines how literary and legal works negotiate relationships between and among sovereigns and states. In this account, the function of literature is at once "to cope with the uncertainty, instability, and incompleteness of international law" (9) and to "leave more visible traces" (11) on an international order than it perhaps can on any individual modern state in which "rationality … mask[s] the poetic operations constitutive of it" (11). In the rules of genre, meanwhile, Tang locates a "normative character" within literary order's constitution into genres, an order which, in turn, shapes and responds to the burgeoning international order around it. The literary sphere forges legal fictions and responds to international strife, all the while indexing the tectonic shifts of early modern statecraft in a period marked by political and epistemic convulsion. The legal axis of the book, so to speak, tells the story of founding fictions and concepts designed to understand and shape "a state-centered world legal order contingent upon the voluntary actions of individual states" (57). Tang moves nimbly through legal history and a history of ideas in and through statecraft, tracing how the subjects of the international order respond to and diagnose the political and legal challenges of the early modern era. Reading Vitoria, Suárez, and Grotius, among many other legal and political philosophers, Tang narrates the emergence of reason of state and, along with it, the advent of "self-preservation, self-interest, and expediency" in the legal and political imagination (61). Along the way, Imagining World Order considers the birth of foundational narratives, concepts, and categories of many kinds. Tang leads the reader from the formation [End Page 739] of legal personality to that of private property, from the appearance of the private individual to the ideal of the cosmopolite. The reader encounters Machiavelli's tips for diplomats (always dissemble!) (50) and meets the new-fangled creature known as the "businessman" who cuts quite an international (and literary) figure as he moves in spaces "outside of a state or between states" (243). The book, then, accounts for "the classical period of international law" (1), but in showing how these famous (sometimes infamous) legal concepts take form and exert force, Tang tells a literary history simultaneously—one that...

Tyranny and the Problem of Politics - Michael Palmer: Love of Glory and the Common Good: Aspects of the Political Thought of Thucydides. (Lanham, MD: Roman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc.,1992. Pp. 152. $48.50, $17.95 paper.)

OME JOURNEYS are interesting as much because of the route taken and the scenery surveyed as for the destination arrived at. This seems particularly true of philosophizing. It is especially evident in contemporary instances of linguistic analysis, where the method employed (the route taken) and the imaginative use of examples (the scenery surveyed) are intrinsically engaging aspects of the philosophical subject-matter. Even political philosophy has felt the influence of the newer way, as shown by some recent writings of the now deceased T. D. Weldon, who devoted several decades of his scholarly life to preoccupation with the problems of politics. Weldon seems unreservedly to have gone over to the significant philosophical camp of the analysts, for he wrote in one place: purpose of philosophy, then, is to expose and elucidate linguistic muddles; it has done its job when it has resolved the confusions which have occurred and are likely to recur in inquiries into matters of fact because the structure and use of language are what they are. ' Since I hold that Weldon has some important things to say about politics and philosophy, I want here to treat of selected aspects of his published views.2 What I hope to accomplish is twofold: to characterize his notions of what politics and political appraisals are about; and to analyze his conception of the philosopher's task with some key words in the political vocabulary. Weldon's relevant political writings sometimes cause a critic to wonder how their author estimated the nature of their intended audience. His method of discussing issues in political philosophy often evidences a surface awareness of contemporary British philosophizing; yet only in one chapter of The Vocabulary of Politics does he concern himself with a detailed treatment of crucial words in the political vocabulary. Often Weldon brings a set of philosophical convictions to political discussion. He does not arrive at these conclusions as a result of his analyses but rather applies them to the materials in which he is interested. Weldon also makes a loose use of the word important, especially whenever he discusses the ways in which politics and morals are related as well as when he attempts to distinguish the interests of the political philosopher from those of the academic moral theorist. It is clear that Weldon writes most frequently for persons who are broadly interested in talk about politics in more than immediately practical ways, neither especially for nor yet excluding technical philosophers. This results from what may have been Weldon's uncertainty about whether political philosophy is, after all, an important subject-matter in the twentieth century.3

The growing exploration of political life from an aesthetic perspective has become so prominent that we must now speak of an “aesthetic turn” in political thought. But what does it mean and what makes it an aesthetic turn? Why now? This diverse and path-breaking collection of essays answers these questions, provoking new ways to think about the possibilities and debilities of democratic politics. Beginning from the premise that politics is already “aesthetic in principle,” the contributions to The Aesthetic Turn in Political Thought from some of the world's leading political theorists and philosophers, disclose a distinct set of political problems: the aesthetic problems of modern politics. The aesthetic turn in political thought not only recognizes that these problems are different in kind from the standard problems of politics, it also recognizes that they call for a different kind of theorizing – a theorizing that is itself aesthetic. A major contribution to contemporary theoretical debates, The Aesthetic Turn in Political Thought will be essential reading to anyone interested in the interdisciplinary crossroads of aesthetic and politics.

The Thomist 65 (2001): 505-27 THE HUMAN PERSON AND POLITICAL LIFE1 ROBERT SOKOLOWSKI The Catholic University ofAmerica Washington, D.C. IWISH TO DISCUSS the relationship between the human person and political life. My remarks will be a venture into political philosophy. This branch of philosophy has been shortchanged in Catholic philosophy in the past century, during the Thomistic revival following the encyclical Aetemi Patris of Pope Leo XIII in 1879. In the departmental structure and the philosophical curricula that prevailed in many Catholic colleges and universities during the first two thirds of the twentieth century, political philosophy would usually be located not in philosophy departments but in political science. In seminary programs, there was effectively no political philosophy whatsoever. The philosophy manuals of the early and middle part ofthe century covered political philosophy, if they treated it at all, as a division of ethics. In the great manual written by Joseph Gredt, O.S.B., for example, entitled Elementa philosophiae Aristotelico-Thomisticae,2 one finds extensive treatments oflogic, epistemology, philosophy ofnature, philosophical psychology, metaphysics, theodicy, and ethics, but in the nearly one thousand pages of the two volumes, there are only some 1 An earlier draft of this paper was presented at a symposium that both honored Pope John Paul II and marked the university career of Jude P. Dougherty, Dean Emeritus of the School of Philosophy, The Catholic University of America. The symposium was held on November 17-18, 2000, and was sponsored by the School of Philosophy and the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center. 2JosephGredt, O.S.B., ElementaPhilosophiaeltristotelico-'Ihomisticae, 2 vols. (Freiburg: Herder, 1953). 505 506 ROBERT SOKOLOWSKI twenty pages, at the very end of the second volume, devoted to "civil society," and this brief section terminates with a two-page treatment de bello, on war. This long philosophical work, therefore, does not end peacefully, and it clearly does not offer a solution to the political problem. It is true that some of the most important twentieth-century Catholic philosophers devoted much of their work to political philosophy: Jacques Maritain wrote such books as Man and the State, The Person and the Common Good, Things that are Not Caesar's, Integral Humanism, Freedom in the Modern World (the French title was Du regime temporel et de la liberte}, and Scholasticism and Politics (Principes d'une politique humaniste}, all of which deal with politics, andYves R. Simon wrote The Philosophy of Democratic Government among other titles in political thought, but these two authors were the exception rather than the rule. At Louvain's Higher Institute for Philosophy, for example, there was no representation of political philosophy. Jacques LeClercq wrote in social ethics and social philosophy, but not in political thought as such. What was done in political philosophy added up to a relatively small achievement in this field, compared, say, with the work that was done in metaphysics, philosophy of science, ethics, and the philosophy of man. This lack of interest is rather strange, since political life originally provided the context for philosophy, in the life ofSocrates and in the writings ofboth Plato and Aristotle. The lack of concern with political philosophy should provoke our curiosity and perhaps even our wonder. At the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first, a particularly impressive group of Catholic thinkers in Paris has addressed issues in political philosophy. Pierre Manent is the most conspicuous of these, but one must also mention Remi Brague, Alain Besan~on, and Terence Marshall. Their work has been influenced by Raymond Aron and Leo Strauss. We should also call to mind the work, in the United States, of Ernest Fortin, A. A. (Boston College}, James Schall, S.J. (Georgetown}, Francis Canavan, S. J. (Fordham}, and Charles N. THE HUMAN PERSON AND POLITICAL LIFE 507 R. McCoy (Catholic University), but it is interesting to note that all these persons were or are academically "housed" not in philosophy but in departments of politics, or, in the case of Fortin, in theology. There were other thinkers who approached social and political problems, such asJohn Courtney Murray, S.J., and John A. Ryan in the United States and Denis Fahey and Edward Cahill...

Violence and war were ubiquitous features of politics long before the emergence of the modern state system. Since the late 18th century major revolutions across the world have further challenged the idea of the state as a final arbiter of international order. This book discusses ten major thinkers who have questioned and re-shaped how we think about politics, violence and relations between states – Thucydides, Augustine, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Clausewitz, Lenin and Mao, and Schmitt. Conflict, war and revolution have generally been seen in political thought as problems to be managed by stable domestic political communities. In different ways, all the paradigmatic thinkers here acknowledge them instead as inevitable dimensions of human experience, manifested through different ways of acting politically – while yet offering radically distinct answers about how they can be handled. This book dramatically broadens the canon of political thought by considering perspectives on the international system that challenge its historical inevitability and triumph. Each thinker is considered in a free-standing chapter rather than as a placeholder in a debate such as ‘realism versus idealism’. The book broadens international political thought debates by drawing on history, theology, and law as well as philosophy. And Paul Kelly introduces thinkers who challenge fundamentally the ways in which we should think about the nature and scope of political institutions and agents. In doing so the analysis illuminates a myriad of troubling contemporary conflicts with a crucial critical and historical perspective. This book is primarily intended for second year and upwards undergraduate students in general political theory and international theory, and advanced international relations students. Each chapter is also downloadable on its own for use in courses considering only some of the ten theorists covered. Written in an accessible way Conflict, War and Revolution will also interest advanced general readers with interests in the historical thought underpinnings of political ideas and today’s international politics. Detailed reading advice is provided, and advice on how to access open access versions of the key thinkers writing.

Jason Stanley's book, How Propaganda Works, is a welcome and needed work in social and political philosophy. It creatively weaves political philosophy, social theory, analytic epistemology, feminism, philosophy of language, philosophy of education, formal semantics, and social psychology. The central goal of the book is to explain how propaganda works in a liberal democratic society. Propaganda exists in totalitarian regimes through the mechanisms of social control like the mass media. That is not surprising. But, does propaganda exist in the United States? The fact that propaganda exists in the United States is perhaps not novel; the novelty of Stanley's book is its philosophical explanation of the mechanism behind propaganda. Stanley does this with the rigor, clarity, and depth that you would expect from such a distinguished philosopher. In what follows, I will provide a brief description of the main arguments of each of seven chapters and offer several observations. These observations are an invitation for further reflection and investigation.I begin by situating Stanley's book in the broader literature. How Propaganda Works situates itself in at least three different terrains of philosophical inquiry. First, Stanley's book is a welcome and important addition to the type of theorizing that blurs the distinction between subdisciplines of philosophy. For instance, Miranda Fricker's groundbreaking book Epistemic Injustice blurs the distinction between analytic epistemology (virtue epistemology), and ethics and politics.1 Stanley's work also blurs the line between analytic epistemology and contemporary social and political philosophy. It would be interesting to see analytic epistemologists working on pragmatic encroachment issues (or what Stanley calls interest-relativism about knowledge) to probe the social-political implications of their apolitical postulates. Second, Stanley's book is a welcome addition to the methodological debate in political philosophy regarding the ideal and nonideal theories. The consequence of this methodological commitment leads Stanley to scour the vast fields of behavioral, social, and human sciences to answer the question of “how propaganda works.” Third, and this may be a hopeful speculation on my part, Stanley's work might legitimize marginalized areas of philosophy, including critical theory and pragmatism. Stanley, for instance, though not uncritical of John Dewey, legitimately recognizes Dewey's contribution to democracy and its culture.How Propaganda Works is comprised of an informative introduction and seven substantive chapters. In what follows, I will briefly discuss the main arguments of each of seven chapters.The goal of chapter 1 is to provide a historical account of the prevalence of propaganda in the history of political philosophy, from Plato to Rousseau to the twentieth century. According to Stanley, one of the central reasons philosophers have endorsed democracy is because of its stability over other political arrangements. Democratic ideals demand that a regime affords liberty to all of its citizens. But having liberty makes it possible to use propaganda or demagoguery to seize power that ultimately makes democracy unstable. This classic problem of propaganda drops out in contemporary political philosophy because of its insistence on political ideals. This reveals the central contention of Stanley's book: ideals can be used to mislead democratic discourse. This also reveals the methodology of the book: we need to connect normative political philosophy with social theory.In chapter 2, Stanley defines propaganda as a means by which the language of democratic ideals is used to undermine the very ideal that it is purported to serve. Stanley attempts to undermine the common belief that propaganda must be false and insincerely made. That propaganda can be true is exemplified by an example that “there is a Muslim in the room.” The assertion is true because it is true that there is a Muslim in the room, but this is an instance of propaganda because it elicits fear about Muslims, that is, all Muslims are potentially terrorists. So, propaganda can be true. This point will be picked up in my discussion of chapter 4. That propaganda can be sincerely made is exemplified by the example of Hitler, who asserted derogatory statements about the Jews. Hitler sincerely held this belief, yet it was used as propaganda to elicit the belief that the Jews were a public health menace. The main problem with the claim that propaganda has to be insincerely made is that it “fails to respect the connection between propaganda and ideology” (46). Stanley draws a distinction between supporting and undermining propaganda: Supporting propaganda: A contribution to public discourse that is presented as an embodiment of certain ideals, yet it is of a kind that tends to increase the realization of those very ideals by either emotional or other non rational means.Undermining propaganda: A contribution to public discourse that is presented as an embodiment of certain ideals, yet is of a kind that tends to erode those very ideals. (53) To illustrate the connection between ideology and (undermining) propaganda, Stanley uses a series of examples. Let me just discuss one such example. The neurosurgeon Carl Hart has persuasively shown that the so-called “War on Drugs” is predicated on Black exceptionalism—Blacks have an exceptional reaction to crack cocaine. This ideology of Black exceptionalism led to sentencing disparity between whites and blacks who consume crack cocaine. This example shows the connection between ideology and undermining propaganda: the “War on Drugs” is intended to promote the rule of law and justice, but the sentencing disparity between whites and blacks undermines the rule of law and justice.In chapter 3, Stanley accomplishes the task of explaining why propaganda is a special problem in democracies. But not all forms of propaganda are bad. There are therefore two types of propaganda. The first type of propaganda strengthens the democratic ideal of reasonableness; Stanley calls this ‘civic rhetoric.’ The second type of propaganda undermines the demo- cratic ideal of reasonableness; Stanley calls this undermining propaganda or demagoguery. Stanley argues that the normative ideal of public reason is central to liberal democracy. Following John Rawls's enormously influential account of public reason, reasons offered in public speech or debate ought to be public, or publicly acceptable. The first normative ideal of public reason is theoretical rationality, by which Stanley means “a contribution to a political debate must be justified, and be assessed solely by its impact on the truth of the issues at hand” (94). The second normative ideal of public reason is reasonableness. According to Rawls's account of reasonableness, reasons offered in public political fora have to be reasonable: that is, one should recognize that there are multiple reasonable comprehensive doctrines, and if one were reasonable, then one should recognize that a doctrine (Christian doctrine for instance) can be rejected by others as unreasonable. Stanley's conception of reasonableness is interesting because he incorporates empathy as part of the concept of reasonableness. The problem with the prison system in the United States, for instance, is that the perspectives of the prisoners are excluded in our public political debates about the prison system. For this reason, those laws and policies about the prison system that are enacted without taking into consideration the perspectives of prisoners in public debate are less legitimate and just.Having given an account of how propaganda works in liberal democracies, Stanley, in chapter 4, argues that seemingly neutral language serves as a mechanism of control. Utilizing his insights from formal and pragmatic semantics, Stanley argues that language is context-dependent. For instance, a universal quantifier, “every,” is contextual; if a teacher says “everyone got an A on the midterm exam,” the teacher is referring to everyone in this class, not everyone in the world. Moreover, Stanley distinguishes between “at-issue content” and “not-at-issue content.” The “at-issue-content” is “what is at issue in the debate” (134). On the other hand, “the not-at-issue content of an utterance is not advanced as a proposal of a content to be added to the common ground” (135). An example of “the not-at-issue content” is an utterance like “welfare”; though the assertion appears to be neutral, its “not-at-issue content” is biased. This is because the repeated assertions make it the case that people connect “welfare” to a negative characterization of a group of people. For example, suppose that a politician uses “welfare” in a political debate to advocate for the reduction of entitlement spending. “Welfare” elicits the connection that negatively characterizes a group of people, so his constituents are proportion- ately against welfare spending. This cuts off rational will and public deliberation. So, “welfare” is a propagandistic tool.Stanley, in chapter 5, discusses ideology. Ideology allows people to navigate their social world. In this sense everyone has ideology. While some ideologies are beneficial—one can acquire a tolerant identity by virtue of living in a tolerant world—some are harmful. The conception of ideology that Stanley pursues in this chapter is flawed ideology. Flawed ideology is characterized by the fact that it is hard to rationally revise one's belief in light of counter evidence. This is puzzling because even if there is good evidence to the contrary, people with flawed ideological beliefs do not revise their beliefs. “The ones that are flawed in the relevant sense are the ideologies that are genuine barriers to the acquisition of knowledge.” In this sense, Stanley's point is not that flawed ideology is a moral and political problem, but an epistemological problem. Unlike some theorists who conceptually connect ideology to psychological or mental states, Stanley instead connects ideology to beliefs, and social identities and practices. So, the reason why flawed ideological beliefs are difficult to revise is due to the adherents' social identities. This move allows Stanley to place the problem of ideological belief within the realm of social reality and not merely one's subjective mental state.In chapter 6, “Political Ideologies,” Stanley advances an epistemological argument for political equality in two steps. First, Stanley provides empirical evidence from social psychology to show that negatively privileged people tend to adopt the flawed ideology of the elites; more specifically, those with negative privilege tend to adopt the ideology that justifies the uneven distribution of goods even if doing this would go against their self-interest. Second, Stanley explains the mechanism under which the flawed ideologies of the elites prevent negatively privileged people from obtaining epistemic resources to counter the dominant narratives. Stanley here appeals to the recent literature in pragmatic encroachment in analytic epistemology. He advances the Knowledge-Action thesis, “one can act on p if and only if one knows that p” (252). Knowledge is relative to the practical interests of an agent: “whether or not someone knows that p at a certain time depends upon the practical decisions they face at that time” (252). So, depending on the practical decision one faces, one could “lose knowledge” if the stakes were high. Applying this seemingly remote epistemological principle to politics, along with the account of flawed ideology, we get the following argument for political equality. Negatively privileged people tend to adopt the flawed ideology of the elites. Negatively privileged people face high stakes when it comes to knowledge claims because they are expected to contribute at an equal level as the elites, but this is not possible for the negatively privileged people. The verdict is that privileged people could literally “lose knowledge.” What is novel about Stanley's argument for political equality is that it is an epistemological argument for equality, not a moral one.Chapter 7, the final chapter, provides a fascinating case study of the ideology of elites. Stanley writes: “The ideology of the elites is a flawed ideology that those who possess more than they deserve tell themselves to justify their excessive control over the goods of the society into which they are born” (268). The ideology of elites makes it possible to justify their excessive control over the goods by appealing to natural facts about their intelligence or superiority. Against Plato and Aristotle, who believed that some are naturally intellectual and others are suited for practical activity, Stanley dispels the idea that the distinction is a natural fact.Stanley's book contains deep insights, rigorous argumentation, and interesting case studies that we would expect from such a distinguished philosopher. It is a challenging book because there are a number of intersecting and crisscrossing arguments. It is also a rewarding book because there are many important insights and arguments, as it should be evident from my discussion. In what follows, I would like to focus on three observations and criticisms that may be of interest to the readers of this journal.First, the book is rich in analysis and explanation, but weak on proposals. The book does not have much to offer in terms of solutions to the problem of propaganda that he is articulating. Here I am reminded of the last chapter of Peter Levine's book, We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For, where he articulates strategies for civic renewal, in addition to articulating facts and values. Stanley does a phenomenal job of articulating facts and values.2 For instance, when he discusses education in the second part of the twentieth century as a mechanism of social control, he argues that democracy is fundamentally about equality and autonomy. The problem with “The Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education” (282–88) is that the document talks about secondary education to further the goals of democracy, but democracy is fundamentally about social efficiency. This is a wonderful example of how facts and values are woven together. There is however no strategy here. This criticism cannot be an internal criticism—criticism about the argument of the book—because the explicit aim of Stanley's argument is to provide a theoretical explanation of why and how propaganda arises in a liberal democratic society; that is, his aim is not to provide a strategy on overcoming propaganda in a liberal democratic society. But one may naturally wonder about what we ought to do, given what we know. I propose one answer: in line with Levine's general thesis, a way of overcoming the general malaise when it comes to civic life is not merely the media, education, government, but the citizens themselves who are active and creative agents of their common worlds. Similarly, the way of overcoming propaganda has to include the citizens themselves. This is the reason why the discussion of ideology in chapters 5 and 6 are so trenchant.Second, if what Stanley argues about were true, then it would pose a significant problem for democratic theory, especially the deliberative or epistemic conceptions of democracy. According to the deliberative conception of democracy, the primary purpose of democracy is not voting, but deliberation. Deliberative democracy postulates that citizens are competent, motivated, and capable of publicly deliberating about the common good. However valid these ideals may be, they may be practically infeasible. Chapter 4 shows that language couched in neutral language could still have negative effects in political discourse. One avenue to counter this problem would be to engage with empirical research in deliberative democracy. Indeed the last decade or so has seen a tremendous amount of empirical research in deliberative democracy that attempts to map out whether the ideals of public reason are practically feasible or not. The jury is still out on that project, but it would be interesting to see Stanley engage with that body of literature. Stanley's project also poses a significant problem for epistemic conceptions of democracy. Epistemic democracy argues that democracy is capable of making good decisions and that the reason why we prefer democratic over nondemocratic regimes is that it has the capacity to make better decisions. Though there are different formulations of epistemic democracy, they all assume ideal conditions. For instance, theories inspired by the Condorcet Jury Theorem assume ideal conditions in which voters decide. Ideal conditions are free of ideology. So, the question is: do flawed ideologies cause problems for the voting public reaching the “right” answer? Although I cannot answer that question here, I suspect that the project of epistemic democracy would be considerably more complicated.Third, one of Stanley's main concerns is the ideology of elites (in other places Stanley refers to this as the ideology of technicism). The basic idea is that epistemic authority does not entail practical authority. This poses a significant problem for democracy because the expert's epistemic authority underwrites their practical authority to rule over the rest of us. So, for instance, those with positive privilege tend to invoke epistemic authority to justify their superiority (culture or material) and those in negative privilege tend to believe this, even when there is evidence to the contrary. The negatively privileged people are not only excluded from knowledge acquisition, but they also lose self-respect. This is precisely why the ideology of elites is so virulent: it thwarts the democratic ideal of citizens as equal and autonomous agents. Here I am reminded of what Alasdair MacIntyre dubs “manipulative expertise.”3 One possible response to the ideology of elites can be found in a small, but growing, body of literature that suggest that deliberation among cognitively diverse perspectives is better at solving complex problems than expert deliberation.4 This literature has garnered much attention lately, and it would have been interesting to have Stanley engage in that debate.In conclusion, I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in propaganda, social and political philosophy, civic studies, and social theory. This book challenges our conception of democracy and its ideals and causes us to be more cognizant of the ways in which flawed ideological beliefs can color the way we look at the world and interact with one another as equals.

International Affairs: Outer Space: A Problem in Politics <i>By</i> I.D. Sharma. Educational Publishers, Agra. 1964. 188p. Rs. 10.00

My title, as it stands, is not very informative. The two terms that occur in it are so commonly conjoined, in the philosophical world, at any rate, that it can be no surprise to find them together. My aim, however, is to go some way, at least, towards disconnecting them. My thesis is, to put it briefly, that it is a mistake to see political philosophy as a subordinate part of moral philosophy and thus to suppose that the characteristic problems of the former are of the same kind as those of the latter. More concretely, the problems of politics itself are not generally or primarily, let alone exclusively, moral in nature. We all know that political problems are not, to any great extent, approached by those involved with them, from a moral point of view. I shall argue that it is not reasonable that they should be. But the philosophical habit of running the two things together encourages a kind of moral absolutism in political thinking, and from time to time in political practice, which has bad results, not necessarily morally bad, just bad.

This chapter's main thesis is that it is a mistake to see political philosophy as a subordinate part of moral philosophy, and thus to suppose that the characteristic problems of the former are of the same kind as those of the latter. More concretely, the problems of politics itself are not generally or primarily, let alone exclusively, moral in nature. We all know that political problems are not, to any great extent, approached by those involved with them, from a moral point of view. It is argued that it is not reasonable that they should be. But the philosophical habit of running the two things together encourages a kind of moral absolutism in political thinking, and from time to time in political practice, which has bad results, not necessarily morally bad, just bad.

This Article will explore four major questions. Is there a grand democratic design to be detected in John F. Kennedy's political philosophy? Was the design coherent? May it still profitably guide us today? And does it have enduring significance?Perhaps these questions ask too much of a President whose primary task is statesmanship and not philosophy or science. Yet if political theory is a “critical study concerned with harmoniously relating the normative, empirical, and prudential components of politics,” then even a focus on Kennedy's public policy inevitably throws light on his goals and his grasp of political reality. And as the statesman seeks (in the light of political possibility) to advance his policies in order to fulfill his purposes, he must in some fashion grapple with the fundamental problems of politics. Consequently, recognizing that Kennedy's approach to the key problems of political philosophy will not be critical, comprehensive, or complete, we may still want to explore his approach in the context of his own grand democratic design.