The Problem of Rational Political Decision-Making in Thucydides’ History (2.60-64)

Reviews 129 practical account of how the dictionary can be used in classroom teaching of English as a Second Language to adult learners. Rosemary Huisman Department of EngUsh University of Sydney Cambridge history of medieval political thought, c. 350-c. 1450, The, ed. J. H. Burns, Cambridge, C. U. P., 1988; cloth; pp. viii, 808; R. R. P. AUS$204.00. It has been a long while since scholarship has witnessed the publication in the English language of a systematic survey of medieval Latin political thought. The six volumes by the Carlyles at the beginning of the century were perhaps the most recent contribution to this genre; although, Ewart Lewis's two-volume 1954 study Medieval political ideas rivals their achievement. Surveys on a smaller scale, such as the commonly cited works of Macllwain, UUmann, and MorraU, were invariably flawed or distorting because they were unsuited to the vast expanse of time and sizeable number of texts and themes associated with the development of medieval political theory. With the publication of the longawaited Cambridge history of medieval political thought, however, a reliable overview of the topic which takes into account the many important scholarly discoveries of the twentieth century is now available. Although the volume will remain largely a reference work, J. H. Burns and his collaborators have succeeded in producing an accurate and inclusive yet readable introduction to the political ideas of the Latin Middle Ages. It is not really possible in the present context to do full justice to a book which contains 21 substantive essays by eighteen different contributors. For the most part, the authors are active specialists in some aspect of medieval political thought who have been granted a unique opportunity to summarize and synthesize the best current scholarship in their particular fields. Thus, the contributions by, for instance, Janet Nelson, Joseph Canning, John Watt, Antony Black and Janet Coleman reflect a balanced and up-to-date presentation of their respective themes. This reliance upon specialists makes all the more inexplicable the decision to invite David Luscombe to introduce the section on the formation of political thought between c. 750 and c. 1150 and to co-author the treatment of the 'Twelth-Century Renaissance.' Luscombe is a noted Abelard scholar but he has never included political theory among his research specialities; even if one counts his outmoded and lightly researched essay on 'The state of nature and the origin of the state' in the Cambridge history of later medieval philosophy. Luscombe is unaware of current scholarship in the field and this is reflected, for example, by his unwavering commitment to the now heavily discredited idea of a completely disjunctive 'Aristotelian revolution' in 130 Reviews political thinking (see pp. 169, 173, 306-7 and 338). H e also makes an especially poor job of John of Salisbury, with whose ideas he seems to have only superficial acquaintance. T w o other observations about the contributors are also relevant. The volume has less of an international flavour than one might desire and more of an historical one. All the authors are essentiaUy historians by disciplinary training, a fact which is sometimes reflected in the absence from the volume of philosophical or theoretical analysis of texts and ideas. This only reinforces the already existing impression of many political theorists that rational argumentation and philosophical reflection is lacking in scholarship on the Middle Ages and that the study of medieval ideas is a purely antiquarian pursuit in a way that the study of, say, Plato or Machiavelli is not. The tendency to treat medieval political thought mainly from the perspective of the intellectual historian does not serve to promote wider interest in the topic. Moreover, all but four of the authors represented here have a British institutional affiliation and only one teaches outside of Europe. Yet there are surely a number of worthy established scholars in North America and Australasia (Francis Oakley, Arthur McGrade, Alan Gewirth and Conal Condren come quickly to mind) who could have contributed to the volume and thereby expanded the range of visions and interests incorporated within it. The important articles by Condren on Marsiglio of Padua are even left out of the Bibliography. Unlike the...

A basic introduction to the world of philosophy, with answers to the deepest questions we all ask ourselves, through the lens of the world's greatest philosophers, from Plato and Confucius to modern thinkers. A guide to the fundamental nature of existence, society and the way we think. After an overview of philosophy, with the history of philosophy, branches of philosophy, philosophical concepts and philosophical schools and traditions, specific topics in philosophy are addressed, such as God (religion), good and evil (ethics), animal rights, politics (political philosophy), appearance and reality, science (philosophy of science), mind (philosophy of mind), and art (aesthetics). Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning such matters as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophical methods include questioning, critical discussion, rational argument, and systematic presentation. Classical philosophical questions include both abstract questions (Is it possible to know something and prove it? What is most real?) and more practical and concrete questions (Is there an optimal way to live? Is it better to be just or unjust? Do people have free will?) Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of approaching these problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and reliance on rational arguments. Other investigations are closely related to art, science, politics, or other pursuits. For example, is beauty objective or subjective? Are there many scientific methods or just one? Is political utopia a hopeful dream or hopeless fantasy? The main sub-fields of academic philosophy include metaphysics ("concerned with the fundamental nature of reality and being"), epistemology (about the nature and foundations of knowledge andits limits and validity), ethics, aesthetics, political philosophy, logic, philosophy of science and the history of Western philosophy. Many philosophical debates that began in antiquity are still debated today.

In The Poetics of Political Thinking Davide Panagia focuses on the role that aesthetic sensibilities play in theorists’ evaluations of political arguments. Examining works by thinkers from Thomas Hobbes to Jacques Ranciere, Panagia shows how each one invokes aesthetic concepts and devices, such as metaphor, mimesis, imagination, beauty, and the sublime. He argues that it is important to recognize and acknowledge these poetic forms of representation because they provide evaluative standards that theorists use in appraising the value of ideas—ideas about justice, politics, and democratic life. An investigation into the intertwined histories of aesthetic and political accounts of representation—such as Panagia presents here—sheds light on how modes of poetic thinking delimit the questions of unity and diversity that continue to animate contemporary political theory. Panagia not only illuminates the structure of much contemporary political theory but also shows why understanding the poetics of political thinking is vital to contemporary society. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze’s critique of negation and his privileging of paradox as the source of political thought, Panagia suggests that a non-teleological concept of difference might generate insight into pressing questions about foreignness and citizenship. Turning to the liberal/poststructural debate that dominates contemporary political theory, he compares John Rawls’s concept of justice to Ranciere’s ideas about political disagreement in order to demonstrate how, despite their differences, both thinkers comprehend aesthetic and moral reasoning as part and parcel of political writing. Considering the writings of William Hazlitt and Jurgen Habermas, he describes how the essay has become the exemplary genre of what is considered rational political argument. The Poetics of Political Thinking is a compelling reappraisal of the role of representation within political thought.

This article discussed the using of narrative techniques in crisis situations. The authors emphasized that due to the narrative structure of human thinking, narrative can become a way to represent a crisis situation. The authors mentioned narrative techniques in the works of narrative researchers and ways how these techniques may affect emotions. The aim of the article was to identify techniques which the media use in coverage of crisis situation and determined the purpose of using these techniques. For this aims the authors used the descriptive method and the method of content analysis, narrative analysis. More than 150 materials from “The Guardian”, “The Washington Post”, “Expert”, “Izvestia” were analyzed in this article. An analysis of the materials shown that narrative techniques are often used by journalists. In American and English press journalists included narrative in their materials to evoke emotions. In Russian press narrative techniques were used to present a picturesque scene of what is happening and immerse the reader in the situation. Authors have found out that narrative techniques in covering crisis situations is used to express the author's assessment, to evoke emotions and as an attempt to give own interpretation to the crisis. Contribution: The contribution of the research is in the contemporary role of the political agenda. Different media interpret the events of the crisis in different ways and researching the methods they use helps to determine the degree of their objectivity and the goals they want to achieve.

This article surveys research assessing and critiquing the doctrine of neoliberalism. I identify two defining characteristics of neoliberalism, its approach to competition and the state, and argue that what is often seen as a fundamental contradiction – the necessity of a strong state to protect the market – is in fact a reflection of the context in which neoliberalism developed. A discussion of some key applications of neoliberalism covers the role of central banks, the European project, transition, democracy, and Western civilization. I also identify an important limitation in the existing literature, namely a tendency for conspiracy theories to be employed to explain various aspects of neoliberalism’s intellectual origins and contemporary functioning. By challenging some of the weaker arguments made in this field, this article intends to contribute to a more analytically robust treatment of the political and economic philosophy known as neoliberalism.

This text explores the difference between rational decisionmaking in crisis situations and ethical assumptions of action (imperatives). The paper starts from the hypothesis that socially responsible decisionmaking should be based on the theory of rational choice, that is, that the deontological principles of patient care and the implementation of prophylaxis and treatment are necessarily opposed to the rationally calculated social interest. Analyzing the methods of rational decision-making in a crisis situation, on the example of the Spanish flu and Covid-19 epidemics, and the ethical imperatives of utilitarian and deontological ethics, the paper, using a comparative method, comes to the following conclusions: (1) that crisis decision-making cannot be determined by Pareto-optimality, and (2) that in major crisis situations, such as a pandemic, rational decision-making appropriate to crisis management is necessary, which can only be related to the utilitarianism of consequences.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to gain insight into the contingent use of rational, intuitive and political decision-making in R&D.Design/methodology/approachThis research is based on a study in an R&D department of a multinational high-tech firm in the Netherlands. The study consists of a case study design, focusing on four embedded cases, longitudinally studying each case.FindingsThe literature distinguishes three dimensions of innovation decision-making processes: rational, intuitive and political. By studying these interwoven dimensions over time, this study finds that the dominant use of each of these dimensions differs across the innovation process. There is an emphasis on intuitive decision-making in an early phase, followed by more emphasis on political decision-making, and moving to more emphasis on rational decision-making in a later phase of the R&D process. Furthermore, the predominant choice in a specific innovation phase for one of the three decision-making dimensions is influenced by the decision-making dimension that is dominantly employed in the preceding phase.Research limitations/implicationsThis study contributes to the innovation decision-making literature by developing and applying a model that distinguishes rational, intuitive and political decision-making dimensions, the interactions among these dimensions in innovation decision-making in R&D, and the contingency of these dimensions upon the innovation phase. It calls for further research into the contingent nature of innovation decision-making processes.Practical implicationsFor practitioners this study has two relevant insights. First it highlights the importance and usefulness of intuitive and political decision-making in addition to the prevailing emphasis on rational decision-making. Second, practitioners may be more alert to consciously changing their dominant decision-making approach across the phases of the innovation process. Third, companies may adjust their human resource policies to this study’s findings.Originality/valueThe literature on rational, intuitive and political decision-making is quite extensive. However, research has hardly studied how these decision-making dimensions develop in conjunction, and over time. This paper reports on a first study to do so and finds that the dominant use of these dimensions is contingent upon the phase of the R&D process and on the decision-making dimensions used in earlier phases. The study suggests that using a contingency approach can help to further integrate the debate in research and practice.

Est, there can be no serious question that we live in a world marked by a plurality of moral perspectives. There is profound disagreement regarding the morality of euthanasia, abortion, embryo research, and the use of neocortical (or higher brain centers) oriented definitions of death. Even if we conceded that many (perhaps even most) individuals wish through political structures to realize such societal goals as liberty, equality, security, and prosperity, there is still a dramatic disagreement about how to rank these goals or integrate our concerns regarding them. Individuals and groups disagree regarding their vision of a good society and of good health care. There is a real pluralism with regard to many, if not most, important ethical and bioethical issues. For example, whether embryo research is viewed with moral horror or as a promising technique will depend on the moral community or vision within which the question is considered. Pluralism and relativism are indisputable sociocultural realities. Second, there appears to be no philosophical deliverance from much of the pluralism and relativism that constitutes our contemporary condition. We cannot identify a particular understanding of a hypothetical decisionmaker, an ideal observer, a rational decisionmaker, rational preferences, or the proper ranking of consequences such as liberty, equality, security, and prosperity without begging the fundamental question: How do we establish in general secular terms a particular moral viewpoint as generally morally canonical? To identify the correct moral sense (or ranking of values), we need already to have a guiding moral sense (or ranking of values). The serious question is thus not whether we should accept a circumstance stance of pronounced pluralism in which moral relativism appears triumphant, but whether any other choice can be defended in general secular moral terms. This is an intellectual question, for we must recognize that the religiously or politically passionate may out of frustration abandon the niceties of rational argument and resort to the use of coercive force, including the coercive force of a political majority. Our central cultural challenge is to establish in general secular terms a commonly acknowledgeable basis for moral constraints on our actions. The modem as opposed to the medieval moral assumption was that we can through rational argument secure a secular surrogate for the Christian God, and through rational argument alone justify the general lineaments of Western morality. If anything characterizes the post-modern period, it is the loss of this pretense. As Alasdair Maclntyre has observed, we are left with conflicting moral intuitions and conclusions severed from the particular moral communities and arguments that originally supported them. There is only one deliverance from nihilism, unconstrained relativism, and pluralism, when moral strangers (individuals who do not participate in a common moral vision) meet in a noncoercive society. If they cannot appeal to God or reason to provide a secular deliverance, then they must rely on what is implicit in the practice of secular ethics as the commitment to resolving moral controversies without a primary appeal to force: mutual respect in the process of negotiating points of collaboration. …

The COVID-19 pandemic has altered the world in significant ways just as it has opened new vistas of thought in both secular and religious circles. This article is situated within the frames of African Pentecostalism, which found itself in a gap during the lockdown in early 2020. This ‘gap’ is grounded on Nimi Wariboko’s The Pentecostal Hypothesis, which I use as a theoretical framework to interrogate how the African Pentecostal churches, which inadvertently found themselves in a ‘gap’ responded to the predictions that Africa would be the most hit by the pandemic, and how it also impacted on their teaching and praxis. The thrust of The Pentecostal Hypothesis is the creation of, and insertion into, a gap between sense and spirit, and how such a gap creates an opportunity for meaning-making: “It does not make sense, but it makes spirit.” That is, even though something may not make sense on the basis of scientific data and rational argument, there is a sense in which appealing to spiritual data, it will still be meaningful. In order to achieve this, the author adopted interpretive method, a qualitative method that helps to engage Wariboko’s socialtheological worlds of the Pentecostals within the context of COVID-19. Through this method, we analyze the responses of African Pentecostals and attempt to validate them against The Pentecostal Hypothesis. It was thus observed that many Pentecostals’ theological explications of the COVID-19 pandemic cannot pass as absolute epistemology of the pandemic as some of them assumed. Consequently, it is concluded that there is the need for a constructive engagement so that sense and spirit can be utilized for human flourishing in a pandemic or crisis situation.

Arendt, Hannah (1906–75)

Arendt, Hannah (1906–75)

The article discusses the main ideas of F. M. Dostoevsky’s political philosophy and their organic connection with the integrity of his Orthodox worldview. It is shown that the Orthodox monarchism of the writer, his artistic world and his understanding of a person as a spiritual being shared the same higher moral foundations. Dostoevsky’s Orthodox political philosophy, though unappreciated by his readers from “the educated stratum”, at the same time exactly corresponded to the off icial ideological formula of “Orthodoxy. Autocracy. Nationality”. Against the background of the prophetically depicted de-Goded world, which Dostoevsky had already looked into in the 19th century, his vision of the Russian people as “God-bearers” and the Orthodox monarchy as the most Christian and salvatory form of statehood served as the only “sliver of light” in this dying world. The particular value of Dostoevsky’s political philosophy is that it stood as the articulation of the mass peoples’ consciousness, which was no longer represented in fi ction and scientifi c literature of his lifetime due to the prevalent ideology of liberalism and democracy borrowed from Europe. The voice of Dostoevsky expressed “the culture of the silent majority” of the people, which was not refl ected in the secular culture of that period. In A Writer’s Diary and other works by Dostoevsky, this popular Orthodox view of the monarchy received a rational formulation and argumentation. The article highlights the main components of this argumentation, showing the consistency of the writer’s political views and their deeply thought-out and pained nature. Dostoevsky turned out to be equally correct in his predictions about the future revolutionary catastrophe in Russia and the huge number of its victims. He was the one to accurately formulate the essential reason for it as the takeover of Russia by “demons”. He also did not fail to name the last hope for the people — the repentance and the return to the Church. The relevance of Dostoevsky’s political philosophy in the modern era is determined by two factors: it helps to understand the real political thinking of the Russian people, which has existed for many centuries, but has hardly been studied so far; it explains “the archetypes” of Russian political consciousness that have existed at all times up to the present and remain an important factor in Russian history.

Authorship and individualization in the digital public sphere

Research background: The modern world is situated today in a very difficult and complicated period of existence: the coronavirus pandemic, quarantine, the global lockdown, etcetera. Today we are talking about the transition to a new type of social structure, and this transition to something new always entails complexity in adaptation and some breaking of familiar stereotypes. The mankind has faced again the necessity to develop new norms. Purpose of the article: In this article, from the point of view of philosophy, one of the most complex phenomena of the modern information age, is characterized, namely: the global crisis and its role in the formation and development of human thinking, is studied and analyzed. The author’s position echoing the key philosophical ideas presented by such philosophers as R. Descartes and B. Spinoza, I. Kant and G. Hegel, V. Heisenberg and by the others, however, contains its own authorial position. Methods: As part of the historical-comparative analysis, the crucial cultural and existential problems in modern society are demonstrated. The analysis is presented through the prism of such phenomena as a conflict of values, the subjective experience of a person, and a crisis. Thanks to an extensive historical-philosophical and sociocultural discourse, the main milestones of the transformation of understanding and attitude of a person to the basic existential elements of his being in a crisis situation are shown. Findings & Value added: The main focus of the article is on the study and new reception of some previous views on the phenomenon of crisis and the role of philosophy in its evolution.

Interreligious and intercultural dialogue is supposed to be the best way to solve the conflicts arising from rival religious hermeneutics and different modes to conceive the ideal of a good life in contemporary multicultural and pluralistic societies. In regard to communicative or dialogical reason, respectful coexistence can be reached only by argumentative communication between interested people. In this sense, only rational arguments, strong enough to pass the test of the shared rationality can be valid at a discursive level. However, Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas and Catholic theologian Johann Baptist Metz challenge symmetrical and rational-based dialogue in order to postulate an asymmetrical relationship by giving voice to the other. For them, the core of interreligious and intercultural engagement does not start from rational agreements as Habermas, for instance, has proposed; but from prophetic and anamnestic reasons. This analytical and comparative presentation will show the possibilities of anamnestic reason and religion as service against dialogical reason in intercultural and interreligious contexts. Levinas's and Metz's criticism of dialogical reason opens new perspectives which contribute to reflection for both political theology and political philosophy.