Liberal Reading Research Articles

Sieyès’s idea of constituent power: a moderate and illiberal idea of sovereignty in the French revolution

ABSTRACT Moderation and liberalism are different and in some cases antagonistic concepts. In recent years, the view that Sieyès’s idea of constituent power is a moderate and liberal rendering of sovereignty has gained acceptance in intellectual history and constitutional theory literature. This claim is based on the premise that radical and illiberal readers of Rousseau’s idea of sovereignty, such as Robespierre and the Jacobins, were opposed to representing the general will (volonté générale). Thus, constituent power as the exercise of power by extraordinary representatives to draft a constitution would be a liberal attempt at political moderation in the French revolution. In contrast to this liberal reading, my analysis shows that Sieyès’s idea of constituent power is an illiberal attempt at political moderation. Against moderate liberal theories, constituent power demands that the extraordinary representatives of the constituent assembly must will, deliberate, and act as if they were the people themselves. These representatives have absolute powers and the mandate to create a constitution but also the imperative to perceive and mirror the sovereign will. From a political theory approach, I conclude that constituent power is not a liberal idea but a key notion of moderate illiberalism that prevailed during the French Revolution.

Affective Profit

Affective Profit

Lesbian mothers in twenty-first century Australia: creating a political subject position

ABSTRACT The creation of a political subject position based on the identity ‘lesbian mother’ was central to the achievement of law reform regarding reproduction and family matters in Australia in the twenty-first century. Authors identifying as lesbian mothers wrote submissions to a range of public inquiries, crafting detailed self-representations and often telling intimate stories of everyday experience of discrimination and marginalisation. This article understands the submissions as constrained by the practices of political subjectivity. They are governed by the rules of the authority to which submissions are addressed, even as they make claims for change. Investigation of available submissions from lesbian mothers from nine inquiries points to the classed and raced limits of the normative political subject which emerges and to the presence of historically dominant discourses of the good mother and the narrowed imagination of the marriage equality movement. Diversity in the submissions, however, also challenges the boundaries of the rules and avoids universal conformity to respectability. This analysis contributes to the scant historiography of lesbian mother politics in Australia and to the international literature on queer politics and sexual citizenship. It cautions against simple liberal readings of progress based in the achievement of rights and recognition for newly normative political subjects.

The Limits of Drag: Women, Gender, and the Other in Hayehudim Baim

Abstract The Israeli sketch comedy show Hayehudim Baim skewers many elements of Jewish and Israeli history, and its satirical, secular, liberal readings of biblical figures and religious practices have created political controversy. Yet despite its apparently progressive take on Jewish history and Israeli culture, the show’s use of drag as a central feature of its satire reveals certain practical and ideological lapses in its treatment of gender norms. A series of sketches about the biblical matriarchs Rachel and Leah, both married to the patriarch Jacob, demonstrates the limits of the show’s ability to engage in a progressive critique without resorting to regressive notions of gender and sexuality deeply embedded in Zionist ideology.

The limitations of liberal reproductive autonomy.

The common liberal understanding of reproductive autonomy - characterized by free choice and a principle of non-interference - serves as a useful way to analyse the normative appeal of having certain choices open to people in the reproductive realm, especially for issues like abortion rights. However, this liberal reading of reproductive autonomy only offers us a limited ethical understanding of what is at stake in many kinds of reproductive choices, particularly when it comes to different uses of reproductive technologies and third-party reproduction. This is because the liberal framework does not fully capture who benefits from which reproductive options, the extent of the risks and harms involved in various reproductive interventions, and the reasons for why people are driven to make certain reproductive choices.

"A proposal For Liberal Reading Subjects to Enhance the Level of Environmental literacy in Junior High School Students"

"A proposal For Liberal Reading Subjects to Enhance the Level of Environmental literacy in Junior High School Students"

Citizenship by vitality: rethinking the concept of health citizenship

ABSTRACT In this article, we develop a concept of health citizenship that is specific, historically informed, and flexible to use in the analysis of different domains of medicine and healthcare. Our starting point is that health citizenship is rooted in notions about the vitality and biological existence of populations and individuals. Key tensions in citizenship vis-à-vis health and illness emerge when ideas of membership of a nation, rights and responsibilities, and the related ethical principles of access, equality, and participation encounter ‘truths’ regarding the vital capacities and characteristics of individuals and populations. Drawing from historical and contemporary examples from Finland, we analyse how biological and medical facts and related expert knowledge enter into and influence the domains in which citizenship is defined and contested. Our concept shares the Foucauldian tenet of biological citizenship, but we expand its scope beyond the focus on recent developments in life sciences and biotechnology, situating it in a broader historical trajectory. Our approach also stresses the specificity of health within the field of social citizenship and offers a more balanced account of the historical development of health citizenship, as compared to the liberal reading focused on the right to health.

Beyond a liberal reading of insurgent in transformative planning practices

Beyond a liberal reading of <i>insurgent</i> in transformative planning practices

Editorial

Editorial Mervyn O'Driscoll This Irish Studies in International Affairs volume is diverse in nature and content. It points towards a prevalent global and academic conviction that the global system is experiencing an unmatched period of change, transition, and even crisis. Numerous pressures are acting against the values and basis of the multilateral system from which Ireland has succoured and profited since the 1950s. Some have attributed the term 'polycrisis' to the universal and multiple crises experienced globally during this age. It is an era of accumulating, interwoven problems and changes that defy easy disentanglement. The global pandemic has had lasting impacts. In February 2022, the Russian invasion of Ukraine signified the return of major warfare to the European continent. The war has shattered complacency, tested multilateral institutions, and resulted in unquantifiable human suffering, including generating the largest refugee crisis in Europe since World War Two. Nuclear signalling and nuclear deterrence have re-emerged. The war has also brutally exposed the hazards of energy dependency from a single source. Despite belated efforts to decarbonise, Europe and the world will remain reliant on fossil fuels for decades. Simultaneously, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded in 2022 that the globe will surpass the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold by 2040 if dramatic action is not taken immediately. Compounding this is an intensification of economic and inflationary pressures. It was, therefore, timely that our annual conference in 2022 should turn its attention to 'Global Power Shifts: Connectivity, Cooperation and Conflict'. Our theme recognised the growing tensions between great powers, the costs and benefits of economic connectivity, the tensions between national interests, and the pressing and multiplying need for global cooperation to address the threats to the global commons. Simon Coveney, Minister for Foreign Affairs and Minister for Defence, TD, who opened the conference, outlined how Ireland's mission remains an active [End Page 1] membership in the multilateral institutions, particularly the EU and the UN. In his address, reproduced here, he reiterated the Irish government's enduring position that an insular path is not tenable. Its interests lie in arresting realpolitik, bolstering global governance, and fostering international cooperation and shared values. As an open economy and outward-looking society, 'Global Ireland' is apprehensive about global power shifts and the recrudescence of realpolitik in Europe and the Asia-Pacific.1 It fears any hint of 'back to the future', i.e., the rise of unilateralism and naked power politics. But the evidence is disconcerting and predates the Russo-Ukrainian war and encompasses several other changes in Europe, the US, the Middle East and Asia in recent years. Scholars and policymakers seek to explain the evolving US-China relationship, predict its future direction, gauge its implications, and advise governments accordingly. The prospect and consequences of the end of American hegemony and a multipolar global configuration are avidly debated. China's projected levelling up with and overtaking of the US would represent the end of 'the American century', as Time magazine publisher Henry Luce called it while in its midst. Graham Allison has melodramatically characterised this as the most perilous phase (the 'Thucydides Trap').2 The paper by George Koukoudakis is a defence of Kenneth Waltz's neorealism against liberal readings of developments in international affairs since the end of the bipolar system in 1989. Koukoudakis posits that neorealism remains enduringly relevant. Neorealists such as Koukoudakis recognise that America's hegemony is nearing its terminal phase with the impending arrival of unstable multipolarity, in line with what Henry Kissinger foresaw in the 1970s. A central question, therefore, relates to Washington's international relationship management as the anticipated fragile tipping or inflection point looms. Dylan Motin contends, based on his historical reading of the in/effectiveness of America's Monroe Doctrine during the last two centuries, that it is in America's national interests not to opt for a retreat from Europe and Asia into the Western hemisphere (restraint realism). Instead, it should adopt a containment or offshore balancing strategy. Motin endorses what he interprets as the recent US moves in this direction. In their paper, Qin Lin and Wang Li also adopt the lens of neorealism or structural realism but do so from a...

Editorial

Irish Studies in International Affairs, Vol. 33 (2022), 1–6 This Irish Studies in International Affairs volume is diverse in nature and content. It points towards a prevalent global and academic conviction that the global system is experiencing an unmatched period of change, transition, and even crisis. Numerous pressures are acting against the values and basis of the multilateral system from which Ireland has succoured and profited since the 1950s. Some have attributed the term ‘polycrisis’ to the universal and multiple crises experienced globally during this age. It is an era of accumulating, interwoven problems and changes that defy easy disentanglement. The global pandemic has had lasting impacts. In February 2022, the Russian invasion of Ukraine signified the return of major warfare to the European continent. The war has shattered complacency , tested multilateral institutions, and resulted in unquantifiable human suffering, including generating the largest refugee crisis in Europe since World War Two. Nuclear signalling and nuclear deterrence have re-emerged. The war has also brutally exposed the hazards of energy dependency from a single source. Despite belated efforts to decarbonise, Europe and the world will remain reliant on fossil fuels for decades. Simultaneously, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded in 2022 that the globe will surpass the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold by 2040 if dramatic action is not taken immediately. Compounding this is an intensification of economic and inflationary pressures. It was, therefore, timely that our annual conference in 2022 should turn its attention to ‘Global Power Shifts: Connectivity, Cooperation and Conflict’. Our theme recognised the growing tensions between great powers, the costs and benefits of economic connectivity, the tensions between national interests, and the pressing and multiplying need for global cooperation to address the threats to the global commons. Simon Coveney, Minister for Foreign Affairs and Minister for Defence, TD, who opened the conference, outlined how Ireland’s mission remains an active Editorial Mervyn O’Driscoll School of History, University College Cork 2 Irish Studies in International Affairs membership in the multilateral institutions, particularly the EU and the UN. In his address, reproduced here, he reiterated the Irish government’s enduring position that an insular path is not tenable. Its interests lie in arresting realpolitik, bolstering global governance, and fostering international cooperation and shared values. As an open economy and outward-looking society, ‘Global Ireland’ is apprehensive about global power shifts and the recrudescence of realpolitik in Europe and the Asia-Pacific.1 It fears any hint of ‘back to the future’, i.e., the rise of unilateralism and naked power politics. But the evidence is disconcerting and predates the Russo-Ukrainian war and encompasses several other changes in Europe, the US, the Middle East and Asia in recent years. Scholars and policymakers seek to explain the evolving US-China relationship, predict its future direction, gauge its implications, and advise governments accordingly. The prospect and consequences of the end of American hegemony and a multipolar global configuration are avidly debated. China’s projected levelling up with and overtaking of the US would represent the end of ‘the American century’, as Time magazine publisher Henry Luce called it while in its midst. Graham Allison has melodramatically characterised this as the most perilous phase (the ‘Thucydides Trap’).2 The paper by George Koukoudakis is a defence of Kenneth Waltz’s neorealism against liberal readings of developments in international affairs since the end of the bipolar system in 1989. Koukoudakis posits that neorealism remains enduringly relevant. Neorealists such as Koukoudakis recognise that America’s hegemony is nearing its terminal phase with the impending arrival of unstable multipolarity, in line with what Henry Kissinger foresaw in the 1970s. A central question, therefore, relates to Washington’s international relationship management as the anticipated fragile tipping or inflection point looms. Dylan Motin contends, based on his historical reading of the in/effectiveness of America’s Monroe Doctrine during the last two centuries, that it is in America’s national interests not to opt for a retreat from Europe and Asia into the Western hemisphere (restraint realism). Instead, it should adopt a containment or offshore balancing strategy. Motin endorses what he interprets as the recent US moves in this direction. In their paper...

Political Liberalism and Cognitive Disability: an Inclusive Account

ABSTRACT In this paper, I argue that, contrary to what some critics suggest, political liberalism is not exclusionary with regards to the rights and interests of individuals with cognitive disabilities. I begin by defending four publicly justifiable reasons that are collectively sufficient for the inclusion of members of this group. Briefly, these are the epistemic uncertainty that inevitably exists about individuals’ actual capacities, the political liberal duty to treat parents fairly, the social framework that is required for the fulfilment of parental duties, and the necessity of cultivating certain emotions that are strongly associated with reasonableness. These reasons show why a more inclusive reading of political liberalism is plausible, and how this can be achieved without abandoning or revising the theory’s commitment to public reason, the political conception of the person, and the role of social cooperation. I then turn to the question of what a more inclusive political liberalism would look like. More specifically, I argue that, although it would not require the participation of individuals with cognitive disabilities in the practice of legitimation, it would require their full inclusion in the realm of justice as equal rights-bearers.

Chapitre 3. Dignité humaine et droit de la bioéthique dans la jurisprudence des Cours européenne et interaméricaine des droits de l’homme.

This contribution analyses the way in which the European and Inter-American Courts of Human Rights handle the concept of Human Dignity in cases that present bioethical stakes. As they do not comprehend it in the same way &#8211; &#8216;Dignity-Freedom&#8217; on the one hand, &#8216;Dignity-Equality&#8217; on the other &#8211; it implies differences of solutions in areas such as the definition of the human person, the right to personal autonomy, the right to health or even the right to a healthy environment. This comparative analysis also allows us to grasp better the limits that a too liberal reading of human rights can represent and to propose some means of improvement. That would involve a review of the equal dignity of human beings by the European Court, thanks to different tools that can be put into action without the Court&#8217;s being forced to reconsider the theoretical basis on which its whole system is founded.

Vícios e virtudes nas políticas públicas de cotas educionais: os obstáculos ao desenvolvimento humano com a chegada dos cotistas nas universidades públicas

O artigo propõe-se a discutir as políticas públicas de cotas educacionais sob o crivo da justiça. Adotando-se uma leitura liberal igualitária da vigente Constituição brasileira, com base principalmente em John Rawls, a pesquisa debruça-se a analisar desde as virtudes das políticas de acesso e ingresso dos cotistas nas universidades públicas até os persistentes vícios nas relações entre cotistas e não cotistas e, também, nos ambientes universitários. Partindo-se da hipótese de que o consenso sobre o valor da igualdade ainda não está totalmente formado no meio social, embora já o esteja no âmbito constitucional brasileiro, a pesquisa propõe a necessidade das políticas públicas de continuidade e permanência dos estudantes estar em conformidade com a missão das universidades públicas, sob pena de os vícios presentes no meio social e insistentes nos ambientes universitários suplantarem as conquistas obtidas até então.

ESOTERIC CONFUCIANISM, MORAL DILEMMAS, AND FILIAL PIETY

AbstractTwo controversial cases in Confucian literature present the demands of filial piety as conflicting with those of impartial justice. Let us call them the Case of Concealment (Analects 18.13) and the Case of Evasion (Mencius 7A53). A dogmatic reading of the texts indicates that both Confucius and Mencius give more weight to filial piety than to justice. This essay, however, provides an alternative reading of the cases: the liberal reading. I argue that the Confucian teachers used the cases as moral dilemmas that force Confucian students to learn how to use a cluster of Confucian virtues, including practical wisdom, discretion, and straight determination, under difficult circumstances. The liberal reading views these moral dilemmas as rhetorical tools; they guide Confucian students in meditative exercises and ultimately transform students’ mode of seeing and being.

AN EXAMINATION OF SISTERHOOD AS AN EMANCIPATIVE CONCEPT IN ALICE WALKER'S NOVELS: MERIDIAN AND THE COLOR PURPLE

Purpose of the study: The study aims to examine the concept of sisterhood as an emancipative endeavor to empower and free the Afro-American women in Alice Walker's (1942) novels: Meridian and the Color Purple, through the liberal treatment of Black Feminism. Methodology: Qualitative research aims to form speculations or facts that are derived from secondary sources. It tries to understand Walker's liberal treatment of sisterhood, in the selected novels, through the radical black feminism, and the feminist liberal lens of bell hooks. The study considered other related critics and scholars to help further illuminate the emancipative notion of sisterhood. The study is a library-based drawn on literary and critical books and articles. Main finding: The study clarifies the emancipative notion of hooks on Walker's feminist attitude of sisterhood in the selected novels as a privilege to enhance black women's growth and to strengthen the social bond to achieve women's liberation. Simultaneously, the study criticizes the Western oppressive authority as well as the traditional one-sided thinking of mainstream feminism. By a new and liberal reading of hooks' perspective, the study illuminates that the collective power and mass struggle of Afro-American women lead to self-realization and identity. Implication: This study can be used by scholars and activists to understand how Afro-American women have been undergoing a long process of transformation by radical feminist thinking, from exploitation, domination, and oppression toward the center of social, political and cultural focus. Originality/Novelty: A new reading of Walker's novels is utilized by the light of bell hooks' emancipative notion of sisterhood.

Democracia em tempos sombrios

O presente artigo visa desenvolver uma análise acerca da proposição de John Rawls acerca de uma concepção política de justiça como equidade com o objetivo de fundamentar uma ideia de sociedade liberal bem ordenada a partir do pensamento de Giorgio Agamben. Desse modo, buscar-se-á apresentar uma leitura crítica ao liberalismo jurídico-político por reafirmar a exceção como regra. Essa constatação coloca em xeque a própria estrutura da proposta liberal, pois encobre a matriz oculta do poder soberano, a relação de exceção em seu caráter primigênio – que demarca o poder de vida e sobre a vida (nua). Dessa forma, pretende-se traçar algumas diferenciações entre ambas as propostas, ressaltando que o exercício de (re)pensar a política que vem coloca em questão os conceitos ainda vigentes na configuração da comunidade política ocidental que se pretende democrática, tais como: soberania, cidadania, direitos humanos, contrato social.&#x0D; Palavras-chave: Rawls. Liberalismo. Agamben. Vida nua. Política que vem.

Interpretations of Justice: Conceptions of Family and Gender Justice at aNari Adalat(Women’s Court) in South India

This article is a socio-legal study situated at the intersection of legal anthropology, sociology of law, and gender studies. It addresses interpretations of family and gender justice by analyzing a family dispute brought before a women’s court in the rural northern part of Karnataka, a state in South India. The analysis is based on ethnographic material collected during a 7-month fieldwork stay. The trials presented provide insight into the potential and the limitations of the women’s court and into the structural conditions upon which success in this comparatively new legal arena depends. In doing so, the article identifies the power structures and obstacles within and beyond the family that restrict women in their quest for justice. The article presents the argument that the family itself plays an ambivalent role: It is a constraint, but can also support the woman’s attempt to increase family and gender justice in family conflicts. To understand this ambivalence properly, one must attend to what family and gender justice mean in any given context and how particular family relations shape this concept beyond a normative liberal reading.

Democracy disembedded

Democracy is in serious difficulties. Three features of the crisis stand out. First is the dominant culture of disillusionment in democracy, which transpires as the mistrust in constitutionalist institutions and values. Second, political authority, both at domestic and international levels, is largely substituted by the rule of non-transparent and unpredictable social powers. Third, democratic states are deprived of much of their capacity to govern, but they retain a non-negligible capacity to coerce. The article is structured as follows. Section I introduces Karl Polanyi’s concept of embeddedness and juxtaposes it to the theoretical defense of market disembeddedness advanced by the classical political economy. It then points to the challenge that the complexity of the contemporary society poses to the idea of embeddedness and identifies the need for further analytical clarification of the idea. Section II tries to explain why the idea of embeddedness is intuitively suspect. One reason is found in the dominant understanding of liberalism as a regime that rests on the separation between private and public realms. The section closes with a reference to internal tensions of this reading of liberalism. Section III provides a diagnosis of the contemporary condition of disembeddedness. The core claim is that the combination of neoliberalism and globalization has created a condition of multiple—normative, social, political and legal—disintegration, which questions the very survival of democracy. Section IV addresses the question of transformation, focusing on the need for the reconceptualization of liberal equality.

A Utopia de Thomas More e a Questão Republicana

Este artigo realiza uma revisão bibliográfica procurando analisar o significado da obra Utopia, de Thomas More, com base nos trabalhos que metodologicamente valorizam o “contexto intelectual” de uma obra. Adotando um ponto de vista crítico em relação às leituras liberais da Utopia, o artigo procura destacar os avanços do que estamos designando como leituras republicanas, em seu esforço de inserir a obra de More nos debates de seu tempo. Concluímos que a grande contribuição da Utopia para pensar os desafios políticos, inclusive no mundo contemporâneo, não está no que ela prefiguraria de um possível regime totalitário, como afirmaria a leitura liberal, mas na necessidade de refletir sobre a constituição de uma república de homens livres nas condições de regimes políticos ameaçados pelo poder econômico.

The first reception of James Steuart in Italy: Giovanni Tamassia and his liberal economic reading of the Principles of Political Economy

ABSTRACTThis article has two aims. The first is to explore the early reception of James Steuart in Italy, focusing on Giovanni Tamassia’s writings. In his Dello spirito di riforma, written between 1799 and 1800, Tamassia was the first Italian author to assume Steuart as a point of reference in economic analysis. Largely re-proposing Steuart’s considerations on the issues of redistribution of land, of luxury, and of comparison between ancient and modern times, he contributed decisively to the first circulation in Italy of the Principles of Political Economy. The second aim is to shed light on the singular reading given by Tamassia of Steuart’s thought. In his works Lezione di economia politica and Delle scienze e della libertà relativamente al commercio, the Italian author proposed an economic liberal reading of the Principles. Deliberately downplaying the importance attributed by Steuart to protectionist policies, he attempted to demonstrate the compatibility between the economic theories of Steuart and those of Smith in the matter of economic freedom. Rather than being based on the grounds of a rigorous economic analysis, Tamassia’s reading reflected a deliberate attempt to make Steuart’s thought compatible with an economic and political culture centred on the defence of freedom.