Political Evil Research Articles

The Lost Founding Father: John Quincy Adams and the Transformation of American Politics by William J. Cooper

Reviewed by: The Lost Founding Father: John Quincy Adams and the Transformation of American Politics by William J. Cooper Ben Wynne The Lost Founding Father: John Quincy Adams and the Transformation of American Politics. By William J. Cooper. (New York and London: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2018. Pp. xvi, 526. Paper, $18.95, ISBN 978-1-63149-495-6.) In a departure from his consistently fine work on southern history, William J. Cooper has produced in The Lost Founding Father: John Quincy Adams and the Transformation of American Politics an outstanding biography of John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of the United States. The well-written tome is aptly named, giving readers a portrait of one of American history’s best-credentialed statesmen, whose story is sometimes diminished by the shadow of both the older founding leaders he followed and the wave of social and political change that ushered in the Jacksonian era. Cooper offers a balanced treatment of Adams’s life in the context of the turbulent times in which he lived. Cooper portrays Adams’s conduct against a backdrop of national growing pains, including the increasing “democratization of American politics for white men” and the relentless progress of slavery as the nation’s most divisive issue (p. xii). The strengths of this book are many. Adams was involved in all the important debates of his era, as James Monroe’s secretary of state, as president, and as a United States congressman after his term in the White House. Cooper does a wonderful job weaving Adams’s views into the historical fabric of the times and describing his relationships with powerful political contemporaries such as Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, and John C. Calhoun. Of particular [End Page 896] interest are treatments of Adams’s work on the Adams-Onis Treaty with Spain and the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812, along with Adams’s views of the Missouri Compromise as an ominous harbinger of things to come rather than an agreement that would help bring calm to the slavery debate. Adams was unique among American presidents in that, rather than retire from politics after his term as president, he continued to contribute significantly to public discourse through lengthy service in the U.S. House of Representatives. There he cast the South’s increasingly angry rhetoric promoting slavery and states’ rights as a “simmering brew of political evil” and became increasingly pessimistic regarding the immediate future of the country (p. 268). Guided by a firm belief in American exceptionalism before his presidency, he lived long enough to see the national fabric begin to unravel, dimming, in his view, the original vision of the Founders. In addition to chronicling major national events during turbulent times, this work also reminds readers of a towering political figure in America who has never quite achieved the historical status that he surely deserves. In many ways John Quincy Adams was indeed the last Founding Father—or “Founding Father by extension,” as Cooper puts it (p. 3). As John Adams’s son, he grew up in the household of a president and surrounded by leading members of the Revolutionary generation, men he looked up to and whose enlightened vision for the country he admired. Harvard-educated and well-traveled as a young man, there was probably no person better prepared to carry the Founders’ ideals into the next generation than John Quincy Adams. Yet he was unable to sustain his presidency for two terms against the swell of Jacksonian democracy that took the country in a new direction. Overall, Cooper’s work helps define Adams’s legacy and, one hopes, will give readers a chance to finally recognize this “lost Founding Father” and appreciate his contributions to his era. Anyone interested in antebellum American history, political history, or presidential biography would do well to add this book to their collection. Ben Wynne University of North Georgia Copyright © 2019 The Southern Historical Association

Anomaly and Danger: Politics of the Impure in Goethe’s Hermann und Dorothea

Anomaly and Danger: Politics of the Impure in Goethe’s Hermann und Dorothea Joel B. Lande (bio) I. Revolution, Evolution For many German-speaking intellectuals around 1800, the events surrounding the French Revolution assumed pivotal importance. Beyond the first-hand reports from prominent authors, including Georg Forster und Joachim Heinrich Campe, there were also figures further removed from the epicenter of revolutionary events, who felt personally addressed by the upheaval.1 Perhaps the most prominent instance of such engagement can be found in the final text Immanuel Kant published during his lifetime, the Conflict of the Faculties (1798). From his far-flung university town along the southeastern coast of the Baltic Sea, Kant asserted his belief that the ongoing Revolution was of universal human importance. At the heart of Kant’s observations is the set of concerns expressed in the following paragraph The revolution which we have seen taking place in our own times in a nation of gifted people may succeed, or it may fail. It may be so filled with misery and atrocities that no right-thinking man would ever decide to make the same experiment again at such a price, even if he could hope to carry it out successfully at the second attempt. But I maintain that this revolution has aroused in the hearts and desires of all spectators who are not themselves [End Page 572] caught up in it a sympathy which borders almost on enthusiasm, although the very utterance of this sympathy was fraught with danger. It cannot therefore have been caused by anything other than a moral disposition within the human race. (Kant, Political Writings 182)2 Kant’s suspicion that the fall of the monarchy, along with the accompanying order of the estates, enjoys a significance untethered from a specific time or place, is closely linked to his philosophical-historical interest in the progress of human society in general. Kant insists on the pivotal place of the Revolution in the course of human history, not because he believes it will immediately result in the realization of the historically ideal form of government—a republican constitution founded on universal principles of natural right—but rather because he senses its potential contribution to that still-distant goal. And so he uses an act of lexical and conceptual sleight-of-hand in order to hide the fact that the events in France since 1789 have involved what he regards as the ultimate political evil, war. Kant’s surprising linguistic move has its source in a problematic aptly described by Hannah Arendt in her study On Revolution. Arendt’s book introduces the claim that “revolutions are the only political events that confront us directly and inevitably with the problem of beginning” (21). Kant, for one, responds to this confrontation by distancing himself from abrupt change; in fact, one can reasonably conjecture that a radical start may well have appeared to him irredeemably linked to the post-1790 violence abroad. In his sleight-of-hand, Kant draws on a subtle terminological choice he encountered in a treatise by his student Johann Benjamin Erhard. He picks up on the description of the events in France as a form of “evolution,” as a contingent and flawed stage in the unforeseeable and intractable path traced by humankind. The choice of the word “evolution” was highly unconventional—it was an essentially unused term in the German language of the time, but was also one that Kant, with his Latin education, could easily make his own. To the eighteenth-century German ear, the Latin evolutio or evolvo possessed a less problematic set of associations than the French loanword “revolution.” Both terms had historically promoted the imagination of a uniform and repetitive temporality (the Vulgate speaks of “anni circulus fuerit evolutus”). But for a mode of Enlightenment thought [End Page 573] searching for a way to describe time linearly, the cluster of prefixes ec-, ex-, e- conjured a more congenial set of associations than re-. Erhard’s use of the term “evolution” has a clear vector of movement—toward a “progress of Enlightenment,” as he says (188–189). The recourse of both Erhard and his teacher Kant to this unusual term testifies to...

Messianism and UFO Sightings as Counterfactual Strategies of Enchantment of the World

Summary In this text, I argue that there are numerous affinities between 19th century messianism and testimonies of UFO sightings, both of which I regarded as forms of secular millennialism. The common denominator for the comparison was Max Weber’s concept of “disenchantment of the world” in the wake of the Industrial Revolution which initiated the era of the dominance of rational thinking and technological progress. However, the period’s counterfactual narratives of enchantment did not repudiate technology as the source of all social and political evil—on the contrary, they variously redefined its function, imagining a possibility of a new world order. In this context, I analysed the social projects put forward by Polish Romantics in the first half of the 19th century, with emphasis on the role of technology as an agent of social change. Similarly, the imaginary technology described by UFO contactees often has a redemptive function and is supposed to bring solution to humanity’s most dangerous problems.

Migration, membership, and republican liberty

ABSTRACT Neorepublicanism holds that domination is the foremost political evil. More, it claims to be able to address today’s most pressing issues. It follows that neorepublicanism should, then, speak to questions of migration, membership, and domination. However, this is not the case. Some critical voices inspired by the idea of non-domination arrive at interesting critiques of migration, membership, and domination, but their answers are often partial and in some ways problematic. They are also largely ahistorical. The contemporary paucity of neorepublican reflections on migration contrasts sharply with its centrality in republican history. In the US, from the colonial period until late into the 19th century, some republicans understood the domination of migrants and citizens as conjoined concerns. They developed a robust account of the relationship between domestic domination and exclusionary migration regimes. They conceptualized the republic as a global asylum where membership is based on volitional allegiance, and they vigorously defended the right of aliens to expatriate. Those ideas were ultimately defeated by aristocratic, oligarchic, and statist forces. This article explicates that history through a genealogical account of what I call ‘insurgent republicanism’. The article then returns to contemporary theorization to diagnose its limitations, continuities, and potentials as seen from the perspective of the insurgent republican tradition.

The Right to be Publicly Naked: A Defence of Nudism

Many liberal democracies have legal restrictions on nudism. This article argues that when public nudity does not pose a health threat (which it seldom does), such restrictions are unjust. To vindicate this claim, I start by showing that there are two weighty interests served by the freedom to be naked in public. First, it promotes individual well-being; not only can nudist activities have great recreational value, recent studies have found that exposure to non-idealised naked bodies has a positive impact on body image, and, ultimately, on life satisfaction. Second, public nudity has expressive value; apart from being a constitutive element of various spiritual and religious worldviews, public nudity is frequently used to protest (perceived) social and political evils. As I go on to argue, the reasons for abolishing current anti-nudist laws that stem from these interests are not overridden, let alone cancelled, by the offence that public nudity might cause. Indeed, whereas my principal aim is to defend the freedom to be publicly naked when this poses no health threat, I will contend that states should recognise this liberty as a distinct legal right rather than try to subsume it under existing rights or secure it simply by excluding non-sexual, non-exhibitionist public nudity from existing laws against public indecency, sexual exhibition, and disorderly conduct.

Two views on political lesser evil

In this article I argue that doing the lesser evil in politics is always permitted and even required. I call this view “pragmatism”. I defend it against “purism”, which claims that it is never permissible to do (the lesser) evil. I reject three arguments for purism, which are based on Alan Gewirth’s principle of intervening action, on an alleged epistemic difference between doing and allowing evil, and on rule-consequentialism. I also address Terrance McConnell’s and Thomas Hill Jr.’s attempts to constrain pragmatism by claiming that doing the lesser evil is not always permitted or required. Although those constraints may apply to most spheres of action, I contend that they do not apply to political action. Keywords: lesser evil, politics, purism, pragmatism.

«Продай одежду свою и купи меч»: еще к вопросу о средствах противодействия политическому злу

«Продай одежду свою и купи меч»: еще к вопросу о средствах противодействия политическому злу

‘My little wild fever-struck brother’: human and animal subjectivity in Hélène Cixous’ Algeria

ABSTRACTThis article examines the place of human and animal subjectivity in two autobiographically informed texts by Hélène Cixous. It takes her view on the word ‘human’ and the figure of Fips, the dog of the Cixous family, as a point of departure. By thinking through this figure, I argue, Cixous analyses the dehumanizing logic of colonialism and anti-Semitism in Algeria and develops her own response to such kinds of political evils, arguing for human relationality and animal corporeality. The article shows that Cixous’ meeting with Fips creates a stigma that, belatedly, breaks through the barrier between herself and the dog; the reopening of the wound takes place in a poetical writing that reveals an intense ‘animal humanity’ formed by communal suffering, finiteness, and love. The lesson Cixous learns from the memory of Fips the dog is how to become ‘better human’. This becoming is also an assault on the false humanism of the colonial project and on racialized social exclusion.

POLITICAL EMOTIONS AND EVIL

Objetivo. Comprender emociones politicas como la repugnancia y verguenza, sus rasgos y su relacion con la dignidad humana y la libertad en los actos belicos en Colombia. Metodologia. Se realizo una pesquisa teorica en torno a las emociones politicas destacando creencias, juicios y valoraciones asociados a la verguenza y la repugnancia. Se abordaron algunos aspectos enmarcados en la filosofia del mal como la dignidad humana y su relacion con la libertad. Resultados. Se encontraron rasgos configurantes de las emociones de repugnancia y verguenza en los actos belicos. Conclusiones. El mal en la guerra esta tenido de emociones politicas como la verguenza y repugnancia, la dignidad humana se hace fragil y esta asociada a la libertad y a la voluntad

Why love leads to justice: love across the boundaries

This book tells the stories of notable historical figures who, by resisting patriarchal laws condemning adultery, gay and lesbian sex, and sex across the boundaries of religion and race, brought about lasting social and political change. Constitutional scholar David A. J. Richards investigates the lives of leading transgressive artists, social critics, and activists including George Eliot, Benjamin Britten, Christopher Isherwood, Bayard Rustin, James Baldwin, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Margaret Mead. Richards shows how ethical empowerment, motivated by love, allowed these figures to resist the injustices of anti-Semitism, racism, sexism, and homophobia, leading to the constitutional condemnation of these political evils in the United States, Britain, and beyond. Love and law thus grow together, and this book shows how and why. Drawing from developmental psychology (including studies of trauma), political theory, the history of social movements, literature, biography, and law, this book will be a thought-provoking tool for anyone interested in civil rights.

The Subversion of Reason

In light of current neuroscience and related research, this paper suggests that political evil is the socially engineered consequence of nominally reputable institutions that school its manufacture on a continuum. The author attempts to synthesize a precis of sufficiently well refereed inter-disciplinary knowledge to scientifically account for the extraordinary post 9/11 evolution of micro- to macro-political control of global human resolve. The principles posited have remained enigmatic until recently, but echo those used by ancient mystery religions. References to Kant, Vygotsky and other polymaths aid this effort to adequately describe a developing typology that decrypts the profound riddle of human cognition and thought that impedes corrective educational strategies.

Politics in popular movies: rhetorical takes on horror, war, thriller, and scifi films

1. Film Takes: Rhetorical Appreciations of Popular Politics Part One: Popular Genres 2. Politics in Conventions: Conspiracy as a Cinematic Trope for System 3. Politics in Subtexts: Horror Movies as Facing Political Evils in Everyday Life 4. Politics in Innovations: Fractal Films as New Rhetorics for Nonlinear Politics Part Two: Political Experiences 5. Emotion and Empathy: From Sins and Pains to Bodies and Deeds in Horror Movies 6. Character and Community: From Contracts to Contacts in Science-Fiction Films 7. Atmosphere and Argument: From Vicarious to Virtual Experience in War Movies Part Three: Cinematic Terrors 8. Movies Prefigure Politics: How Thrillers Anticipated Terrorist Attacks on America 9. Movies Disfigure Politics: How Vampire Hunters Pursued the War on Terror 10. Movies Configure Politics: How Horror, Dystopia, Thriller, and Noir Shape Terrorism 11. Conclusion: Political Styles in Popular Movies

The Ecumenical Vision of John A. Mackay

Despite a religious background that he himself later called “completely parochial,” John Mackay matured into a Christian leader with a remarkably inclusive vision. “If it is to be truly ecumenical,” Mackay declared, “the Church must transcend every boundary … As the Church, it must rise above every human division.” To go beyond such boundaries, Mackay not only engaged in standard ecumenical ventures such as the YMCA and the World Council of Churches, he also raised his voice to protest social and political evils, whether found in Nazi Germany, the Communist Bloc, or the United States. Mackay also reached out to movements such as Pentecostalism, often ignored by many mid-twentieth century ecumenical Protestants. Beneath Mackay’s inclusiveness lay his faith in a Christ in whom all things ultimately cohere and who even now leads his people beyond existing boundaries toward the fulfillment of cosmic unity in Him.

“The First Secessionist Was Satan”: Secession and the Religious Politics of Evil in Civil War America

“The First Secessionist Was Satan”: Secession and the Religious Politics of Evil in Civil War America

The Communal Machinery of Evil: Reflections on Hannah Arendt

The fifty-year anniversary of the trial and execution of Adolph Eichmann saw the release of the Margarethe von Trotta film Hannah Arendt. This article considers the film’s achievements in the context of Arendt’s book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, and especially her “lesson” that political evil consists not only in some demonic instinct or motive, but in a monstrous lack of imagination, a condition of radical philosophical thoughtlessness. The film is principally a character study of a political philosopher with strong convictions and an abiding concern for what Arendt saw as the unfortunate truth about Eichmann. Largely occluded are the enduring political themes with which Arendt’s many books in political theory dealt – themes including power, conformity, and community. Yet, the film anticipates important moral and political questions of lasting relevance. There remains much to be learned about thoughtlessness in nations where power is broadly shared by the people. Concerns over evil’s precise nature aside, the question of conformity in democracies remains important to consider as nationalist, ethnic, and sectarian sentiments arise anew in Russia, the Middle East, as well as the United States.

Systemic evil and the international political imagination

In light of the persistence of discourses of atrocity in the post-Holocaust era, and with the resurgence of talk of evil that followed 11 September 2001, it is clear that the idea of evil still possesses a powerful hold upon the modern imagination. Yet, the interplay of evil and the political imagination – in particular, how different images of evil have shaped the discourses and practices of international politics – remains neglected. This article suggests that evil is depicted through three contending images within international politics – evil as individualistic, as statist and as systemic – and their corresponding forms of collective imagination – the juridical, the humanitarian and the political. It argues further that the dominance of the juridical and, to a lesser extent, the humanitarian imagination obscures our ability to imagine and respond to political evils of structural or systemic violence. Drawing on the example of global poverty, this article contends that the ability to portray and critically judge systemic evils in international politics today depends upon enriching our narratives about indefensible atrocities and reimagining our shared political responsibilities for them.

Evilization in liberal discourse: From Kant’s ‘unjust enemy’ to today’s ‘rogue state’

Liberal discourse should have a hard time looking for ‘evil’ in international relations. Standing on the pillar of rationalism and humanitarianism, there seems to be little space for the morally and emotionally charged notion of evil to enter considerations. Yet, the liberal belief in the freedom of will implies that humans are capable of turning against the advice of reason and opt for evil behavior and underlying principles. This possibility is epitomized by Kant’s construction of the ‘evil enemy’. Since ‘evil’ appears sporadically in international relations, with Hitler’s Germany as prototype, its existence in the real world of international relations cannot be ruled out a priori. Designating an ‘other’ as evil is thus a discursive possibility. The practice to turn this possibility into reality is conceptualized here as ‘evilization’ in analogy to ‘securitization’. There is strong variance among liberal democracies in applying this practice, ranging from ‘pacifism’ to ‘militancy’, which often leads to dire consequences. Deriving the principles of fallibility and prudence from liberal reasoning, this article concludes with the proposition that ‘liberal pacifism’ is the preferable option in most conceivable circumstances, but that the possibility of confronting political evil is rare, but existing.

Doing Justice to Justice

Reflections on Just attempts both to complement and to correct the whole dialectic of little that Paul Ricoeur had placed at end of Oneself as Another.1 One of problems identified was that approach Ricoeur had taken there gave rise to the impression of a juxtaposi- tion and of a weakly arbitrated conflict of positions.2 Ricoeur was happier with dialectical idea of justice he had argued for in Just between Legal and Good.3 Francois Dosse's Les sens d'une vie offers an interesting account of circumstances in which he came to deliver that lecture.4 It was 1991-of- ficially designated l'Annee de la justice by Prime Minister Michel Rocard-and Antoine Garapon had recently founded Institut des hautes etudes sur la justice (IHEJ). Ricoeur accepted Garapon's invitation to give inaugural lecture, and two men then worked on text, meeting several times at Ricoeur's home in Châteney-Malabry. Significantly, lecture was written for members of a professional body whose interest in justice was decidedly practical. Looking back on period, in The Just, Ricoeur claims that his work with Garapon's IHEJ al- lowed him to resist a line of thought that strongly encouraged by spirit of our times.5 This line of thought turns its gaze towards philosophy of history, losing sight of philosophy of right. Once happens is drama of war that captures our intellectual energy, at price of an oft repeated confession of incomprehensibility in principle of political evil.6 Ricoeur acknowledges that he is not in any position to deplore what he terms this obstinate return of eminently historical problem of political evil because, in past, he played a part in promoting it.7 But things changed as soon as he collaborated with Garapon and he began, at last, to pay attention to problematic.8 He writes,My work with Institut des Hautes Etudes sur la Justice has been particu- larly influential in that regard. There I encountered question of unjust and just on a level where reflection on juridical ran little risk of being prematurely taken up into a political philosophy, itself snatched up by a phi- losophy of history haunted in turn by pitiless torment arising from and sustained by aporia of political evil.9He claims that once he began to work at more appropriate level he was able to take on task of justice to the question of right and of doing justice to justice.Ricoeur also acknowledges, in The Just, his debt to Ecole nationale de la magistrature, nearby training school for public prosecutors and judges. He recalls that it was there that hemet question of juridical in figure of judiciary, with its writ- ten laws, its tribunals, its judges, its ceremonial processes, and, as a capstone to all this, pronouncement of a sentence where law is stated in circumstances of a trial, an eminently singular affair. In way I was led to believe that juridical, comprehended through features of judiciary, could provide philosophy occasion to reflect upon specificity of right and law, in its proper setting midway between moral philosophy or ethics (the nuance separating these two not being of importance at preliminary stage of my investigation) and politics.10It is significant, I think, that Ricoeur sees a new opportunity for philosophy in his belated discovery of juridical problematic. Philosophy is given time to reflect on distinctiveness of right and law once it finds itself situated between ethics and politics, i.e., on very plane where judiciary is located.Dosse's reading of Just between Legal and Good probably does not give due consideration to opportunity for philosophical reflection that lecture provides. For Dosse, Ricoeur was-certainly in 1990's-the philoso- pher of city who endeavoured to enrich social practices with philosophical theories and insights. …

기초지방선거 정당공천 개선방안

In the democratic country, it is the very natural principle that political party makes the candidate. In spite of that the nomination of political party abolition issue is not in the local election the problem of is being easily solved. Therefore, the recent argument about the nomination of political party of the basic local election and overseas case were organized and the reasonable alternative was sought for. As to the argument related to the nomination of political party, the discussion in which the groping of the waste paper or new alternative is needed stops so that the existing politicians can overcome the nomination of political party evil in spite of the opposition position. In the positive investigation, the populations which are many in the waste paper of the system of public nomination by party agree. However, the bad effect that can be shown up according to the waste paper of the nomination of political party is the woman allocation door. Therefore, some alternatives were presented in the bad effect that can be shown up according to the waste paper of the nomination of political party. This alternative is the participation subject expansion, the introduction of political party claim to support, the introduction of local political party system, the application of upward official nomination procedure, and etc. The participation subject expansion presented logically as the optimum alternative among this method, the decision of the alternative should be confirmed through the social agreement procedure.

Hitler's Conscience, Redemptive Political Emotions, and the Politics of Fear

Framed as a response to Arne Vetlesen's Atrocities: A Case of Suppresing Emotions or Acting Them Out? [(2011) 2 Passions in Context], this essay, which appears in (2012) 3 Passions in Context, interrogates the requirements of serious, responsible, and productive engagement with political evil, here defined as the unjustifiable mass killing of human beings as a political policy and project of modern states. I agrue for the following seven requirements: first, that the easy, comforting and until quite recently, ruling disciplinary move of pathologizing perpetrators and perpetrator states must be abandoned because it renders opaque and largely meaningless their purposes and projects; second, that proper engagement proceeds from acknowledging perpetrator motives and beliefs as political and their acts as a specifically political form of evil; third, that proper engagement therefore seeks to interrogate both the nature of those political motives and beliefs and the nature and quaility of those political acts; fourth, that as regards the second, any serious account of political evil must acknowledge that, like any other political policy and project, political evil requires committed political support and supporters, that as an act and policy of state, political evil takes form -- and can only take form -- through the machinery of state and especially through its legal machinery, and that whatever else may be said of it, political evil is a legally constructed and lawful state system of ordered brutality and cruelty; fifth, that as regards perpetrator beliefs, serious engagement requires acknowledgement that perpetrators may, and with respect to the leadership cadre, must, be persons of sincere conviction and good conscience and that, in consequence, perpetrators need not be evil persons; sixth, that productive engagement resides in establising perpetrator beliefs as false and perpetrator acts as evil; and seventh, that as regards perpetrator beliefs, the belief that founds political moralities that propose and permit political evil and that must be establised as false is political millenarianism, that peculiar and devastating political emotion of the modern period. The remainder of the essay seeks to demonstrate these requirements with respect to the political morality of Hitlerism and the conduct of the Hitler state before then concluding with a brief exploration of what is required to immunize ourselves from the seduction of redemptive political emotions from which political evil always arises.