Political Virtue Research Articles

L'Oubli et la mémoire dans quelques tragédies classiques françaises

ABSTRACTThis article explores the dynamic interplay between memory and forgetfulness in three French classical tragedies: Cinna, Andromaque, and Britannicus. Corneille envisages forgetfulness as a political virtue in Cinna: Auguste's clemency represents not only the redemption of the political misdeeds of his enemies but also their conversion from rebellion to submission. Moreover, the emperor's magnanimity conjures the notion of historical myth, his transcendence of guilt, and his profound need to detach himself from his criminal identity. Andromaque highlights, on the contrary, the tragic inability of protagonists to escape the powerful hold of the past on their conscience. Memories of the Trojan War continue to obsess them. Whereas Pyrrhus calls into question his heroic identity and winds up rejecting it, Andromaque takes refuge in the mythic past of Troy and remains forever wedded to the horrific images of the war's carnage. Racine emphasizes the deep-rooted influence of the historical past in Britannicus: Agrippine incarnates the aging matriarch bent on recapturing her glorious past but remains obsessed with the tragic dimension of time, which will result in her ultimate fall from power. Néron exemplifies the would-be virtuous emperor incapable of escaping from the tragedy of genetic determinism. By centering attention on the sheer decadence of Rome and the ignominious reign of the “monstre naissant,” Britannicus stands in direct opposition to Cinna, which clearly belongs to the heroic tradition of French classical tragedy.

“There Is Another Kingdom”: On The Politics of Virtue

“There Is Another Kingdom”:On The Politics of Virtue Tracey Rowland John Milbank’s and Adrian Pabst’s The Politics of Virtue could be described as the theo-political analogue to Rupert Brooke’s The Soldier, Blake’s Jerusalem, and Sir Cecil Spring Rice’s I Vow to Thee my Country all rolled into one. It pulls no punches and is unashamedly in favor of aristocratic and monarchical forms of government, as well as the establishment of the Church of England. God, Queen, and Country Anglicans who read it are likely to recall the words of Simeon’s prayer upon the presentation of the Christ-child: Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine, secundum verbum tuum in pace: Quia viderunt oculi mei salutare tuum; Quod parasti ante faciem omnium populorum: Lumen ad revelationem gentium, et gloriam plebis tuae Israel. Another way to describe it would be a twenty-first-century Tory manifesto or “Blue Labor” handbook. (The difference between the British political classifications “Red Tory” and “Blue Labor” seems to be more a matter of class identity than substantive policy preference). Whether one is an aristocrat with a strong sense of noblesse oblige—that is, a Red or Turquoise Tory (turquoise is red combined with green ecological interests)—or a person from a lowlier social position who appreciates the value of an aristocratic element within the social order—a Blue Labor type—the same substantive political positions can be arrived at assuming a common Christian intellectual foundation. The Politics of Virtue is therefore in the genre of works that offer a critique of liberal political theory from a Christian perspective. It [End Page 1337] shares something of the flavor of Alasdair MacIntyre’s many publications on the subject, especially the need to reclaim virtue and unmask the confidence tricks and coercive character of liberal ideology. However, where MacIntyre and others have been criticized for offering no alternative to the present liberal political order other than building more monasteries, home schooling children, out-breeding liberals, and praying for another St. Benedict or Joseph Ratzinger (all reasonable strategies in my judgment), Milbank and Pabst have dared to offer some concrete proposals about the structure of political institutions, as well as offering a robust defense of a Christian commonwealth where both politics and economics are rooted in virtuous practices. While a wave of communitarian and specifically Catholic criticisms of liberalism began to be published in the 1980s, often in response to John Rawls’s liberal classic A Theory of Justice (1971), at a time when it seemed as though the end-of-history theorists and a chorus of neoconservative Catholics might be right about the triumph of liberalism, and hence the enthusiasm (especially among American Catholics) to quickly baptise it, Milbank’s and Pabst’s book comes after the outbreak of Islamic terrorism in 2001 and the financial crisis of 2008. They note that both of these events “exposed the limitations of the two liberalisms that have dominated Western politics for the last half-century: the social-cultural liberalism of the left since the 1960s and the economic-political liberalism of the right since the 1980s.”1 The social-cultural liberalism of the left and the economic-political liberalism of the right share the same starting position of a merely negative conception of liberty. A negative conception of liberty is about “freedom from” something, rather than “freedom for” something. This negative liberty rests on two pillars: “a procedural, formalistic conception of justice and an instrumental notion of reason.”2 The combined result is that “individuals are proclaimed ‘autonomous’ when all the while they are subjected to the instrumental logic of bureaucratic control and commercial exchange.”3 Worse yet, “the scale of self-worth that the individual is encouraged to adopt is the [End Page 1338] very same scale by which she is subjected to mass manipulation.”4 The “double paradox at the heart of liberalism” is therefore the “relentless privatisation of the public sphere and yet the ever-greater invasion of the private sphere, coupled with an oppressive moralism masquerading as liberal impartiality and procedural fairness.”5 Milbank and Pabst strongly affirm the judgment of the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek...

Challenging the Terms of Liberalism: On The Politics of Virtue

Challenging the Terms of Liberalism:On The Politics of Virtue D. C. Schindler With their recent book The Politics of Virtue,1 John Milbank and Adrian Pabst take a decisive step in the ongoing critique of liberalism. Not only do they articulate in a compelling way why the current crises of liberal institutions (which only those blinded by ideology can still deny) were all but inevitable given the founding principles of liberalism, but they also show, in relentlessly concrete terms, what a “post-liberal” alternative might look like. This latter contribution is something quite new, and quite helpful. The fundamental significance of this contribution ought not to be overlooked, and reflecting on it gets us immediately to the heart of the matter. One of the primary reasons for the triumph of liberalism in the West—and indeed, at this point, arguably in the world simply—is that it changed the very terms of the debate, so to speak, and did so in such a way as to make its triumph inevitable. To put the matter somewhat oversimply, it deposed truth as the standard by which reality is measured and, in a certain sense, replaced it with nothing at all, insofar as having a standard of any genuinely transcendent sort inevitably brings one back inside a horizon set by truth (as Plato showed over and over again). Radically new approaches to theology, metaphysics, anthropology, and physics are entailed by this shift that may, on the surface, appear to be little more than a new [End Page 1353] approach to politics and economics. This shift is a disruption of the previous tradition that is more radically new, at least in a certain respect, than even God’s self-revelation in Christ, since the latter is the revelation of the God who created all things, including the nature presupposed and perfected by the gift of grace.2 Ultimately, liberalism is in this sense a breaking of the analogy of being, and if there is a metaphysical equivalent of the sin against the Holy Spirit, the destruction of the analogy of being would be it, insofar as it finally renders metaphysics itself impossible. Because the shifting of terms entails a new theology and metaphysics, a critique of liberalism must address it at this level. But because liberalism is most directly a political philosophy, the critique has to be carried through to the level of prudential judgments concerning concrete matters. There are few who can do both, and the present authors are among those few. According to the authors, liberalism is a kind of absolutizing of the individual: “Liberalism … exhibits in all its variants an individualist consistency” (45). And, as we see clearly in Hobbes, Spinoza, Harrington, and Locke, it is committed to a reductive rationalism in politics that coincides with its ontological individualism: “A reigning individualism is inseparable from this rationalism and from opposition to any Catholic conception of the role of the Church” (46). This ontological individualism relentlessly undermines any gathering up of genuine unities, genuinely cohesive wholes, whether this be understood at the level of social or political order, culture, economics, philosophy, or others. It is just this fragmentation that ensures the victory of liberalism: it no longer needs to give reasons for its superiority, for reason itself has been emptied of substance. The only thing left is effective force in its various manifestations, above all technology, majority opinion, the machinery of state, and the movement of history, which gets dubbed “inevitable.” Liberalism wins because it has always neutralized in advance any competitor. It is in relation to this point that the authors’ achievement stands out so brilliantly. By introducing a concrete alternative to liberalism, they not only provide a competitor, or at least outline in plausible terms what a competitor might look like, but even more fundamentally, in doing so, they reinstate, at least in principle, the classical terms of the debate, terms that are necessary for there even to be any [End Page 1354] kind of debate in the first place. In impressive detail, Milbank and Pabst show that the liberal institutions that we have come to take for granted—capitalism, democracy, and so forth—were far from eternally...

Rebuilding the City of God: Locating the Politics of Virtue within the Politics of Sin and Grace

Rebuilding the City of God: Locating the Politics of Virtue within the Politics of Sin and Grace

Policing Transnational Protest: Liberal imperialism and the surveillance of anticolonialists in Europe, 1905–1945 by Daniel Brückenhaus

Reviewed by: Policing Transnational Protest: Liberal imperialism and the surveillance of anticolonialists in Europe, 1905–1945 by Daniel Brückenhaus Zaib un Nisa Aziz Policing Transnational Protest: Liberal imperialism and the surveillance of anticolonialists in Europe, 1905–1945 By Daniel Brückenhaus. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Daniel Brückenhaus’ new monograph—the author’s first—contains all the exciting elements of new international history. Its archival span covers several countries across four continents, its source base is multilingual and it features a wide and diverse cast of characters. In this book, Brückenhaus tells the story of how European states, particularly Britain, France and Germany, responded to the rise of anticolonial activity within the continent. This work is hence a contribution to the growing historiography on the sites and spaces of transimperial and transnational radical politics in the twentieth century. Hitherto, historians have focused on the social and intellectual basis of cooperation and connections amongst revolutionary actors. Brückenhaus is also interested in the formation and workings of these networks but his chief concern is to demonstrate how these transnational movements led to internationalization of policing and the introduction of autocratic practices by supposedly liberal European states. This intervention is both important and timely because it allows us to understand how practices of anticolonial activism were shaped by, and in turn influenced, the evolving practices of policing and surveillance. This book can be best understood as a study of a certain kind of governmentality. As such, it also converses with the increasing scholarly concern with the phenomenon of imperial and colonial anxiety. Brückenhaus demonstrates how the imperative to control thought and police movements was not restricted to the colonial spaces. On the contrary, the increasing mobility of anticolonial networks meant that imperial anxieties were also transposed to the metropole. By tracing the movements of Asian and African anticolonialists in in British and French capitals, Brückenhaus is able to bring the colony and metropole into the same narrative frame. However, one of the critical aims of the book is to highlight the centrality of Germany to this history. In the first chapter of the book, Brückenhaus shows that the movement and subsequent vigilance of dissident elements had already begun at the turn of the century, particularly in London and Paris. But it is the outbreak of the First World War and the looming threat of German collusion with antiimperial forces that form the raison d’être of a significant expansion of police and spy networks. Anxiety about outside intrusion multiplies with the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. In Chapters Three to Five, Brückenhaus explains how the German-Bolshevik threat led to intergovernmental cooperation between the British and French authorities. These chapters illustrate that the desire to control activists did not just lead to expansion of policing within the borders of France and Germany but also led to the extension of spies, agents and intelligence officers in Germany. Through an extensive range of case studies, he uncovers how anticolonial activists sought to subvert and negotiate this growing web of policing. In averting the gaze of the state, rebellious activists from India to Ghana, Vietnam to Kenya were able to forge solidarities and new networks. But this work also serves as warning against the romanticizing of transnational cooperation in the twentieth century. The range of case studies in the book gives an idea about the heterogeneous nature of anticolonial movements and ideas. While anticolonial activists often aligned with the left, alliances with the extreme right were not out of the question. Indeed, fascism was able to capture the imagination of Indian leader Subash Chandra Bose. The complex relationship between Nazi Germany and antiimperialists forms the subject of the final chapter of the book. For many revolutionaries seeking an end of empire, political allegiance was as much a function of strategic needs as of ideological affinity. Equally, the author contends that European states could also make a political virtue of supporting anticolonial movements. This is most true, in the case of the German state, which not only provides support for anti-British movements during the Weimar period but at one stage during the Third Reich as well. The book is thus...

Ethics in Politics: Political Virtues of Citizens and Politicians

Gunumuzde ‘‘etik’’ sikca kullanilan onemli bir kavramdir. Genel anlamda neyin iyi ve neyin kotu oldugunu belirtmektedir. Bugun dunya toplumlarinin bircogu karmasik toplumlardir ve karmasik sorunlara sahiptirler. Bu karmasik sorunlar her zaman yaptirimlar araciligiyla kontrol altina alinamamaktadirlar. Dolayisiyla boyle bir sorunu cozme noktasinda etik kavraminin yani sira bize yardimci olabilecek diger bir kavramda ‘‘erdem’’dir. Her iki kavram bir araya getirildiginde ‘’Erdem etigi’’ kavrami ortaya cikmaktadir. Erdem her zaman kendisine eslik eden hukuk kavramina gereksinim duymaktadir. Bu nedenle erdem etigi hukukun yerini tutmasa da hukuk icin gerekli bir tamamlayicidir. Bu baglamda demokratik bir devlet ve ayni zamanda hukuk devleti erdemli ve ahlakli vatandaslar ve siyasetciler sayesinde islevsel olabilir. Demokrasilerde tum vatandaslarin siyasal hayata katilmalari tesvik ediliyor olmalarindan oturu vatandaslarin siyasal erdemin temel niteliklerine sahip olmalidirlar. Ozellikle siyaset kurumunda etkin roller ustlenen siyasetcilerin siyasal erdem sahibi olmalari daha da onemlidir. Bunun yaninda siyaseti etkileyebilecek olan diger siyasi guclerden medya calisani olan gazeteciler ve belli cikar grubu temsilcilerinin de siyasal erdemli olmalari gerekmektedir. Herkes kendi bulundugu ortamda erdemli hareket ettiginde sorunlarin buyuk bolumu halledilebilir. Erdemli hareket etmek icin yapilmasi gereken belli basli unsurlarda burada onem kazanmaktadir: Demokrasiyi yasam sekli haline getirme ve demokratik egitim, demokratik karar alma sureclerini uygulamak (okulda, iste vb.), demokratik siyasetin basarili tecrubelerini sunma, vb. Bu bildiri de, erdemli ve ahlakli siyasetci ve vatandasa sahip olmak icin gerekli siyasal erdem kavrami uzerinde durularak siyasal erdemin temel ozellikleri irdelenmektedir. Daha sonra da bir toplumda siyasal erdemi yaymak icin neler yapilacagina iliskin bilgilere yer verilmektedir. Kisacasi demokrasi erdemlere ve ozellikle de siyasal erdemlere ihtiyac duymaktadir. Bunun icinde toplumlarin belirli aktorlerinden bazi taleplerde bulunmaktadir.

Is Pacifism a Democratic Virtue? Pragmatist Reflections on an Often Neglected Dimension of Contemporary Peace Ethics

The article questions concepts of ‘democratic peace’ that presuppose an intrinsic relation between pacifism and democracy. This view lacks from both, empirical evidence and historical insight. Instead, pacifism as political and personal virtue can be better linked to the Deweyan idea of democracy as the basic way of life, that is, mutual cooperation and self-realisation. But not only pacifism but also warfare and aggressive conduct often are rooted and result in an ethos of solidarity and cooperation. Therefore, the task for any realistic concept of democratic pacifism is at least two-fold: finding ‘moral equivalents’ (W. James) to war and cultivating an ethos of self-criticism and self-restraint as already the Old Testament’s prophets have proclaimed.

Teoria da integridade de ronald dworkin: um olhar matemático para a tese da resposta correta

O presente artigo pretende analisar os argumentos que fundamentam a ideia da resposta correta no direito sob a tica da teoria da deciso de Ronald Dworkin. O pressuposto bsico do direito como integridade para Dworkin o enquadramento da integridade como uma terceira virtude poltica, ao lado da equidade, da justia e tambm do devido processo legal adjetivo, o que configurar os fundamentos para a sua teoria da deciso judicial, cujas expresses superlativas esto na figura fictcia do juiz Hrcules. Ao analisar a tese da resposta correta de Dworkin a fizemos sob a tica da matemtica, ou seja, atravs de uma equao. Por fim, o que se pretende demonstrar que sempre possvel imprimir um olhar matemtico s teorias do direito. Neste caso em particular, atravs da equao da Resposta Correta possvel demonstrar a relao entre integridade, vontade poltica do julgador e conceitos de justia, equidade e devido processo legal adjetivo.

“Address to Public Council”: The Additions to Marston’sThe Malcontent, the King’s Men’s Repertory, and Early Modern Theatrical Economics

“Address to Public Council”: The Additions to Marston’s<i>The Malcontent</i>, the King’s Men’s Repertory, and Early Modern Theatrical Economics

The Politics of Virtue: Post-Liberalism and the Human Future by John Milbank and Adrian Pabst (London and New York: Rowman &amp; Littlefield International Ltd., 2016), x + 385 pp.

The Politics of Virtue: Post-Liberalism and the Human Future by John Milbank and Adrian Pabst (London and New York: Rowman &amp; Littlefield International Ltd., 2016), x + 385 pp.

“Framing and Fashioning of Images”: The Pictorial Invention of the Art Lover in Daniel Mytens’s Portrait of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel (ca 1618)

Abstract The article examines Daniel Mytens’s portrait of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, and the pendant portrait of his wife, Aletheia Howard (ca 1618), in relation to early modern rhetorical concepts in portrait painting and art theory. Particular focus is placed on the pictorial meaning of the depicted sculpture gallery in Lord Arundel’s portrait in its relation to the sitter. The author argues that the composition subtly transforms certain patterns of a long-standing pictorial code in portrait painting, which can be identified as a type of “picture within a picture.” Already established in the Italian portrait tradition, an integrated little picture or window view next to the sitter was a widespread formula in seventeenth-century Dutch and British portraiture, in order to praise a sitter’s moral and political virtues. Mytens reinterprets this portrait type, in this way inventing a pictorial mode of highlighting the particular virtues of the art lover: his portrait, through its adaptation of the picture-within-a-picture formula, praises the earl’s noble act of collecting antiquities while at the same time strongly emphasizing his intellectual strength.

John Milton's Idea of Kingship and its Comparison With Confucianism

Abstract Scattered throughout the author's prose and poetical works, kingship is a core concept in John Milton's political and literary practices. According to Milton, a king must first be a “wise and virtuous man” (Paradise Regained), and the Son is the perfect model of kingship. The possession of virtue and a “paradise within” (Paradise Lost) would enable everyone to be kingly. Tyrants like Charles I may be lawfully deposed or even beheaded by their subjects. Milton's republicanism is not only rooted in classical, biblical, and continental traditions, but is also inseparable—in my opinion—from the native British tradition, including important figures such as John of Salisbury (twelfth century) and John Ponet (sixteenth century). This essay also compares Milton's Aristotelian “virtue politics” with Confucianism represented by Confucius and Mencius, pinpointing the former's contemporary relevance.

Neuplatonische politische Philosophie in der Rede Περὶ βασιλείας des Synesios von Kyrene

Abstract This paper argues that Synesios’ De regno is a mirror for princes and a splendid example of Neoplatonic political philosophy. It is based on Plato’s Politeia and its model of philosopher-kingship. Synesios makes his audience compare the current political reality with the ideal of the philosopher-kings, who are the image of the transcendent god in the political realm. In doing so he recommends political virtue in general, especially phronesis and sophrosyne. Particularly he argues for reforming the recruitment of military and civil officials with reference to Plato’s concept of friendship in the Politeia.

John Milbank and Adrian Pabst : The Politics of Virtue: Post-Liberalism and the Human Future. (London: Rowman and Littlefield, 2016. Pp. 385.)

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Kafka kontra mesjanizm. Kryzys mitycznego uzasadnienia prawa w kulturze europejskiej

The essay is centered around the political and historical interpretation of Franz Kafka’s short story In the Penal Colony. The theoretical context includes Claude Levi-Strauss’s comments on “cold” societies (trying to deny history) and “hot” societies (trying to internalize the history). The aim of the interpretation is to create a simplified model of the shifts taking place in European culture in terms of the relations between myth, law, and (a specific kind of) messianism and to capture the differences between the pre-modern and the modern approach to the myth as a kind of fabricated imitation of eternity. The methodological tool used to this end includes a critical and hermeneutical interpretation involving reading literature in the light of historical processes, and historical processes in the light of literature. The disintegration of the torture apparatus in the Kafka’s story can be decoded as the transition from “cold” to “hot” society, i.e. as an entry into enlightened modernity, where the awareness of the fact that transcendence is something fabricated becomes universal. This reduces the politics practised in modern, illuminated, and liberal societies (which conceal their own mythical nature under a veneer of science and democracy) to the need to choose between cynicism and fanaticism: between the cynical politics of ressentiment, which involves fabrication of emotions that drive the social machine, and the politics of virtue revived by desperate messianism that can no longer believe in its own truth.

Common Wealth, Common Good: The Politics of Virtue in Early Modern Poland–Lithuania, by Benedict Wagner-Rundell

Common Wealth, Common Good: The Politics of Virtue in Early Modern Poland–Lithuania, by Benedict Wagner-Rundell

Positure in Plato's Laws: An Introduction to Figuration on Civic Education.

Purpose: The aim of the research was to determine the benefits of applying the new Figuration philosophy of dance, based in part on Plato, to civic education. Design/methodology: A close phenomenological reading of Plato’s The Laws, with a strategic focus on its account of the concept of posture. Findings: Plato considers posture to be central to dance education, which in turn is central to civic education, as suggested by concrete analyses of dance based on posture. Research limitations: Further studies on this subject are required in order to achieve a more nuanced and balanced account of the concepts of posture articulated by other philosophers and theorists. Practical implications: More resources must be allocated to dance and dance education, in the interest of fostering civic education, and the political virtue that results therefrom.

Common Wealth, Common Good: The Politics of Virtue in Early Modern Poland‐Lithuania. By Benedict Wagner‐Rundell. Oxford Historical Monographs. Oxford University Press. 2015. xi + 189 pp. £60.00.

Common Wealth, Common Good: The Politics of Virtue in Early Modern Poland‐Lithuania. By Benedict Wagner‐Rundell. Oxford Historical Monographs. Oxford University Press. 2015. xi + 189 pp. £60.00.

Telugu diaspora as soft power: mapping media, cultural ties and political economy with homeland

ABSTRACTThe Telugu diaspora, the second largest Indian linguistic diaspora abroad, plays a key role in influencing the political economy of their home States – Andhra Pradesh and Telangana – as well as their host lands. The intentions of post-globalized Telugu diaspora to continue their traditions and cultural ties, through media and fine arts, with their homelands have in fact transformed the Telugu diaspora itself into a potential source for cultural diplomacy between the two lands. The explosion of Telugu media, Tollywood, mobile, Internet and web-sources, increased earnings and currency exchange of dollar have enabled Telugu diaspora establish numerous Telugu associations across the globe for an increased bi-directional cultural flows and investments in their homelands for their rapid growth and development. Grounded in the centre–periphery model of Ghosh-Schellhorn [2006. “Introduction: A Preface to Peripheral Centers, Central Peripheries.” In Anglophone India and its Diasporas, edited by M. Ghosh-Schellhorn and V. Alexander, 12–35. Munster: Lit Verlag] along the side of Friedman’s tenets of globalization coupled with the definition of ‘soft power’ [Chitty, N. Forthcoming. “Soft Power, Civic Virtue and World Politics.” In Handbook on Soft Power, edited by N. Chitty, G. Rawnsely, J. Simons, and L. Ji. Routledge; Nye, J. Jr. 2004. Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics. Public Affairs/Perseus Books Group; Nye, J. Jr. 2011. The Future of Power. Philadelphia, PA: Public Affairs/Perseus Books Group], the present study tends to map not only the bi-directional cultural flows of Telugu diaspora but also show how these flows perpetuated the caste identities, matrimonial relationships, moral and religious anchoring with the homeland. The study hypothesizes that bi-directional cultural flows that subsume media, television and film industry bear a direct relationship with the political economy of homelands. The study further documents that these bi-directional flows have also transformed Telugu diaspora itself into a flagship resource as a ‘soft power’.

Wagner-Rundell, Benedict Common Wealth, Common Good: The Politics of Virtue in Early-Modern Poland-Lithuania (review)

Wagner-Rundell, Benedict Common Wealth, Common Good: The Politics of Virtue in Early-Modern Poland-Lithuania (review)