Radical Pluralism Research Articles

Radical pluralism and free speech in online public spaces

• Progressive political movements and activists are not the only ones appropriating Web 2.0 as a way to construct independent public spaces and voice counter-hegemonic discourses. By studying (post-) fascist movements, it will be shown that the internet also gives rise to anti-public spaces, voicing hatred and essentialist discourses. In this article, discourses of hate produced by North Belgian (post-)fascist movements and activists will be analysed. Theoretically the analysis is informed by radical pluralism and the limits of freedom of speech in a strong democracy. The cases presented challenge the limits of freedom of speech and of radical pluralism, and bring us to question whether being a racist is a democratic right, whether freedom of speech includes opinions and views that challenge basic democratic values. •

Nietzsche's Critique of Democracy (1870—1886)

Abstract This article reconstructs Nietzsche's shifting views on democracy in the period 1870—86 with reference to his enduring preoccupation with tyrannical concentrations of power and the conviction that radical pluralism offers the only effective form of resistance. As long as he identifies democracy with pluralism (Human, All Too Human), he sympathizes with it as a site of resistance and emancipation. From around 1880 on, however, Nietzsche increasingly links it with tyranny, in the form of popular sovereignty, and with the promotion of uniformity, to the exclusion of genuine pluralism. Democracy's emancipatory claims are reinterpreted as “misarchism,” or hatred of authority, and Nietzsche looks to the “exceptional beings” excluded by democracy for sources of resistance to the “autonomous herd” and “mob rule.” Against elitist readings of this move, it is argued that Nietzsche opposes the domination of the herd type under democracy from a standpoint in human diversity and a generic concern with the future of humankind. Exceptional individuals are conceived in pluralistic, agonal terms, as a community of legislators engaged in a process of transvaluation that serves the interests not of one or a few but of all of us: “the self-overcoming of the human.”

Nietzsche's Critique of Democracy (1870—1886)

Abstract This article reconstructs Nietzsche's shifting views on democracy in the period 1870—86 with reference to his enduring preoccupation with tyrannical concentrations of power and the conviction that radical pluralism offers the only effective form of resistance. As long as he identifies democracy with pluralism (Human, All Too Human), he sympathizes with it as a site of resistance and emancipation. From around 1880 on, however, Nietzsche increasingly links it with tyranny, in the form of popular sovereignty, and with the promotion of uniformity, to the exclusion of genuine pluralism. Democracy's emancipatory claims are reinterpreted as “misarchism,” or hatred of authority, and Nietzsche looks to the “exceptional beings” excluded by democracy for sources of resistance to the “autonomous herd” and “mob rule.” Against elitist readings of this move, it is argued that Nietzsche opposes the domination of the herd type under democracy from a standpoint in human diversity and a generic concern with the future of humankind. Exceptional individuals are conceived in pluralistic, agonal terms, as a community of legislators engaged in a process of transvaluation that serves the interests not of one or a few but of all of us: “the self-overcoming of the human.”

Nursing and the reality of politics

Notwithstanding the remarkable achievements made by medical science over the last half of the twentieth century, there is a palpable sense that a strictly medical view of human health, that is one founded on modernist assumptions, has become problematic, if not counterproductive. In this study, I argue that as nursing continues to eagerly welcome and indeed champion medical epistemology in the form of knowledge transfer, evidence-based practice, research utilization, outcomes-based practice, quantifiable efficiency and effectiveness, it risks becoming little more than a medical science addendum and indeed one that inherits the problems now facing contemporary medicine. The purpose of this study then is to attempt to resituate nursing as a discipline at work within an ontopolitical matrix of radical democratic pluralism. I begin by tracing a philosophical line from Kuhn's paradigms to Bloor's strong programme of Sociology of Scientific Knowledge. Following this, I attempt to explicate the thought of Bruno Latour as a philosophical alternative to Sociology of Scientific Knowledge. Next, I outline the radical pluralism of William Connolly in an effort to demonstrate its similarity to Latour's philosophy and finally how such a position is germane to contemporary nursing and the reality of politics. I do this with reference to the controversial issue of illicit drug use and harm reduction. In effect, I argue that such an issue cannot be dealt with using scientific evidence alone, but rather requires a philosophy of advocacy, what I term democratic advocacy, that is capable of responding to the politics of suffering, which is to say suffering that results from identity/difference.

The Perennial Relevance of Saint Paul: Paul's Understanding of Christ and a Time of Radical Pluralism

This article examines Pauline christology through a series of five theses and argues that Paul saw in Christ the fulness of the human rather than the fulness of the divine. Paul's christology inspired his openness as an apostle to the gentiles; it did not effect a “Christian particularism” as later exclusivist christologies would do. Paul's work of embracing pluralism was done under an inclusive symbol of salvation that could underwrite respect for difference and at the same time articulate a community within a common humanity. A return to Paul's christology today could provide for Christians a constructive and critical basis for the encounter with modern religious pluralism.

The Birth of a New Intellectual Left in Poland?

This paper considers the growth of a new left intellectual movement in Poland: Krytyka Polityczna. This group, led by the sociologist Słavomir Sierakowski, has brought a new discourse into the Polish political debate and challenged the ruling right-wing hegemony in the country. With the country's political scene dominated by two parties of the right, Krytyka Polityczna has added an alternative left-wing voice to the political debate. It has offered a new strategic thinking for the Polish left and confronted the mainstream left's capitulation to the right-wing hegemony. However, Krytyka Polityczna's language and activities are predominantly directed towards the liberal intellectual milleu. It has remained within the confines of a liberal democratic ideology, promoting ideas of a radical pluralist democracy, and thus failing to expand support for left wing ideas within large sections of Polish society and fuelling the suspicion that it is a creature of the establishment. Its growth therefore highlights the weakness of the Polish left and the failure of the labour movement in Poland to impose a real alternative to the dominance of the conservative right.

Pluralism, radical pluralism and the politics of the Big Bang

Imagine that, in your travels, you meet an earth systems scientist. She says that she is a total earth systems scientist. She is looking for one, single, concise, clean, elegant theory to explain E...

The Mode and Limits of Mill's Toleration

John Stuart Mill's liberal theory of toleration has long been a target of conservatives, who believe that Mill tolerates too much that ought to be prohibited. More recently, some contemporary liberals have joined conservatives in criticizing Mill's theory of toleration. Taking their lead from John Rawls, political liberals question Mill's attachment to a comprehensive conception of the good - a substantive form of human flourishing, in other words - that not all reasonable persons can accept. In contrast, some radical pluralists - taking their lead from Isaiah Berlin and, more recently, John Gray - criticize Mill's reliance upon a theory of progress. This essay argues that Mill's theory of toleration draws upon a set of plausible claims concerning the interconnections of security, liberty, progress, and character-formation. It defends Mill's theory from political liberal and radical pluralist charges of the intolerance of Mill's liberalism.

Child‐Rearing: On government intervention and the discourse of experts

For Kant, education was understood as the ‘means’ to become human—and that is to say, rational. For Rousseau by contrast, and the many child‐centred educators that followed him, the adult world, far from representing reason, is essentially corrupt and given over to the superficialities of worldly vanity. On this view, the child, as a product of nature, is essentially good and will learn all she needs to know from experience. Both positions have their own problems, but beyond this ‘internal debate’, the change in the content of education (i.e. child‐rearing and schooling) is now furthermore due to a radical pluralism that has swept the world. Moreover, there may be differences in value between individual parents and between values held within the family and those held in society at large. Among other reasons this has put more generally children's (and parents’) ‘rights’ on the agenda, which differs from thinking of education in terms of a ‘practice’. The paper develops this latter concept and the criticisms to which it has been subject and argues that there is no necessary incompatibility between initiation into an existing practice and transforming that practice in some way, if it is emphasized how practices are learned and enacted. It then turns to the tendency in education and child‐rearing, as in other spheres of human interaction, for more laws and codes of conduct and to call upon experts for all kind of matters. It argues that performativity rules on the level of the practitioner, of the experts, and even on the level of educational research. It argues that many governments have adopted in matters of schooling the language of output and school effectiveness and that something similar is now bound to happen in the sphere of child‐rearing (with talk of parenting skills and courses). This is made credible due to a particular model of educational research, i.e. an empiricist quasi‐causal model of explaining human behaviour. The paper then discusses the problems with this stance and argues that we should part company from the entrepreneurial manipulative educator to open up a sphere of responsiveness for the child and that for these reasons, the concept of the ‘practice of child‐rearing’ should be revisited. Insisting on the complexities that have to be taken into account and thus surpassing a discourse of effectiveness and output as well as of codes of conduct and rulings of courts of law, may help us to focus on what is really at stake: to lead a meaningful life, to be initiated into what is ‘real for us’ and what we value. It concludes that thus restoring a place for child‐rearing as a practice will do justice to the responsiveness to which each child is entitled.

Class, State and Democracy: Laski, Miliband and the Search for a Synthesis

Socialism comprises several distinct traditions but, for much of the twentieth century, it also struggled to define its position in relation both to the revolutionary Marxist claim that all forms of capitalist state were class dictatorships and to the liberal concept of democracy. This article accepts that there are contradictions between the Marxist and liberal positions, but suggests that these can be embraced positively by socialists. It explores the ideas of Harold Laski and Ralph Miliband to demonstrate this. There were some similarities between the two theorists, but their trajectories differed. Laski began with a radical pluralist perspective into which he later attempted to incorporate a Marxist critique of capitalism, while Miliband started as a Marxist but increasingly sought to integrate strands of thought associated with liberalism into his outlook. The article explains why the positions of both thinkers evolved over time and the comparative discussion highlights their insights into some key problems in socialist political theory. More generally, it concludes that both the liberal and Marxist traditions are a necessary part of socialist thought on class, democracy and the state.

Raimon Panikkar's Cosmotheandrism — Theologizing at the Meeting Point of Hinduism and Christianity

AbstractRaimon Panikkar (b. 1918), a Catalan-born Hindu-Christian, is a prominent theorist of interreligious dialogue. This article provides an analysis of his theology of religions. On the basis of the most recent sources available, it appears that even his 'radical pluralism' cannot eschew the inherent problems characteristic of pluralistic theologies of religions.Unlike other pluralists, Panikkar does not subscribe to the Enlightenment tradition. Instead, his plea for the transformation of religions is based on an idiosyncratic 'Cosmotheandrism', which draws on both primordial religious traditions and existentialist philosophy. The prerequisites of interreligious dialogue, as outlined in his work, thus entail commitment to a particular cosmology and mode of consciousness.

Some Evidence of a Pluralistic Discipline: A Narrative Analysis of Public Administration Symposia

This article investigates the discipline of public administration as it is manifested in symposium articles published during the period 1985–99. What was the field trying to accomplish? The method of investigation is narrative analysis. Using specific discourse markers (method, substantive contents, and authorial intentions), the authors found a wide variety of purposes and projects in the symposia investigated. The condition of public administration, they conclude, is distinguished by a radical pluralism—a striking absence of any singular conception of public administration scholarship.

Different Paths, Different Summits: A Model for Religious Pluralism (review)

Reviewed by: Different Paths, Different Summits: A Model for Religious Pluralism John B. Cobb Jr. Different Paths, Different Summits: A Model for Religious Pluralism. By Stephen Kaplan. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002. Pp. xi + 187. Those of us who believe that religious traditions are radically different from one another are divided between two camps. One camp holds that they are simply incommensurable. Participants in this camp often emphasize the decisive importance of language. They may argue that each language creates its own world within which every part of the symbolic system has its meaning in its relation to other parts of the system. Since language does not refer to a nonlinguistic reality, there is no possibility of translation among languages. Some who recognize the possibility of translation for some parts of the linguistic systems still reject any such possibility in the sphere of religion. It is in this sphere that the denial that language has nonlinguistic reference is most firmly insisted upon. It is urged that each religious system is simply what it is. The second group, the one to which I belong, holds that religious language does have referential character, and that dialogue, although complex and difficult, is possible and fruitful. But against those who hold that all religions are speaking, in their very diverse ways, of the same reality, we hold that the reality to which reference is made is multiple or diverse. It is our belief that the concrete and detailed study of religious experience and of the language through which it comes to expression enables us to distinguish these diverse references. To the best of my knowledge, Stephen Kaplan has written the first book-length argument in favor of this view. He entitles it, quite appropriately, Different Paths, Different [End Page 367] Summits. The contrast, of course, is with the common image of different paths up a single mountain to the same summit. Those of us who take this approach do not believe that every religious path leads to a different summit. Whether two paths lead to the same or different summits is to be decided on the basis of careful study of the traditions that follow these paths. Kaplan develops a threefold typology. One path is that of the theists, who seek communion with God. Another is that of Advaita Vedānta, which aims at final identity with the changeless real. A third is that of many forms of Buddhism, which seek to realize the wholly processive and interconnected character of all reality including the self. Kaplan rightly emphasizes his agreement with those who stress the importance of language and culture in shaping religious experience as well as its articulation. He does not take this to mean that we cannot discern families of experience, such as the experiences of those who seek communion with God. The experiences of those with this goal in diverse traditions differ in their imagery. The language used to speak of the experience is that of a particular community. But the judgment that what constitutes experience in multiple communities is theistic reality fits many of them. There are thus several paths to the same summit. But not all religious paths are directed to this theistic summit. Kaplan understands that a main objection to this radical religious pluralism is the deep-seated assumption that reality cannot have more than one fundamental character. If it is theistic, then the Hindu and Buddhist versions are in error. If either of them is correct, then all differing views are illusory. To adopt a radical pluralism is, then, in principle, to force a profound choice among religious traditions, holding that two out of three groups of traditions fail to provide paths up any mountain at all. Kaplan responds to this objection thoughtfully and thoroughly. He finds in David Bohm's holographic model a clue to how three very different views of reality may all be justified by one reality. Bohm holds that the hologram illustrates and embodies the distinction between the implicate and the explicate orders. The implicate order is represented by the plate on which are inscribed the results of laser beams. When these are projected they give rise to an explicate order of...

Usual Culture: The Jet

This paper argues that the advent of the turbo jet engine and consequent acceleration in the construction of temporal-spatial dimension enabled novel social and cultural capability. The scientific and mythic aspects of jet power have played out in Canada, from the innovative theorization of Marshall McLuhan to the Avro Arrow and SARS incidents. Assessing the impact of jet propulsion, this paper proposes that while allied with older systems and tropes, jet travel stimulated the consolidation of a broad arena of practice defined as usual culture. The theorization involves the assertion of a prior and heightened interdependence between technology and cultural practice. The focus is upon registers of literary representation that recount the transformative and disruptive outcomes of the rapid transcontinental interchange of the individual body and bodies of knowledge. A further analytic is the redefinition of the aesthetic with respect to technology, especially aeronautical, in Modern Movement discourse. Notwithstanding contrary corporate and political agency, the jet is held to enact the radical pluralism envisaged by Modernism.

Global Justice and the Challenge of Radical Pluralism

Political philosophy has been under the sway of a certain picture since Rawls’s A Theory of Justice was published in 1971. This picture combines the idea that the problem of justice should be approached from the direction of ideal normative theory, and that there are some anchoring ideas that secure the justificatory role of a hypothetical agreement. I think this picture and the hold it has over political philosophy is beginning to fragment. This fragmentation I think is most evident in the skepticism that has become a routine response to the Kantian idea that ‘we’ can ‘discover’ the terms of an agreement that has both a categorical force and a universal scope. But as the picture fragments we are still left with the framework and vocabulary of Rawls’s difficult and elaborate theory. The major difficulty confronting the Rawlsian project (the problem of pluralism as I will argue below) is itself defined in terms of Rawls’s conceptual language. And this serves only to obscure the real challenge and keep us ‘bewitched’ by Rawls’s narrow way of seeing issues. In being bewitched in this way we do not see that the problem of pluralism confronts Rawls’s project as a whole, rather than requiring adjustments and accommodations.

What is Politics? The Approach of Radical Pluralism

In this article I evaluate the conceptions of politics and of ‘the political’ characteristic of ‘radical pluralism’. I argue that in order to comprehend the radically pluralist conception of politics it is necessary to grasp the post-structuralist critique of the philosophical principle of identity. The concern with the interface between politics and ethics – which is typical of the radical pluralist approach – is also explored. Throughout the article contrast is made with the conventional pluralism of American political science. I conclude with a consideration of the importance of radical pluralism, with reference to the difficulties this may present for the methods and suppositions of political science traditionally understood.

Pluralismo y unidad: la relevancia práctica de la idea metafísica de participación.

The post-modern pleading for radical pluralism has an ant-itotalitarian intention: it is directed against the idea of a unitary science as well as against the idea of a progress in history and demands the acception of the otherness of the other. Because the postmodern concept of pluralism shares with the totalitarian concept of unity (oppposed by it) the same presupposition -the anti-thesis of singularity and pluraility- the concept of pluralism is itself totalitarian. Whereas participative unity does not exclude diversity, but includes it. The practical relevance of the concept of participation is that it is not subject to the dialectic of diversity negating unity and unity negating diversity, because wherein everything comes together is exactly wherin everything is distinguished. A true pleading for plurality includes concern about community.

Environmental decisions and theories of justice: Implications for economic analysis and policy practice

This article examines the implications of pluralism for environmental decision-making and governance in the globalizing world. It first discusses how environmental governance is needed to deal with environmental conflicts and interdependencies caused by the attributes of environmental resources and their users. The article argues that globalization engenders large-scale interdependencies and conflicts that involve increasingly heterogeneous individuals and organizations. The article suggests that the resulting radical pluralism will underline the role of justice in providing reasons and justifications for collective environmental decisions and will shift emphasis from distributive justice to procedural justice. The article concludes by discussing solutions that would take justice concerns into account in environmental governance. *** DIRECT SUPPORT *** A03DH034 00004

Community and radical democracy

Radical democracy encompasses a variety of thinkers who are concerned with theories of political renewal and the invigoration of the public sphere. Commentators such as Chantal Mouffe and William Connolly have sought to demonstrate the political and democratic implications of diversity and value pluralism. The conceptual tool that is frequently employed in these discourses of difference is community. Unlike mainstream theorizations of community that have emerged within contemporary third way thinking, radical democracy does not seek to manufacture consensus out of difference. Instead it argues that social diversity gives rise to incommensurable value pluralism, which in turn may generate conflict and dissent. Radical democracy implies an expansion of political debate as a means of grappling with a multiplicity of communities within society. Thus, whilst sharing some of the conceptual tools of the Third Way in contemporary social democracy, radical pluralism points to an opening out, rather than a closure, of political debate.

A Strategic Approach to Multistakeholder Negotiations

Environment and development practitioners increasingly are interested in identifying methods, institutional arrangements and policy environments that promote negotiations among natural resource stakeholders leading to collective action and, it is hoped, sustainable resource management. Yet the implications of negotiations for disadvantaged groups of people are seldom critically examined. We draw attention to such implications by examining different theoretical foundations for multistakeholder negotiations and linking these to practical problems for disadvantaged groups. We argue that negotiations based on an unhealthy combination of communicative rationality and liberal pluralism, which underplays or seeks to neutralize differences among stakeholders, poses considerable risks for disadvantaged groups. We suggest that negotiations influenced by radical pluralist and feminist post‐structuralist thought, which emphasize strategic behaviour and selective alliance‐building, promise better outcomes for disadvantaged groups in most cases, particularly on the scale and in the historical contexts in which negotiations over forest management usually take place.