Tradition Of Political Philosophy Research Articles

World and alienation in Hannah Arendt’s

Este estudo apresenta uma interpretacao da reflexao de Hannah Arendt acerca do homem com um “ser do mundo” e sobre as mais gerais condicoes mundanas da existencia humana. Nele e analisado de que modo, atraves do exame da inedita desmundanizacao totalitaria, Arendt reconsiderou criticamente a “alienacao” pre-moderna e moderna expressa de formas distintas tanto no quadro conceitual da filosofia politica tradicional quanto na historica ordenacao hierarquica dos mais basicos engajamentos ativos (trabalho, fabricacao e acao) e nao-ativos (pensamento) do homem com o mundo. A alienacao do mundo significa literalmente uma negacao do cosmo (mundus, em latim), uma degradacao de tudo que vincula o homem ao mundo humano e comum, ou ainda, um desequilibrio na plena instituicao e preservacao do mundo, sobretudo do “lado publico do mundo”. Este estudo almeja elucidar, portanto, em que medida os regimes totalitarios desataram o fio da historia ocidental, indicando o surgimento de novas experiencias que, opacas a luz do legado filosofico tradicional, iluminam o passado e os “transes do nosso tempo”, ainda tao vigentes no trânsito das sociedades modernas para o seculo XXI. Palavras-chave: Hannah Arendt, totalitarismo, acao, pensamento, ciencia, tecnologia, filosofia politica.

East/West Relations: Toward a New Definition of a Dialogue

The pleasure of being in Rome is greatly enhanced by honor of addressing this most renowned forum, where so many distin guished persons have presented papers in past thirty years. My sense of honor at appear ing before this forum grew as I paged report on activities of this society since 1947, and I saw there photographs of many whose writings and international works and diplomacy have shaped contemporary mind and contemporary world: Alcide de Gasperi, Paul Henry Spaak, Joseph Luns, Cardinal Casarolli, Mrs. Margaret Thatcher, to name just a few. It is a privilege to participate in this distinguished lecture series. It's also a marvelous pleasure to be in Rome in spring. For me, Rome is a pleasure of a very special sort. It is kind of pleasure which Samuel Johnson called the wine of life and of which St. Augustine wrote it rejoices soul. For me, truly, significance of this city lies less in undoubted beauty of its fountains and its squares, less in richness of its museums and its galleries, or majesty of its great public buildings, less in its dazzling sun and its Mediterranean visage than in its place in our shared history. It takes only a bit of poetic license to see Rome as heart of West ern Civilization?our civilization. Capital of antiquity, capital of Christendom, home of Renaissance and modern mind; Rome has for more than two thousand years reflected essential aspects of Western style of civili zation?the rule of law, mixed constitution, idea of constitutionalism itself. These and other key elements of mod ern liberal democratic tradition are explicated in Italy's rich contributions to modern political philosophy. Certain of these elements seem to me especially crucial to contemporary scene. When I think of Italian tradition in political philosophy and its contributions to world, I think of contribution of Marsiglio, whom many consider very beginning of modern tradition in political philosophy. Marsiglio gave us first modern version of a doctrine of social

Illiberal justice: John Rawls vs. the American political tradition

Often considered the greatest American political philosopher of the twentieth century, and the most important liberal theorist since John Stuart Mill, John Rawls enjoys a practically sacrosanct status among scholars of political theory, law, and ethics. In Illiberal Justice, David Schaefer offers the most thorough challenge to Rawls' doctrine yet published, demonstrating how his teachings deviate from the core tradition of constitutional liberalism as exemplified by leading American statesmen from the founders through Lincoln and beyond. Illiberal Justice is the first comprehensive overview of all of Rawls' writings, emphasizing the continuity in his thought and intention to a greater extent than other scholars have done. Schaefer offers a fundamental critique of both Rawls' conception of political philosophy and the policy judgments he derives from his of justice. Schaefer argues that Rawls' failure to ground his teaching about justice in a serious analysis of human nature or an empirical grasp of political life is symptomatic of a larger crisis within contemporary liberal political and jurisprudential theorizing. Although Rawls is commonly viewed as a welfare-state liberal, Schaefer stresses that his writings actually embody a radical transformation of liberalism in the direction of libertarianism that deviates sharply from the American liberal tradition. Citing empirical evidence of the persistence of political and economic opportunity in America, Schaefer challenges Rawls' allegations that our polity suffers from grave injustices. He points out the strikingly apocalyptic tone of Rawls' last writings, in which Rawls even questions whether human existence is worthwhile if his principles are not actualized. Illiberal Justice is not only a critique of Rawls' political program and philosophic methodology, it is also a defense of the American constitutional order against Rawls' dogmatic theorizing, which Schaefer argues has exercised an increasing, and detrimental, effect on our jurisprudence. By combining a thorough critical exegesis of Rawls' texts with a broad engagement with the tradition of political philosophy and American political thought, Schaefer makes an important contribution to both our understanding of Rawls and the enterprise of political philosophy.

Distributive justice in science and technology policy

This article examines the principles of distributive justice that underlie common rationales and goals in science and technology policy, treating four traditions in political philosophy: libertarian; utilitarian; contractarian; and communitarian. All four approaches play some role in current ST in the effort to maximize public benefit; in programs targeted to disadvantaged groups; and in programs that build community through involvement in research. This variety gives national policy-makers options to mix, match, and grow these elements in their national systems. Making conscious decisions about the mix is important to achieving public goals in science and technology. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.

Representação: palavras, instituições e idéias

Em argumento reconstrutivo, baseado em abordagem própria à filosofia da linguagem, a autora lança mão das transformações seculares nos usos da fala, nas cristalizações ideológicas no plano da filosofia política e nas práticas históricas de representação política para mostrar a emergência das feições distintivas da representação moderna.

Comparing Theories of Sex Discrimination: The Role of Comparison

Academia these days, like politics, tends to be polarized into opposed camps, theoretical or substantive. In any given domain, members of each often conduct more and more rarefied discussions amongst themselves, seldom venturing into the territory of others. It is rare, therefore, to come across a book, like Timothy Macklem’s Beyond Comparison: Sex and Discrimination, that makes the effort to bridge the divide between the analytical tradition in political philosophy and feminist theory. Macklem takes on the issue of sex discrimination—what it is, and what it isn’t—an issue that has, in recent times, mostly been the preserve of feminist scholars. His effort is all the more commendable, and brave, because his main interlocutors are Catharine MacKinnon and Drucilla Cornell, both of whom, in their different ways, have made careers out of trashing analytical philosophy as ‘male’, or liberal, or both, and therefore not (sufficiently) feminist. As interlocutors go, this...

NATURAL RIGHTS AND IMPERIAL CONSTITUTIONALISM: THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE AMERICAN AMALGAM

Robert Nozick worked in a Lockean tradition of political philosophy, a tradition with deep resonance in the American political culture. This paper attempts to explore the formative moments of that culture and at the same time to clarify the role of Lockean philosophy in the American Revolution. One of the currently dominant approaches to the revolution emphasizes the colonists' commitments to their rights, but identifies the relevant rights as “the rights of Englishmen,” not natural rights in the Lockean mode. This approach misses, however, the way the Americans construed their positive or constitutional rights in the light of a Lockean background theory. In a word, the Americans recreated an amalgam of traditional constitutional principles and Lockean philosophy, an amalgam that nearly guaranteed that they and the British would speak past each other. The ambiguities and uncertainties of the British constitution as extended to the colonies provided an incentive to the Americans (but not the British) to look to Locke as a guide to their rights, thereby helping win a place for Lockean theory in American political thinking.

Democratic Hyperbole

Democratic Hyperbole Marc Goldschmit Translated from French by Samir Haddad It is said that in recent years Derrida’s thought had become ethical and political, thereby correcting a serious flaw for any philosophy. The turn would be all the more visible to the extent that, prior to 1990, his thought obviously lacked a political philosophy. However, we should be wary of this apparent absence and not forget that in his thought and writing Derrida did not cease to challenge and contest the characteristics of visible or phenomenal presence. We might thus suspect that ethics and politics are not simply “absent” from the texts before 1990, even if they do not have the same order of visibility as in books such as Rogues and Philosophy in a Time of Terror.1 We can even elliptically point to signs and indications of the political import of the pre-1990 texts, which worked to continually transform and stratify themselves and each other rather than dialectically contradict each other. The most insistent gesture of writing in the early publications consisted of overturning and then displacing, sometimes generalizing, the concept of what had always been repressed and devalued. Before generalizing writing, Derrida effectively overturned the subordination of the letter and the trace to the voice and living speech, thereby showing that the process of writing constantly structures metaphysical texts, albeit in a self-effacing and ruinous manner. This systematic gesture, without system — overturning, displacing, generalizing — is the principle of the deconstruction of power. It signifies the general political import of all of Derrida’s writings, even if this import is not visible according to the schemas and expectations of traditional political philosophy. Allow me to present some visible marks of this general political import. The revolutionary analysis of Plato’s Phaedrus, published in 1972,2 brought to light the manner in which the philosophico-Platonic determination of writing as anti-substance, without a father, irresponsible and incapable of defending itself, is inseparable from the path and democratic stakes of the case against the sophistry which defined philosophy. In Of Grammatology (1967), the chapter devoted to Lévi-Strauss showed how power and violence are implicated in writing, at its origin, thus signifying that Derrida did not think writing without politics. He showed in the same chapter that Lévi-Strauss’ critique of ethnocentrism rests on an underlying ethnocentrism all the more irreducible because it remains invisible. The Derridean deconstruction of democratic good conscience will always be accompanied by the thought of democracy as a hyperbolic demand — this double strategy was pursued and complicated in 1987 when Derrida interrogated the diabolical logic at work in the Heideggerian spiritualization of Nazism.3 Heidegger’s political engagement avoided racism and biologism, in the name of spirit, at the price of an overvaluation of Nazism. Heidegger saved himself from Nazism as biological racism by investing in it and thinking it as a movement of spiritual essence. It is thus there where he would no longer belong to Nazism at all that this engagement would become more Nazi, more-than-Nazi. At the price of uncompromisingly rigorous analyses, Derrida thus showed that discourses in opposition to fascism, to Nazism, and to Heidegger are made in the name of an axiomatic (for example that of humanism, of spirit or of human rights) that shares fatally in the metaphysics (of subjectivity) that structures that which these discourses oppose. Every political position is thus dangerously shaken, contaminated by its other, and democracy is menaced in its possibility by such a logic of diabolical contamination. Derrida can thus find the “place” of his thought only on the outer limits of political philosophy, where his thought signals towards another heading, in truth to the other of the philosophical heading and of philosophy as heading.4 In order to measure the enormous spacing and interval opened up by Derrida within political philosophy, we should perhaps begin with the large question of right, that is to say the question of law, justice and the juridical. In other words, we should begin with the form in which political philosophy has come to think power, the state, society, freedom, and violence on the basis of these concepts. In “Force...

The Past, Present, and Future of Information Policy

The profile of information policy in academic and policy-making circles has been rising in recent decades, a function, presumably, of the expansion of an ‘information society’. Nevertheless, there is widespread confusion over its meaning and purpose. This paper seeks to produce a clearer picture, building on useful groundwork in information science and other disciplines. The history of information policy is traced, featuring exposition of the pioneering contribution of Marc Porat in the 1970s. The present state of information policy is then described, with particular reference to some salient themes of current literature: issue inventories (i.e. the scope of information policy); academic identity (including a critique of attempts to appropriate information policy for one discipline); and the ideal – or, it is argued, illusion – of a ‘national information policy’. In the final section of the paper, some suggestions are made for the future direction of information policy. First, information policy should engage much more thoroughly with the tradition of political philosophy. Second, information policy may benefit from more forays into the field of futures studies. Finally, it is proposed that information policy could be positioned as a subset of the interdisciplinary specialism of information society studies, in which case its definition might be resolved in terms of the ‘normative theory of the information society’

Deleuze and the liberal tradition: normativity, freedom and judgement

This paper is a critical review article of Paul Patton's book, Deleuze and the Political , and analyzes the relationship between Deleuze and the 'liberal' tradition of political philosophy. It focuses on three concepts drawn from the liberal tradition - normativity, freedom and judgment - and in each case shows how these concepts are capable of being transformed in light of Deleuze's philosophy. For Deleuze, a truly 'normative' principle must be a principle of creation as well as critique: it must not only provide norms for condemning abuses of power, but also a means for transforming norms that have themselves become abuses of power. From a Deleuzian perspective, the normative is thus seen as the condition for the production of the new. The liberal notion of 'negative freedom' in turn finds itself transformed into the stronger notion of 'critical freedom' (Tully), which entails the freedom to critique and create, to transform (and not merely pursue) one's own interest and desires. This entails, finally, an exercise of a kind of judgement outside pre-existing rules or norms that would be truly creative of the new (e.g. the production of new rights). A concluding section of the concept of the 'social imaginary’ shows how Deleuze's work might contribute to a transformation and rejuvenation of the liberal tradition itself.

Self-Government

Focuses on self-government in republican liberty. Pros and cons of republican liberty; Triadic concept of liberty; foundational assumptions of different traditions of political philosophy.

Hobbes's contempt for opinions: Manipulation and the challenge for mass democracies

Thomas Hobbes denied both that opinion provides access to truth and that it ought to be protected from political manipulation. Hobbes knew that his contempt for opinion put him at odds with the classical tradition of political philosophy. What he could not have known was that it also would put him at odds with modern, liberal democracy, which protects opinions—the opinions of the public—that it cannot invest with truth value.

On Cropsey's World: Joseph Cropsey and the Tradition of Political Philosophy

Throughout his corpus, Joseph Cropsey reflects upon the tradition of political philosophy. Those reflections can be fruitfully approached under four headings. First, Cropsey questions the nature and origins of political philosophy as well as its cosmological or metaphysical foundations. Second, Cropsey questions the customary periodizations of the tradition of political philosophy. He especially questions the usefulness of the ancients-moderns distinction. Third, Cropsey reflects upon the relation between the tradition of political philosophy and concrete political life past and present. In the process, he tries to show the ways in which comprehensive constellations of ideas work their way into and inform everyday life. Fourth, Cropsey reflects upon the nature of the American regime and its prospects for the future. Throughout, it becomes clear that Cropsey has engaged in an ongoing dialogue with his mentor Leo Strauss. Finally, it also becomes clear, contrary to recent assertions made in response toPlato's World, that Cropsey engages in a series of subtle critiques of Nietzschean and Heideggerian historicism and thereby of contemporary postmodernism as well.

Mapping the Terrain of Time—Space Compression: Power Networks in Everyday Life

In this paper I seek a more comprehensive mapping of the experience of time—space in late modernity. I develop Massey's critique of the work of Harvey and Jameson in their reading of time space compression as a socially uniform experience of disorientation. Building on Massey's notion of ‘power geometry’ I integrate discussions of time—space with an application of different understandings of power (from traditional political philosophy, Marxism, and poststructuralism) and their manifestations—in latent-power conditions, socioeconomic networks, actor networks, ‘local’ interpersonal relations, and the network spaces of subjectivity. Rather than being posited as irreconcilable conceptions, these versions of power and their articulations can be seen as initial coordinates in the mapping of the complexities of the experiences of time and space in late modernity.

Gassendi's ethics: freedom in a mechanistic universe

This is the first book to explore the ethical thought of Pierre Gassendi, the seventeenth-century French priest who rehabilitated Epicurean philosophy in the Western tradition. Lisa T. Sarasohn's discussion of the relationship between Gassendi's philosophy of nature and his ethics discloses the underlying unity of his philosophy and elucidates this critical figure in the intellectual revolution. Sarasohn demonstrates that Gassendi's ethics was an important part of his attempt to Christianize Epicureanism. She shows how Gassendi integrated ideas of human freedom into a neo-Epicurean ethic where pleasure is the highest good, yet maintained a consistent belief in Christian providence. These views challenged what were then the new systems of philosophy, Hobbesian materialism and Cartesian rationalism. Sarasohn places Gassendi in his historical and intellectual context, considering him in relation to contemporary philosophers and within the patronage system that conditioned his own freedom. She investigates the links between his ethical thought and philosophy of science and makes sense of his attacks on astrology. Finally, her work clarifies Pierre Gassendi's considerable influence on seventeenth-century ethical and political philosophy, particularly on the work of John Locke-and thus on the whole English liberal tradition in political philosophy.

What Can Philosophy Teach Us About Multiculturalism?

Multiculturalism is an increasingly important topic for philosophers, largely because of the practical problems posed by diversity. Traditional political philosophy had little to say about cultural difference, taking the existence of a shared language and culture pretty much for granted. The multicultural societies of the contemporary world make such assumptions untenable. Traditional questions of fairness and sovereignty find hard cases in such policy issues as immigration, education, criminal law, and freedom of expression.

Politics and the Problem of Technology: An Essay on Heidegger and the Tradition of Political Philosophy

I examine Heidegger's postmodern interpretation of technology, with an eye to exposing its weaknesses. I do this by showing that his view entails an understanding of the tradition of political philosophy that cannot do justice to that tradition's own understanding of the character of technology. I consider first Plato and Aristotle and then Hobbes and Locke in order to suggest that Heidegger's view that modern politics are stamped by technological metaphysics can be challenged on two related grounds: (1) it assumes incorrectly that the tradition is dominated by dogmatic metaphysics; (2) it prevents us from seeing how some in the tradition both understood and doubted the possibility of a technological stamp. I then suggest an alternative view of technology that might account better for the character of technology and political life.

Existentialism Politicized: Arendt's Debt to Jaspers

There has been much debate about how to locate Hannah Arendt within the tradition of political philosophy. This article argues for an “existentialist” reading, claiming that Karl Jaspers's categories reappear, politicized, in Arendt's own thought. Her language and arguments do not, in fact, become completely intelligible until read in the context of Jaspers's Existentz philosophy. The authors contend that the apparent obscurity and ambiguity of Arendt's writings owe to her attempt to stretch the framework of existentialism to fit the milieu of classical antiquity, to which it is fundamentally alien. Conversely, Arendt appropriated only those aspects of Aristotelian theory that suited her existentially defined concerns while ignoring the rest, a procedure that accounts for many of the tensions and contradictions found in her work.

Marxism, Materialism and Historical Progress

The theory of historical materialism is the core commitment of Marx’s social theory. More than his views on markets, philosophical methods, the state and social institutions, it is this theory which sets Marx’s views apart from alternative traditions in political philosophy. Marx believes that there is a tendency for societies to make moral and material progress. The point of Marx’s theory of historical materialism is to offer a theory of the mechanisms which produce this tendency. However, in Marx’s own formulation, the precise nature of these mechanisms remains obscure. In The German Ideology, Marx emphasizes the growth of human productive powers as the fundamental cause of historical change and progress: social forms (e.g., feudalism, capitalism) change in order to adapt to the requirements of further productive development. By contrast, in The Communist Manifesto and the Grundrisse, Marx emphasizes the desires and interests of classes as fundamental to explaining social change. Here, it is class struggles (aimed at ending specific conditions of oppression) which determine not only when an old social form will be replaced by a new one, but also the nature of the new social form itself. Marx never specifies the connection between these two explanations of historical change, between the development of human productive powers and class struggles. In particular, Marx is not explicit as to whether there are two distinct mechanisms at work in the production of historical progress, or only one.

Luck

John Donne's song was hardly written in the tradition of political philosophy, but it has a good deal to say about the theme of luck, both good and bad, which I want to address. There is no doubt but that bad luck has bad consequences for the persons who suffer from it. If there were a costless way in which the consequences of bad luck could be spread across everyone in society at large, without increasing the risk of its occurrence, then most of us would pronounce ourselves better off for the change. In this sense it can be said, for example, that there is a utilitarian grounding for a moral obligation to care and provide for those persons who suffer the fortunes of bad luck. For the sake of argument I do not wish to contest this particular starting point, although there are many who would. Instead, I want to ask the question of whether this moral obligation should be converted into a legal obligation, backed by public force. The dominant answer to that question today is yes. Even those who think that markets should determine decisions on production find that the state has a proper role to reduce the adverse consequences of bad luck. My cast of mind is more skeptical. In life, or, in this instance, politics, “come bad chance, and we do join to it our strength.” In general the effort to use coercion to counter the adverse effects of luck tends only to make matters worse.