Locke, Darwin, and the American Science of Modern Virtue

American “progress” has typically been reconstructed in terms of the Lockean understanding of who we are. That “progress” is only ambiguously progress. It highlights the truth about our personal freedom, but at the expense of the truth about who we are as free and relational beings. So our Lockeanism receives and deserves Darwinian criticism—criticism from the point of view of the social animals evolutionary theory says we are. This article is a scientific prelude to our openness to a theory that incorporates what’s true about Locke, what’s true about Darwin, and more.     

思想路线问题是中国革命和建设的一个根本问题

能否坚持实事求是的思想路线问题,是中国革命和建设的一个根本问题,它关系到中国革命和建设需不需要马克思主义科学理论的指导,关系到我们能否把握到中国革命和建设的真谛,关系到我们能否把中国革命和建设从一个胜利推向另一个胜利.在新时期新阶段,面对复杂多变的客观形势,要坚持好实事求是的思想路线,必须有正确的立场,必须有一种批评与自我批评的精神,必须要以民主作保证,必须要有一种坚持真理的勇气,必须要以不断提高我们的能力作保证.     

Transitional Injustice: Subverting Justice in Transition and Postconflict Societies

Diverse in many respects, one unifying element of research on transitional justice (TJ) concerns the fact that predicted outcomes of these processes are normatively appealing; specifically, advocates argue TJ promotes truth and reconciliation, prevents armed conflict and increases democratization. This perspective further assumes that justice efforts are implemented with these goals in mind. We argue that it is possible for governments to implement TJ without maintaining an interest in truth, peace, or democracy but rather with the intention of promoting denial and forgetting, perpetuating violence, and legitimating authoritarianism—a process we call transitional injustice. In this article, we provide indicators by which scholars and policy makers can determine if transitional injustice is taking place. To further our argument, we conduct a detailed examination of Rwandan politics following the violence of 1994 and demonstrate the ways in which the Rwandan state has been able to use justice processes towards alternative ends.     

Speaking the truth

Suspicion regarding the notion of truth is a characteristic feature of much contemporary thought. Often this suspicion is based in a view that takes truth to be a notion associated with a discredited view of knowledge or with an oppressive and exclusionary politics. That the very possibility of knowledge, and so of our access to the truth, can be put in question and that truth itself always operates within a political dimension are not, of course, claims that can be denied. Nor can it be denied that knowledge, truth and power are closely tied together. But these considerations should prompt us to a reappraisal of the notion of truth that sees it as more, not less, significant. This paper is an attempt to begin such a reappraisal and to attend, not merely to the truth. Speaking the truth is not something the successful achievement of which can, in every case, be guaranteed in advance; yet neither is it something that we can abandon or ignore.     

Ideology after the Collapse of Communism

The collapse ofcommunism has not. as might be expected, led to the end of ideologies. Instead of the grand rcvolutionary projects of the past, however, we now have a set of overlapping fragments of revelation which cooperatc with each other in social transformation. These fragments exhibit an 'identity monism' which can tell us something about the character of ideology in general. This form of monism is the necessary condition of turning a modern state into a managed enterprise for the satisfaction of human needs-a project which happens also to be adumbrated in much normative political philosophy. A managed civil state responds to opinion rather than interest. and the opinions on which the project rests commend themselves by some version of self-evidence.     

Derrida, Lyotard and the Orientations of a New Academic Responsibility

The paper examines the ethics of research and knowledge as it is constructed in the postmodern, technophilic university. It takes as its premise that the modern university is driven by research that is funded by external sources and therefore is directed or guided toward questions that arise outside of the university. Academic responsibility therefore must take into account not only the duty to questions of knowledge and truth but to the nature of who that knowledge will serve and how. The paper looks at these questions through the work of Jacques Derrida and Jean-Francois Lyotard to understand the ethical problems the question of research pose for educational institutions and those who live within their walls.     

直觉主义伦理中的显见义务论

直觉主义伦理学家罗斯试图通过提出显见义务论来解决道德冲突问题。显见义务就是正确的、有约束力的、应该被履行的、没有与之竞争的义务。在遇有道德冲突时,由于显见义务不证自明的特性,人们凭直觉就可以直接知道应该履行哪一种义务。然而,由于作为显见义务及其基础——直觉本身的缺陷,显见义务论并没有达到它解决道德冲突的目的。     

Designing truth: Facilitating perpetrator testimony at truth commissions

Truth commissions aim to promote transparency, accountability, and reconciliation by compiling detailed narratives of political violence. To achieve this end, both victims and perpetrators of abuses must testify. Yet, little is known about how commissions can be designed to facilitate perpetrator testimony. This article develops a theory of perpetrator participation in truth commissions, with a focus on institutional design. The article then evaluates the effectiveness of four design features—amnesties, subpoena powers, dual-party agreements, and spiritual frameworks—in facilitating perpetrator testimony in the truth commissions in Sierra Leone, South Africa, and Timor-Leste. The analysis indicates that the theoretical constructs developed are present, functional, and influential for perpetrator participation in the three commissions. And, while no individual design feature is essential, the case studies reveal that perpetrator participation may not be forthcoming without a robust dual-party agreement and/or a resonant spiritual framework. This underscores the importance of normative foundations for perpetrators’ engagement with commissions. Crucially, though advantageous features may be present, the criteria required for them to function may not be met, resulting in no effect or a negative effect on participation.     

Manliness,Religion, and Our Manly Scientists

The source of the manly exaggerations characteristic of members of our species is our abstract and idealistic ability to imagine ourselves as more than we really are. Our scientists are right that religious cruelty has often been the product of our manly inclination to exaggerate our personal importance. Our scientists, however, characteristically forget that we also have the abstract and idealistic ability to imagine ourselves as less than we really are. Surely their theoretical manliness or proud self-transcendence is also unrealistically self-confident, and it can even produce its own forms of “dehumanizing” cruelty. In spite of our scientists’ criticisms, the truth will always be known by a particular person, and any realistic account of all we can know must include room for persons.

After the Truth Commission: Gender and Citizenship in Timor-Leste

This article explores the relationship between truth commissions and gendered citizenship through a case study of Timor-Leste. It examines how, 10 years after the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (CAVR) has completed its work, women’s citizenship remains constrained by, and negotiated within, deeply gendered narratives of nation-building that are informed by historical experiences of the resistance struggle. The power of these narratives—which foreground heroism rather than victimisation—underscores the need to situate truth commissions as part of an ongoing politics of memory. Despite the power of political elites to shape this politics, the continued marginalisation of sections of society within official narratives is also providing an impetus for alternative truth-telling efforts that seek to broaden public perspectives on the past. By promoting new narratives of women’s experiences of the conflict, these projects might be understood as attempts to negotiate and transform gendered conceptions of citizenship in the present and for the future.     

Local Government Restructuring: Privatization and Its Alternatives

Local government restructuring should no longer be viewed as a simple dichotomy between private and public provision. A 1997 survey of chief elected township and county officials in New York shows that local governments use both private and public sector mechanisms to structure the market, create competition, and attain economies of scale. In addition to privatization and inter‐municipal cooperation, two alternative forms of service delivery not previously researched—reverse privatization and governmental entrepreneurship—are analyzed here. Logistic regression on the 201 responding governments differentiates the decision to restructure from the level and complexity of restructuring. Results confirm that local governments are guided primarily by pragmatic concerns with information, monitoring, and service quality. Political factors are not significant in the restructuring process and unionization is only significant in cases of simple restructuring (privatization or cooperation used alone). Fiscal stress is not a primary motivator, but debt limits are associated with more complex forms of restructuring. Restructuring service delivery requires capacity to take risks and is more common among experienced local officials in larger, higher‐income communities. Restructuring should be viewed as a complex, pragmatic process where governments combine public and private provision with an active role as service provider and market player. © 2001 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

论中国特色社会主义思想路线的哲学基础

解放思想,实事求是,与时俱进,是我们党建设中国特色社会主义的思想路线。其中,实事求是是中国特色社会主义思想路线的集中体现,解放思想是中国特色社会主义思想路线的本质要求,与时俱进是中国特色社会主义思想路线的基本原则。实事求是、解放思想、与时俱进三者密切联系,相互贯通,浓缩了辩证唯物主义和历史唯物主义的基本原理和根本要求。     

The paradox of grading systems

We distinguish between (i) voting systems in which voters can rank candidates and (ii) those in which they can grade candidates, using two or more grades. In approval voting, voters can assign two grades only—approve (1) or not approve (0)—to candidates. While two grades rule out a discrepancy between the average-grade winners, who receive the highest average grade, and the superior-grade winners, who receive more superior grades in pairwise comparisons (akin to Condorcet winners), more than two grades allow it. We call this discrepancy between the two kinds of winners the paradox of grading systems, which we illustrate with several examples and whose probability we estimate for sincere and strategic voters through a Monte Carlo simulation. We discuss the tradeoff between (i) allowing more than two grades, but risking the paradox, and (ii) precluding the paradox, but restricting voters to two grades.     

The politics of history and historical memory in China-Japan relations

The current state of China-Japan relations is characterized by two seemingly contradictory developments adjacent to each other: while economic and cultural relations have experienced an unprecedented and continuous improvement since the 1980s, Chinese and Japanese public perceptions of each other have been deteriorating. This raises interesting questions. How do we explain this discrepancy and what are the sources of the increasing public animosity in China or Japan toward the other country? Can China and Japan maintain amicable relations and continue economic cooperation in spite of the enduring mistrust between their peoples? What is the role of public perception and memory of history in the foreign policies of East Asia? This paper addresses these questions, focusing especially on the last one — the role of history and collective historical memory in international relations and the interaction between public sentiment and government foreign policies. Through a detailed study of recent events and the issue of Japanese textbooks, the author argues that public perception of history can and should be guided toward more positive directions. Otherwise, it will be increasingly difficult to maintain amicable relations between the two countries, especially when new nationalism is on the rise in both counties.     

Untangling the Causal Effects of Sex on Judging

We explore the role of sex in judging by addressing two questions of long‐standing interest to political scientists: whether and in what ways male and female judges decide cases distinctly—“individual effects”—and whether and in what ways serving with a female judge causes males to behave differently—“panel effects.” While we attend to the dominant theoretical accounts of why we might expect to observe either or both effects, we do not use the predominant statistical tools to assess them. Instead, we deploy a more appropriate methodology: semiparametric matching, which follows from a formal framework for causal inference. Applying matching methods to 13 areas of law, we observe consistent gender effects in only one—sex discrimination. For these disputes, the probability of a judge deciding in favor of the party alleging discrimination decreases by about 10 percentage points when the judge is a male. Likewise, when a woman serves on a panel with men, the men are significantly more likely to rule in favor of the rights litigant. These results are consistent with an informational account of gendered judging and are inconsistent with several others.     

Viewpoint: Look Before Taking Another Leap for Mankind—Ethical and Social Considerations in Rebuilding Society in Space

Commercial space travel is looking more like a real possibility than science fiction, but tied to that ambition we may be held back by the gravity of emerging ethical dilemmas. This viewpoint article surveys a range of social, economic, and political questions, and critically evaluates reasons why we should explore space. The usual ethical issues related to environmental and safety concerns are just the beginning, as there are other interesting questions, such as: what would be a fair process for commercializing or claiming property in space; how likely would a separatist movement be among space settlements who want to be free and independent states; and are reasons to explore space, like for adventure, wanderlust, or “backing up the biosphere,” good enough to justify our exploration of space? The point here that we should explore space; and if we are to move forward with our journey, which may be unstoppable anyway, then we should seriously consider these issues. At the least, this would give the public more confidence—amid questions of misplaced priorities and wasteful spending, along with an increased focus on ethics in science—that we are looking ahead before we take another leap for mankind.     

Cross-ideological discussions among conservative and liberal bloggers

With the increasing spread of information technologies and their potential to filter content, some have argued that people will abandon the reading of dissenting political opinions in favor of material that is closely aligned with their own ideological position. We test this theory empirically by analyzing—both quantitatively and qualitatively—Web links among the writings of top conservative and liberal bloggers. Given our use of novel methods, we discuss in detail our sampling and data collection methodologies. We find that widely read political bloggers are much more likely to link to others who share their political views. However, we find no increase in this pattern over time. We also analyze the content of the links and find that while many of the links are based on straw-man arguments, bloggers across the political spectrum also address each others’ writing substantively, both in agreement and disagreement.     

For an International of Workers and Peoples

It is probably not easy for a foreign reader to understand many of our difficulties. It is only natural. Each people and each country have a life of their own, their own laws, their own hopes and misconceptions, and their own ideals. Such diversity is wonderful; it needs to be developed rather than stifled. I, for one, am sick of the attempts of some politicians to teach others how to live and what policy to conduct.—Mikhail Gorbachev.’¹

The report [Gorbachev's report at the celebration of the 70th anniversary of the October Revolution] . . . makes a world assessment at variance with our understanding, virtually liquidating the contradictions of the period and acts as a damper on the world revolutionary movement. Our Party cannot accept its analysis, its argumentations and its conclusions.—Resolution of the Communist Party of India—Marxist.²

The Marxism we follow is superior to that followed by them [the Communist Party of the Soviet Union]—Saroj Mukherjee, Secretary, West Bengal State Committee of the Communist Party of India—Marxist.³     

Fathers,Families and Work: Putting ‘Working Fathers’ in the Picture

This article is a review of Fathers, Families and Work, one of a series of reports published as part of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC)'s ‘Working Better’ programme. The article examines Fathers, Families and Work in the context of the wider conclusions and recommendations of the ‘Working Better’ programme and considers the extent to which these recommendations will translate into public policy. It concludes that there is a gap between parents' desire for both mothers and fathers to be involved in caring for children and the reality of long hours and inflexible workplaces that limits the time men can spend caring for children.