Three Forms of Political Realism

In the recent study of international relations, political realism has, apparently, had as many supporters as detractors. Nonetheless, there seems to be a growing tendency to treat the categories of political realism as if they were passing the way of all flesh, destined to be replaced by system theory, transnationalism, Marxist structuralism, critical theory or whatever. One difficulty with this judgement is that political realism is not a single theoretical entity which can be refuted by single disconfirming instances. Nor is it an understanding of the subject rooted in the views of such well-known exponents of this school as Hans Morgenthau, Kenneth Thompson, Martin Wight, Sir Herbert Butterfield, E. H. Carr or Raymond Aron. On the contrary, political realism is a conception of politics which stretches back to the great Indian thinker Kautilya and in fact constitutes a many-mansioned tradition of thought about international relations. Three aspects of that tradition are examined in this essay: Common-sense Realism, Concessional Realism and neo-Aristotelian Realism. These reflections are only very tangentially related to the debates in the 1950s and 1960s concerning realism. This essay focuses, rather, on certain neglected features of contrasting philosophies of science. The article concludes, somewhat tentatively, that neo-Aristotelian Realism is coherent and cogent and superior in important respects to what scientific empiricism has to offer.     

Laclau and Mouffe's Hegemonic Project: The Story So Far

This paper seeks to do two things: first, to map out in a broad way Laclau and Mouffe's intellectual development, since the publication of Hegemony and Socialist Strategy in 1985, and how they have created a following within academia; and second, to evaluate their 'hegemonic' endeavours so far. I argue that there is a place for a post-structuralist approach to the study of political ideologies and the 'political', but that the project as a whole is unlikely to achieve its intellectual and political ambitions.     

Unity Without Totalitarianism: Tensions Within Normativity

Although he did not invent the term, Jürgen Habermas has popularised “constitutional patriotism” as a form of political unity that avoids excessive nationalism. This paper attempts to examine the link between emotivism and normativity that has otherwise been excluded from Habermas’s notion of constitutional patriotism. Beyond Habermas, political theory as a whole has not yet taken emotivism as a serious component of normativity. Rather than developing it in isolation, this paper attempts to reconcile emotivism with cognitive-normative practices found within rational deliberation. Reconciling the two not only provides a better normative steering component for judging good from bad practices, but also depicts contemporary political practices more accurately. In sum, constitutional patriotism’s normativity must be sourced from a complex integration of emotion and cognition, or put another way, from the interplay between citizens’ moral sentiments and rational judgements.     

The Normativity of Work: Retrieving a Critical Craft Norm

Recent social theory has begun to reconsider how the activity of work can contribute to well-being or autonomy under the right conditions. However, there is no consensus on what this contribution consists in, and so on precisely which normative principles should be marshalled to critique harmful or repressive forms of workplace organisation. This paper argues that Richard Sennett’s concept of work as craft provides a normative standard against which the organisation of work can be assessed, especially when explained within a broadly Aristotelian account of the conditions of human flourishing. More precisely, the paper argues that a craft norm can meet the standards of social critique within the Frankfurt School tradition of Critical Theory, as this tradition has been interpreted by Axel Honneth. Honneth himself now rejects craft norms as too utopian and parochial to inform Critical Theory under contemporary economic conditions. In reply, this paper uses sociological studies of call centre workers to illustrate how work motivated by craft ideals can be sustainable rather than utopian, and how craftsmanship can inform social critique across a wide variety of industries and management practices.     

Coming to Grips with Realism

Retrieving Realism renders the joint philosophical goals of Hubert Dreyfus and Charles Taylor into what is probably their final and most concise form. It has two main objectives: first, it aims to deconstruct the mediationalism that undergirds Western philosophy, and second, it endorses contact theory, or embodied/embedded coping, as an alternative. In this essay, I present the book’s most salient themes and reveal areas that are ripe for further philosophical consideration. I also direct the reader to the work’s genuine ontological challenge: how to come to grips with contact theory beyond the borders of epistemology.     

Policy Community Realism versus'New' Institutionalist Ambiguity

There has been widespread interest in the term 'institution' within political science in the past five years. Two principal uses of this are identified. The first is associated with the policy community literature and in this sense the institution is an extra-constitutional policymaking arrangement between ministries and clientelistic groups. The second use of the term is associated with state-centred authors who wish to argue for the relative autonomy of political institutions. In this second use there is ambiguity about the scope of the term institution; whether it is, or is not, intended to be confined to traditional institutions or whether the disaggregated state embraces the newer policy community phenomenon.     

可误论、实在论与科学进步

为了突破近代西方哲学的认识论困境,皮尔士提出了一种可误主义的知识理论.但皮尔士并没有因此而放弃对客现真理的追求,他的实在论向人们表明在认识探究过程中,虽然没有任何可靠的基础给我们提供保证,但是,我们依然可以追求客观的真理(终极的实在).因为人类认识过程(尤其是科学进步过程)就是通向真理的"长征".就是不断向实在的趋同.     

George F. Kennan’s Realism

Recent studies of the career diplomat and distinguished historian George F. Kennan, and particularly a little noted intellectual biography by Lee Congdon, reveal a side of this figure that has often been neglected. Despite his reputation as a critic of the Cold War, Kennan was in fact a strong anti-Communist and profoundly conservative thinker. His conventional defenders have stressed his displeasure with vocal anti-Communism in order to create an image of him that is consistent with their left-of-center politics. This has come at the expense of playing down unfashionable opinions that Kennan expressed on a wide range of issues. Many of his opinions, which he viewed as eminently “realistic,” would have been unacceptable to his mainstream admirers even fifty years ago, were it not for his stands on the Cold War and for certain isolated statements drawn from his post-World War Two speeches mentioning racial inequality and industrial waste. What is now being published on Kennan’s life, however, provides a more balanced picture. Congdon and John Lukacs have both offered this necessary corrective to earlier views about their subject in recent biographical studies. These and other commentators are now highlighting the anti-modernist perspective from which he viewed and criticized the twentieth century.     

马恩现实主义思想的当代价值

马恩现实主义思想以历史唯物主义史观为基础,使现实主义发展成为一种科学的理论,在马克思主义文艺思想中占有重要的地位。它在今天仍然是指导我们文艺创作与研究的基本原则,我们应该用发展的眼光去重点坚持其真实性原则和艺术的社会批判精神,并服务于当代的文学创作与研究现状。     

批判实在论与马克思主义哲学的主要区别

批判实在论的一个重要发展方向就是自觉地与马克思主义密切联系起来,并认为自己在很多方面是对马克思主义的丰富和发展.事实上二者有很多本质区别,这些主要区别可以从本体论、认识论、辩证法和价值论四个领域分别加以澄清.