Aristotle, Hobbes and Chimpanzees

The article is an exercise in the philosophical anthropology of politics. According to Aristotle, man is a political animal but not uniquely so, whereas, according to Hobbes, politics is artificial and the preserve of humans alone. Both Aristotle and Hobbes draw upon contemporary science. The dominant relevant science today is neo-Darwinism – humans are products of evolution and genetically closely related to the other primates. The argument that chimpanzees are political, thus putatively endorsing an Aristotelian rather than a Hobbesian perspective, is scrutinised. However, at best, chimpanzees are only metaphorically political. While this conclusion may weaken the Aristotelian position, it cannot of itself vindicate the Hobbesian one. The philosophical anthropological endeavour to investigate the relation between politics and human nature still has work to do.     

Locke, Hegel, and the Economy

Peter Lawler’s insightful critique of American individualism offers many important lessons, but his diagnosis of our economic situation is overly optimistic. Indeed, “big government” is more of a problem than Lawler suggests. This essay draws on two central figures of Lawler’s analysis—Locke and Hegel—to explore the problems that individualism poses for modern political economy. Although individualism is unlikely to make the regulatory state or welfare state wither away, the psychology of individualism confirms the importance of cultivating forms of recognition beyond economic life.     

Hannah Arendt on Kant, Truth and Politics

Hannah Arendt is right to give prominence to Kant's Critique of Judgment—for that work contains Kant's fullest treatment of 'ends' and purposes, and Kantian politics (embracing universal republicanism and eternal peace) is meant to be a 'legal' realization of moral ends (when 'good will' alone is too weak to produce what ought to be). But Arendt is wrong to try to extract a 'new' Kantian politics from Judgment's aesthetic ideas: Kantian politics is already 'there', and need not be squeezed out of his theory of art. She has chosen the right work, but given it a bizarre reading.     

The Messianic,Sovereignty and the Camps: Arendt and Agamben

Abstract

After centuries of relative neglect, the notion of the messianic is again in vogue in radical discourse. This paper explores the meaning and significance of this concept in the work of Hannah Arendt and Giorgio Agamben. They have been chosen not only because of their biographical and theoretical linkages to the thinker most responsible for the current resurgence of the concept of the messianic – Walter Benjamin – but also because they offer two alternative readings of precisely this concept. After exploring the meaning of this concept in Benjamin, Arendt and Agamben, the analysis turns to the related concepts of sovereignty and the “camps” in our principals in order to further elaborate the difference between them and to bring into focus the strengths and weaknesses of the theoretical/political deployment of messianism in contemporary leftist thought.     

Question,ethos, event: Foucault on Kant and Enlightenment

The use of labour values as a basis for economic calculation in a socialist economy is defended. A resource allocation mechanism is outlined that uses a combination of labour value calculation with market clearing prices for consumer goods. Conditions for full employment are specified. A type theoretic analysis of economic calculation is presented. Information theory is used to estimate the information content of real price vectors. It is demonstrated that both price calculations and value calculations are type theory equivalent and that both involve information loss. It is shown that modern computer technology is capable of computing up to date labour values with comparative ease.     

Nancy and Kant on Inoperative Communities

Abstract

This essay argues that Kant's explanation of the purposiveness-without-a-purpose of beauty (in the third Critique) can help to make sense of Nancy's theory of the inoperative community.     

Hegel against Fukuyama: Associations, Markets and Recognition

Fukuyama's influential book The End of History and the Last Man presents an Hegelian picture of history as the story of the struggle for recognition. Modern liberal society is the end of history since it resolves that struggle. However, unlike Hegel, Fukuyama assumes recognition is pursued for its own sake. The assumption lends plausibility to a market model of recognition which sits uneasily with his own defence of associational spheres of existence. Hegel, in contrast, inherits an Aristotelian position according to which recognition is parasitic on other goods. This account of recognition informs Hegel's defence of an associational account of civil society and his rejection of market exchange as satisfactory site for recognition. Hegel's response to market modes of recognition is contrasted with that of Adam Smith.     

Hegel,Habermas and the Spirit of Critical Theory

Abstract

This paper explores the complex relation between Hegel and Habermas. Centring the discussion around the key themes of philosophy, modernity and political philosophy, it argues for a gradual re-approachment of Habermas towards Hegel. In the final section on critical theory, it takes up the question of the spirit of this theory to offer a more trenchant critique of Habermas' theoretical short coming from this perspective.     

Weber, Wilson, and Hegel: Theories of Modern Bureaucracy

Convergence between Woodrow Wilson's and Max Weber's thought, as well as their differences with regard to the politics–administration dichotomy, can be ascribed to the Hegelian tradition of public administrative theory. On the one hand, Wilson was strongly influenced by Georg W. F. Hegel. On the other hand, there is an empirical connection between Hegel and Weber. Both shared a consciousness of the German bureaucratic tradition based on Hegel's Philosophy of Right . These insights have important methodological and theoretical implications for the contemporary comparative study of public administration.     

Aristotle on the Foundations of the State

Aristotle's Politics shows an apparent tension between a recognition of the desirability of individual liberty and his claim that 'none of the citizens belongs to himself but all belong to the state'. We can start to resolve that tension by considering Aristotle's doctrine of man as a political animal. Artistotle offers a particular account of the nature of man according to which his specifically human capacities cannot be realized outside of the state. This is not an account adopted arbitrarily for Aristotle's political theory but follows directly from his analysis of substances in the Physics . On Aristotle's account of human nature, man is essentially rational and virtuous and the political theory allows the rational and virtuous man to be as free as possible without intefering with others. Some are less rational and are subject to authority in virtue of this. We can see that Aristotle's theory has advantages over rights-based theories since Aristotle has an account of what constitutes human flourishing, without which one cannot found rights claims.     

On Sugar,Capitalism, and Socialism

Elinor G. K. Melville: A Plague of Sheep: Environmental Consequences of the Conquest of Mexico . New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994

Douglas Murray: Cultivating Crisis: The Human Cost of Pesticides in Latin America ,Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994

Wes Jackson: Becoming Native to this Place . Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1994.

Jeremy Brecher and Tim Costello: Global Village or Global Pillage: Economic Reconstruction From Ground Up .Boston: South End Press, 1994.

Wolfgang Sachs, editor: Global Ecology: A New Arena of Political Conflict . London and New Jersey: Zed Books and Halifax, Nova Scotia: Fernwood Publishing, 1993.

John Walton: Western Times and Water Wars: State, Culture, and Rebellion in California . Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992.

Brendan Prendiville: Environmental Politics in France . Boulder, Co.: Westview Press, 1994.     

Socialism,associations and the market

Hayek's epistemic arguments against central planning and in defence of market economies have recently been redeployed by some market-socialists against more decentralized models of non-market socialism. This paper considers the cogency of these arguments through an examination of an unpublished exchange in the socialist calculation debates between Hayek and a proponent of non-market associational models of socialism, Otto Neurath. Contrary to the standard view of the debates, Neurath shared many of the assumptions of Hayek's epistemic arguments and similarly criticized technocratic models of planning. The paper outlines Neurath's defence of associational socialism from his early role in the Bavarian revolution through his engagement in the post-war housing movements in Vienna and the unity of science movement. While Neurath's response to Hayek is not entirely successful, his proposals for associational models of socialism point to problems not just in Hayek's criticisms of non-market socialism, but also those of more recent market-socialists.     

Loving Freedom: Aristotle on Slavery and the Good Life

Most commentators on Aristotle's theory of natural slavery locate the source of slavishness in an intellectual deficiency that Aristotle describes. This paper sets out to show that Aristotle's natural slaves are not intellectually deficient in the way normally assumed, but are lacking an emotional faculty, thymos , which Aristotle connects to actual enslavement through its power to generate a love of freedom. It is also argued that Aristotle's understanding of slavishness entails a risk for a democratic regime, such as Classical Athens, since such a system has highly inclusive criteria for membership in the political association. Commentators have also failed to connect natural slavery to Aristotle's ethical thought and to note the theory's practical relevance to the goal of living a good human life.     

Politics and enlightenment: Kant and Derrida on cosmopolitan responsibility

Walter Benjamin once remarked of the enterprise of translation ‘that it is nowhere’: that the labour of transcribing the sense, inflection and difference of any particular language and text must always situate the translator in a space which is neither ‘of the original, nor ‘of the language into which it is to be transcribed. This ‘non‐position’ of the translator—between the original and its analogue, between the ‘spirit’ and the ‘letter’, the difference and the acceptability of the text—marks the labour of translation as an ethical responsibility: that of communicating the significance of something—a gesture, a story, a custom, a tradition—which has appeared to this/our socio‐linguistic culture as strange and unfathomably alien; and to achieve this communication without annulling its strangeness, its alterity. The purpose of my comparison of Kant and Derrida's remarks on cosmopolitical responsibility therefore, is fourfold. First, I want to suggest that it is this ‘stricture’ of translation—this difficult responsibility of both judging and respecting the difference of foreign’ cultures—which marks the (non‐Kantian, non‐situated) ‘territory’ of cosmopolitical responsibility. Second, by using Kant's remarks on the relationship between the political evolution of European Enlightenment culture and a possible world confederation of sovereign states, I want to point up the hierarchies and secondarizations involved in the determination of universal standards of moral, ethical and political conduct (even if these standards are originally prosecuted as the legislative conditions of a ‘radical democracy'). Third, I want to look at the ways in which the stricture of translation has been articulated as a theory of ‘global’ responsibility—particularly in the divergent ethical and political approaches of Jurgen Habermas and Jean‐Francois Lyotard. Fourth, I want to suggest that it is Derrida's idea of a ‘dual responsibility’ of critical thought to the political and philosophical resources of European Enlightenment and to the difference of non‐European nations and cultures, that marks the difficulty (the stricture) of acting responsibly within the global economics of power, identity and legislation. I want, in other words, to show that the ‘nowhere’ of Benjamin's translator, is a ‘place’ whose possibility demands a certain ‘Kantian’ right of reflection; that is, the right to pursue the ‘transcendent’ principle of respect for the other.     

经济全球化、当代资本主义和社会主义

在经济全球化条件下,当代资本主义的发展进入了一个新的历史阶段,即金融垄断资本主义阶段。金融垄断资本主义显示出资本主义基本矛盾发展的阶段性特征。这些特征成为当代资本主义历史定位的主要依据。同时,资本主义和社会主义之间矛盾对立统一关系的实质并没有改变,但是它们之间关系的内容和形式却发生很大变化。这种并存性没有也不可能改变资本主义的历史命运以及社会主义取代资本主义的历史发展趋势。