The Lost Treasure of Arendt's Council System

Abstract

Hannah Arendt's On Revolution offers a critique of modern representative democracy combined with a manifesto-like treatise on council systems as they have arisen over the course of revolutions and uprisings. However, Arendt's contribution to democratic theory has been obscured by her commentators who argue that her reflections on democracy are either an aberration in her work or easily reconcilable within a liberal democratic framework. This paper seeks to provide a comprehensive outline of Arendt's writing on the council system and a clarification of her work outside the milieu of the post-Cold War return to Arendt. Her analyses bring to light a political system that guarantees civil and political rights while allowing all willing citizens direct participation in government. Framing her discussion within the language of the current renewed interest in constituent power, her council system could be described as a blending together of constituent power and constitutional form. Arendt resists the complete dominance and superiority of either element and argues that the foundation of a free state requires nothing less than the stabilization and persistence of constituent power within an open and fluid institution that would resist either the bureaucratization of politics or its dispersal into a revolutionary flux. Although one may conclude that her institutional suggestions are far from flawless, her political principles allow a conceptualization of democracy in more substantial ways than current liberal political philosophy.     

Rancière,religion and the political

In the past few decades, the ‘return of the religious’ has been a recurrent theme in popular and academic discourse. From debates regarding the permissibility of religious dress and symbols in the public sphere, to questions of the integration of Muslim immigrants, concerns about the rise of the Christian Right in American politics and the role of Islam in the uprisings of the Arab Spring, a great deal of attention has been accorded to the presence of religion and religious subjects in the public sphere. Such has been the importance attached to accounting for, categorizing and contending with this phenomenon that it has attracted the attention of many of the major figures in contemporary social and political thought. However, the ideas of Jacques Rancière, one of the foremost figures in contemporary political philosophy, are noticeably absent in these discussions. In this article, I take up the task of investigating how Rancière's political philosophy can be brought to bear on debates surrounding the relationship between citizenship, religion and the political. I argue that his reconceptualization of politics, democracy and political subjectivity makes apparent the limitations, and even futility of current debates between advocates of secular universalism and those of religious pluralism, and, through assisting in the critical analysis of the public presence of religion, provide an opening for the potential emergence of alternative forms of community and political subjectivity.     

Growthism and the Green Backlash

Recent years have seen the growth of a 'green backlash' movement which has argued against 'the myths of environmentalism'. Many environmentalists have pointed out the political motivation and factual errors in much of these arguments. But what has not been given much attention is their underlying philosophy. To look at this is to find an ideology, related to neoliberalism, which we might call 'growthism'; based on a utopian faith in the inevitability of endless material growth, this is animated by a revolt against the very idea of limits. This faith has a potent influence on contemporary politics, which we can best see in relief: as today the only serious challenge to the neoliberal hegemony over electoral politics comes from environmentalism, so we can see revealed in the green backlash the utopianism of that unquestioned principle at the heart of all mainstream political debate - the commitment to economic growth.     

近20年英美哲学的最新进展(下)

2、实在论.在当代美国哲学家看来,实在论、自然主义和实用主义在哲学基本倾向上是一致的,它们之间的关系可以解释为,是一种以实用主义为主导精神,以实在论为基本态度,以自然主义为思想方法的美国特有的生活方式.在当代美国哲学中,实在论和实用主义构成了一幅美国哲学的未来图景.当今美国哲学中的一种重要动向,就是实用主义实在论的兴起.2000年10月在美国纽约布法罗州立大学举行的"美国实用自然主义传统中的实在论的未来"国际研讨会,就充分体现了这样一种倾向.例如,默菲(Mur-ray G. Murphey)指出,实用主义不是要揭示世界的真实情况,而是要说明人类对环境做出有限反应的能力,例如人类根据自己的兴趣或态度对某种所与物(the giyen)作出选择.这里并不涉及真实世界的独立存在问题,而仅仅涉及到外在事物对人类感官产生的感觉刺激,也就是知觉(perception)过程.罗森塔尔(Sandra B. Rosenthal)明确地把实用主义与实在论联系起来.     

Banality in Politics: Margaret Thatcher and the Biographers

There are numerous biographies of Margaret Thatcher, but as yet no full-length study has been written by a political scientist. This is a disappointing omission from the literature, and reflects a general tendency to undervalue biographical studies. One result has been the production of scholarly work on the Conservative party between 1975 and 1990 which is unduly abstract and often misleading. Equally, although some excellent biographies have been produced – and Thatcher's memoirs are among the best of their genre – the unique perspectives of political science can yield some fascinating insights into her career, her party and the changing nature of British government. This article traces some of the crucial interactions which influenced Thatcher – her family background, her experiences within the Conservative party, her electioneering and her conduct of government. It concludes that although Thatcher's personality developed as a result of these encounters, as an adult she affected institutions far more than they affected her. This raises interesting, but not insuperable challenges for political scientists. Individuals do matter, and their influence can be appraised within a broader context. Ironically, it seems that complex characters conform more readily to generalisable norms of political conduct; Thatcher, by contrast, broke many of the accepted rules precisely because her personality was so banal.     

Europe and the Common

Significant attention has been given to the necessary conditions for a viable and legitimate European polity. Drawing on traditions in political philosophy, a central strand of this debate has concerned what must be common to a set of people such that they may be ruled through the same institutions, with various types of collective bond proposed as possible bases for political community. The argument of this article is that many such approaches, which conceive a bond in terms of shared interests, cultural attributes or shared values and principles, are liable either to underplay or to overplay how much the citizens of a polity must have in common, tending either to empty public life of the pursuit of shared ends or conversely to downgrade the importance of adversarialism. Both may be seen as depoliticising moves. The article goes on to explore how a more explicitly political bond, based on the appraisal of political problems, might be conceived for a European polity.     

Capabilities Theory and the Limits of Liberal Justice: On Nussbaum’s Frontiers of Justice

In Frontiers of Justice, Martha Nussbaum applies the “Capabilities Approach,” which she calls “one species of a human rights approach,” to justice issues that have in her view been inadequately addressed in liberal political theory. These issues include rights of the disabled, rights that transcend national borders, and animal rights issues. She demonstrates the weakness of Rawlsianism, contractualism in general, and much of the Kantian tradition in moral philosophy and shows the need to move beyond the limitations of narrow rationalism, nationalism, and speciesism. Nevertheless, Nussbaum fails to elaborate adequately the grounds for her own capabilities position or to face fundamental theoretical questions about the nature and implications of that position.     

The Relevance of Hannah Arendt’s Reflections on Evil: Globalization and Rightlessness

The centenary of Hannah Arendt’s birth in 2006 has provided the catalyst for a body of literature grappling with the legacy of her thought, especially the question of its enduring political relevance. Yet this literature largely excludes from consideration a significant aspect of Arendt’s legacy, namely, her account of evil and its devastating political reality. This article contends that the neglect of Arendt’s understanding of the dynamic reality of evil unnecessarily delimits the opportunities her legacy affords to diagnose forms of evil today. In particular, I propose that Arendt’s notion of evil and her unique insight into its dynamic reality remain very much pertinent in light of a globalizing world where the conditions of extreme deprivation and exclusion have become thoroughly bound up with the structurally unequal conditions of the global political economy. The persistent global poverty knowingly reproduced in and through policies and practices of economic globalization effectively renders vast numbers of people superfluous and “rightless,” resulting in a distinctive form of political evil. I conclude that more attention should be paid to the deeper pertinence of Arendt’s concepts of evil, human superfluousness, and rightlessness for contemporary political life.     

Marxism in the Post-Communist World

Abstract

Marx was and remained a philosopher. This simple fact was forgotten when Marxism became a system. Now that the system has been defeated, the philosophy re-emerges. However, its "Marxist" adherents have never understood that this philosophy was always political - in short, they have never understood politics, and there fore will never understand philosophy. Thus, the claim of the article is that, correctly read, Marx can be seen as the true philosophical founder of a modern theory of democracy.     

Quentin Skinner: From Historian of Ideas to Political Scientist

This article is an assessment of Quentin Skinner's contribution to the study of political change and to the contemporary debate in political philosophy. We argue that the significance of Skinner's work to a large extent has been neglected by political scientists, as they have tended to regard him solely as a historian of ideas rather than as a political scientist. However, Skinner's approach not only offers valuable methodological lessons but a historically grounded framework that accounts for the relationship between human agency and the structural language-context, that make actions meaningful. This allows for a conception of historical change that is neither narrowly structuralist nor exclusively focused on the individual agent. In his most recent historical works, Skinner has entered the main debate of contemporary political philosophy, i. e. the debate between liberals and communitarians. Here, his analysis of the classical republican tradition of political thought, attempts a revitalization of the debate beyond the stereotypes of liberalism and Aristotelianism. This work points towards the possibility of developing a radical reconception of modern liberal democracy.     

Reconciliation Arguments in John Rawls’s Political Philosophy

Abstract

Recently debates about the worth of “ideal theory” have directed attention to the functions that an account of a perfectly just society can serve. One function is that of “reconciliation”: learning that a seemingly undesirable feature of the social world would exist even in the perfectly just society can show us the value that it has in the present as well. John Rawls has emphasized reconciliation as among the roles of political philosophy. For instance, Rawls claims that his theory of justice can reconcile us to the pluralism of liberal democracies. In this essay, I argue that Rawls’s political theory also can reconcile the inhabitants of liberal democratic societies to the fact that such societies may be cognitively confusing on account of their complexity. Then I contend that Rawls’s work offers valuable theoretical resources for analysing a society’s transparency or lack thereof.     

对公共政策制定的政治哲学思考

公共政策制定是社会政治生活中公共决策系统的经常性活动。在现代社会,由于公共政策的巨大作用和影响,公共政策制定问题引起了广泛的关注。从政治哲学的角度审视,以公意为价值取向、以政治权力为基本依托,以政治秩序为最终归宿,才能建立起人民期待的合理、公正、有效的公共政策,从而进一步推进决策的科学化、民主化。     

Other(s) Worlds: Mysticism and Radicalism at the Fin de Siècle

Abstract

Over time our understanding of the ‘political’ has been progressively shaped by the secular rational calculations of modern European political thought. This paper aims to critique these ‘calculations’ with reference to crucial moments of departure and flight within western philosophy itself. It concludes by reclaiming fin de siècle radicalism/philosophy as a forgotten instance of empirical-metaphysical hybridity: a form of politics or ethics capable of housing the imperatives of both desire and prayer.     

Agency, Structure and Causality in Political Science: A Comment on Sibeon

Researchers in political science are devoting increasing attention to the ontological commitments of their theories – that is, to what those theories presuppose about the nature of the political world. This article focuses on a recent contribution to this 'ontological turn' in political science ( Sibeon, 1999 ). Tensions are identified in Sibeon's account of the causal interplay between agency and social structure. It is argued that these tensions can be resolved by reflecting explicitly on ontological issues, in particular the causal efficacy of social structure, using a particular approach to the philosophy of the social sciences known as critical realism. The value of such reflection for the explanatory power of political analysis is highlighted.     

Kant and the critique of the ethics-first approach to politics

Abstract

Contemporary ‘realists’ attack the Kantian influence on political philosophy. A main charge is that Kantians fail to understand the specificity of politics and neglect to develop a ‘distinctively political thought’ that differs from moral philosophy. Instead, the critics say, Kantians are guilty of an ‘ethics-first approach to politics,’ in which political theory is a mere application of moral principles. But what does this ethics-first approach have to do with Kant himself? Very little. This article shows how Kant’s approach to political theory at a fundamental level includes political institutions, power, and coercion as well as disagreement, security, and coordination problems. In contrast to realists, Kant has a fundamental principle, which can explain why and guide how we ought to approach the political question, namely the norm of equal freedom. Yet, Kant’s theory does not take the form of a moralistic ought addressed to the isolated individual, but concerns a problem that we share as interdependent beings and that requires common institutions. The fruitfulness of the Kantian approach, then, is that it can take the political question seriously without being uncritical of actual politics and power, and that it can be normative without being moralistic.     

Profoundly Un‐Conservative? David Cameron and the UK Bill of Rights Debate

This article considers David Cameron's proposal to repeal the Human Rights Act (HRA) and replace it with a British Bill of Rights. Cameron's proposal has been heavily criticised by a range of political, academic and non‐state actors and was described by a current senior Coalition Cabinet member as ‘xenophobic’ and ‘legal nonsense’. This article takes a slightly different direction to those lines of attack and critique that have been developed of the Conservative's proposals. The central proposition of the article is that Cameron's proposal is profoundly un‐Conservative at two levels. Firstly, at the level of Conservative approaches to constitutional reform and secondly, at the level of Conservative political philosophy.     

Occupations,mediations, subjectifications: fabricating politics

The revolutions and protests that have spread across the globe since 2008 have been seen as a watershed moment. In this article we examine the relationships between urban space and politics that have emerged across these events. We draw upon the political philosophy of Jacques Rancière to provide a framework to understand some events of this period as political moments and, in addition, attempt to build upon Rancière's work to trace out the geographical dimensions of politics. The paper concludes with a consideration of the counter-revolutionary projects enacted by current social orders.     

In the woods: darkness at noon or Sunday in the park with Lin?

I discuss Elinor (Lin) Ostrom’s long journey into complex social systems and draw attention to her reliance on induction and the methods of experimental science. In her own words, the simple “organism” she has experimented on is a particular type of human situation—the common pool situation. I compare the philosophy of science associated with the European Enlightenment to Lin’s approach. I discuss the implication of problem difficulty and complexity for institutional policy, and conclude by comparing the tragedy of the commons to the tragedy of the anticommons, claiming that little is known empirically about the existence of the latter phenomenon.     

Can my religion influence my conception of justice? Political liberalism and the role of comprehensive doctrines

In his last works, John Rawls explicitly argued for an overlapping consensus on a family of reasonable liberal political conceptions of justice, rather than just one. This ‘Deep Version’ of political liberalism opens up new questions about the relationship between citizens’ political conceptions, from which they must draw and offer public reasons in their political advocacy, and their comprehensive doctrines. These questions centre on whether a reasonable citizen’s choice of political conception can be influenced by her comprehensive doctrine. In this paper I present two models of the relationship, which give contrasting answers to these questions, and defend the model that is more permissive with regard to the influence of comprehensive doctrines. This has important implications for our understanding of Rawlsian political liberalism, and reduces the force of objections that have been offered by theorists sympathetic to religion.     

Umbrella Themes Obscure Real Problems: An Appraisal of Recent Efforts to Improve Financial Management

Financial management in public bodies has been going through several changes either as a part of improvement of public management or because of specific attention to the process of stewardship of public money. As an integral part of these efforts, now known as new public management philosophy, several measures have been and are being taken by industrial and developing countries to develop general institutions as well as financial management machinery Meanwhile, the objectives sought to be served by financial management have grown substantially. This article formulates an analytical framework to assess the adequacy of the existing financial management systems and reaches the conclusion that the new public management philosophy can at best serve only a few of the specified objectives. The changing portfolio of public expenditures requires that more attention needs to be paid to the details and hitherto neglected high-risk areas.