The United States, as a leading world power, has to face China – an emerging powerful rival. The potential of both states’ power is measured by universal indicators. On a military level, these indicators are: military expenditure, soldiers/reserve/soldiers abroad, offensive weapons, nuclear warheads. On an economic level: GDP value, reserve currency/public debt to GNP, direct investment home and abroad. With regard soft power, six categories have been taken into consideration: diplomacy, socio-political, socioeconomic, education, high and popular culture. All of the (...) three researched levels were correlated with both states’ political system specificity and the character of the international arena’s relations. It allowed for the assessment of the current levels of both states’ power as well as their future prospects. (shrink)

The political mobilization of conservative Protestants in the United States since the 1970s is commonly viewed as having resulted from a “backlash” against the alleged iniquities of the 1960s, including the excess-es of the counterculture. In contrast, this article maintains that conservative Protestant efforts to infiltrate and absorb the counterculture contributed to the organizational strength, cultural attractiveness, and politi-cal efficacy of the New Christian Right. The essay advances three arguments: First, that evangelicals did not simply reject the countercultural ideas of (...) the 1960s, but absorbed and extended its key sentiments. Second, that conservative Protestantism’s appropriation of countercultural rhetoric and organizational styles played a significant role in the right-wing political mobilization of evangelicals. And third, that the merger of evan-gelical Christianity and countercultural styles, rather than their antagonism, ended up being one of the most enduring legacies of the sixties. In revisiting the relationship between the counterculture and evangelicalism, the essay also explores the larger implications for understanding the relationship between religion and poli-tics. The New Christian Right domesticated genuinely insurgent impulses within the evangelical resurgence. By the same token, it nurtured the conservative components of the counterculture. Conservative Protestant-ism thus constituted a political movement that channeled insurgencies into a cultural form that relegitimized the fundamental trajectories of liberal capitalism and consumerist society. (shrink)

This book challenges the conventional wisdom that improving democratic politics requires keeping emotion out of it. Marcus advances the provocative claim that the tradition in democratic theory of treating emotion and reason as hostile opposites is misguided and leads contemporary theorists to misdiagnose the current state of American democracy. Instead of viewing the presence of emotion in politics as a failure of rationality and therefore as a failure of citizenship, Marcus argues, democratic theorists need to understand that emotions (...) are in fact a prerequisite for the exercise of reason and thus essential for rational democratic deliberation and political judgment. Attempts to purge emotion from public life not only are destined to fail, but ultimately would rob democracies of a key source of revitalization and change. Drawing on recent research in neuroscience, Marcus shows how emotion functions generally and what role it plays in politics. In contrast to the traditional view of emotion as a form of agitation associated with belief, neuroscience reveals it to be generated by brain systems that operate largely outside of awareness. Two of these systems, "disposition" and "surveillance," are especially important in enabling emotions to produce habits, which often serve a positive function in democratic societies. But anxiety, also a preconscious emotion, is crucial to democratic politics as well because it can inhibit or disable habits and thus clear a space for the conscious use of reason and deliberation. If we acknowledge how emotion facilitates reason and is "cooperatively entangled" with it, Marcus concludes, then we should recognize sentimental citizens as the only citizens really capable of exercising political judgment and of putting their decisions into action. (shrink)

Duties to address global poverty face a motivation gap. We have good reasons for acting yet we do not, at least consistently. A ‘sentimental education’, featuring literature and journalism detailing the lives of distant others has been suggested as a promising means by which to close this gap. Although sympathetic to this project, I argue that it is too heavily wed to a charitable model of our duties to address global poverty—understood as requiring we sacrifice a certain portion of our (...) income. However, political action, aimed at altering institutions at both a global and a local level is likely to be necessary in order to provide effective long-term solutions to poverty globally. To rectify this, the article develops an alternative dialogical account of sentimental education, suitable for motivating support for political action to address global poverty. (shrink)

The Sentimental Life of International Law is about our age-old longing for a decent international society and the ways of seeing, being, and speaking that might help us achieve that aim. This book asks how international lawyers might engage in a professional practice that has become, to adapt a title of Janet Malcolm's, both difficult and impossible. It suggests that international lawyers are disabled by the governing idioms of international lawyering, and proposes that they may be re-enabled by speaking different (...) sorts of international law, or by speaking international law in different sorts of ways. In this methodologically diverse and unusually personal account, Gerry Simpson brings to the surface international law's hidden literary prose and offers a critical and redemptive account of the field. He does so in a series of chapters on international law's bathetic underpinnings, its friendly relations, the neurotic foundations of its underlying social order, its screened-off comic dispositions, its anti-method, and the life-worlds of its practitioners. Finally, the book closes with a chapter in which international law is re-envisioned through the practice of gardening. All of this is put forward as a contribution to the project of making international law, again, a compelling language for our times. (shrink)

From the start of the Arab revolutions in late 2010, a connection between the law, state, political economy, gender norms and orientalist ideology has formed the foundation of women's systematic exclusion from politics. By unmasking processes in Egypt that have created the ideological and material conditions of externalising women's revolutionary acts, estranging their political involvement, and exposing them to various forms of violence, this article offers a gendered political reading of the concept of alienation. The article suggests that gender-normative (...) ideology's characterisation of women's images, roles and acts during and after revolutions, corresponds to the most profound form of alienation. The article identifies the externalisation and subjugation of women, and objectification of their revolutionary acts as modes of alienation. Moreover, it proposes that the implementing of these modes of alienation are necessary for creating conditions that allow for the reconfiguration of power dynamics that restore the authoritarian power of the state. This discussion suggests that the sphere of politics not only relates to political activism and conflict between revolutions and counterrevolutions, but that it is also a battlefield for the (re)production of gender-normative knowledge. (shrink)

Book synopsis: The influential philosopher Richard Rorty is the focus of volume 32 in the world-renowned Library of Living Philosophers series. The book includes Rorty's intellectual autobiography, 29 previously unpublished critical and descriptive essays by famous scholars, Rorty's replies to most of the essays, and a complete bibliography of Rorty's published works. Since Rorty passed away in 2007, his contributions to this volume are among the last things he wrote. Rorty is tremendously important. He transformed the discipline of philosophy during (...) the last quarter of the 20th century, while setting it on a new path for the 21st. In epistemology, the philosophy of language, culture, value, and politics, the impact of his thought is impossible to measure. Having achieved early prominence as a theorist and practitioner of analytic philosophy, Rorty pointed criticism at these accepted pursuits and methods of philosophy, particularly attacking widespread preoccupation with questions of truth, representation, and the foundations of knowledge. For better or worse, Rorty became the center of tremendous controversy, within and beyond the academy. Yet, his critique found its mark, providing a touchstone for numberless others to step into a more open marketplace of ideas. For nearly thirty years, Rorty promoted a new type of philosophical pragmatism with great persuasive power, and many have credited him with creating the renewed interest in the thought of classical American philosophy, especially in his hero John Dewey, with whom Rorty increasingly identified his own aims as his thought matured. Always controversial, Rorty's books and essays were read as carefully by his critics as by his admirers, and it seems that almost everyone holds a strong opinion about his writings, whether positive or negative, with very few thinkers to be found between these extremes. This volume brings together many of Rorty's best critics and supporters for a comprehensive assessment of his achievement and a final defense of the views for which he became so widely known. Rorty devoted some of his final energies to this volume. It stands as his final response to the intellectual world. (shrink)

This article examines the excitement that Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments generated in France during the French Revolution, focusing particularly on the writings of political theorists, participants and commentators such as the abbé Sieyès, Pierre-Louis Rœderer, the Marquis de Condorcet and Sophie de Grouchy Condorcet, who were dismayed at their political opponents’ use of Rousseau, and looked to Smith for an understanding of the passions that was compatible with democratic sovereignty and representative government. In the political context of the (...) early 1790s, clarifying the concept of natural sociability, which Rousseau had rejected, but Smith and Helvétius, in different ways, each regarded as indispensible to a society dependent on advanced division of labour, became a central concern in the public lectures delivered by Pierre-Louis Rœderer as the Terror took hold. ☆ My thanks to Emma Rothschild, Michael Sonenscher, Brian Young and other participants in the History of Political Thought Seminar, Oxford, and The Hexagonal Forum, Cambridge, where earlier versions of this paper were presented and helpfully discussed. I’m also grateful for comments on an earlier draft from Carolina Armenteros, Clare Jackson, Duncan Kelly, Michael Sonenscher and Richard Whatmore. (shrink)

In this essay I intend to analyze the issue of good government in the works of Adam Smith, the importance of which seems to have not received due attention. The reconstruction is driven by three hermeneutical hypotheses concerning the role played by the idea of good government in the development of Smith's speculation: 1) the «good government» has a synthetic character, holding together the different aspects – moral, legal, economic and political – of his reflection; 2) it emerges against the (...) backdrop of the first acquisitions of the Theory of Moral Sentiments about the ‘mediating’ role of the middle class, and especially during the reflection that goes from the Lectures on Jurisprudence to the Wealth of Nations, and then feeds back into the subsequent rewritings of the Theory; 3) From the moment the «good government» appears, it becomes a descriptive and prescriptive idea of the social order. In the conclusions I will show how these hermeneutical hypotheses might have implications in the history of political, legal and economic thought. (shrink)

This paper undertakes a political sociology of religious sentiments by examining how social actors seek to make their religious sentiments legible and authoritative within structures of modern state governance. It argues that a central dimension of religious politics consists of struggles over constituting hegemonic and common sense religious sentiments through drawing on the secular powers of the modern state. This politics entails contestations over how citizens ought to feel, and how the state ought to authorize certain religious sentiments, (...) with respect to socially resonant religious issues and events. Drawing on concrete historical episodes from colonial India and postcolonial Pakistan that allow a problematization of ‘religious sentiments of Muslims' in relation to the controversial religious views of the reformist Ahmadiyya movement, this paper further demonstrates the elasticity of the modern state to accommodate and embed a range of religious sensibilities, affects and emotive responses through legal arguments about public order. (shrink)

R. Jay Wallace argues in this book that moral accountability hinges on questions of fairness: When is it fair to hold people morally responsible for what they do? Would it be fair to do so even in a deterministic world? To answer these questions, we need to understand what we are doing when we hold people morally responsible, a stance that Wallace connects with a central class of moral sentiments, those of resentment, indignation, and guilt. To hold someone responsible, he (...) argues, is to be subject to these reactive emotions in one's dealings with that person. Developing this theme with unusual sophistication, he offers a new interpretation of the reactive emotions and traces their role in our practices of blame and moral sanction. With this account in place, Wallace advances a powerful and sustained argument against the common view that accountability requires freedom of will. Instead, he maintains, the fairness of holding people responsible depends on their rational competence: the power to grasp moral reasons and to control their behavior accordingly. He shows how these forms of rational competence are compatible with determinism. At the same time, giving serious consideration to incompatibilist concerns, Wallace develops a compelling diagnosis of the common assumption that freedom is necessary for responsibility. Rigorously argued, eminently readable, this book touches on issues of broad concern to philosophers, legal theorists, political scientists, and anyone with an interest in the nature and limits of responsibility. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Confucian Sentimental Representation: A New Approach to Confucian Democracy by Kyung Rok KwonStephen C. AngleKWON, Kyung Rok. Confucian Sentimental Representation: A New Approach to Confucian Democracy. New York: Routledge, 2022. vi + 128 pp. Cloth, $128.00; eBook, $39.16Two facts have driven much of the recent theorizing about Confucian democracy. First, even in robust democracies like South Korea and Taiwan, East Asian citizens hold distinctive views about the relation (...) between leaders and led. Two-thirds of South Korean respondents and a third of those from Taiwan agreed with the statement "If we have political leaders who are morally upright, we can let them decide everything." Second, it is uncontroversial to say that traditional Confucianism advocated for rule by the virtuous. Most observers believe these two facts are linked but disagree about their normative upshot. Some regret the lingering authoritarianism polluting East Asian democracies, while others—primarily based in less democratic [End Page 146] countries—call for an embrace of "meritocracy" instead of democracy. A third group, to which Kwon Kyung Rok and I both belong, believe that properly understood "rule by virtue" can be better realized in a democracy. This means that modern Confucians should be democrats, and it suggests a distinctive way of conceptualizing democracy that both may be more apt for East Asia and may even offer lessons applicable worldwide. For Kwon, the key to all this is rethinking how we understand political representation.Kwon argues that we should look to representation rather than directly at democracy because representation is both central to modern conceptions of democracy and yet makes a more constructive dialogue partner for Confucian virtue-based politics. Democracy, says Kwon, is at its core concerned with the equal distribution of political power, whereas representation concerns "a special relationship and psychology" between the representer and the represented that he understands in terms of "authorization," the making of "sound judgments," and "accountability." Chapters 1 and 2 of the book explore the primarily "rationalist" notion of representation found in the Western tradition and the more "sentimentalist" version of representation that can be constructed out of Confucian virtue politics. The latter chapter is the creative core of the book. Kwon argues that for one to count as a representative in a modern Confucian context, one needs to make sound judgments of the true interests of society and share emotions with the people—in the process of transforming them into more morally cultivated people. This sense of "representing" the people builds on what it is to be a virtuous exemplar. Along the way Kwon makes a detailed case that direct caring rather than empathy is core to the idea of humaneness (or benevolence; ren) that is so central to Confucianism; this is a good example of how he engages with interpretive literature to clarify aspects of his picture.The final two chapters engage with alternative accounts of modern Confucian political theory. Chapter 3 provides a negative defense of democratic sentimental representation by demonstrating that various "meritocratic" alternative arguments fail. One of the key points here is that Daniel Bell and Tongdong Bai are overly concerned with the instrumental value of a ruler's competence, missing the intrinsic value of a ruler's virtue and its contribution to the ethically good life of the community; as a result, their views fail to be distinctively Confucian. Chapter 4 takes Sungmoon Kim's influential idea of "public reason Confucianism" as its point of departure. Kwon is quite sympathetic to Kim's framework and defends Kim against certain misunderstandings, but perceptively argues that there is a gap in Kim's account between citizens, understood primarily in affective terms, and the state, which in Kim's account is exemplified by the high court and is understood primarily in rationalist terms. What is missing is the bridging role of leaders. Kwon writes that mediating between formal and informal decision-making processes, leaders should "make ordinary citizens feel respected and make them focus on public issues in appropriate ways." He believes that a caring and competent [End Page 147] leader can "broaden the horizon of mutual understanding by exhorting [citizens] to think of all as belonging to an extended family." In short... (shrink)

This article examines the role played by ‘feeling’ (Gefühl) and ‘love’ within the philosophy of German Romanticism. After an introduction (I) to the actual debate on German Romanticism, paragraph II sketches an analysis of the concept of Gefühl at the end of the eighteenth century and highlights the differences with its actual meaning. The successive three sections are dedicated to three pivotal figures of German Romanticism: F. Schlegel (III), Novalis (IV), and Baader (V). Similarities and differences between these authors will (...) be emphasized. It will be demonstrated that they deny the reason˗feeling opposition, and that ‘feeling’ and ‘love’ are at the heart of their ontology, epistemology, and conception of subjectivity, conditioning the Romantic human-nature relationship and Romantic political philosophy. In the concluding remarks (VI), this paper explains how German Romanticism can still help to better understand the role of feelings in politics. (shrink)

In common with much of the Western world, agrarianism—valuing farmers and agricultural activity as intrinsically worthwhile, noble, and contributing to the strength of the national character—runs through Australian culture and politics. Agrarian sentiments and attitudes have been identified through empirical research and by inference from analysis of political debate, policy content, and studies of media and popular culture. Empirical studies have, however, been largely confined to the US, with little in the way of recent re-evaluations of, or developments from, (...) early work. This paper reports on research that seeks quantitative empirical evidence for the existence of agrarianism in the Australian community and seeks to identify its core characteristics. Using a purpose-designed sub-set of items within a large, omnibus-style survey of regional and rural Australia, we demonstrate that agrarianism exists as a scientifically quantifiable concept identifiable through responses to four key propositions: that Australians should support policies aimed at improving the position of the agricultural industries; that working in agriculture and associated industries brings out the best in people; that agricultural producers make a major contribution to environmental protection and biodiversity conservation; and that the development of agriculture in Australia contributed to the development of the national character. We found very little variation in the degree to which different demographic groupings agree with agrarianism. Older people, farmers, and non-Indigenous Australian-born respondents were among those who were statistically significantly more likely to agree with the defining propositions of agrarianism, but their scores were only very slightly higher than those of other sub-populations in the sample. (shrink)

The foundation for a system of morals, this 1749 work is a landmark of moral and political thought. Its highly original theories of conscience, moral judgment, and virtue offer a reconstruction of the Enlightenment concept of social science, embracing both political economy and theories of law and government.

Die „family sentiments“ sind nichts Ursprüngliches, sondern entfalten sich erst beim Vorhandensein bestimmter ökonomischer Tatbestände. Sie können deshalb auch nicht als Erklärung für den Ursprung der Familie dienen. Die jeweils herrschenden Auffassungen über die Grundlagen der Verwandtschaft sind ganz verschieden ; jedenfalls bildet diese nicht etwa selbst die Grundlage der gesellschaftlichen Organisation, sondern das umgekehrte Verhältnis trifft zu. Die juristische Verwandtschaft beruht häufig nicht auf Blutszusammengehörigkeit, und die Nomenklatur der Unterscheidung der Grade der Verwandtschaft gewinnt erst in der patriarchalischen Familie (...) ihre volle Bedeutung. Die Gefühle zwischen den Familienmitgliedern können nicht als naturgegeben gelten, denn sonst müssten sie auch bei den Tieren Vorkommen. Der Zusammenhalt zwischen den Mitgliedern einer Gruppe, der bei Tieren beobachtet wird, beruht nicht auf gefühlsmässiger Bindung, sondern auf ökonomischen Faktoren. Die Bindung der Mutter an die Kinder findet sich gewiss auch bei vielen Tieren, aber was wir Mutterliebe nennen, ist etwas anderes, denn jene Bindung bezieht sich bei dem Muttertier unterschiedslos auch auf fremde Junge. Besonders wichtig für die Beurteilung des Charakters der „family sentiments“ ist die Differenzierung der Gefühle zwischen den Mitgliedern einer Gruppe, wenn die ökonomische Grundlage sich ändert, sowie die Anpassung der Gefühle an neue Funktionen. Weitere Beispiele für die Abhängigkeit der „family sentiments“ von ökonomischen Tatbeständen bieten die Erklärung ihrer Verschiedenheit in der englischen und französischen Familie oder die Folgen der industriellen Revolution. Mit dem Sieg der liberalistischen Wirtschaft ändert sich die ganze psychologische Basis für die „family sentiments“, alle gefühlsmässigen Beziehungen werden individualistisch. Die schwere Krise, in die das kapitalistische System geraten ist, greift auch tief in die Familienbeziehungen ein. Jedoch werden die bisher in der Familie aufbewahrten menschlichen Gefühle sich in einer besser organisierten Gesellschaft besser entfalten können.Les „family sentiments“ ne se développèrent qu’en rapport à certains faits économiques. Ils ne sauraient donc servir à expliquer l’origine de la famille. Les conceptions quant à la base de la parenté (en particulier sur la naissance des enfants) qui dominent dans les différentes phases du développement de l’humanité sont très distinctes l’une de l’autre. La base de l’organisation sociale est formée par d’autres éléments que les „family sentiments“. La parenté reconnue ne repose souvent pas sur la parenté du sang. Les noms désignant les degrés de la parenté gagnent leur signification actuelle avec l’apparition dans l’histoire de la famille patriarcale. — Les sentiments entre les différents membres de la famille ne sauraient être considérés comme des données naturelles, car si tel était le cas, on trouverait ces mêmes sentiments également chez les animaux. Les liens entre membres d'un groupe, observés aussi bien chez les animaux que chez les hommes ont pour base des facteurs d'ordre matériel. Le sentiment qui lie la mère à sa progéniture se trouve, il est vrai, chez de nombreux animaux, mais ce n'est point ce que nous appelons aujourd'hui l'amour maternel. Ce lien de la femelle se rencontre aussi bien à l'égard de la progéniture des autres animaux que pour la sienne. Pour être à même de bien juger le caractère des „family sentiments“, il importe surtout d'observer l’adaptation de ces sentiments à de nouvelles exigences, c’est-à-dire comment les sentiments entre membres d'un groupe subissent un changement quand la base économique se trouve modifiée. B. donne d'autres exemples pour la dépendance des „family sentiments“ de facteurs économiques, dans son exposé sur la différence des sentiments dans la famille française et anglaise, tout en décrivant les suites de la révolution industrielle. Avec la victoire du libéralisme économique, la base psychologique pour les „family sentiments“ se transforme entièrement : tous les sentiments revêtent un caractère individualiste. La grande crise dans laquelle le système actuel de l’économie est entré, influence sensiblement les relations psychiques. Les sentiments qui, jusqu'à présent, étaient restreints dans le cadre de la famille, se développeront dans une société mieux organisée que celle de notre époque. (shrink)

Les auteurs analysent l'absence du sentiment d'injustice dans la musique populaire, que ce soit dans les chansons traditionnelles, les chansons d'amour, le rap ou encore les chansons politiquement engagées. Electre 2018.

This article considers the ongoing difficulties for mainstream political theory of actualizing human rights, with particular reference to Rorty’s attempt to transcend their liberal foundations. It argues that there is a problematic disjuncture between his articulation of exclusion and his hope for inclusion via the expansion of the liberal human rights culture. More specifically, it shows that Rorty’s description of victimhood is based on premises unavailable to him, with the consequence that stateless persons are rendered inhuman, and, further, that his (...) accounts of sentimentality and solidarity have limited potential for the inclusion of such victims within the liberal ‘community of justification’. In the final analysis, the article argues that there is a substantial mismatch between Rorty’s dependence on both liberal norms and international political practice, and his hopes for the human rights culture to include those stripped of human dignity. (shrink)

Prevailing in the survey industry is the conception that public sentiment is a simple arithmetic function of individuals’ sentiments, many of them held only privately, maybe even secretly. Against this conception, the present paper argues that public sentiment is better construed as strategic deductions from publicly available evidence—a matter of the public working out a common sentiment from publicly available information. This conception diverges dramatically from a conception of public sentiment as the weight of private thoughts (...) or beliefs—items that may be measured by a poll, at least when the appropriate survey methodologies are correctly administered and analyzed. The reason to prefer a conception emphasizing public materials is perhaps obvious: only that which enjoys public visibility has a chance of effecting change. If measuring public sentiment is truly in service of taking stock of forces at work on the social-political stage, that is quite sufficient—as the arguments presented here will show—to prefer the approach on offer here over those currently prevailing. (shrink)

" Mais là où nous devons aller chercher le héros de notre pensée, ce n'est pas chez un philosophe ayant vécu en chair et en os, mais chez un être de fiction et d'action, plus réel que tous les philosophes : Don Quichotte. Car il y a un quichottisme philosophique, sans doute, mais aussi une philosophie quichottesque. Est-elle autre chose, au fond, celle des conquistadors, des contre-réformateurs, celle de Loyola, et surtout, dans l'ordre de la pensée abstraite mais sentie, celle (...) de nos mystiques? Et l'on ne peut dire que la philosophie de Don Quichotte fut exactement l'idéalisme : il ne combattait pas pour des idées. C'était le spiritualisme : il combattait pour l'esprit ". Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936) s'inscrit dans la tradition de Pascal, de Kierkegaard et aussi de Nietzsche. Dans ce livre, écrit en 1912, l'auteur ne tente pas seulement de définir un christianisme qui se trouve souvent en marge des doctrines officielles, mais oppose également sa conception de l'homme et du monde à celles du rationalisme moderne. (shrink)

This paper addresses one of the challenges in human rights education concerning the conceptualization of a pedagogical orientation that avoids both the pitfalls of a purely juridical address and a ‘cheap sentimental’ approach. The paper uses as its point of departure Richard Rorty’s key intervention on human rights discourse and argues that a more critical orientation of Rorty’s proposal on ‘sentimental education’ has important implications for HRE. This orientation is not limited to perspectives such as Rorty’s voyeuristic approach to sentimentality, (...) but rather focuses explicitly on the emotional and political consequences of various manifestations of sentimentality. Such an orientation in HRE will not only encourage learners to become more sympathetic to the living realities of those who suffer, but it will also interrogate the conditions of hearing narratives of suffering so that possibilities for cheap sentimentality are minimized as much as possible. (shrink)

Qual o lugar da política em nossas modernas sociedades capitalistas? De que política se trata? Como a democracia deve se haver com uma economia que provoca riqueza gerando desigualdades insalubres? Essas são algumas das questões sobre as quais se debruçam os filósofos José Arthur Giannotti e Luiz Damon Moutinho em Os limites da política. Instigado pelo alcance e profundidade do e-book A política no limite do pensar, de Giannotti, publicado pela Companhia das Letras em 2014, Luiz Damon reagiu escrevendo um (...) ensaio em que refletia sobre as bases filosóficas dos argumentos do colega. As provocações de Damon levaram Giannotti a acentuar ou corrigir algumas de suas ideias. Os limites da política nasceu de um intenso debate entre os dois filósofos, com réplicas e tréplicas, agora reunidas em um só volume juntamente ao ensaio original que deu origem à polêmica. (shrink)

In this book Sharon Krause argues that moral and political deliberation must incorporate passions, even as she insists on the value of impartiality.

The aim of this paper is to critically inquire into some of the interpretations of what appears to me to be the core of Hobbes's political philosophy: his concept of political obligation. And in so doing I will provide a new way of reading the problem of obedience in Hobbes, one that does not dismiss the limits of political obligation and the theological context that surrounds it.

O presente artigo procura resgatar um dos períodos mais intensos e menos estudados da Guerra Fria no Brasil, quando duas correntes militares antípodas política e ideológicas atuaram na perspectiva de influenciar através de suas entidades de classe um projeto de nação. Entretanto, essa reflexão tem por foco, os militares nacionalistas e de esquerda, oficiais e praças das forças armadas cuja intervenção foi bem sucedida ao final, com a vitória da Tese do Monopólio Estatal do Petróleo e não intervenção brasileira no (...) conflito coreano, embora ao custo de uma repressão sobre centenas de militares, muitos deles presos e torturados e até hoje não anistiados, demonstrando em última instância, a fragilidade da democracia e do Estado Democrático e de Direito no Brasil.The Military and the Cold War in Brazil The present article seeks to recover one of the most intense and least studied period of the Cold War in Brazil, when two military antipodal political and ideological currents acted in the perspective of influencing through its class entities a nation project. However, this reflection is focused on the nationalist and leftist military, officers and squares of the armed forces whose intervention was successful in the end, with the victory of the Thesis of the State Petroleum Monopoly and not Brazilian intervention in the Korean conflict, although at cost of a crackdown on hundreds of soldiers, many of them imprisoned and tortured and still unamused, demonstrating in the last instance the fragility of democracy and the Democratic State and Law in Brazil. Resumen Los Militares y la Guerra Fría en Brasil El presente artículo busca rescatar uno del período más intensos y menos estudiados de la Guerra Fría en Brasil, cuando dos corrientes militares antípodas políticas e ideológicas actuaron en la perspectiva de influenciar a través de sus entidades de clase un proyecto de nación. Sin embargo, esta reflexión tiene por foco, los militares nacionalistas y de izquierda, oficiales y plazas de las fuerzas armadas cuya intervención fue exitosa al final, con la victoria de la Tesis del Monopolio Estatal del Petróleo y no intervención brasileña en el conflicto coreano, aunque al costo de una represión sobre cientos de militares, muchos de ellos presos y torturados y hasta hoy no aniquilados, demostrando en última instancia, la fragilidad de la democracia y del Estado Democrático y de Derecho en Brasil. (shrink)

This article was written based on Michel Foucault’s formulations in the course Abnormals (1975) about the dimension of human monstrosity. In its general lines, Foucault not only provides us with an overview of the slow formation of the “indefinite and confused family” of the abnormal, but also deals with the important participation of the figure of the human monster in its composition. Thus, taking the theme of the human monster as the guiding thread of this text, we intend to launch (...) ourselves into some questions about the technologies of knowledge and strategies of power that made its existence possible, namely: How the dimension of monstrosity came to be linked to the panorama of sexuality? How did the dispositif of sexuality get involved in the proliferation of the pale figures of human monsters? And, in a final step, we ask ourselves about the possibilities of political resistance from the perspective of dissident bodies, insofar as they face the violent universalism of determinations based on true sex. (shrink)

In _Rancière’s Sentiments _Davide Panagia explores Jacques Rancière’s aesthetics of politics as it informs his radical democratic theory of participation. Attending to diverse practices of everyday living and doing—of form, style, and scenography—in Rancière’s writings, Panagia characterizes Rancière as a sentimental thinker for whom the aesthetic is indistinguishable from the political. Rather than providing prescriptions for political judgment and action, Rancière focuses on how sensibilities and perceptions constitute dynamic relations between persons and the worlds they create. Panagia traces this (...) approach by examining Rancière’s modernist sensibilities, his theory of radical mediation, the influence of Gustave Flaubert on Rancière’s literary voice, and how Rancière juxtaposes seemingly incompatible objects and phenomena to create moments of sensorial disorientation. The power of Rancière’s work, Panagia demonstrates, lies in its ability to leave readers with a disjunctive sensibility of the world and what political thinking is and can be. (shrink)

Este artigo discute algumas variantes de relevo na língua alemã na crítica à modernidade. Em rigor, discute-as na sua pertinência actual, tal como se deixa ver em dois trabalhos recentes de autores portugueses, Rafael Gomes Filipe e Alexandre Franco de Sá. O nó-górdio da questão encontra-se na caracterização da modernidade através da elaboração de uma filosofia da His­tória, problema que sobressai na análise de Nietzsche e Weber por Gomes Filipe e no ensaio schmittiano de Franco de Sá.

O presente ensaio pretende analisar o Cooperativismo Educacional no estado de São Paulo, em suas formas institucionais, agora voltados para a organização escolar a partir de 1980. O cooperativismo educacional ocupou um lugar de destaque, com um discurso aparentemente renovador, pois tanto pretendia formar o indivíduo integralmente, afirmando superar a ética da competição pela ética da cooperação, de modo a superar a tradição administrativa hierárquica da escola pública e privada e, apresentar, inclusive, supondo desencadear disposições políticas emancipatórias para todos os (...) envolvidos no processo de ensino aprendizagem. Tendo como referencial teórico Dermeval Saviani, na análise da organização da escola e os pressupostos filosóficos e políticos dessa trajetória, e de Antonio Gramsci, ao relacionar as transformações do trabalho e a questão da educação, pretendemos descrever a expansão do cooperativismo educacional e analisar os seus princípios pedagógicos, organizacionais e políticos. This essay aims to analyze the Cooperative Education in São Paulo in its institutional forms, now facing the school organization since 1980. The cooperative education occupied a prominent place, with a refreshing speech apparently because both wanted to form the whole person, claiming to overcome the ethics of competition for the ethics of cooperation, in order to overcome the administrative tradition of hierarchical public and private schools, and provide even emancipatory political arrangements for all involved in teaching and learning. The theoretical framework Dermeval Saviani, the analysis of school organization and the philosophical and political assumptions that trajectory, and Antonio Gramsci, to relate changes in work and the issue of education, we intend to describe the expansion of cooperative education and analyze the pedagogical principles , organizational and political. (shrink)

However, other leading philosophers of the era--such as David Hume, Adam Smith, and J.G. Herder--placed greater emphasis on feeling, seeing moral and political ...

This essay argues that the illiberal anti-immigrant sentiments which lie behind the success of populist right-wing parties deserve the attention of political theorists working on the ethics of migration, even though such sentiments exceed the boundaries of admissible disagreement on justice in migration. Firstly, populist anti-immigrant sentiments hinder the implementation of liberal democratic immigration policies and thus they represent a feasibility constraint for any liberal ethics of migration, not only the most cosmopolitan ones. Secondly, there are legitimacy reasons why such (...) views should be neither merely dismissed nor simply contained, since they are voiced by populist political parties which are admitted in the electoral competition and even participate in governments. The main upshot of this discussion is a methodological one: the article argues that, since political theory should deal with the feasibility and legitimacy issues raised by populist anti-immigrant sentiments, a realistic approach is needed. The last section shows that such a methodological change offers the opportunity to extend the scope of normative theorising. In particular, it illustrates how a realistic approach encourages theorists to focus on local-level policies, as well as to devote attention to non-governmental actors and to their role in tackling citizens’ hostility towards immigrants. (shrink)

RESUMO O texto propõe, inicialmente, uma aproximação entre as visões de Aristóteles e Montaigne sobre a virtude da coragem, com especial atenção ao problema da morte heroica. Então, são apresentados alguns pontos de diferenciação do filósofo francês em relação ao legado aristotélico para, enfim, mostrar que uma das restrições especificamente montaignianas sobre a legitimidade de um ato de coragem acarreta uma limitação à ação do próprio Estado, o que deve ser julgado um elemento essencial à formação do pensamento político moderno. (...) ABSTRACT At first, the article proposes an approximation between Aristotle's and Montaigne's views on the virtue of courage, with special attention to the problem of heroic death. Then, some distinguishing points of the French philosopher from the Aristotelian legacy are presented, in order to show, finally, that one of the specifically Montaignean restrictions on the legitimacy of an act of courage entails a limitation to the action of the State itself; which must be considered an essential element to the shaping of Modern political thought. (shrink)

The foundations of Horkheimer’s rational society are based on the premise that social philosophy could be a choice for the Critical Theory. Therefore [1] a dialectic interpretation of the social issue is developed between philosophy and social sciences theories, using the category of interdisciplinary materialism. [2] Characterizing an age in a state of indigence begins with the definition of Enlightenment as a process of disenchantment with the world that reduces human reality under the sign of domination. The liberator course of (...) the Enlightenment was marred from the beginning and ended up being a process of alienation and reification. [3] Hence, the moral sentiments of compassion and politic solidarity get to the stage in order to addressing a new ethical perspective in which it is posible to define an existential imperative that can view the human misery and the searching of happiness, in the purpose of overcoming the conditions and realities of the present age in state of indigence. (shrink)

In Democracy against capitalism, Ellen Wood defends two important theses: capitalism inaugurates a new kind of exploitation and extortion of the working class that is not directly dependent on state extortion; this makes it possible for some political rights to be extended to a larger number of people through the establishment of “representative democracy”. On the other hand, workers' political participation is limited: by identifying democracy with political representation, the ruling classes have created an illusion of popular political participation that (...) is, in fact, extremely limited, or almost nil. In this article, we intend to show some of the main limits of representative democracy, and how this “democracy” atomizes citizens and keeps them away from effective political participation. For this, we will use other influential theorists such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Bernard Manin, Hanna Pitkin, Noam Chomsky. (shrink)

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the biologist Joseph Grinnell made a distinction between science and sentiment for producing fact-based generalizations on how to conserve biodiversity. We are inspired by Grinnellian science, which successfully produced a century-long impact on studying and conserving biodiversity that runs orthogonal to some familiar philosophical distinctions such as fact versus value, emotion versus reason and basic versus applied science. According to Grinnell, unlike sentiment-based generalizations, a fact-based generalization traces its diverse commitments and (...) thus becomes tractable for its audience. We argue that foregrounding tractability better explains Grinnell’s practice in the context of his time as well as in the context of current discourse among scientists over the political “biases” of biodiversity research and its problem of “reproducibility.”. (shrink)

According to Adam Smith, vanity is a vice that contains a promise: a vain person is much more likely than a person with low self-esteem to accomplish great things. Problematic as it may be from a moral perspective, vanity makes a person more likely to succeed in business, politics and other public pursuits. “The great secret of education,” Smith writes, “is to direct vanity to proper objects:” this peculiar vice can serve as a stepping-stone to virtue. How can this (...) transformation be accomplished and what might go wrong along the way? What exactly is vanity and how does it factor into our personal and professional lives, for better and for worse? This book brings Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments into conversation with William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair to offer an analysis of vanity and the objects to which it may be directed. Leading the way through the literary case study presented here is Becky Sharp, the ambitious and cunning protagonist of Thackeray’s novel. Becky is joined by a number of other 19th Century literary heroines – drawn from the novels of Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë and George Eliot – whose feminine perspectives complement Smith’s astute observations and complicate his account of vanity. The fictional characters featured in this volume enrich and deepen our understanding of Smith’s work and disclose parts of our own experience in a fresh way, revealing the dark and at times ridiculous aspects of life in Vanity Fair, today as in the past. (shrink)