Since the September 11 attacks, a new security agenda has swept aside much of the old sensitivity and apathy about intervening in “failing” states. The war on terror has redefined “governance” from concentrating on issues of economic viability and popular rights to a focus on the capacity of states to generate sufficient “order” to deter or capture the agents of the new transnational security threats: terrorists, smugglers, money launderers, the carriers of zoonotic disease. As part of this process, the governance (...) standards of other states became part of Western states' own security agendas, generating new, self-interested incentives for aid and intervention. In this article, I explore the possibilities for developing a realist-informed normative framework for humanitarian intervention in the context of the post–September 11international concern with transnational threats. (shrink)

What are we to make of the fact that world leaders, such as Canada’s Justin Trudeau, have, within the last few decades, offered official apologies for a whole host of past injustices? Scholars have largely dealt with this phenomenon as a moral question, seeing in these expressions of contrition a radical disruption of contemporary neoliberal individualism, a promise of a more humane world. Focusing on Canadian apology politics, this essay instead proposes a nonideal approach to state apologies, sidestepping questions of (...) what they ought to do and focusing instead on their actual functioning as political acts. Through a sociologically informed speech act theory and Foucault’s work on power, apology is conceptualized as a speech act with an essentially relational nature. The state, through apologizing, reaffirms the norms governing its relationship to its subjects at a moment when a past transgression threatens to destabilize this relation. From a Foucauldian point of view, the state’s power inheres in the very stability of the state–citizen relation, and we should therefore see apologies as defensive moves to protect state hegemony. In the context of Western liberal democracies, such as Canada, apologies embody, rather than challenge, the logic of neoliberal governmentality by suggesting that everything, including resentment against the state, can be managed within the current status quo. Nevertheless, total cynicism about apology politics is not warranted. In many indigenous apology campaigners’ demands for contrition we see another side of apologies: their potential to bring about change by enacting counterhegemonic relations to the state. (shrink)

This study explores new philosophical foundations for democracy in revolutions. Alain Badiou’s thought is in focus, but this essay is not just an exegesis. The thought of Alain Badiou is appraised (and adapted) in this essay in the light of the main currents of European thought on the hopes and history of European revolutions. This essay dismisses Badiou’s ultra-gauche Maoism, focusing instead on Badiou’s ways to reconcile revolutionary change, social inclusion and human freedom. These ways are important. By overcoming hegemonic (...) traditions of study, Badiou’s methods promote democratic ethics of restraint. They also help re-invigorate methods in the social sciences privileging participant perspectives. (shrink)

Using both Confucian texts and the work of American pragmatist John Dewey, this book offers a distinctly Confucian model of democracy.

Demokratien geraten zunehmend unter Druck. Dabei wird die Bedeutung von Demokratie selbst zum Gegenstand der Auseinandersetzung. Diese Auseinandersetzungen nimmt der vorliegende Band zum Anlass, die Bedeutung von Demokratie grundsätzlich zu untersuchen. Mit dem Begriff der Konstituenzien sind dabei jene wesentlichen Bedingungen gemeint, die Demokratie ausmachen. Die meisten dieser Bedingungen sind normativ. Was Demokratie ist, wird auch und gerade dadurch bestimmt, was Demokratie sein sollte. Damit geht es um jene Normen, deren Verwirklichung politische Praktiken zu demokratischen Praktiken macht. Sind diese Normen (...) nur eingeschränkt verwirklicht, mindert sich der demokratische Gehalt von Politik. Inwieweit ist dann nun aber eigentlich der Fall? Und was können wir dagegen tun? Antworten auf diese Fragen geben einschlägige Vertreterinnen und Vertreter aus Philosophie, Politik- und Rechtswissenschaft. (shrink)

Investigates, through a critical exploration of Derrida's political thought, the foundations of modern secular discourse in relation to issues of race and colonialism.

Russia’s war against Ukraine has grave consequences in several political categories. These include: a reassessment of the school of ‘political realism’, one of whose proponents claims to have predicted the war. Was the West partly ‘responsible’ for the war? Second, to what extent does the war of aggression, as an undeniable violation of law, damage the status of international law and justice? Third, the war is embedded in political developments that stretch back a century. It is examined in its context (...) within American foreign policy since the Wilsonian peace programme, in relation to the dangerous reluctance of the EU to pursue a decisive geopolitical policy towards Russia, and interpreted in the light of Stalinist echoes within Russian politics. (shrink)

Martin Heideggers Holzwege erschien 1950 und präsentierte dem Publikum seine Überlegungen zum "Ursprung des Kunstwerkes", zur "Zeit des Weltbildes", zu "Hegels Begriff der Erfahrung", zu "Nietzsches Wort 'Gott ist tot'", zur Frage "Wozu Dichter?" und zum "Spruch des Anaximander". Damit liegen in diesem Band einige der wichtigsten Beiträge aus Heideggers Spätwerk vor, in dem er sich kritisch mit der Geschichte der Metaphysik auseinandersetzt und sich in der Begegnung mit Kunst, Dichtung und der vorsokratischen Philosophie um neue Wege des Denkens bemüht. (...) Seit seinem Erscheinen hat dieser Band, der in zahlreichen Übersetzungen vorliegt, die Rezeption von Heideggers Denken maßgeblich geprägt. Mittlerweile liegen zahlreiche andere Texte Heideggers gerade aus den 1930er und 1940er Jahren vor. Diese erlauben eine bessere Einordnung der in Holzwege veröffentlichten Texte und somit auch eine vertiefte Interpretation des Heidegger'schen Spätwerkes. Genau darum bemüht sich der vorliegende Band, der die Aufsätze aus Holzwege sowohl vor dem Hintergrund von Heideggers eigenem Denkweg als auch im weiteren Rahmen der Philosophiegeschichte diskutiert Dieser Band eignet sich zur allgemeinen Einführung in Heideggers Spätwerk als auch zu einer vertieften Auseinandersetzung mit Detailfragen zu seinem Denken. (shrink)

The “welcome return” to “substantive political philosophy” that Rawls'sA Theory of Justicewas said to herald has resulted in forty years of proposals seeking to show that philosophical reflection leads to the demonstrable truth of almost every and any conceivable view of the justice of property rights. Select any view—from the justice of unregulated capitalist markets to the most extreme forms of egalitarianism—and one will find that some philosophers have proclaimed that rational reflection uniquely leads to its justice. This is, I (...) believe, a sort of ideological thinking masquerading as philosophizing. In this paper, using some tools from game theory as well as experimental findings, I seek to sketch a non-ideological approach to the question of the justification of property rights. On this approach the aim of political philosophy is, first and foremost, to reflect on whether our social rules of property are within the “optimal eligible set” of rules acceptable to all. (shrink)

Examines the early works of German-Jewish philosopher Leo Strauss (1899-1973).

Presents Li Zehou's culminating views on ethics in a series of works that highlight the importance of Confucian philosophy today.

This chapter argues that dual-use emerging technologies are distributing unprecedented offensive capabilities to nonstate actors. To counteract this trend, some scholars have proposed that states become a little “less liberal” by implementing large-scale surveillance policies to monitor the actions of citizens. This is problematic, though, because the distribution of offensive capabilities is also undermining states’ capacity to enforce the rule of law. I will suggest that the only plausible escape from this conundrum, at least from our present vantage point, is (...) the creation of a “supersingleton” run by a friendly superintelligence, founded upon a “post-singularity social contract.” In making this argument, the present chapter offers a novel reason for prioritizing the “control problem,” i.e., the problem of ensuring that a greaterthan-human-level AI will positively enhance human well-being. (shrink)

Der soziotechnische Wandel bringt neue Phänomene des Zufalls hervor, die sich den üblichen Strategien des Umgangs mit Risiken und Unsicherheit entziehen. Diese Akzidenzphänomene sind prinzipiell unvorhersehbar und in ihrer komplexen Effektgesamtheit jenseits von Kalkulation und Antizipation. Eine allgemeine Verzukünftigung unseres Weltbezuges mit spezifischen weitreichenden Problemen ist die Folge und lässt klassische Agenturen des Risikomanagements und der Unsicherheitsbewältigung an ihre Leistungsgrenzen stoßen. Bruno Gransche zeigt, dass Philosophie und Zukunftsforschung gemeinsam großes Potenzial aufweisen, hier zu helfen.

Anger is often an appropriate reaction to harms and injustices, but is it a politically beneficial one? Martha Nussbaum (Journal of the American Philosophical Association 1 (1), 41–56, 2015, Anger and Forgiveness. Oxford University Press, 2016) has argued that, although anger is useful in initially recruiting agents for action, anger is typically counterproductive to securing the political aims of those harmed. After the initial shockwave of outrage, Nussbaum argues that to be effective at enacting positive social change, groups and individuals (...) alike, must move quickly out of the state of anger. Feminist theorists (Frye, The Politics of Reality. Crossing Press, 1983; Lorde, 1997; Narayan, Hypatia 3 (2): 31–48, 1988) on the other hand have for long highlighted the efficacy of anger, as well as its moral and epistemic value, in fighting against the oppressive status quo. It might be thought therefore that for political action to be effective, a continued state of anger is preferable. Protestors must after all create and sustain a sense of moral obligation and justice. A main way of doing so is to promote successive moral shocks that trigger outrage (Jasper, Emotion Review 6 (3): 208–213, 2014). I present a novel, empirically informed defense of anger’s efficacy in political action. Nussbaum holds a traditional view on the nature of anger, inherited from Aristotle and the Stoics, which holds that anger constitutively involves a desire for retribution. The view that anger is counterproductive falls out of this and is dominant in academic work as well as in our personal and political lives. Based on work in social psychology, I argue that we need to reconsider this. In doing so, I highlight anger’s aim for recognition, rather than retribution, as key. Furthermore, I uncover conditions for anger’s political efficacy, as well as reasons for why the traditional view of anger has been so pervasive. (shrink)

This article highlights the long accomplishments of Claude Sumner, S.J. in the field of African philosophy. During his lifetime he published over 33 books and 184 articles. He lived and worked in Ethiopia for 44 years. He translated into English and analysed several key historical works in Ethiopian philosophy, written originally in Ge’ez. He argued that modern rationalist philosophy began in Africa with Zera Yacob at the same time that it began in France with Descartes. He then set to work (...) recording and analyzing oral philosophical sources found in proverbs and songs. He theorized on the definitions of philosophy and the methods to explore philosophy found in different sources. (shrink)

Purpose. The research is based on the comprehension of the anthropological tendencies of the metamodernism, which presupposes the consistent solution of the following tasks: a) explication of the content of post-postmodernism in modern philosophical literature; b) identification of the ideological basis of metamodernism anthropology; c) characteristics of the problem field of metamodernism anthropology and the state of man in the modern era. Theoretical basis. Anthropology of the metamodernism for the first time defines socio-cultural context through the hesitative state between the (...) values of modernism and their rejection by the postmodernism, which makes it possible to formulate the peculiarity of the time as a desire to reconstruct a Holistic Man, impartial to the dominant worldview attitudes of a social nature. Anthropology of the metamodernism is presented as the individualization of the socio-cultural space in the form of human self-reconstruction at all anthropological levels. An era without an unambiguously expressed moral guideline is based on the ethics of all-acceptance, the only justification of which is the existence of a universal right to beingness. Digitalization as a process of digital transformation of society creates conditions for the value realization of the free choice of metamodernism man, through which a Holistic Man is accomplished. Originality. It is substantiated that metamodernism as a descriptive position of the modern cultural dominant of the digitalized era is characterized by a state of hesitation between the values of modernism and postmodernism. The anthropology of the metamodernism manifests itself in the form of the reconstruction of the holistic man and the self-reconstruction of the inner man. The peculiarities of the human metamodernism are recognized as the mutual complete determinability of the individual and the mass. Conclusions. Metamodernism is the formulation of the problem of a man in a new perspective: what to be and how to survive between the extremes of semantic poles, without losing dignity and unique intrinsic value. Proceeding from this, the fate of a metamodernism man is determined in pursuit of the endlessly receding horizons of the anthropology of incompleteness, which is carried out through post-irony, naive sincerity, optimistic openness to the world. (shrink)

Many scholars have argued that unity of humankind can be established on the basis of some basic or core human values. Instead of engaging in a comparative empirical research, compiling lists of core values derived from different cultures, discuss their relevance for human fellowship, I examine the simple values of life that during the 1980s united people in Poland and made them to form the powerful civic movement, which was Solidarity. Today we live in a world that is fundamentally different (...) from that before 1989. We are no longer divided by a global ideological struggle between communism and liberal democracy. The key issue today is not a bipolar division but globalization. My thesis is today we need a new Global Solidarity and that this movement can take lessons from Poland’s Solidarity. It should not be grounded in any ideology, but in inclusive values that do not divide but can potentially unite all human beings, and these can be derived from basic human needs. In short, Global Solidarity should be based on what I call the “righteousness of life.” It can be achieved if there is a growing recognition of what is right for life and a growing interest in protecting and enhancing life. (shrink)

This review essay engages critically with Heikki Patomäki's The Political Economy of Global Security: War, Future Crises, and Changes in Global Governance. The book is built around the hypothesis that the current ‘era of Neoliberalism’ shares many similarities to the era of the ‘new imperialism’ of the late nineteenth century, ending, catastrophically, in World War I and the Great Depression. Patomäki undertakes this comparison by focusing on the principal long-term historical processes, structures, tendencies and contradictions that may be responsible for (...) the similarities between these two eras. To do so Patomäki constructs an explanatory model of the underlying causal processes and mechanisms involved. The implications are ominous and urgent. The essay uses a close examination of this exemplary case of critical realism in social science to discuss critically its historical explanations, the comparative analysis it makes, and especially the question of agency as theorised in the author's ‘future scenarios’. (shrink)

This article attempts to critically challenge Richard Rorty's view that the work of Jacques Derrida has no political utility. For Rorty, Derrida is a ‘private ironist’ whose quest for personal perfection renders him ineffectual as a ‘public liberal’. This view, I contend, is the consequence of looking at Derrida from the perspective of critics, such as Simon Critchley, who suggest that there is a strong ethico‐political strain in deconstruction on the basis of its Levinasian import. But to ally Derrida too (...) closely with Levinas, I maintain, runs the risk of obfuscating the rich and powerful insights regarding the nature of justice and democracy which Derrida has been developing for some time now. By showing how the theme of justice in Derrida differs from that encountered in Levinas, it becomes possible for us to show how Derrida's political intuitions bear remarkable and surprising similarity to those forged by Rorty. Derrida, on this reading, appears as a Utopian liberal in the pragmatic mode, one for whom progress in the political sphere is engendered by attending to the suffering of those about us and not (pace Marx, Althusser, and Foucault) by way of large‐scale revolution. The notion that solidarity is ultimately founded on our mutual susceptibility to suffering, I argue finally, is what serves to link Rorty's idea of a ‘liberal utopia’ to Derrida's ‘new international’, a comparison which significantly undermines the contention that the latter is useful for exclusively private purposes. (shrink)

. Time, virtuality and the Goddess. Cultural Values: Vol. 2, No. 2-3, pp. 270-287.

In this essay, I ask what form of historical consciousness schools should nurture in students. The two criteria I set up in this regard are plausibility—is the account of history plausible—and practicality—does the form of historical consciousness help young people contribute to the betterment of society. The level of my analysis is that of modernity, a novel interpretation of which I gradually develop. I begin by drawing on Nietzsche to assess three forms of historical consciousness that are on offer: the (...) belief in the old age of humankind, a forward-looking rebellion, and a backwards-looking rebellion. All three are found wanting according to my criteria. I retain from Nietzsche the idea that a certain degree of ‘presentism’ is inevitable in historical consciousness. I then use Paul Ricoeur’s reflections on modernity as a springboard for outlining a different account, which mobilizes the metaphor of modernity as a period of transition akin to adolescence. The form of historical consciousness that is associated with this metaphor is more plausible and practical than the three competitors I assessed. I conclude by defending this account from potential objections. (shrink)

The end of history by Fukuyama is mainly based on Hegel’s treatise of the end of history and Kojeve’s corresponding interpretation. But Hegel’s end of history is a purely philosophical question, i.e., an ontological premise that must be fulfilled to complete absolute knowledge. When Kojeve further demonstrates its universal and homogeneous state, Fukuyama extends it into a political view: The victory of the Western system of freedom and democracy marks the end of the development of human history and Marxist theory (...) and practice. This is a misunderstanding of Hegel. Marx analyzes, scientifically, the historical limitation of Western capitalism and maintains, by way of a kind of revolutionary teleology, the expectation of and belief in human liberation, which is the highest historical goal. His philosophy of history is hence characterized by theoretical elements from both historical scientificalness and historical teleology. (shrink)

Scholars of Marx often spend much effort to emphasize the socio-historical characteristics of Marx's concept of nature. At the same time, from this concept of nature, one seems to be able to deduce a strong sense of historical anthropocentricism and relativism. But through an exploration of the results of Rorty's discarding the distinction between "natural" and "man-made" and Strauss' clearing up value relativism in terms of the concept of nature, people will find that historicism is a world outlook that brought (...) its historical circumstances on itself. It neglects the fundamental role of nature in the structure of the relationships between nature and history. A modern result of it is that it fails to offer any universal norms. (shrink)

Volume 16, Issue 4, September 2019, Page 381-388.

There is a complicated relation between social and political inertia – the failure of institutions to respond adequately to social, technological and environmental change – and social acceleration – the tendency of social change to go faster and faster. Social stasis and acceleration are not simply opposed but also causally related. This article contrasts two theories of political and social inertia. Francis Fukuyama argues that political inertia is a result of a cognitive and institutional rigidity which is ultimately grounded in (...) human nature, and that therefore inertia is a feature inherent in political systems. Hartmut Rosa, by contrast, sees inertia as a specifically modern phenomenon, which is the result of the inability of political institutions to cope with the accelerating rate of change in other social systems. It will be argued that a broad approach combining historical, institutional and normative perspectives is needed to explain political inertia. (shrink)

This essay is a reflection on the ways we understand East Asia, as well as how East Asia is related to our knowledge construction. In spite of the personal tone, which I use strategically to formulate arguments in a carefully designed narrative flow, the article remains critical throughout and its conclusion is clear: exploration of the essence of East Asian civilization can constitute a meaningful effort to reevaluate and even restructure our current world of knowledge.

Alienation theory has acted as the stimulus for a great deal of research and writing in the history of sociology. It has formed the basis of many sociological ‘classics’ focused on the workplace and the experiences of workers, and has also been mobilized to chart wider social malaise and individual troubles. Alienation theory usage has, however, declined significantly since its heyday of the 1960s and 1970s. Here, the reasons why alienation theory was ‘forgotten’ and what can be gained by ‘remembering’ (...) alienation theory are explored. To realize this ambition this article proceeds by (1) briefly visiting differing definitions of alienation theory, before charting its high point, and the various debates and tensions of the time, during the 1960s and 1970s; (2) analysing the reasons why alienation theory fell from grace from the 1980s onwards; (3) elaborating how and why alienation theory is still relevant for sociology and the wider social sciences today. (shrink)

This article examines the discursive strategies of news reports on China's human rights in The New York Times and People's Daily. After an analysis of local semantics, I argue that the discursive representations in the two newspapers reflect the struggle over articulation of human rights. The New York Times attempts to project the notion of natural rights as universal truth, whereas People's Daily defines human rights as a process of development to counter Western condemnation as well as to justify rights (...) abuses in China. The struggle over articulation is also a manifestation of the hierarchy of discourse. The powerful try to fix the preferred meaning while the powerless strive to negate the dominant meaning. (shrink)

This article critically investigates the presumption that we are living in a qualitatively new `age of anxiety'. It suggests that most sociologists who address this topic have so far failed to recognize the analytical complexity of the condition of anxiety itself. By examining the possibility of establishing sociological indicators of the prevalence and character of anxiety in contemporary societies, the author argues that the `sociological imagination' has yet to provide a sufficient account of the interrelationship between representations of social problems (...) in the public sphere and the variety of anxieties which individuals may encounter in their `personal troubles of milieu'. (shrink)

This paper examines the tension between the mainstream belief in international law as a source of objectivity distinct from politics and its new stream critics that question the validity of such a distinction. It is argued that, as a type of language, international law is not distinct from politics as a function of objectivity, but rather by the fact that it serves the international community’s thymos. The phenomena of global administrative law and NATO’s use of force in Kosovo are analyzed (...) as examples of how the thymos drives international law. Building on feminist theories of international law, the article sets forth a vision of international law as the primary communicative device for the international community’s thymos. (shrink)

Education for Sustainable Development supports processes of change in complex socio-ecological systems. Where and how this change takes place are important considerations as we seek to enhance our capacity to challenge existing systems and thus produce and reproduce our life activities in more sustainable ways. This paper considers the possibilities for change in a system as deeply embedded in our social and material existence as capitalism. It rejects the notion that there is no alternative and considers the implications of Evald (...) Ilyenkov’s exploration and development of the Dialectic of the Ideal as the basis for change. I reflect on Ilyenkov’s work in relation to a recent national study into the potential for creating a more sustainable banking sector and the associated education and skills development requirements. The individualising response to sustainability challenges is rejected through the opening up of a more nuanced understanding of the role of contradictions evident in the reciprocal movement and mutual transformations between society and the material structures, both natural and built, within which society exists. (shrink)

By 1989, fascism had long been defeated in Europe, and reforms in the Soviet Union appeared to signify the collapse of communist ideology, prompting Francis Fukuyama to famously declare the ‘end of...

This article analyzes the loss of legitimacy that the economic crisis brought upon representative democracy and the consequences that can be drawn for the thesis of the end of History. The thesis we defend here is that the deterioration of the welfare state, as a result, under very specific conditions, of the capitalism in certain parts of the world, runs parallel with the delegative degradation of democracy.

National legal systems undergo profound changes when they are confronted with undemocratic power seizure. The same occurs when they experience a transition (back) to democracy. Thus far, these two types of transition have been studied in relative isolation. Nevertheless, it seems that both undemocratic usurpers and democratizing regimes affect the role of fundamental rule-of-law principles in similar ways. This article compares both types of transition and suggests that pragmatism and national identity are the driving forces behind similar legal mechanisms, affecting (...) legal principles, in those two forms of transition. Drawing on Carl Schmitt's idea of the state of exception and Ruti Teitel's work on transitional justice, this article shows that both kinds of transition share the same fundamental legal structure. (shrink)

In the coming years people will live in an ever-globalizing world with possibilities and challenges that did not exist before. The contours of this new world are already with us—capital flow across the world with lightning speed; mass media events broadcast anywhere in the globe as if they happened next door; tests, food habits, consumer goods, cultural production and political ideas floating across the globe unhindered; the boundaries of nation states becoming more and more porous; and the Internet being a (...) major source of rapid unbound communication. All sectors of the society are affected by this global society, the technological revolution. In this connection ethics becomes an increasingly im portant issue in global decision making. The author suggests some solutions on the basis of Indian culture. (shrink)

By the mid-19th century, an increasing number of Japan's political leaders and scholars realized that Japan had to adapt and incorporate some elements of Western-style industrialization into their own political and economic order as the necessary means to remain independent of Western imperialism. The Opium War in China, and later the Euro-American bombardments of the domain capitals in Choshu and Satsuma demonstrated that trying to defend the realm with only an increased emphasis on coastal defense would ultimately fail to keep (...) out the barbarians from the West. Sakuma Shozan, a samurai scholar from Matsushiro, proposed a dichotomous philosophy of 'Eastern ethics, Western science' as the means to strengthen Japan both internally and externally, and allow Japan to maintain its independence. In this paper, I argue that Sakuma's dichotomous approach can be interpreted within a Hegelian dialectical paradigm. After the traditional order of Japan (Eastern ethics as Idea/Thesis) came into contact with the industrializing order of the West (Western science as Nature/Anti-Thesis), Sakuma believed a new order would be created in Japan (Synthesis) that combined an increased knowledge on the Eastern ethics of Neo-Confucianism with the 'new' scientific knowledge of the West. (shrink)