In my book, The Rights of Others, I developed a discourse-theoretic approach to questions of political membership in liberal democracies, which include practices of citizenship, as well as of immigration, refuge and asylum. This article revisits five issues in response to various criticisms. How can we justify democratic exclusions? Is there a `right to membership' and how can it be reconciled with the different practices of various constitutional democracies? Is there a distinction between normatively acceptable and normatively problematic restrictions (...) on political membership? Does the concept of `democratic iterations' describe normative or empirical processes? How plausible is the binarism of the national and the global? I argue that democratic exclusions can be justified by not discriminating against would-be citizens and immigrants on the basis of ascriptive criteria. Ascriptive characteristics, like one's sex and skin colour, are not the product of one's voluntary doings. Democratic iterations are empirical processes which can be judged in the light of normative criteria deriving from discourse theory. Furthermore, while the binarism of national and global is problematical, alternative configurations of political membership at the present are not more defensible. (shrink)

Seyla Benhabib’s article, “Twilight of Sovereignty or the Emergence of Cosmopolitan Norms” offers a penetrating analysis of the contemporary global order and suggests a normative approach by which to mend its structural failures—viewed from the democratic ideal of popular sovereignty and guided by what she calls “cosmopolitan norms.” The authors take issue with Benhabib's position on both the descriptive and the normative grounds, and make three critical points in this matter: the first two points concern Benhabib's descriptive portrayal of (...) the global order. The third critical point concerns her normative position, i.e., her ideal of the good polity, displayed through her idea of “democratic iteration” operating through global civil society. The critical assessment of Benhabib's views ensues from the authors’ endorsement of the transformationalist position—the state, although somewhat undermined by global processes, still possesses considerable power and maintains a crucial role in determining the trajectory of these processes. (shrink)

In these two important lectures, distinguished political philosopher Seyla Benhabib argues that since the UN Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, we have entered a phase of global civil society which is governed by cosmopolitan norms of universal justice--norms which are difficult for some to accept as legitimate since they are sometimes in conflict with democratic ideals. In her first lecture, Benhabib argues that this tension can never be fully resolved, but it can be mitigated through the renegotiation of (...) the dual commitments to human rights and sovereign self-determination. Her second lecture develops this idea in detail, with special reference to recent developments in Europe (for example, the banning of Muslim head scarves in France). The EU has seen the replacement of the traditional unitary model of citizenship with a new model that disaggregates the components of traditional citizenship, making it possible to be a citizen of multiple entities at the same time. The volume also contains a substantive introduction by Robert Post, the volume editor, and contributions by Bonnie Honig (Northwestern University), Will Kymlicka (Queens University), and Jeremy Waldron (Columbia School of Law). (shrink)

This paper has several aims. Its main interpretive task is to argue that the democratic aspirations of contemporary critical theory are informed and haunted by an essentially Hegelian conception of constitutional order that I describe in part 1, according to which the modern state represents an institutional structure that integrates society through rational activity by mediating between the different interests of various social strata, connecting them in a common enterprise—haunted, because this Hegelian vision of making individuals free and “at (...) home” in the modern world, reconciled to it by virtue of being able to comprehend their social order as the work of their own shared reasons, remains a griping one, but one that critical theorists starting with the Left Hegelians view as increasingly implausible under modern social conditions. In section 2, I trace the decline of confidence in the prospects for the rational/mediational integration of society Hegel envisioned through Horkheimer and Adorno, and discuss some relevant aspects of Habermas’s initial reception of their views. Section 3 argues that the conceptions of democratic constitutional politics offered by Habermas and Benhabib should be read as attempts to recover, in a critical manner and under changed conditions, Hegel’s idea of social order as the product of rational activity. Along the way, I will make three interpretive and critical points: first, the existence of this link to Hegelian conceptions of constitutionalism demonstrates that interpretations of Habermas’s later work that read him as having broken with the tradition of Left Hegelianism are overstated—my reading of Habermas highlights his essentially Hegelian proceduralism and the social theoretic dimension of his work, and should challenge people who think of him as a neo-Kantian moralist. Second, this Left Hegelian social theoretic backdrop provides a stronger normative justification for the practice of democratically rearticulating constitutional norms—along with its apparent demotion of the stabilizing virtues of the rule of law—than the contextual one that some legal theorists have so far offered. Thirdly, I will comment on the shortcomings of Habermas’s conception of democratic constitutionalism, as well as Benhabib’s modified concept of “democratic iterations,” along with some brief suggestions on how this set of ideas should be developed. (shrink)

This contribution involves an analysis of philosophy of higher education in Africa, specifically related to a notion of democratic citizenship education. If one understands what philosophy of higher education constitutes African thought and practice one would get to know how such an understanding of higher education is realised and guides human actions related to the African context. Thus, the main argument of this article involves what philosophy of higher education guides understandings and practices on the African continent pertaining to (...) the cultivation of democratic citizenship education. In this article, the notion of an African philosophy of higher education is rearticulated according to autonomous and deliberative iterations, human co-belonging, and the recognition of pluralist and defensible thought. Based on analyses of (con)textual matters, such a philosophy of higher education summons university teachers and students to resist their predicaments autonomously, iteratively, and co-responsibly – that is, they are urged to act ethically. (shrink)

The authors of this essay have been committed practitioners and teachers of Philosophy for Children in a variety of educational settings, from pre-schools through university doctoral programs and in adult community and religious education programs. The promotion of critical thinking has always been a primary goal of this movement. But communal practices of critical thinking need to include other kinds of democratic conversation that prompt us to see others as full-fledged persons and to be curious about how our being (...) in community with them makes growth and self-correction possible. As we continue to experiment and innovate in new contexts we see ourselves continuing the inquiry around expanding the inclusivity of conversations about basic human concerns. In this essay we describe an inclusive strategy called the story circle, that was first developed as a method of popular education in Denmark and was then adapted as a tool of social change among poor and dis-empowered American citizens in Appalachia. Story circles were later utilized in a philosophical living-learning community and most recently coupled with Lipman and Sharp’s dialogue method of the community of philosophical inquiry. The authors of this paper have combined story circles with the community of philosophical inquiry in a variety of contexts. In each iteration, telling one’s own story and listening carefully to the stories of others can be equally revelatory actions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Problems with a Weakly Pluralist Approach to Democratic EducationSheron Fraser-BurgessIntroductionPluralism embodies wide acknowledgement of various forms of difference. Appeals to pluralism involve arguments for the proliferating of differences as a social and moral ideal. Rather than being a formal political regime such as with democracy or social liberalism, in the extant political philosophy literature, pluralism brings considerations of diversity and equality to bear in philosophical analysis of traditional (...) systems of government.As a critique, pluralism falls along a continuum, which can be conceived of as iterations of the standing of particular ways of life, with respect to constraints of both equality and justice. At one end of the spectrum, all conceptions of the human good share a prima facie equality that belie overarching moral norms as a criterion of ranking. Questions about the incumbency of individual liberty motivate movement toward the opposing end, as allowing for the most just society warrants giving precedence to such values. The source of pluralism’s critical role is its inherent demand of a cogent resolution of the moral and, at times, political tension between equality and freedom.This article considers two forms of pluralism that lie near opposing extremes of the continuum and their implication for education. According to Horace Kallen’s and John Gray’s strong pluralism, the claim to the fact of differing values, cultures, etc., has primacy. As a corollary, maintaining the integrity of the social groups as holders of those values becomes central. In conflict with liberal democratic principles, however, protecting group values may occur at the expense of individual detractors within the group or may pose a threat of harm to others outside of the group who do not share these values.On the other hand, one form of weak pluralism, Amy Gutmann’s deliberative democracy, constrains pluralism on political grounds of individual [End Page 1] freedom. Deliberative democracy subsumes the holding of all values, including those shared with a social group, to the requirements of democracy. Both theories are considered as attempts to reconcile principles of treating everyone equally with not unjustly limiting individual freedom in a democracy. I raise principled and practical issues from education that call into question whether each theory satisfactorily resolves the conflicting demands of both equality and liberty. A third alternative is proposed as a salient consideration for democratic education. I begin with the pluralism of Horace Kallen and its relationship to that of John Gray.Strong PluralismHorace Kallen’s Cultural PluralismIn this section, I discuss Horace Kallen’s seminal account of cultural pluralism from the early twentieth century, classifying it with the strong value pluralism articulated by John Gray. Gray’s and Kallen’s pluralism have in common both the sanctioning of the fullest expression of difference and difficulties with making sense of the intuitive pull toward a criterion for the ranking of values that democracy dictates. I then consider the educational implications of Kallen’s view, particularly with respect to its actual influence upon multi-cultural initiatives of the 1970s and 1980s.Kallen coined the term “cultural pluralism” in the early twentieth century (Kallen 73). At this time, America was experiencing a great deal of social upheaval because of the huge influx of European and Asian immigrants. Movements such as nativism and Americanization fueled xenophobic sentiment. In this milieu, the full acculturation of new immigrants became a priority. In education, schooling policies penalized immigrant expressions of cultural identity, such as speaking one’s native language and practicing cultural traditions (Kallen 4).Kallen was one of the voices advocating not only that new immigrants should be allowed to maintain their cultural identity but also that a formal political solution be initiated which accommodated the predilection to do so. Nathan Glazer explains that there was at that time a general blindness to the possibility that “these groups or elements within them would not want to acculturate and assimilate but would want to preserve their corporate characters and distinctiveness even if prejudice and discrimination disappeared.” According to Glazer, such was the doctrine of assimilation for the first forty years of the twentieth century (7). [End Page 2]Kallen’s pluralism is a departure from the prevailing view in... (shrink)

We can now survey the ruins of a Babelian tower of discourse about cosmopolitanism. We speak of “elite travel lounge,” “Davos,” “banal” as well as of “reflexive,” “really existing,” “patriotic,” and “horizontal” cosmopolitanisms. Here, an attempt is made to extract what is normative and ideal in the concept of cosmopolitanism by foregrounding the epistemic and moral dimensions of this attitude towards the world and other cultures. Kant, in a rather unexpected way, is profiled as the exemplification of what is here (...) called “imperial” cosmopolitanism, which is both blind and dismissive of its own material conditions of possibility. Then, through a discussion of the works of Nussbaum, Appiah, Mignolo, Butler, Benhabib and Beck the author elaborates a version of cosmopolitanism that is grounded, enlightened, and reflexive, which corrects and supersedes Kant’s own Eurocentric cosmopolitanism. We do not live in an age of cosmopolitanism, but in an age of cosmopolitization. Democratic iterations that are jurisgenerative are matched at the global level by cosmopolitan iterations that are both jurisgenerative and affect generating. (shrink)

When the brothers Hakob, 13, and Hasmik, 14, had lived in Sweden for 5 years, their applications for residence were rejected, and they were to be deported to Armenia (Dagens Nyheter March 8, 2007,...

Until recently the term ‘cosmopolitanism’ was a forgotten concept in the intellectual history of the 18th and 19th centuries. The last two decades have seen a remarkable revival of interest in cosmopolitanism across a wide variety of fields. This article contends that legal developments since the 1948 Declaration of Human Rights and the rise of an ‘international human rights regime’ are at the forefront of a new cosmopolitanism. Yet there is a great deal of skepticism toward such claims on the (...) part of those who maintain that democracy and human rights are best furthered by the nation-state framework. Still others confuse legal cosmopolitanism with the spread of a uniform system of rights across different national jurisdictions.In several writings in the past, I developed the concept of ‘democratic iterations’ to argue against such skepticism as well as misunderstandings of legal cosmopolitanism. In this article, I show how democratic iterations unfold across transnational legal sites, which encompass various national jurisdictions and through which contentious dialogues on the application and interpretation of such fundamental rights as ‘freedom of religion’ in different jurisdictions can emerge. To document such processes I focus on the Leyla Sahin v. Turkey case which was adjudicated by the European Court of Human Rights in 2005. (shrink)

Contemporary ‘crisis studies’ seek to advance democracy by emphasizing the threats that technocracy and populism pose to a specific form of it, liberal- democracy. Crisis studies argue that, since the 1970s, technocratic policymak- ing has deepened economic inequality. This has fostered citizenly anger, which populists exploit. Four well-known iterations of this argument are evaluated using a political realist lens. Political realism emphasizes the histor- ical context of politics, actors’ possible motives, and a normative orientation derived from the political order (...) itself, rather than an external ethico-moral ideal. The realist lens encourages comparison of crisis studies with historical political theory, which situates liberal-democracy within the long-term devel- opment of oligarchic systems of authority, and political history, which portrays technocracy as a product of the well-funded reaction to assertions of the democratic impulse that began in the 1970s. Populism is in this view not so much a perversion of liberal-democracy as it is a perhaps unintended conse- quence of anti-democratic reaction. The crisis studies make this error because based on a moral defence of the justice of the liberal-democratic order. Revealing the democratically unhelpful moralism at the core of crisis studies demonstrates the usefulness of political realism as a form of applied political theory, and not simply theory about theory. (shrink)

Surveillance programs supporting the management of One Health issues such as antibiotic resistance are complex systems in themselves. Designing ethical surveillance systems is thus a complex task (retroactive and iterative), yet one that is also complicated to implement and evaluate (e.g., sharing, collaboration, and governance). The governance of health surveillance requires attention to ethical concerns about data and knowledge (e.g., performance, trust, accountability, and transparency) and empowerment ethics, also referred to as a form of responsible self-governance. Ethics in reflexive governance (...) operates as a systematic critical-thinking procedure that aims to define its value: What are the “right” criteria to justify how to govern “good” actions for a “better” future? The objective is to lay the foundations for a methodological framework in empirical bioethics, the rudiments of which have been applied to a case study to building reflexive governance in One Health. This ongoing critical thinking process involves “mapping, framing, and shaping” the dynamics of interests and perspectives that could jeopardize a “better” future. This paper proposes to hybridize methods to combine insights from collective deliberation and expert evaluation through a reflexive governance functioning as a community-based action-ethics methodology. The intention is to empower individuals and associations in a dialogue with society, which operation is carried out using a case study approach on data sharing systems. We based our reasoning on a feasibility study conducted in Québec, Canada (2018–2021), envisioning an antibiotic use surveillance program in animal health for 2023. Using the adaptive cycle and governance techniques and perspectives, we synthesize an alternative governance model rooted in the value of empowerment. The framework, depicted as a new “research and design (R&D)” practice, is linking operation and innovation by bridging the gap between Reflexive, Evaluative, and Deliberative reasonings and by intellectualizing the management of democratizing critical thinking locally (collective ethics) by recognizing its context (social ethics). Drawing on the literature in One Health and sustainable development studies, this article describes how a communitarian and pragmatic approach can broaden the vision of feasibility studies to ease collaboration through public-private-academic partnerships. The result is a process that “reassembles” the One Health paradigm under the perspective of global bioethics to create bridges between the person and the ecosystem through pragmatic ethics. (shrink)

Littoz-Monnet provides a fresh analysis of the enmeshment of expert knowledge with politics in global governance, through a unique investigation of bioethical expertise, an intriguing form of 'expert knowledge' which claims authority in the ethical analysis of issues that arise in relation to biomedicine, the life sciences and new fields of technological innovation. She makes the case that the mobilisation of ethics experts does not always arise from a motivation to rationalise governance. Instead, mobilising ethics experts - who are endowed (...) with a unique double-edged authority, both 'democratic' and 'epistemic' - can help policy-makers manoeuvre policy conflicts on scientific and technological innovations and make their pro-science and innovation agendas possible. Bioethical expertise is indeed shaped in a political and iterative space between experts and those who do policy. The book reveals the mechanisms through which certain global governance narratives, as well as the types of expertise they rely on, remain stable even when they are contested. (shrink)

A number of EU institutions and government committees across Europe have expressed interest in developing methods and decision-support tools to facilitate consideration of the ethical dimensions of biotechnology assessment. As part of the work conducted in the EC supported project on ethical tools (Ethical Bio-TA Tools), a number of ethical frameworks with the potential to support the work of public policy decision-makers has been characterized and evaluated. One of these potential tools is the Delphi method. The Delphi method was originally (...) developed to assess variables that are intangible and/or shrouded in uncertainty by drawing on the knowledge and abilities of a diverse group of experts through a form of anonymous and iterative consultation. The method has hitherto been used by a diversity of practitioners to explore issues such as technology assessment, environmental planning, and public health measures. From the original (classical) Delphi, a family of Delphi-related processes has emerged. As a result of the evaluation of the various Delphi processes, it is proposed that the classical method can be further developed and applied as a form of ethical framework to assist policy-makers. Through a series of exercises and trials, an Ethical Delphi has been developed as a potential approach for characterizing ethical issues raised by the use of novel biotechnologies. Advantages and disadvantages of the method are discussed. Further work is needed to develop the procedural aspects of the Ethical Delphi method and to test its use in different cultural contexts. However, utilizing an ethical framework of this type combines the advantages of a methodical approach to capture ethical aspects with the democratic virtues of transparency and openness to criticism. Ethical frameworks such as the Ethical Delphi should contribute to better understanding of and decision-making on issues that involve decisive ethical dimensions. (shrink)

This article examines religious socialism as an American social movement. It focuses on the most recent iteration of this tradition, the Religion and Socialism Commission, formed in the 1970s as a subgroup of the Democratic Socialists of America. Drawing on concepts from social movement theory such as frame alignment and political opportunity structure, it argues that the Religion and Socialism Commission ultimately failed in its attempt to transition from an organization into a social movement. It then considers various possibilities (...) for the future of religious socialism in the United States, given new variables such as a changing political opportunity structure and the rise of social media. (shrink)

Cristina Lafont gives an impressive defence of deliberative democracy against its critics. This article considers in detail her engagement with the ‘deep pluralist’ position that characterizes Nadia Urbinati’s, Jeremy Waldron’s and Richard Bellamy’s positions. After considering Lafont’s threefold argument against the deep pluralists, I contend that she vacillates between a substantialist and recursive-iterative defence of the democratic ideal. Her defence of judicial review does not consider some of the strategic ways in which civil society groups may approach the process. (...) I conclude by arguing that constitutionalization is not always a salutary move for resolving controversial issues in a democracy. (shrink)

This article presents Catherine Malabou and Alain Badiou as theorists of contraction and its related operations of self-reflexivity and infinite iteration. Trading on these commonalities, the article hopes to draw out Malabou’s and Badiou’s respective formalist commitments. On Badiou’s side, it sharpens the question of what is at stake in something as regulated as a “procedure”; on Malabou’s, it recognizes formal stakes to plasticity that often go unrecognized because of her penchant for biology. The article then concludes with a broad (...) comparison of these two thinkers in terms of their accounts of potential and imagines the critiques each might leverage against the other. Where Malabou might well regard Badiou to be too tightly constraining the shape of the future, Badiou is likely to find in Malabou one more instance of a naïve democratic materialism. (shrink)

Benhabib recasts the Derridean idea of `iteration' in democratic terms. While adhering to the original idea that both the fundamental terms of political consociation and the identity of the people itself is `radically' open, Benhabib argues that deliberative norms do and should frame the process of reiteration. For the deliberative democrat, the democratic constitution is not a would-be barrier to iterability (which we are told cannot be contained anyway); it is rather a communicative or discursive space in which (...) the hitherto suppressed or not yet present voice of other people finds its way and expands the terms of meaning giving and hence reason giving. The democratic constitution enables iteration; it is one side of a dialectic that relies upon, balances and, in some sense, makes the most of people power. Immigrants, in the final analysis, are the latest group to proclaim their presence in the sphere of constitutional interpretation, and thereby recalibrate the interpretive frame. And when they make their presence known in this way they have truly become a part of the `people'. When, however, they make their presence known in ways that undermine constitutional self-understanding, instead of engaging it, they are `not us'. Benhabib is hesitant to add this last bit, as she is hesitant to admit how much the constitutional identity of a people `rift with otherness' is reliant upon the historical referent and the generative/steering power of the right sort of constitutional court. (shrink)

This article compares political clientelism and datafied campaigning as two modes of relating politicians/parties and voters that are centred around voter surveillance. It contributes to the discussion on consequences of Big Data by showing similarities of datafied campaigns with a type of electoral politics that pre-dates the advent of mass media and is usually regarded as deficient. It thus departs from the predominant perspective on datafication and surveillance, which draws on Foucault, in order to identify the particular challenges that datafication (...) poses in the realm of democratic electoral politics. They are related to four major aspects in which datafied campaigning resembles political clientelism, as opposed to the combination of ideology, issue-based campaigning and media appeal that characterized Western European party politics in the second half of the 20th century. It personalizes the relationship between politicians and voters with the help of intermediaries; it is based on an asymmetric and iterative monitoring of voters; it implies a strong particularism and an affinity with populist appeals; and it is ambivalent with regard to the volition of voters. The identification of these similarities renders general concerns about the consequences of datafied campaigning for democracy more concrete. It offers a mirror in which seemingly novel practices are revealed to have implications that are well known to be problematic for the quality of democracy. (shrink)

Climate change and fourth industrial revolution (4IR) technologies are massively shifting the material and social conditions of existence on Earth and contribute to a state of indeterminacy and increased political experimentation. While various models for what might become the ‘next iteration of governance’ are currently emerging, this essay turns to specific contemporary political experiments which claim to democratize power, distribute and/or share sovereignty, function as peer-to-peer or actor-to-actor, and move beyond criticism—be it to the moon or to soil. More precisely, (...) I look at extropist experiments in competitive crypto-governance and at (post)critical laboratories closer to the conceptual frame of international law, which both, in different ways, rely on a specific practice of determination characterized by binary relations and existential negation. In favor of an alternative approach, I argue for an ethics of legal thought capable of attending to indeterminacy and the relationalities it enables differently. (shrink)

The last decades have witnessed the emergence of a burgeoning literature on freedom that has set out to reconfigure this idea in response to the critique of the autonomous subject. The paper has three main objectives. It engages critically with this new field of theory by exploring two divergent strands of thought: a recast form of liberal autonomy and agonistic freedom as envisioned by M. Foucault, C. Castoriadis and certain other authors. Second, it seeks to bring out the merits of (...) the agonistic view by situating it in the problematic of freedom that developed after the critique. Agonistic freedom attends more fully to social inhibitions and unconscious determinations; it grapples more effectively with internalized limits; and it gives more play to the creative powers of action, which carry liberating effects. The argument offers, finally, a reply to the much-iterated polemic against agonistic self-invention, which charges it with amoral and antidemocratic implications. In effect, this ethos of freedom displays virtues that can facilitate democratic interaction and reinforce commitment to democratic egalitarianism. The entire discussion ties in with debates around agonistic democracy and helps to construe democratic freedom in a way that enables social contestation, pluralization, and solidarity. (shrink)

Seyla Benhabib in her book The Rights of Others (2004) focuses on the tension between the universal claims of human rights and the localized democratic regimes which are based on the rule of majority. In Benhabib’s opinion the tension between these two is constitutive of existing democratic states and can be resolved only provisionally through democratic deliberations. The article looks to the theory of deliberative democracy for a way of conceptualizing sexual minorities politics which would appeal to (...) human rights and their universal claims. Along with Benhabib the paper recognizes the need on the part of all minorities to negotiate their rights within the ruling majority, which would hopefully enhance both learning processes within society and influence its changing self-interpretation. Benhabib’s contribution to the problem of cultural conflicts is all the more valuable that she not only remains within the critical theory paradigm but opens it up to the challenge of poststructuralism by taking advantage of some of its insights such as Jacques Derrida’s concept of iterations. (shrink)

Seyla Benhabib in her book The Rights of Others focuses on the tension between the universal claims of human rights and the localized democratic regimes which are based on the rule of majority. In Benhabib’s opinion the tension between these two is constitutive of existing democratic states and can be resolved only provisionally through democratic deliberations. The article looks to the theory of deliberative democracy for a way of conceptualizing sexual minorities politics which would appeal to human (...) rights and their universal claims. Along with Benhabib the paper recognizes the need on the part of all minorities to negotiate their rights within the ruling majority, which would hopefully enhance both learning processes within society and influence its changing self-interpretation. Benhabib’s contribution to the problem of cultural conflicts is all the more valuable that she not only remains within the critical theory paradigm but opens it up to the challenge of poststructuralism by taking advantage of some of its insights such as Jacques Derrida’s concept of iterations. (shrink)

In his recent essay, Mark Wenman highlighted parallels between Connolly’s theory of pluralism and earlier iterations of pluralism in the postwar period and the early twentieth century. Focusing on his account of postwar pluralism and especially his interpretation of Dahl, I argue that Dahl’s vision of democracy as polyarchy is fundamentally at odds with Connolly’s. A close reading of Dahl’s text and a consideration of the historical context suggest that Dahl’s theory effectively creates a depoliticized world where citizens are (...) unresponsive to claims about alternative possibilities of democratic life. (shrink)

Influenced by Sachs’ ‘activist identity’ I propose that pre-service teacher education or initial teacher education, as I will refer to it, could, and indeed should, encourage a new form of teacher; the ‘teacher-agent.’ This teacher-agent would be aware of the pressures and dictates of the neo-liberal educational culture and its ensuing performative discourse, and choose to resist it, in favour of a more holistic view of education. This view of education encourages inclusive, creative and democratic forms of education concerned (...) with encouraging a social conscience in children and young people, as well as seeing education as concerned with the whole child. These more holistic approaches to education could include pedagogical approaches such as Philosophy for Children, Rights’ Respecting Education and Slow Pedagogy, which can not only provide a more balanced understanding and deeper experience of education for both teachers and pupils, but can also help teachers to resist the debilitating impact of the neo-liberal performative discourse, potentially also thus impacting on their wellbeing and ability to retain their integrity as professionals. This may also have the potential to halt the rapid exodus of new teachers from the profession. It is my contention, that engaging with pedagogies such as P4C in this new iteration of ITE could help not only to encourage the Student Teacher-Agent, but also, as a consequence, develop the Citizen-Agent in the children they are teaching. In this paper I consider four key areas where I propose P4C could play a role in this alternative model of Initial Teacher Education; Democracy in action, the teacher as Teacher-Facilitator, a space for co-construction of knowledge, and encouraging Social Justice. (shrink)

This paper argues that the approach to questions of authority, legitimacy, and personal identity characteristic of contemporary European law presents a paradox. The power of the legal project that emerged after the French Revolution lay in its deployment of the notion of abstract legal subjectivity to challenge claimed authority. Much is made of the public law dimensions of this revolutionary moment—the creation of political constitutions establishing national citizenship and human rights standards. But the transposition of abstract legal subjectivity into the (...) private law through national social constitutions like Civil Codes has been far less successful.legal subjectivity in public law regimes necessarily privileges some personal identities over others in its construction of citizenship. These privileged identities of public law citizenship limit how legal subjects can express their identities in the private law. The paper proposes an alternative, pluralist, theorization of the diverse, iterative character of everyday human interaction that gives content to the idea of legal subjectivity in the private law. It seeks to reconcile a public law of abstract, unitary citizenship with a private law of plural legal subjectivities in a manner that advances the project of democratic constitutionalism. (shrink)

The introduction of multiple intelligence theory into sports professional football teaching is a requirement of educational innovation, which helps to expand and play the multiple functions of football, and can effectively improve the comprehensive quality of football professional science. Under the perspective of multiple intelligence theory, college sports professional football teaching will focus on the all-round development of students, actively cultivate students’ multiple intelligence, and reflect the democratization, individualization, and diversification of teaching in the process of educational concept innovation. This (...) article explains the origin and characteristics of the particle swarm optimization algorithm and discusses the application status of the PSO algorithm in detail. We introduced the standard PSO algorithm, including mathematical forms, iteration steps, and flowcharts. In addition, it also specifically describes the proposed new PSO improved algorithm, including the food chain strategy and reproduction strategy, as well as the implementation of the algorithm. Through analysis, it is concluded that the implementation and implementation of relevant systems is the guarantee for the sustained and sound development of campus football. The amount of football lessons is insufficient, and the classroom teaching effect is not ideal. Physical education teachers are acceptable, but the football professional knowledge training of physical education teachers needs to be strengthened. The selection and setting of the teaching content of football lessons lack systematic, scientific, and adaptable, and the teaching methods and teaching model concepts are backward. In the process of football teaching, teachers ignored the evaluation and assessment of students’ nonphysical and nonintellectual factors, and campus football activities did not achieve the expected goals. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the recent work on mirror neurons illuminates the character of our capacities for a politics of resonant receptivity in ways that both help us to comprehend the damages of our contemporary order and suggest indispensable alternative ethical-strategic registers and possible directions for organising a powerful movement towards radical democracy. In doing so, neuroscience simultaneously contributes to our understanding of the possibility and importance of a more durable radically democratic habitus. While the trope, ‘radically (...) democratic habitus’, may seem oxymoronic in light of Bourdieu’s extensive rendering of ‘habitus’, I suggest that research on mirror neurons discloses ways in which iterated practices and dispositional structures are crucial for democratic freedom.Keywords: radical democracy; mirror neurons; receptivity; political resonance; habitus; resonance machine; mimesis; affect. (shrink)

In his book Political Theology, Carl Schmitt compared the freedom of God over and beyond the laws of nature to sovereign power, understood as transcending the laws of the state. Philosopher Jacques Derrida has argued that such a Schmittian political theology undermines the possibility of democracy from within. Yet in this paper I would like to develop Derrida’s understanding of justice in order to show that it functions in a similar way to Schmitt’s understanding of sovereign power. Because justice is (...) always singular for Derrida, it transcends politics and is identified with a transcendent alterity beyond the iterability of the law. If Schmitt’s understanding of power as a State of Exception undermines democracy from within, by placing justice in a dimension beyond politics and the law, Derrida’s notion of justice also functions as a State of Exception and undermines the democratic project from without, depriving it of its performative power. (shrink)

In his book Political Theology, Carl Schmitt compared the freedom of God over and beyond the laws of nature to sovereign power, understood as transcending the laws of the state. Philosopher Jacques Derrida has argued that such a Schmittian political theology undermines the possibility of democracy from within. Yet in this paper I would like to develop Derrida’s understanding of justice in order to show that it functions in a similar way to Schmitt’s understanding of sovereign power. Because justice is (...) always singular for Derrida, it transcends politics and is identified with a transcendent alterity beyond the iterability of the law. If Schmitt’s understanding of power as a State of Exception undermines democracy from within, by placing justice in a dimension beyond politics and the law, Derrida’s notion of justice also functions as a State of Exception and undermines the democratic project from without, depriving it of its performative power. (shrink)

Abstract:This work is a feminist focus on Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) for green democracy. It argues that at the root of Africa’s water crisis is Africa’s lull towards an inclusive harnessing of her traditional ecological knowledge and values for state re-engineering. Given the foregoing, exploring rain-making and rain-holding acts raise questions such as: what is the African ontology of rain-making or rain-holding? Who are rain-makers and rain-holders? Could their knowledge be publicly harnessed and politically institutionalized? For what purposes and at (...) whose expense do they operate? By gendering the questions, women’s roles in rain-making and rain-holding processes links African feminism to TEK and green democracy, thus iterating that democratic societal discourses must engage structural support which transcends those sufficient for traditional liberal democracy. It suggests a different, yet complementary attitude of participation and interaction to prove that certain traditional practices in Africa are sustainable toward both the environment and human nature. (shrink)

“The Fourth Spartacus” uses Alain Badiou’s work, especially Logics of Worlds, to critique the 1976 Soweto student rebellion. Soweto 1976 is one of the key events in black South African anti-apartheid history. Taking its cue from the figure of Spartacus, a figure that assumes many iterations in political history, this essay argues for a fidelity to the event of Soweto 1976: the recognition that Soweto 1976 must be understood as a radical moment that is not continuous with the preceding (...) and, particularly, successive moments of anti-apartheid struggle. Soweto 1976, “The Fourth Spartacus” insists, did not culminate, as the dominant political narrative in post-apartheid South Africa claims, in the democratic elections of 1994. More than anything, the event of Soweto 1976 stands determinedly opposed to the democratic materialism of post-apartheid South Africa. (shrink)

Why are natural theories pre-well-ordered by consistency strength? In previous work, an approach to this question was proposed. This approach was inspired by Martin's Conjecture, one of the most prominent conjectures in recursion theory. Fixing a reasonable subsystem $T$ of arithmetic, the goal was to classify the recursive functions that are monotone with respect to the Lindenbaum algebra of $T$. According to an optimistic conjecture, roughly, every such function must be equivalent to an iterate $\mathsf{Con}_T^\alpha$ of the consistency operator ``in (...) the limit'' within the ultrafilter of sentences that are true in the standard model. In previous work the author established the first case of this optimistic conjecture; roughly, every recursive monotone function is either as weak as the identity operator in the limit or as strong as $\mathsf{Con}_T$ in the limit. Yet in this note we prove that this optimistic conjecture fails already at the next step; there are recursive monotone functions that are neither as weak as $\mathsf{Con}_T$ in the limit nor as strong as $\mathsf{Con}_T^2$ in the limit. In fact, for every $\alpha$, we produce a function that is cofinally equivalent to $\mathsf{Con}^\alpha_T$ yet cofinally equivalent to $\mathsf{Con}_T$. (shrink)

In this paper it is argued that, in order to solve the problem of iterated belief change, both the belief state and its input should be represented as epistemic entrenchment (EE) relations. A belief revision operation is constructed that updates a given EE relation to a new one in light of an evidential EE relation. It is shown that the operation in question satisfies generalized versions of the Gärdenfors revision postulates. The account offered is motivated by Spohn's ordinal conditionalization functions, (...) and can be seen as the Jeffrization of a proposal considered by Rott. (shrink)

Relative to a hyperstrong cardinal, it is consistent that measure one covering fails relative to HOD. In fact it is consistent that there is a superstrong cardinal and for every regular cardinal κ, κ + is greater than κ + of HOD. The proof uses a very general lemma showing that homogeneity is preserved through certain reverse Easton iterations.

Hilary Putnam once suggested that “the actual existence of sets as ‘intangible objects’ suffers… from a generalization of a problem first pointed out by Paul Benacerraf… are sets a kind of function or are functions a sort of set?” Sadly, he did not elaborate; my aim, here, is to do so on his behalf. There are well-known methods for treating sets as functions and functions as sets. But these do not raise any obvious philosophical or foundational puzzles. For that, we (...) first need to provide a full-fledged function theory. I supply such a theory: it axiomatizes the iterative notion of function in exactly the same sense that ZF axiomatizes the iterative notion of set. Indeed, this function theory is synonymous with ZF. It might seem that set theory and function theory present us with rival foundations for mathematics, since they postulate different ontologies. But appearances are deceptive. Set theory and function theory provide the very same judicial foundation for mathematics. They do not supply rival metaphysical foundations; indeed, if they supply metaphysical foundations at all, then they supply the very same metaphysical foundations. (shrink)

The use of tensed language and the metaphor of set ‘formation’ found in informal descriptions of the iterative conception of set are seldom taken at all seriously. Both are eliminated in the nonmodal stage theories that formalise this account. To avoid the paradoxes, such accounts deny the Maximality thesis, the compelling thesis that any sets can form a set. This paper seeks to save the Maximality thesis by taking the tense more seriously than has been customary (although not literally). A (...) modal stage theory, MST, is developed in a bimodal language, governed by a tenselike logic. Such a language permits a very natural axiomatisation of the iterative conception, which upholds the Maximality thesis. It is argued that the modal approach is consonant with mathematical practice and a plausible metaphysics of sets and shown that MST interprets a natural extension of Zermelo set theory less the axiom of Infinity and, when extended with a further axiom concerning the extent of the hierarchy, interprets Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory. (shrink)

Using matrix iterations of ccc posets, we prove the consistency with ZFC of some cases where the cardinals on the right hand side of Cichon’s diagram take two or three arbitrary values (two regular values, the third one with uncountable cofinality). Also, mixing this with the techniques in J Symb Log 56(3):795–810, 1991, we can prove that it is consistent with ZFC to assign, at the same time, several arbitrary regular values on the left hand side of Cichon’s diagram.

We describe a model of iterated belief revision that extends the AGM theory of revision to account for the effect of a revision on the conditional beliefs of an agent. In particular, this model ensures that an agent makes as few changes as possible to the conditional component of its belief set. Adopting the Ramsey test, minimal conditional revision provides acceptance conditions for arbitrary right-nested conditionals. We show that problem of determining acceptance of any such nested conditional can be reduced (...) to acceptance tests for unnested conditionals. Thus, iterated revision can be accomplished in a "virtual" manner, using uniterated revision. (shrink)