In this first-ever history of contemporary liberal theory, Forrester shows how liberal egalitarianism--a set of ideas about justice, equality, obligation, and the state--became dominant, and traces its emergence from the political and ideological context of the postwar United States and Britain.d Britain.

How a hybrid Confucian-engendered form of governance might solve today’s political problems What might a viable political alternative to liberal democracy look like? In Against Political Equality, Tongdong Bai offers a possibility inspired by Confucian ideas. Bai argues that domestic governance influenced by Confucianism can embrace the liberal aspects of democracy along with the democratic ideas of equal opportunities and governmental accountability to the people. But Confucianism would give more political decision-making power to those with the (...) moral, practical, and intellectual capabilities of caring for the people. While most democratic thinkers still focus on strengthening equality to cure the ills of democracy, the proposed hybrid regime—made up of Confucian-inspired meritocratic characteristics combined with democratic elements and a quasi-liberal system of laws and rights—recognizes that egalitarian qualities sometimes conflict with good governance and the protection of liberties, and defends liberal aspects by restricting democratic ones. Bai applies his views to the international realm by supporting a hierarchical order based on how humane each state is toward its own and other peoples, and on the principle of international interventions whereby humane responsibilities override sovereignty. Exploring the deficiencies posed by many liberal democracies, Against Political Equality presents a novel Confucian-engendered alternative for solving today’s political problems. (shrink)

Human rights have a rich life in the world around us. Political rhetoric pays tribute to them, or scorns them. Citizens and activists strive for them. The law enshrines them. And they live inside us too. For many of us, human rights form part of how we understand the world and what must (or must not) be done within it. -/- The ubiquity of human rights raises questions for the philosopher. If we want to understand these rights, where do (...) we look? As a set of moral norms, it is tempting to think they can be grasped strictly from the armchair, say, by appeal to moral intuition. But what, if anything, can that kind of inquiry tell us about the human rights of contemporary politics, law, and civil society — that is, human rights as we ordinarily know them? -/- This volume brings together a distinguished, interdisciplinary group of scholars to address philosophical questions raised by the many facets of human rights: moral, legal, political, and historical. Its original chapters, each accompanied by a critical commentary, explore topics including: the purpose and methods of a philosophical theory of human rights; the "Orthodox-Political" debate; the relevance of history to philosophy; the relationship between human rights morality and law; and the value of political critiques of human rights. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: References.

A compact and accessible edition of Hume’s political and moral writings with essays by a distinguished set of contributors A key figure of the Scottish Enlightenment, David Hume was a major influence on thinkers ranging from Kant and Schopenhauer to Einstein and Popper, and his writings continue to be deeply relevant today. With four essays by leading Hume scholars exploring his complex intellectual legacy, this volume presents an overview of Hume’s moral, political, and social philosophy. Editors Angela Coventry (...) and Andrew Valls bring together a selection of writings from Hume’s most important works, with contributors placing them in their appropriate context and offering a lively discourse on the relevance of Hume’s thought to contemporary subjects like reason’s dependence on emotion and the importance of social convention in political and economic behavior. Perfect for classroom use, this volume is an invaluable companion for anyone studying an important thinker who advanced the development of moral philosophy, economics, cognitive science, and many other fields of the Western tradition. (shrink)

Katrin Flikschuh offers an accessible introduction to divergent conceptions of freedom in contemporary liberal political philosophy.

This chapter contains sections titled: Philosophy in Non‐Philosophy Departments Definitions and Wittgensteinean Themes Tradition and Philosophy's Pitfalls Science, Poetry, Real Politics, and History: Antidotes to Scholasticism, and Their Side Effects Institutional Structures and the Road Not Taken Acknowledgments References.

How do we challenge the structures of late capitalism if all possible media through which to do do is inescapably capitalist? This urgent political question is at the heart of Peter Trawny's major new work. With searing precision Trawny demonstrates how our world has become wholly determined by technology, capital, and the medium. In this world of the 'TCM', we universal subjects remain in a state of apathy that is temporarily punctuated, but also reinforced, by the phantasmatic dream of (...) difference offered us by the 'Hollywood machine.' Our sole motivation is to gain money and the power it brings. The only meaningful difference in the world of the TCM universal is the difference between wealth and poverty. Freedom here is then the freedom to dispose of things (particularly technological objects) and to gain pleasure. It makes our relation to our surroundings essentially 'touristic,' and our relation to the earth an essentially exploitative one. The notion of personal or societal freedom has never been more controversial or, seemingly, more far from our grasp. While exploring in details the difficulties we face in our attempts to be free, Trawny builds an almost Utopian vision of how to break out of the mediums in which we operate and experience a new kind of freedom – both one of intimacy, and one through philosophy. An ambitious and lively yet completely rigorous work, this book offers a fascinating vision of how to live and live well. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Theoretical‐Explanatory Enquiries Moral Enquiries Brief Concluding Remarks Acknowledgments References.

Like many episodes of South Park, “Medicinal Fried Chicken” drags real political scenarios into the cold, hard light of the Rocky Mountains. In this chapter, the author aims at challenging the received interpretation of the moral message behind “Medicinal Fried Chicken” and many other South Park episodes, the message that legislating lifestyles is immoral at worst and ridiculous at best. This message is encapsulated by the moral perspective known of libertarianism, which takes individual rights in political and social (...) scenarios to be not only basic, but also to trump many other moral considerations. For tensions between an individual's good and the common good in the drug legalization debate, the chapter further discusses a 1989 exchange between Milton Friedman and William J. Bennett. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Acknowledgments References.

Toward the end of Ender's Game, after the manipulations of the Battle School officials stand exposed, Ender Wiggin must face the terrible consequences of what has really been going on during the last simulation. In the spirit of diplomacy, political leaders decide that Ender will not return home, since his presence on Earth could spark a war. Instead, he will be part of the pioneering groups launched out into space to explore and to establish settlements on the “bugger worlds.” (...) We gradually realize that Ender has another destiny‐revealed through the significant philotic connection that the Formic hive‐queen has made with him‐the new role of Speaker for the Dead. The special nature of his connection with the buggers is the real reason Ender cannot go home. In searching for a way to bring back the Formics, Ender has to establish a new community. (shrink)

What could be the motives for producing a Popperian half‐life such as the present volume? This work, which takes Karl Popper right up to his debut on the world stage with the assumption of his position at the London School of Economics, displays no inclination to follow up with the complementary second half of Popper's life sometime in the future. Indeed, the author admits that the omitted subsequent “public Popper” was frequently an embarrassment. Here is truncation with a purpose: this (...) book is written to recommend the work of the early Popper to the “academic left” and to “historiciz[e] the postmodern predicament [as] an antidote to current false consciousness” . Since this is a work in social/political theory masquerading as biography, I shall respond in kind.There have recently been a spate of attempts to revisit the major figures of the philosophy of science in the twentieth century, primarily for the purpose of explaining to ourselves what it was that provoked such an efflorescence of ingenuity, only to result in the subsequent letdown we now confront or enjoy: Cartwright et al. on Neurath, Fuller on Kuhn, and Kadvany on Lakatos. Malachi Hacohen admits that this constitutes his motive as well: he is impressed with the early Popper's political leftism and anti‐foundationalism, regarding the later Cold Warrior as a sad retrogression. It seems to me, however, that he has missed the major lesson of all these retrospectives. Crudely, what emerges from these exercises, as a group, is the thesis that the looming significance in general intellectual discourse of philosophers of science in the mid‐twentieth century was due to the fact that they were doing social theory all along under the guise of describing Science. Furthermore, their question of the true nature of legitimate Science was seen as a crucial preliminary to understanding which politico‐economic system would come to dominate in the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War.From this perspective, I strongly doubt that Popper's social significance ever derived from his durable “solution” of any pressing philosophical problems: Did he really proffer a usable “demarcation criterion” for science, or rectify the problem of induction, or adequately describe probabilities as propensities, or banish “subjectivism” from physics, or even really demonstrate that Marxism was untestable? No, during the Cold War it turned out that the very best apologists for Western society were leftists and anti‐foundationalists; and one can observe this in the history of postwar social sciences like economics and psychology, as well as the philosophy of science. Kuhn et al. then took the next logical step in the sequence: something like “critical rationalism” was widely deemed a thoroughly implausible account of social organization in an anti‐foundationalist context . Social order had to be reconceptualized and reimposed, be it through “normal science,” “progressive research programs,” or whatever.Hence, banishing the half‐life of the Cold Warrior from the biographical account is to parade a pointless Popper in a plotless Punch‐and‐Judy show. Hacohen rightly cautions the reader about the unreliability of Popper's autobiography Unended Quest, but he should have taken more to heart Popper's assertions therein that although he knew almost no social theory, that didn't prevent him from seeking to dictate good “scientific method” to the social sciences ; and furthermore, that his vaunted method of “situational analysis” was little more than a repackaging of neoclassical economics as a general methodology for the social sciences . Thus when Hacohen proposes “situational logic” as a template for his historiography, is he sufficiently aware that he is merely participating in the general movement to extend neoclassical economics as a Theory of Everything for our contemporary globalized situation? If the purpose really was to demonstrate that Popper was situatedly rational, there would be no pressing need to write a biography; one could just as well fit his data to a generic maximization model. History should make us rather more self‐conscious about our scholarly and political options, not less. (shrink)

Ender, in Ender's Game, seems to be more a superhuman or a god than a normal human being. Colonel Graff structures Ender's life to support Ender's maturation into a superman. A focus on the power of the human will—over oneself or over another—frames the story of Ender. Ender occupies a middle position between Peter and the buggers, who share a hive mind. His development fleshes out insights that Aristotle had about friendship and humanity over two thousand years ago. The fact (...) that the queen is able to communicate with Ender establishes a form of “political” community between them in Aristotle's sense. The real heart of the story lies in the truth about human nature that Aristotle realized long ago: that friendship is necessary for human life and human beings are political animals, not solitary supermen. (shrink)

To understand political power it's necessary to comprehend why individuals and entire nations make the choices they do. Two influential approaches to understanding the intentions behind human behavior are known as realism and liberalism. Neoliberalism developed in response to the charge that liberalism represented an overly utopian view of the world. To explain whether cooperation or conflict should be expected between two parties, international relations scholars often try to calculate costs and benefits of either strategy. Among the most famous (...) of their scenarios is the “Prisoner's Dilemma”. In the case of Ender's Game, the humans and buggers face a dilemma about whether or not to cooperate with one another or defect, which means fighting a war for survival. The dilemma for Ender and the I.F. is complicated by the fact that there seems to be no possibility of communication between humans and buggers. (shrink)

Gay marriage is an issue that almost everyone has an opinion about. As with most controversial topics, South Park has also had its say. This chapter centers around one particular episode of South Park, “Follow That Egg!” Recent events show that although the episode may be getting old, the issue and the themes raised in it are as topical as ever. There are many arguments for and against gay marriage. The author looks at the most familiar arguments on both sides (...) and demonstrates that they usually miss the point, are entirely irrelevant, or are just bad arguments. In so doing, the author hopes to map out the landscape of the gay marriage debate and show how barren it is. The only real case for gay marriage is rooted in America's political liberal tradition of “negative liberty.”. (shrink)

Ender's Game explains how Peter and Valentine Wiggin use their world's online nets to get weighty political influence. Peter and Valentine earn money from their online writing, get invited to important discussions, and learn more than the average citizen about political matters. And they continue to build the influence of Locke and Demosthenes, in a public arena. Anonymous is an Internet entity very much like Locke and Demosthenes in the sense that average users are listening to Anonymous without (...) knowing whose views Anonymous represents. The thread running through this chapter is that there's a larger problem than anonymity with virtual politics: it's how to maintain freedom in both worlds. Peter and Valentine used virtual identities on the net to end Earth's dangerous political situation in Ender's Game, but of course, that's only fiction. (shrink)

Lecture I [Chapter The Function of Theory, pp. 45-53] The direct use of language for definite purposes according to the needs of the moment long preceded grammar, rhetoric and the dictionary. Breathing, eating, digesting, seeing and hearing long preceded anatomy and physiology. We first act to meet special needs and particular occasions. Only afterwards do we reflect upon what we do and how and why we do it, and try to frame general principles, a philosophy of the matter. So with (...) social, coll... (shrink)

Comparative political theory is at best an embryonic and marginalized endeavor. As practiced in most Western universities, the study of political theory generally involves a rehearsal of the canon of Western political thought from Plato to Marx. Only rarely are practitioners of political thought willing (and professionally encouraged) to transgress the canon and thereby the cultural boundaries of North America and Europe in the direction of genuine comparative investigation. Border Crossings presents an effort to remedy this (...) situation, fully launching a new era in political theory. Thirteen scholars from around the world examine the various political traditions of West, South, and East Asia and engage in a reflective cross-cultural discussion that belies the assumptions of an Asian "essence" and of an unbridgeable gulf between West and non-West. The denial of essential differences does not, however, amount to an endorsement of essential sameness. As viewed and as practiced by contributors to this ground-breaking volume, comparative political theorizing must steer a course between uniformity and radical separation--this is the path of "border crossings.". (shrink)

Explores some steps toward non-assimilative encounters in the "global village.".

Anyone interested in the philosophy of music, especially popular music, should be familiar with Cristyn Magnus, P.D. Magnus, and Christy Mag Uidhir’s contempora.

In this paper, I present the beginnings of a resemblance theory of representation. I start by surveying the contemporary philosophical debate surrounding musical representation and reveal that its main interlocutors share a conception of artistic representation as a mode of meaningful communication. I then show how conceiving of artistic representation in this way severely limits music’s possibilities as a medium for representation. Next, I propose an alternative conception of representation that, despite its widespread acceptance outside of the philosophy of art, (...) has been largely denigrated within it: namely, that representation fundamentally depends on structural resemblance. Finally, I demonstrate how conceiving of artistic representation as grounded upon structural resemblances, rather than as a mode of meaningful communication, provides us with a more accurate picture of both (a) how music represents and (b) how we perceive and appreciate musical representations. (shrink)

This dissertation defends the place of representation in music. Music’s status as a representational art has been hotly debated since the War of the Romantics, which pitted the Weimar progressives (Liszt, Wagner, &co.) against the Leipzig conservatives (the Schumanns, Brahms, &co.) in an intellectual struggle for what each side took to be the very future of music as an art. I side with the progressives, and argue that music can be and often is a representational medium. Correspondence (or resemblance) theories (...) of representation, such as the one I offer, have been much maligned in philosophy since the 1960s. Most theories assimilate representation under “meaning,” which has usually been thought to belong primarily to language. As a result, representational content has been taken to be purely conventional in the way that sentential meaning is. People want to know what music “means,” and these theories interpret this as “what does it refer to?” or “what propositions does it express?” I argue that propositional communication is only one (small) part of the issue. Once we overcome the bias of conceiving of musical works as essentially linguistic items, speech acts (performed) or sentence tokens (written), we can begin to take music on its own terms to discover how it represents—one way in which it “means.” The first step is to “naturalize” music’s representational content. Influenced by recent discussions in the philosophies of mind and science, I argue in Chapter 1 that composers represent extra-musical objects, events, and states of affairs through their works by exploiting antecedent relations (such as similarities in pitch, timbre, and structure) in order to secure reference to them. In Chapter 2, I survey and respond to the main challenges that those skeptical of music’s representational possibilities would raise against my theory of musical representation. In Chapter 3, I explore a number of ways through which music has been claimed to represent in order to show how my theory accounts for these diverse phenomena better than its conventionalist rivals, both in terms of the metaphysics and the epistemology. Chapter 4 extends this discussion by offering an account of how we perceive, understand, appreciate, and interpret sophisticated musical representations. I conclude by teasing out some of my theory’s implications and suggesting areas for further research. (shrink)

José Ortega y Gasset not only expressed his views on subjects such as art or mass culture but he was also one of the promoters and founders of a United Europe which he considered a cultural unity. However, his view on the proper functioning of multicultural societies was as skeptical as his attitude towards the possibility of constructing an unified world that could be based on cultural coexistence of the Western World societies.

"... some very serious critiques of French existential phenomenology and post-structuralism... the contributors offer some refreshingly new insights into some tried and 'true' philosophical texts and more recent works of literary theory." -- Philosophy and Literature "By bridging the gap between 'analytic' and 'continental' philosophy, the authors of The Thinking Muse: Feminism and the Modern French Philosophy largely overcome the cultural polarity between 'male thinker' and 'female muse'." -- Ethics "These engaging essays by American Feminists bring toether feminist philosophy, existential (...) phenomenology, and recent currents in French poststructuralist thought. The editors provide an excellent introductory overview, making this an ideal book for courses in feminist theory and philosophy and modern French thought." -- Philosopher's Index "The concerns raised in this volume are substantial.... a solid addition to the canon of American feminist philosophy." -- Philosophy and Literature "... a forum for feminist appropriations of existential and post-structuralist philosophy." -- Canadian Philosophical Reviews Marking a radical shift in the traditional philosophical separation between muse (female) and thinker (male), The Thinking Muse revises the scope and methods of philosophical reflection. These engaging essays by American feminists bring together feminist philosophy, existential phenomenology, and recent currents in French poststructuralist thought. (shrink)

In the last two centuries, our world would have been a safer place if philosophers such as Rousseau, Marx, and Nietzsche had not given intellectual encouragement to the radical ideologies of Jacobins, Stalinists, and fascists. Maybe the world would have been better off, from the standpoint of sound practice, if philosophers had engaged in only modest, decent theory, as did John Stuart Mill. Yet, as Ronald Beiner contends, the point of theory is not to think safe thoughts; the point is (...) to open intellectual horizons. In Philosophy in a Time of Lost Spirit, Beiner reflects on the dualism of theory and practice. The purpose of the theorist is not to offer sensible guidance on the conduct of social life but to test the boundaries of our vision of social order. Whereas the liberal citizen should embody the practical virtues of prudence and moderation, the theorist should be radical, probing, and immoderate. Looking back at the liberal-communitarian debate of the 1980s, Beiner recognizes that the antidote to our spiritless times lies neither in the embrace of community over individualism nor of individualism over community: both individual and community need to be submitted to radical questioning. It is by exposing ourselves to the challenge of fearless thinking encountered at the philosophical extremities that we are most likely to understand our own world at a deeper level. In this collection of essays and reviews, Ronald Beiner helps us to think critically about the thought-worlds of our foremost contemporary thinkers, including Hannah Arendt, Allan Bloom, Michel Foucault, Hans-Georg Gadamer, J¦rgen Habermas, Will Kymlicka, Christopher Lasch, Richard Rorty, Judith Shklar, Leo Strauss, Charles Taylor, and Michael Walzer. (shrink)

This book explores how how Hobbes's political philosophy has occupied a pertinent place in different contexts, such as political theory, the theory of international relations, and philosophical idealism.

Todd A. Gooch - The New Hegelians: Politics and Philosophy in the Hegelian School - Journal of the History of Philosophy 45:4 Journal of the History of Philosophy 45.4 667-668 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Reviewed by Todd Gooch Eastern Kentucky University Douglas Moggach, editor. The New Hegelians: Politics and Philosophy in the Hegelian School. Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Pp. xiv + 345. Cloth, $75.00. Of the thirteen essays collected in this volume, several of which discuss more (...) than one thinker, approximately three are devoted to Marx, two to Feuerbach, two to Bruno Bauer, two to Max Stirner, and one each to Eduard Gans, Edgar Bauer, and Friedrich Engels. Underlying the diversity of their individual positions, these "New Hegelians" were united by a common interest in exploiting the conceptual resources of Hegelian.. (shrink)

In September 2006, when 45 scholars and activists from 19 countries around the world gathered amid the spires and gargoyles of Oxford for a conference entitled, “Hope: Probing the Boundaries,” complex dialectics of hope and despair circulated through the meeting rooms by day, and the conversations in quadrangles and pubs late into the night. On the one hand, the remarkable social and political openings and possibilities of the previous decade, from Berlin to Johannesburg, Leningrad to the Lacandon jungle of (...) Chiapas, seemed to be ever-more constrained by political and economic forces as brutal as those that preceded them, but, on the other hand, there were the Zapatistas and a thousand other movements persisting in the belief that, to echo the mantra of the World Social Forums, “another world is possible,” and there we were from around the world, to do the work of theorizing, describing, and enacting the persistence of individual and collective hope despite grim realities. The essays developed from that conference and collected here reflect both the theoretical and philosophical underpinnings and the cultural and political praxes of “hope against hope.”. (shrink)