The European Union (EU) is known as the strongest advocate of the liberal global order. It is invested in the idea of rule-based international order, which forms part of its core identity. This adherence to the principles of the liberal global order is visible in its support for multilateral institutions and norms; open market and liberal trade regimes; approaches to security; emphasis on human rights; and democratic norms and values. With the growing uncertainty in (...) the global order, the EU's commitment to the above stated norms has become much more crucial than before. The objective of the study is to understand the shifting dynamics of the liberal world order as it was established at the end of the Second World War and how the EU is responding to these changes. (shrink)

Adi Da argues that no solutions currently proposed are sufficient to righten the present unsustainable trajectory of life on Earth, because there is no integrated approach to the ordering of society and use of the planet. The presumption of separateness—manifesting collectively as separate “tribes” vying for control—characterizes human affairs, rather than the prior (“a priori”) unity of existence. The struggle for dominance is the “stave in the wheels” of the Earth-system's inherent capacity to self-correct. A new institution, “the Global Cooperative (...) Forum,” is proposed—invoked by “everybody-all-at-once” (a global populace awakened as a single force, capable of cooperatively effecting global change). (shrink)

While Russian leaders are clearly dissatisfied with the United States and the European Union, they are not inherently opposed to a liberal world order. The question of Russia's desire to change a liberal international order hangs on the type of liberalism embedded in that order. Despite some calls from within for it to create a new, post-liberal order premised on conservative nationalism and geopolitics, Russia is unlikely to fare well in such a (...) world. (shrink)

This book explores the writings of Inis L. Claude, Jr., a preeminent scholar on international relations, to define a new approach to the study of international relations. Pragmatic liberalism, an "in-between" approach, argues that a liberal world order can be sustained and promoted by the pragmatic application of liberal principles.

This essay engages critically with Adrian Pabst’s ‘Liberal World Order and Its Critics’, Christian Reus-Smit’s ‘On Cultural Diversity’, and Hal Brands’ and Charles Edel’s ‘The Lessons of Tragedy’. What holds these three (very different) books together is that they revolve around the theme of ‘the crisis of liberal world order’. In this essay, I do not wish to dispute the claim that the liberal world order is in crisis – indeed, I (...) accept this common starting-off point of the four authors as a fact. What distinguishes my take on the ‘crisis of liberal world’ order from the books under review, however, is that I develop an alternative angle on the very idea of ‘crisis’: By understanding crisis as an incitement to judgement, deliberation and, ultimately, political action, I excavate the constructive potential of crisis; and, through the critical engagement with the three books under review, I seek to lay bare the intimate bond that connects ‘crisis’, ‘human diversity’, and ‘tragedy’, and to revive the constructive potential of these themes as ‘opportunities not to be wasted’. (shrink)

Advocates a new existential and political coalition among critical and postmodern social theorists and among critical gender, race, and class theorists, in dissent from the New World Order, to raise specters of liberation and empower radical democratic change.

In light of world globalization, three visions of the world order have been examined. The naive cosmopolitanism has been examined first and then rejected as being unrealistic because it overlooks the reasons for state pluralism in the international order. On this naive view, the world state is the only source of sovereignty and the individual is the only focal point of moral concern. Second subject matter of our investigation were Kantian and Rawlsian views which still (...) defend the state-centered view on international relations with peoples as a major subject of moral concern. However, on Rawls view, the principle of peoples' self-determination should be combined with the principles of universal morality which protect some individuals' fundamental rights thus enabling his theory to be classified into moderate liberal internationalism. Third, the idea of functional sovereignty as a foundation of the system of international sovereignty has been abandoned as being too unrealistic given recent tendencies in the world which associate the identities of individuals with cultures and civilizations rather than with practices and professions. Finally, some reasons have been given for preferring Rawlsian approach. The major reason is that there are close cultural ties between nations and their states and that this fact can contribute greatly to the resolution of coordination problem among states both internally and externally.. Pokusacemo, krecuci se u oblasti politicke normativne teorije, i to pre svega u okviru problema vezanih za analizu pojma suvereniteta drzave i teorije medjunarodnih odnosa, da na adekvatan nacin pojmovno odgovorimo na kulturne, politicke i ekonomske fenomene u svetu koji se u strucnoj literaturi, a i u javnosti uopste, cesto jednim imenom nazivaju "globalizacija". Razmotricemo pre svega klasicno shvacen pojam suvereniteta i ispitacemo kakvu ulogu taj pojam moze da ima u jednoj normativnoj viziji savremenih medjunarodnih odnosa. Branice se teza da uprkos globalizacijskim trendovima u svetu, drzavno shvatanje suvereniteta vezano za pojam nacije-drzave mozda treba i dalje da ima kljucnu ulogu u sistemu medjunarodnih odnosa jer je to najcelishodniji nacin da se ostvare zahtevi za pravdom i mirom na nivou kolektivnog delanja naroda kako unutar drzave tako i na medjunarodnom planu. (shrink)

The complementary deaths of the thinking subject and of the citizen subject -- Producing a Marxist concept of liberation -- Postpolitical politics and global capitalism -- The exacerbation of uneven development : analysis of the current -- The possibility of a new state I : delinking -- Models of liberation I : the politics of identity -- Models of liberation II : the politics of subjectivity -- Models of liberation III : the politics of the event -- Models of liberation (...) IV : the religious transcendent -- Models of liberation V : nomad politics -- The possibility of a new state II : Heterotopia -- Prospects for the new political subject and liberation. (shrink)

“Civilization” is back at the forefront of global policy debates. The leaders of rising powers such as China, India, Turkey, and Russia have stressed their civilizational identity in framing their domestic and foreign policy platforms. An emphasis on civilizational identity is also evident in U.S. president Donald Trump's domestic and foreign policy. Some analysts argue that the twenty-first century might belong to the civilization state, just as the past few centuries were dominated by the nation-state. But is the rise of (...) civilization state inevitable? Will it further undermine the liberal international order and fuel a clash of civilizations, as predicted by the late Samuel Huntington? Or might ideas from East Asian and other non-Western civilizations contribute to greater pluralism in our thinking about world order and the study of international relations? (shrink)

It's a mistake to endow the Holocaust or any other massive case of crimes against humanity with cosmic significance. We want to do it because we think the moral enormity of the events should be balanced by an equally grand theory. But it's not. The attempt to do so is poignant.Alain FinkielkrautSavage ethnonationalism, dating back to the end of the eighteenth century, and violent ethnic conflict, as ancient as history, are sometimes viewed as if for the first time in the (...) post-Cold War era. Still, it is the case that the end of the discipline imposed by the bipolar international system has permitted temporarily repressed ethnic and nationalist passions to reassert themselves. In response, a vast literature has sprung up discussing what states should do about genocide and ethnic cleansing, the gravest human rights abuses. In what follows I will consider barbarous nationalism in the context of the liberal international order put into place at the end of the Second World War, the roles of politics, law and morality forming a sub text to that discussion. (shrink)

What happens in the world’s most advanced life sciences laboratories, why those activities are important, and whether and how they can be brought under a uniform governance framework might be considered exquisitely esoteric matters in the context of the great geopolitical questions of our time. Nonetheless, the emerging issues in biotechnology—the use of living organisms to create new products and especially in the control of the human genome—represent a useful stress test for the future of the norms inherent in (...) the liberal international order (LIO). My case study will be the nearly universal public outrage following the announcement by a Chinese scientist that he had engaged in the first gene editing of several embryos that survived to birth, an episode that has created an opportunity to assess the global consensus about the ethics of biotechnology with regard to human DNA. Although not as explicit or well understood or enforced as weapons treaties, trade arrangements, or monetary institutions, the norms around biotechnology are very much a product of the post-World War II liberal consensus. (shrink)

This article explores the relation between the American-led liberal international order and the persistence of ‘violent extremism’ in the Middle East through a questioning of the role of constitutive aspects of this order, namely territoriality of political organization and capitalist organization of world economy, in contributing to the persistence and recurrent formation of militant Islamist groups. It argues that the historical legitimation crisis of this international order in the Middle East and the other conflict-ridden regions (...) of the Islamic world, and the current globalization of this legitimation crisis in the relatively well-off and democratic states of the western world, contribute to the recurrent explosions of alienation, expressed in the form of militant Islamist groups. (shrink)

The conflict in Ukraine indicates some of the features of a potential post-liberal order and raises several potential ethical issues that may arise for international interventions as the world changes. What types of interventions, if any, are justifiable in response to situations such as the one in Ukraine? Can interventions be permissible given the potential undermining of universalist claims that are often used to support them? How should states prioritize between situations if there is an even greater (...) number of global challenges in a post-liberal order? Three new books—Solferino 21 by Hugo Slim, Decolonizing Human Rights by Abdullahi Ahmed An-Naim, and Promoting Justice across Borders by Lucia Rafanelli—can help to navigate these questions. Drawing on their insights, this essay argues that reform interventions can be justified to defend the liberal international order, that intervention can be defended from a relativist basis, and that socioeconomic rights should be given greater priority. (shrink)

Individual, family, economic, and other forms of people suffering impact organizations. Suffering in the workplace is probably a more common occurrence than expected in everyday life, and opposite to health and employee wellbeing. According to the World Health Organization, 300 million people worldwide struggle with depression and close to 800.000 people die due to suicide every year. The European Survey on Working Conditions in the European Union gathers the most varied aspects of working conditions, such as the duration of (...) the working day, relationships between collaborators in organizations, or healthy work habits. Among the results of that survey it is noteworthy that almost half of the close to twenty-two thousand workers surveyed in the 27 member countries stated that they felt uneasiness due to the conditions of their work. (shrink)

In a single generation, the rise of Asia has precipitated a dramatic sea change in the world’s economic and political orders. This reconfiguration is taking place amidst a host of deepening global predicaments, including climate change, migration, increasing inequalities of wealth and opportunity, that cannot be resolved by purely technical means or by seeking recourse in a liberalism that has of late proven to be less than effective. The present work critically explores how the pan-Asian phenomenon of Confucianism offers (...) alternative values and depths of ethical commitment that cross national and cultural boundaries to provide a new response to these challenges. When searching for resources to respond to the world’s problems, we tend to look to those that are most familiar: Single actors pursuing their own self-interests in competition or collaboration with other players. As is now widely appreciated, Confucian culture celebrates the relational values of deference and interdependence—that is, relationally constituted persons are understood as embedded in and nurtured by unique, transactional patterns of relations. This is a concept of person that contrasts starkly with the discrete, self-determining individual, an artifact of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Western European approaches to modernization that has become closely associated with liberal democracy. Examining the meaning and value of Confucianism in the twenty-first century, the contributors—leading scholars from universities around the world—wrestle with several key questions: What are Confucian values within the context of the disparate cultures of China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam? What is their current significance? What are the limits and historical failings of Confucianism and how are these to be critically addressed? How must Confucian culture be reformed if it is to become relevant as an international resource for positive change? Their answers vary, but all agree that only a vital and critical Confucianism will have relevance for an emerging world cultural order. (shrink)

With unflinching gaze and uncompromising intensity Julius Evola analyzes the spiritual and cultural malaise at the heart of Western civilization and all that passes for progress in the modern world. As a gadfly, Evola spares no one and nothing in his survey of what we have lost and where we are headed. At turns prophetic and provocative, Revolt against the Modern World outlines a profound metaphysics of history and demonstrates how and why we have lost contact with the (...) transcendent dimension of being. The revolt advocated by Evola does not resemble the familiar protests of either liberals or conservatives. His criticisms are not limited to exposing the mindless nature of consumerism, the march of progress, the rise of technocracy, or the dominance of unalloyed individualism, although these and other subjects come under his scrutiny. Rather, he attempts to trace in space and time the remote causes and processes that have exercised corrosive influence on what he considers to be the higher values, ideals, beliefs, and codes of conduct--the world of Tradition--that are at the foundation of Western civilization and described in the myths and sacred literature of the Indo‑Europeans. Agreeing with the Hindu philosophers that history is the movement of huge cycles and that we are now in the Kali Yuga, the age of dissolution and decadence, Evola finds revolt to be the only logical response for those who oppose the materialism and ritualized meaninglessness of life in the twentieth century. Through a sweeping study of the structures, myths, beliefs, and spiritual traditions of the major Western civilizations, the author compares the characteristics of the modern world with those of traditional societies. The domains explored include politics, law, the rise and fall of empires, the history of the Church, the doctrine of the two natures, life and death, social institutions and the caste system, the limits of racial theories, capitalism and communism, relations between the sexes, and the meaning of warriorhood. At every turn Evola challenges the reader’s most cherished assumptions about fundamental aspects of modern life. A controversial scholar, philosopher, and social thinker, JULIUS EVOLA (1898-1974) has only recently become known to more than a handful of English‑speaking readers. An authority on the world’s esoteric traditions, Evola wrote extensively on ancient civilizations and the world of Tradition in both East and West. Other books by Evola published by Inner Traditions include Eros and the Mysteries of Love, The Yoga of Power, The Hermetic Tradition, and The Doctrine of Awakening. (shrink)

_An insightful and passionately written book explaining why a return to Enlightenment ideals is good for the world__ "Beginning with the simple but fertile idea that people should not push other people around, Deirdre McCloskey presents an elegant defense of 'true liberalism' as opposed to its well-meaning rivals on the left and the right. Erudite, but marvelously accessible and written in a style that is at once colloquial and astringent."—Stanley Fish__ The greatest challenges facing humankind, according to Deirdre McCloskey, are (...) poverty and tyranny, both of which hold people back. Arguing for a return to true liberal values, this engaging and accessible book develops, defends, and demonstrates how embracing the ideas first espoused by eighteenth-century philosophers like Locke, Smith, Voltaire, and Wollstonecraft is good for everyone. With her trademark wit and deep understanding, McCloskey shows how the adoption of Enlightenment ideals of liberalism has propelled the freedom and prosperity that define the quality of a full life. In her view, liberalism leads to equality, but equality does not necessarily lead to liberalism. Liberalism is an optimistic philosophy that depends on the power of rhetoric rather than coercion,_ and on ethics, free speech, and facts in order to thrive. (shrink)

This edited volume consists of papers reflecting upon the significance of the contemporary revival of Confucianism for aspects of the global order such as capitalism, Asian modernity, liberal democracy, civil society, and mass media consumption. Read as a whole, the volume neither advocates a particular interpretation of Confucian thought, nor claims the efficacy of Confucianism in resolving human predicaments. Instead, it conceptualizes the Confucian revival as primarily an on-going social phenomenon and tries to analyze its broader impacts beyond (...) the framework of the three epochs of Confucian intellectual history. While immensely... (shrink)

orbit and far beyond it. Indeed, the immense, painstaking, indefatigable and ever-improving effort of Husserl to find ever-deeper and more reliable foundations for the philosophical enterprise (as well as his constant critical re-thinking and perfecting of the approach and so called "method" in order to perform this task and thus cover in this source-excavation an ever more far-reaching groundwork) stands out and maintains itself as an inepuisable reservoir for philosophical reflec tion in which all the above-mentioned work has either (...) its core or its source. In fact, in his undertaking to re-think the entire philosophical enterprise as such and to recreate philosophy upon what he sought to be at least a satisfactorily legitimated basis, Husserl, through his already systematised and "authorized" work, and his courses, and later on in his spontaneous reflection (which did not find its way into a definitive corpus but was nevertheless sufficiently coherent with his previously established body of thought to be considered a continuation of it), uncovers perspectives upon the universe of man and projects their new philosophical thematisation that brings together all the attempts by philosophers (e. g., Merleau-Ponty, who drew upon this material and found there his own inspiration) who succeeded him with foundational intentions; it also gives a core of philosophical ideas and insights for the youngergenerationofphilosophers today. (shrink)

Introduction Perhaps more than any other member of the Frankfurt School, Herbert Marcuse articulated a hope for a radically transfigured world. He imagined a world characterized by receptive, generous relationships rather than domination and violence. Yet Marcuse's philosophy of liberation has been placed on trial within various critical circles. Michel Foucault's rejection of the “repressive hypothesis” and his concomitant analysis of power as generative is typically interpreted as an indirect response to Marcuse's tendency to treat the social (...) class='Hi'>order as a primarily repressive force vis-à-vis our instincts and desires.1 Martin Jay has expressed concerns about the…. (shrink)

In The Law of Peoples Rawls claims that liberal well-ordered societies (LWOSs) should regard certain non-liberal societies, decent hierarchical societies (DHSs), as equal members of a just international order, a ‘Society of Peoples.’ Rawls maintains, however, that while the ‘basic structures’ (the main political and economic institutions) of LWOSs are fair systems of social cooperation, the basic structures of DHSs are only ‘decent’ systems of social cooperation. I explain why the basic structures of DHSs cannot be fair (...) systems of social cooperation. In doing so, I refute a recent defense of DHSs advanced by Samuel Freeman. I then argue that because the basic structures of DHSs cannot be fair systems of social cooperation, Rawls is not justified in holding that LWOSs should refrain always from offering economic incentives to DHSs in order to encourage them to liberalize their political institutions. The ultimate aim of the foreign policies of LWOSs should be a world in which liberal democratic rights are respected by all societies. (shrink)

Monshipouri examines three paradoxes in the conflict between the legal-political global order and the growth of civil society in the international system: state-building vs. democratization; economic liberalization vs. political liberalization; and human rights vs. state sovereignty.

Despite the end of the Cold War and the ascendancy of liberal democracy celebrated by Francis Fukuyama as “the end of history”, a growing number of scholars and political activists point to its inherent shortcomings. However, they have tended to dismiss it on the basis of one or two of its salient weaknesses. While this is a justifiable way to proceed, it denies the searching reader an opportunity to see the broad basis for the growing rejection of liberal (...) democracy among African political theorists. Consequently, in this article, I argue that from an African perspective, the almost hegemonic status of liberal democracy can be challenged on at least five grounds, namely, logical inconsistency, impracticability due to the largely communalistic outlook of many africans, inconsistency between affirmation and action, violation of the right to ethnic identity, and the moral imperative to assert the right to cultural emancipation. -/- I conclude by calling upon African and Africanist political theorists to utilise indigenous African political thought, coupled with emancipatory aspects of political thought from other parts of the world, to design practicable models of democracy for contemporary African states. I further conclude that in order to promote genuine inter-cultural dialogue on democratisation, people from Western cultures ought to acknowledge the equality of all cultures, and to recognise that systems of governance are part and parcel of those cultures. (shrink)

Tradicionalmente, la experiencia mística tiene como uno de sus propósitos fundamentales alcanzar la liberación. Esta puede entenderse como el resultado de la superación de los condicionamientos del ego que permite el encuentro con nuestra mismidad. Se analiza la liberación desde un discurso epistemológico naturalizado, entendiéndola como un proceso de desautomatización que repercute sobre el sistema nervioso central y que suscita una transformación radical en la relación habitual que el hombre tiene con el mundo. According to the tradition, one of the (...) objectives of the mystic experience is to achieve liberation. The latter can be understood as the result of overcoming the conditioning of the ego in order to find our selfhood. The article analyzes liberation from the perspective of naturalized epistemological discourse, understanding it as a process of deautomatization that affects the central nervous system and promotes a radical transformation of the human being's customary relationship to the world. Tradicionalmente, a experiência mística tem como um de seus propósitos fundamentais alcançar a liberação. Esta pode ser entendida como o resultado da superação dos condicionamentos do ego que permite o encontro com nossa mesmi-dade. Analisa-se a liberação a partir de um discurso epistemológico naturalizado, que a entende como um processo de desautomatização que repercute sobre o sistema nervoso central e provoca uma transformação radical na relação habitual que o homem tem com o mundo. (shrink)

The relationship between international order and justice has long been central to the study and practice of international relations. For most of the twentieth century, states and international society gave priority to a view of order that focused on the minimum conditions for coexistence in a pluralist, conflictual world. Justice was seen either as secondary or sometimes even as a challenge to order. Recent developments have forced a reassessment of this position. This book sets current concerns (...) within a broad historical and theoretical context; explores the depth and scope of this presumed solidarism amidst the difficulties of acting on the basis of a more strongly articulated liberal position; and underscores the complexity and abiding tensions inherent in the relationship between order and justice. Chapters examine a wide range of state and transnational perspectives on order and justice, including those from China, India, Russia, the United States, and the Islamic world. Other chapters investigate how the order-justice relationship is mediated within major international institutions, including the United Nations, the World Trade Organization and the global financial institutions. (shrink)

Although the accelerated globalization of recent decades has flourished in tandem with a notable growth of liberal democracy in many states where it was previously absent, it would be hard to say that the prevailed processes of neo-liberal globalization foster development of global democracy and the rule of law. On the contrary, globalization has undercut traditional liberal democracy and created the need for supplementary democratic mechanisms. In fact, neo-liberalism i.e.libertarianism, which has generally prevailed as the authoritative policy (...) framework in contemporary globalization, does not have much in common with the ideal of liberal democracy of well-ordered society. The serious problem in the relationship between democracy and globalization is, however, related to differences among the global cultures and/or civilizations. Democratic rule of law and the problem of human rights are unquestionable values of the Western civilization. Do they have the same significance in each culture/civilization, in every part of the globalized world? Democratic control of globalization can be completed only through a sort of global governance, but who can realize it in our divided world? (shrink)

One of numerous definitions of globalization describes it as a dynamic process whereby the social structures of modernity, such as capitalism, bureaucracy, high technology, and philosophy of rationalism and liberalism are spread the world over. Indeed, in that sense, liberalism has in general prevailed as the authoritative policy framework in present-day globalization. Most governments have promoted neoliberal policies toward globalization, as well as influential multilateral agencies have continually linked globalization with liberalization. Champions of neoliberal globalization have also abounded in (...) commercial circles, particularly in the financial markets and among managers of transborder firms. Business associations and business-oriented mass media have likewise figured as bastions of neoliberalism which has overall ranked as policy orthodoxy in respect of globalization. Generally speaking, neoliberal ideas recently gained widespread unquestioned acceptance as “common sense”. On the other hand, neoliberalism as a sort of philosophical, political and economic theory known as libertarianism, which has generally prevailed as theoretical approach in contemporary globalization, does not have much in common with the ideal of liberal democracy of well-ordered society, which arises from quite different ideas, aspects and dimensions of liberal philosophy. Social philosophy of liberalism, developed by Kant, Hayek, Dworkin and Rawls, has promoted the idea of modern liberal democracy which is generally based on the rule of law, protection of human and civil rights, ideas of equality and justice as fairness. In that sense “affirmative action” programmes in favour of the least advantaged groups are fully consonant with a general liberal philosophy that protects individual rights. Economic and cultural globalization should be accompanied by a clear conceptual analysis and a normative requirement of a globalization of responsibility in order to protect the global future of humankind. A democratic control as well as the rule of law in our globalized world is necessary, too. Central tasks of global policy to prevent global chaos as a consequence of uncontrolled globalization include, among other things, a legalized international order with a sort of global democratic governance. Concerning the improvement of global democracy and global rule of law the genuine question is: who can realize a policy of global governance in our divided world? (shrink)

Democracy is the very rationale for many nationalist movements aspiring to form a state of their own. In their view, political sovereignty is a necessary condition for a people to secure in its own culture, language and traditions, first, to control its internal affairs and second, to gain a voice in the concert of nations. The latter is increasingly important, so goes the argument, in a context in which the shaping of a new global world order is at (...) issue. The same argument is currently made by citizens of existing liberal countries who urge their state to keep, within new economic or political larger unions, the control of the national economy, culture and institutions. (shrink)

Democracy is the very rationale for many nationalist movements aspiring to form a state of their own. In their view, political sovereignty is a necessary condition for a people to secure in its own culture, language and traditions, first, to control its internal affairs and second, to gain a voice in the concert of nations. The latter is increasingly important, so goes the argument, in a context in which the shaping of a new global world order is at (...) issue. The same argument is currently made by citizens of existing liberal countries who urge their state to keep, within new economic or political larger unions, the control of the national economy, culture and institutions. (shrink)

While the word “democracy” has proliferated in social and political discourse in recent decades, I suggest that the liberal democracy of the past, connected as it is (especially in the West) to the market economy, is insufficient for the challenges facing the contemporary Latin American context. I assess and criticize democratic ideas in order to suggest that the way forward is radical democracy based on socio-economic and political justice. These, however, have to be articulated at a variety of (...) levels, from that of local and indigenous peoples to that of national and international relations. (shrink)

In this paper, an account of two novel ontologies is given to point to the need to revise the status of facts in school curriculum. It is argued that schooling is in dire need of re-enchantment. The way to re-enchant schooling is to re-enliven the world we inhabit. We need to fall head over heels in love with the world again. In order to do that, we need to shake up our conception of “the hard and cold (...) facts of the world” to make the latter come alive radiating vibrancy and luminosity out into the world. Facts have to be liberated from their “cold and hard” status and become things that captivate us with their uniqueness and dynamism. To the extent that facts enchant (instead of merely re/present the world), working with them leads to educative experience. To work out how to let the facts do that, two thinkers and two ways to reconceptualize ‘facts’ are discussed: Graham Harman and his objects, and Ken Wilber and his holons. (shrink)

This paper considers two differenttones of voice in philosophy and theology (‘liberal pluralism’ in contrast to ‘radical orthodoxy’) and relates it to a discussion about the theology of religions. ‘Tone of voice’ in this context is intended to denote the affective potency (or not) of a theological perspective as it impacts and influences religious attitudes. In addition, at a related level, ‘tone of voice’ is used when speaking of first-order or second-order perspectives: for example, a first-orderconfessional tone (...) in contrast to a second-ordernotional tone. The paper proceeds to critically engage with John Hick’s pluralism and John Milbank’s Radical Orthodoxy particularly from the point of view of considering thetone adopted by both perspectives. The conclusion is that both views are inadequate: Hick’s pluralism—as a second-order meta-theory—lacks the first-order power that is needed to affect ‘hearts and minds’, Milbank’s Radical Orthodoxy has rhetorical power but is an ‘unfounded’ narrative which lacks the ability to rationally engage with thereal world. In the end, the suggestion is that the ‘right tone of voice’, in a religious context, ought to combine a realistic enquiry concerning the order-of-things with a first-order rhetorical strength. (shrink)

Poverty is a complex, embodied reality comprising the existential, social, material, and spiritual. This paper draws from liberation theologies from North and South America, defining poverty as a religio-historical realidad. Martin Luther King Jr. observed a disembodied spirituality in many American churches who remained apathetic or antagonistic during the Civil Rights Movement. Conversely, James Cone reversed the issue by providing a theological system which utilizes hyper-materialistic presuppositions. By examining the broader Liberation tradition, a more robust theological definition of poverty can (...) be construed. Systems of poverty are systems of death, whereas enrichment are processes of life. Embodiment was used during colonial Christianity as a market identity in order to justify conquest. Liberation theologians reclaim creatureliness in their fight against poverty, and fight for restored identity. Each section of the paper addresses major trajectories within the broad Liberation tradition. North American liberationists analyze poverty from the perspective of racial oppression enforced through visible bodies. South American liberationists created a systematic, biblical definition of poverty while primarily addressing economic exploitation. Feminists addressed their male-dominated worlds addressing quality and quantity of life issues. Both North American and South American theologians agree that Christ identifies with the poor and understands their plight. In the end, Christ is understood as a liberator who is Lord over the material, spiritual, personal, and social. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to present the most important voices on the role of the US in the international order during Donald Trump’s presidency in the debate held in the Foreign Affairs. The authors assume that Foreign Affairs expresses the opinions of the most crucial organisation bringing together the elites of American foreign affairs – the Council on Foreign Relations. The paper proposes a hypothesis according to which there is a difference of opinion due to the adopted (...) theoretical perspective regarding Trump’s role in the destruction of the liberal international order among the American power elites, even though they agree that the ideological conflict between democratic and authoritarian countries around the world is escalating. (shrink)

Building, restoring and maintaining well-placed trust between scientists and the public is a difficult yet crucial social task requiring the successful cooperation of various social actors and institutions. Kitcher’s takes up this challenge in the context of liberal democratic societies by extending his ideal model of “well-ordered science” that he had originally formulated in his. However, Kitcher nowhere offers an explicit account of what it means for the public to invest epistemic trust in science. Yet in order to (...) understand how his extended model and its implementation in the actual world address the problem of trust as well as to evaluate it critically, an explicit account of epistemic public trust in science needs to be given first. In this article we first present such an account and then scrutinize his project of building public trust in science in light of it. We argue that even though Kitcher’s ideal model and his proposals for its implementation in the real world face a number of problems, they can be addressed with the resources of our account. (shrink)

Matteo Bonotti’s book on Partisanship and Public Reason in Diverse Societies is grounded on a theory of partisanship that sees the demands of public reason as internal to the very definition of a party. Bonotti suggests that partisanship is not only compatible with but essential to the stability and legitimacy of a well-ordered liberal society. My paper aims to raise some questions internal to the liberal account of partisanship so as to probe the methodological foundations and plausibility of (...) the liberal framework taken as a whole. My argument is that the assumption of a sufficiently just liberal society on which the book grounds its defence of partisanship makes us ill-equipped to face some of the most critical challenges that liberal societies face in the world that we live. (shrink)

This chapter aims to discuss critically the changing values in higher education within the context of culturally, ethnically and religiously plural modern European societies with a special focus on the case of emerging European Islamic higher education institutions. The inquiry argues for the need to rethink the core values in Islamic and western liberal, secular higher education in order to facilitate a new creative engagement between these two distinctive perspectives on higher education that share an intertwined intellectual legacy. (...) The focus of the study is framed by the following questions: Do central educational values of Islam and western secular higher education remain in conflict? To what extent can a critical dialogue of convergence be facilitated between the educational/pedagogic cultures of Islamic and western higher education? Why should such a critical engagement be based on a shared relational ethics of respecting the dignity of difference and recognition of mutual interdependence? The study adopts a phenomenology- infomed critical, comparative analysis method while exploring the topic within its historical and contempoaray dimensiosns. The original contribution of the inquiry lies in its reflective engagement with the Islamic and western values of higher education and developing a distinctive conceptual framework to facilitate a new pedagogic dialogue among the communities of learners and teachers coming from these educational cultures who increasingly share the same social space. After presenting the aims and context of the inquiry, a brief historical account of Islamic and western values of higher education will be provided. This will be followed by discussing the arguments supporting the incompatibility of Islamic and western values of education. The incompatibility thesis will be deconstructed by critically examining its logic of binary literalism. By drawing on the evidence suggesting presence of a shared reflective, critical educational heritage between Islam and the West, the chapter argues for the need to revive these forgotten traditions of pedagogic curiosity and critical openness to inspire a new cross-pollinating dialogue capable of acknowledging the dignity of being different and recognizing the reality of sharing an interdependent world. (shrink)

Which standards should we employ to evaluate the global order? Should they be standards of justice or standards of legitimacy? In this article, I argue that liberal political theorists need not face this dilemma, because liberal justice and legitimacy are not distinct values. Rather, they indicate what the same value, i.e. equal respect for persons, demands of institutions under different sets of circumstances. I suggest that under real-world circumstances – characterized by conflicts and disagreements – equal (...) respect demands basic-rights protection and democratic participation, which I here call ‘political justice’. I conclude the article by considering three possible configurations of the global order – the ‘democratic world-state’, ‘independent democratic states’, and ‘mixed’ models – and argue that a commitment to political justice speaks in favour of the latter. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Old Orders for New Ecology, Animal Rights, and the Poverty of HumanismCary Wolfe (bio)Luc Ferry. The New Ecological Order. Trans. Carol Volk. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1995.1Early on in The New Ecological Order, the French philosopher Luc Ferry characterizes the allure and danger of ecology in the postmodern moment. What separates it from various other issues in the intellectual and political field, he writes, is thatit (...) can call itself a true “world vision,” whereas the decline of political utopias, but also the parcelization of knowledge and the growing “jargonization” of individual scientific disciplines, seemed to forever prohibit any plan for the globalization of thought.... At a time when ethical guide marks are more than ever floating and undetermined, it allows the unhoped-for promise of rootedness to form, an objective rootedness, certain of a new moral ideal.[xx]As we shall see, for Ferry—a staunch liberal humanist in the Kantian if not quite Cartesian tradition—this vision conceals a danger to which contemporary European intellectuals are especially sensitive: not holism, nor even moralism, exactly, but that far more charged and historically freighted thing, totalitarianism. Ferry’s concern is that such “world visions,” incarnated in contemporary environmentalism in movements such as Deep Ecology and ecofeminism, threaten “[o]ur entire democratic culture,” which “since the French Revolution, has been marked, for basic philosophical reasons, by the glorification of uprootedness, or innovation” [xxi]. Ferry’s thesis—it becomes quite explicit in his comparison of environmental legislation under the Third Reich with tenets of Deep Ecology in the book’s second section—is that Deep Ecology and its ilk have moved in to occupy the space left open by the passing of the political imaginaries of fascism and communism, so that denunciations of liberalism (and its corollary in political praxis, reformism) may now be unmasked for what they are: critiques “in the name of nostalgia, or, on the contrary, in that of hope: either the nostalgia for a lost past, for national identity flouted by the culture of rootlessness, or revolutionary hope in a radiant future, in a classless and free society” [xxvi]. To which Ferry responds—literally—“Grow up!” Late in the book, he tells us that we must see through “the adult development of the secular and democratic universe” [137] by rejecting totalizing revolutionary visions of the sort purveyed by Deep Ecology, and by adhering instead to liberal reformism, “the only [End Page 21] position consistent with leaving the world of childhood” [138].Ferry is certainly right to draw our attention to the often uncritical nostalgia and romantic holism of some varieties of environmental thought—problems that have been noted before by critics from points on the map very different politically from Ferry’s avowed liberal humanism. And it is certainly understandable, given the historical context, that he would join a long list of other European intellectuals in pointing out the manifold dangers to democratic society of totalizing moral schemes—dangers often represented for liberal intellectuals like Ferry by the rise of the Greens in European politics. 1 We do well to remember, too (as Fredric Jameson and others have pointed out), that for European intellectuals such as Ferry, liberalism retains, for understandable historical reasons, a viability and a promise about which many American intellectuals are skeptical or even jaded. European intellectuals, conditioned by the experience of fascist authoritarianism and the strong but problematic presence historically of the Communist party in social and intellectual life, may find in liberalism a refreshing and indeed radical democratic openness and dynamism, while American intellectuals, conditioned to the absence of any other major political contenders, have long since grown accustomed to liberalism as the name for that “end of ideology” position which, as Jameson puts it, “can function more effectively after its own death as an ideology, realizing itself in its most traditional form as a commitment to the market system that has become sheer common sense and no longer a political program” [249, my emphasis].But in defending democratic difference, everything hinges, of course, on precisely how such terms are framed and how difference is articulated—an index of which often may be found in how its imagined... (shrink)