This book offers a collection of essays in contemporary political philosophy from a wide range of Continental viewpoints. The authors include some of the most prominent European and European-oriented philosophers and political thinkers of our day. Two sections out of four focus on the debate between prescriptive and descriptive types of political thinking. On the prescriptive or normative side, Karl-Otto Apel, Robert Paul Wolff, Robert Spaemann, Hans Jonas, and Jean-Francois Lyotard discuss current forms of legitimating political life via some ultimate (...) grounding. On the descriptive or phenomenological side, Bernhard Waldenfels, Michel Henry, William J. Richardson, Jürgen Link, and Vincent Descombes argue that an understanding of praxis is always implied as one reaches insights into the life-world; there is no need to either construe or set normative standards for action. The remaining two sections deal with transcendental and institutional types of political philosophy, respectively. Manfred Riedel, Stanley Rosen, Thomas Seebohm, and Ludwig Siep develop Kant’s search for “a priori” conditions in the public realm; explicitly or implicitly, they confront the ancient Greek with the modern Enlightenment conceptions of life in public. Lastly, Agnes Heller, Alain Touraine, Reinhart Koselleck, and Bertram Schefold put to work many ways of looking at the life of our institutions. (shrink)

From the time she set the intellectual world on fire with her reflections on Eichmann (1963), Hannah Arendt has been seen, essentially, as a literary commentator who had interesting things to say about political and cultural matters. In this critical study, Shiraz Dossa argues that Arendt is a political theorist in the sense in which Aristotle is a theorist, and that the key to her political theory lies in the twin notions of the “public realm” and the “ (...) class='Hi'>public self”. In this work, the author explains how Arendt’s unconventional and controversial views make sense on the terrain of her political theory. He shows that her judgement on thinkers, actors, and events as diverse as Plato, Marx, Machiavelli, Freud, Conrad, Hobbes, Hitler, the Holocaust, the French Revolution, and European colonialism flow directly from her political theory. Tracing the origins of this theory to Homer and Periclean Athens, Dossa underlines Arendt’s unique contribution to reinventing the idea and the ideal of citizenship, reminding us that the public realm is the locus of friendship, community, identity, and in a certain sense, humanity. Arendt believes that no one who prefets his or her private interest to public affairs in the old sense can claim to be fully human or truly excellent. (shrink)

Globalization can undermine as well as enable public discourse at the national, international, and supranational levels. A challenge for political theory is to imagine how a global public realm might be constituted. Because the public realm has flourished in states whose citizens are related under the rule of law, one might ask whether this model of civil association can be extended to a broader and potentially universal context. Given the contingent obstacles to a global state, (...) realizing civil association globally implies a universal confederation of rule‐of‐law states. If the public realm means free deliberation on the laws of a civil association, the ‘global public realm’ would include deliberation at all three levels. (shrink)

In the last two decades, we have seen an increasing display of gestures and language of forgiveness in the public realm. Forgiveness has become a secular phenomenon. What do we mean by forgiveness? What is the role of forgiveness in the public place? Does it have the capacity to enhance the political life and well-being of a community? In The Human Condition, first published in 1958, Hannah Arendt offers an unapparelled reading of political forgiveness, described as a (...) quintessential human faculty for the revitalization of the public and political realm. This paper seeks to investigate the implications of Arendt’s understanding of action and forgiveness for the life of the polis, in particular the promotion of a more hospitable public space. Situated within human capacity to act and to love the other in their uniqueness and despite their trespasses and failures, forgiveness contributes, as this paper seeks to demonstrate, to the enhancement of the political sphere by opening this space to “new beginnings.”. (shrink)

To Hannah Arendt, the public sphere has ontological implications; appearances are produced under conditions of plurality. For that reason, her philosophical work has implications for our reflections on the function of art in public space. What appears and why? What is refrained from appearing? How does intimate space interact with public space? The article looks at these questions and discusses the close relation between political agebcy and art.

Combines the work of promising college students with essays by distinguished scholars.

This article argues that David Hume's essay 'Of the Liberty of the Press' points to significant elements of his conception of the public realm and, in particular, his thoughts on the nature and importance of political discourse. Hume saw the opposition of interests as both a key constitutional support and a potential source of faction and fanaticism. His account of politeness suggests an important means through which a free press might improve the quality of public discourse such (...) that the educative facet of discourse and, what I have termed, its messy facet, could be united towards maintaining the constitutional balance, the latter by providing a forum for the opposition of interests and the former by deflating factional bigotry. (shrink)

The pandemic and subsequent wave of lockdowns in many countries led to a massive increase in TikTok users globally, boosting the platform’s public significance. Even if TikTok’s political potential is already established, the platform still lacks a theoretical underpinning as a space for action. Using both a political-philosophical as well as a techno-philosophical perspective, I seek to discuss and substantiate TikTok’s potential as a public realm that enables political action. Due to the unique algorithmic logic of this (...) app, I argue that users are acting-with the algorithm when engaging in political action from home: be it in the form of national political protest or international acts of care and empowerment. I base my analysis on philosophical theory, cross-disciplinary TikTok research, and my own experiences on TikTok during the pandemic years. (shrink)

The representative institutions of democratic government require the public sphere; but this in turn rests on the fellow‐feeling of citizens. In this article, I explore some recent ways of fleshing out Mill’s thought that patriotic fellow‐feeling is instrumental for a form of trust that the public sphere requires. Deliberation, argument and negotiation in the public sphere require a willingness to discuss, alter one’s position, compromise with others, and do so in good faith and in the belief that (...) other participants are broadly also taking part in the same fashion. Since politics is a realm in which interests and identities clash, we have at least a prima facie reason to worry that others may in fact not be trustworthy in the desired way. Some potential for distrust is inherent in political deliberation, since it presupposes that there is some important conflict or disagreement that needs to be overcome through discussion: in other words, that I cannot simply rely on others to further my interests for the right reasons, or at all. While trust seems inherently problematic, political dialogue in the public sphere seems to require it from those who take part. I look at four accounts of the basis of democratic trust, viz. the communitarian, the ‘societal culture’ account, the public culture account, and what is known as the ‘constitutional patriotism’ account. In outline, my argument is that all four accounts fail to explain the basis of trust in the democratic sphere. I conclude that sharing a national identity still leaves the politics of trust to be negotiated by the participants concerned. (shrink)

In recent years, a growing number of scholars have accused Arendt of anti-Black racism. Some of these criticisms can be traced to certain passages in her essay On Violence about black radicals making what she believed to be unreasonable curriculum demands, namely the establishment of Black Studies programs. The purpose of this paper is to contextualize these controversial passages within her deeply anti-modern thinking about the role of higher education in society. While her arguments remain troubling, when read along with (...) the critical perspectives of Max Weber and Karl Jaspers, it becomes clear that her essential criticism had mostly to do with the transformation of the university into a capitalist enterprise, where students had become customers essentially seeking glorified vocational degrees. For Arendt, the university should not be a means of employment or another branch of the US military, as it had so become. It was a space where one could escape the public realm and discover a kind of freedom, the life of the mind. (shrink)

Throughout the twentieth century, middle-class progressives embraced visions of democracy rooted in their relatively privileged life experiences. Progressive educators developed pedagogies designed to nurture the individual voice within egalitarian classrooms, assuming that collective action in the public realm could be modeled on the relatively safe small-group interactions they were familiar with in their families, schools, and associations. Partly as a result, they remained blind to (and often denigrated) the democratic aspects of working-class organizations, such as unions and community (...) action groups, which found strength in solidarity. In this article Aaron Schutz argues that progressives must integrate into their models the often brutal lessons about power learned by those with less privilege. Until they do so, their approaches to democratic education will continue to have limited capacity to support social transformation and empowerment in the world as it is. (shrink)

Contemporary public art is still in the process of defining its artistic and legal identity. Indeed to juxtapose the terms public and art is a paradox. Art is often said to be the individual inquiry of the sculptor or painter, the epitome of self-expression and vision that may challenge conventional wisdom and values. The term public encompasses a reference to the community, the social order, self-negation: hence the paradox of linking the private and the public in (...) a single concept. A goal of any general or jurisprudential theory concerning government sponsorship or ownership of art in the public context must reconcile, through state institutions and law, this tension between art’s subjectivity with hits potential for controversy and government’s need to promote the public good.This essay critically examines and discusses existing contemporary legal doctrine and its failure to accommodate or even adequately define the issues and competing values at stake in the public art context. Such failure may be attributed in part to the fact that neither legal theory nor art policy have been inspired by the vision of or located in the broader context of a sociopolitical public realm. Barbara Hoffman practices arts and entertainment law in New York and is counsel to the College Art Association. She is a former professor of constitutional law at the University of Puget Sound, and she has served as chair of the Public Art Committee of the Art Law Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, and president of the Washington Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts. (shrink)

This article examines debates about political forgiveness in liberal, pluralist societies. Although the concept of forgiveness is not usually taken up by liberals, I outline a plausible conception by exploring two recent approaches. The first, ‘unattached articulation’, concept requires no real emotional change on the forgiver’s part, but rather a form of civic restraint. In contrast, the second version highlights a strong form of empathy for perpetrators. In spite of their advantages, each concept proves too extreme. The problems are revealed (...) by focusing on the case of the Harkis, who fought for the French during the Algerian war. Often still marginalised in French society, their case helps to highlight the conceivability of a ‘middle-ground’ or moderate concept of political forgiveness. Its core rests on the forgiver’s care for the social world. While this concept brings considerable challenges also, and is not inevitable in any particular case, it entails a more plausible combination of emotional and rational shifts in the forgiver’s world-view. Although the article does not recommend forgiveness by any person or group, it observes, recalling Arendt’s idea of amor mundi or ‘love of the world’, that political forgiveness may sustain a viable connection between diverse citizens’ public and non-public lives. (shrink)

In this paper I evaluate the theoretical and normative validity of Arendt's idea of a public sphere. My discussion is organised under three related headings. First, an exploration of the theme of ‘plurality’ in Arendt's work. This is connected, second, with a distinctive account of the role of ‘representation’ in political life. Third, the relation between ethics and politics, and the particular normativity of Arendt's concept of politics. Finally, I go on to a consideration of how Arendt's scheme of (...) plurality and public political life draw our attention to the themes of political capacity and resistance, risk and public encounter, and an account of the frictional, indeed rebarbative, nature of politics. The aim of the paper is to make clear that these themes remain significant for current debates about participatory deficits and about standards of public conduct. (shrink)

The paper is an examination of the institutional configuration (historical, Cultural, And political) preventing the development of the public sphere (the sphere of unconstrained communication of autonomous individuals regarding matters of common concern) in tzarist russia and in the soviet union.

Bringing together leading scholars in the fields of criminology, international law, philosophy and architectural history and theory, this book examines the interrelationships between architecture and justice, highlighting the provocative and curiously ambiguous juncture between the two. Illustrated by a range of disparate and diverse case studies, it draws out the formal language of justice, and extends the effects that architecture has on both the place of, and the individuals subject to, justice. With its multi-disciplinary perspective, the study serves as a (...) platform on which to debate the relationships between the ceremonial, legalistic, administrative and penal aspects of justice, and the spaces that constitute their settings. (shrink)

Among the characteristic features of Russian philosophy, there is its openness and connections with other realms of public consciousness. In the Middle Ages Orthodox religion was trying to take over the main functions of Russian philosophy. Philosophy was not just under the aegis of religion, as it was in Western Europe and Byzantium, but in its depths. Active philosophical life manifested itself under non-philosophical covers. Russian literature also is involved in philosophy. A plenty of a philosophical writers could doubtlessly (...) be called great. They are: Nikolai Gogol, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, etc. The things that each of them has brought into philosophy are very different in size and direction. As a result of the openness of Russian philosophy appears a unique ideological element which borders on natural science. This element was philosophical on its nature, but it had a strong and sound ties with natural science. No less important for Russian philosophy its connection with historical science. Philosophical ideas and categories are involved in the study of historical events and processes. Historical science, enriched with philosophy, does not remain extraneous to it. Philosophical historians also influenced different sections of philosophy: philosophy of history, social and political philosophy, philosophy of religion, philosophical anthropology… Russian philosophy penetrated into other spheres – music, painting, etc., where it was represented by quite significant figures, in particular – Alexander Scriabin, Nikolay Roerich. The philosophical views of Scriabin and Roerich were not limited to the framework of their theoretical, philosophical constructions. Artistic intuition embodied these constructions in the creation of art. Nowadays contacts of Russian philosophy in its various manifestations with other areas of intelligence also do not lose their attractiveness. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public (...) domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

English version of: "Il personale e politico? Il confine fra pubblico e privato nella sfera della giustizia distributiva." --- Italian text published in Carter, Ian, Otsuka, Michael and Trincia, Francesco Saverio Discussione su "If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich?" di G.A. Cohen. Iride, XIV. pp. 609-634. ISSN 1122-7893.

"In Realms of Legal Interpretation, Kent Greenawalt focuses on how courts decide what is legally forbidden or authorized, and how context shapes their decisions. The problem, he argues, is that we do not, and never have, agreed on all the details of the standards United States judges should employ - like everyone else, judges have different ideas of what constitutes good common sense. Moreover, circumstance regularly throws up hurdles... Different judges react in different ways. Acknowledging that courts will never agree (...) upon a uniform approach to applying norms and interpreting the law, Greenawalt's aim is to provide a capacious, user-friendly model for approaching hard cases sensibly in both public and private law. Just as importantly, the book serves as a pithy guide to the major forms of legal interpretation for nonlawyers" --. (shrink)

The widely accepted approach in scholarly literature on Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition emphasizes its political meaning and implications while neglecting its ontological dimensions. Against this trend, in this article I seek to uncover the implicit ontology that underlies her conception of the human condition. This human ontology appears to be comprised of five realms – the private, the public, intimacy, the social and the self. While Arendt explicitly bases her conception upon the first two, the paper shows that (...) the remaining three, although not defined as realms, are explored by her as such. These appear as autarchic contexts of human activity, which are not supposed to refer to each other. The problematic of this split between the different realms is widely discussed in the paper. Yet, the split of the self from the two pivotal realms – the private and the public – acquires a special interest, for it undermines the entire project of the human condition. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Realm Without Angels: MENCs Partnerships with Disney and Other Major Corporations Julia EkIund Koza University of Wisconsin-Madison My interest in partnerships between the MENC: The National Association for Music Educators and major corporations such as Disney dates back to 1996 when I was invited to attend a free premiere screening of the movie Mr. Holland 's Opus.1 Never one to turn down anything free, in January of (...) that year I joined more than twenty-fivethousandmusiceducators, administrators, and friends ofthe arts, who gathered at fiftyone locations across the nation to watch the movie. Sponsored and promoted by theNational Coalition for Music Education, ofwhich MENC is a member, in cooperation with the National AcademyofRecordingArts and Sciences Foundation, the American Music Conference, and Hollywood Pictures (a Disney subsidiary), the promotional screening was the result of an education/business partnership. I did not like the film much even though I agreed with its message that public schools and public school music should be adequately funded, and I was sorry that MENC had entered into a partnership to promote it. Part ofthe problem may have been timing. I had recentlyreturned froma parental leave during whichIhad sufferedseriouspostpartumcomplications and had struggled fornearly a yearwithpoor health. January 1996 found me trying to figure out how I would manage a full-blown academic career, my still fragile health, and a lively child. Ibristledatthevisionsofprofessionalismfostered by Mr. Holland's Opus, recognizing that I would never again have the luxury he did of indulging myselfuninterruptedly in my career; I knew that I might never again be seen as a "real professional " even though I was more exhausted and working harder than I ever had. From my perspective the film's images of teachers, teaching, andprofessionalismwereprofoundlymasculinist; I also knew that a popular film can play a powerful role in shapingpublic imaginaries. Who tends tobenefit fromtheperpetuationoftheseimagesof teachers, teaching, and professionalism, I wondered? Who tends to be harmed? So my first step on this journey was to write a critique of Mr. Holland's Opus. I soon discovered that the film itselfwas but one small part of a much larger story about MENCs deepening involvement in education /business partnerships. One of the main themes of Mr. Holland's Opus is that budget cuts can have devastating effects on music programs. The education/business partnership forged to promote Opus and the manner in which the film was promoted suggested that the corporate world is socially responsible and genuinely concerned both aboutthe quality ofAmerican education and the demise of music education. In no way did they intimate that corporate practices may be at least partially responsible for any declines in the quality ofpublic schooling. I was also aware, however, of a corpus of scholarship suggesting that recent trends toward corporate partnerships and philanthropy are window-dressing at a time when corporations are sneaking out the back door carrying everything else in the store. Critics contend that on the one hand, corporationsengageinmuchpublicizedacts of gift-giving or school partnership, which cost the corporations relatively little (or in the case of Opus, result in considerable financial profit for the corporation), while on the other hand, they chisel away at the financial infrastructure of©Philosophy ofMusic Education Review 10, no. 2 (Fall, 2002): 72-79. Julia Eklund Koza 73 schools with unrelenting demands for special corporate tax cuts, breaks, and incentives. This practice is especially detrimental to the arts because, relegated to the feminized status of "frill," they may be among the first subjects to suffer. Tax breaks are but one example of what critics term "corporate welfare." John Hood, in Policy Review, provides a list ofincentives states use to attract and keep corporations. In addition to tax abatements and tax credits, Hood mentions land giveaways, releases from infrastructure costs, the issuanceoftax-exemptdevelopmentbonds, offers to promote products, and job training packages. These deals are unfair to existing businesses, Hood argues, especially small ones that can never hope to receive such treatment, and he concludes that there is no clear-cut evidence these forms of corporate welfare benefit state economies.2 Accordingto JayTaylor, school-business partnerships have become increasingly popular; they quadrupled between 1982 and 1992 as financially strappeddistricts found themselves "dredgingfor dollars."3 Taylor explains that "school officials... (shrink)

Conceptions of citizenship which rest on an abstract and universal notion of the individual founder on their inability to recognize the political relevance of gender. Such conceptions, because their ‘gender-neutrality’ has the effect of excluding women, are not helpful to the project of promoting the full citizenship of women. The question of citizenship is often reduced to either political citizenship, in terms of an instrumental notion of political participation, or social citizenship, in terms of an instrumental notion of economic (in)dependence. (...) The paper argues for the recognition of citizenship as gendered, and as an ethical, that is non-instrumental, social status which is distinct from both political participation and economic (in)dependence. What unites us as citizens, in our equal membership of the political community, need not rely on a conception of us as ‘neutral’ (abstract, universalized, genderless) individuals undertaking one specific activity located in the public realm, but can take account of the diverse ways in which we engage in ethically-grounded activities on the basis of our different genders, ethnic and cultural backgrounds and other differences, in both the public and private realms. A convincing feminist conception of citizenship necessarily involves a radical redefinition of the public/private distinction to accommodate the recognition of citizenship practices in the private realm. The paper builds on the observation that the concept of ‘citizenship’ is broader than the concept of ‘the political’ (or ‘the social/economic’), and contends that feminism provides us with the emancipatory potential of gendered subjectivity, which applies to both men and women. The recognition of gendered subjectivity opens the way to the recognition of the diversity of citizenship practices. It is not that women need to be liberated from the private realm, in order to take part in the public realm as equal citizens, but that women – and men – already undertake responsibilities of citizenship in both the public and the private realms. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt’s notion of public space is one of her most fruitful, yet frustrating concepts. Having employed it to analyze political freedom, she claims that such space has largely disappeared in the modern world. In what follows, I am going to argue that this pessimistic assessment follows from Arendt’s exclusion of labor and work from the public realm. Against Arendt’s claim that such activities are essentially private, I shall argue that they, like action, manifest our embodied being-in-the-world. (...) When we think of public space in terms of our embodied presence, it becomes a concept applicable to modern democratic politics. (shrink)