Social and Political Philosophy

By placing John Dewey between John Rawls and Richard Bernstein, I argue for a socialist reading of Dewey’s takes on liberal democracy that moves away both from conservative readings of Dewey of those who claim that his democratic liberalism actually belongs to right-wing or center views, and from left-wing, communitarians who dismiss such views as irrelevant for socialist and radical variants of liberal democracy. Overall, it can be shown that Rawls and Dewey’s different takes on political liberalism could be ultimately (...) reconciled, given their similar takes on democracy, pluralism, and the person. Rawls’ rehabilitation of Kant can itself be shown to be closely related to his reading of Dewey. Furthermore, as Bernstein argues, such a renewal of Dewey’s social and political philosophy in Rawls’s political constructivism and reflective equilibrium was decisive for the great pragmatist turn observed in the second, third, and fourth generations of critical theory, not only in the so-called Frankfurt School (especially Habermas, Honneth, Forst) but also in feminist and decolonial thinkers such as Nancy Fraser, Seyla Benhabib, Judith Butler, Rahel Jaeggi, and Amy Allen. Dewey’s pragmatist turn in political philosophy allows thus for a dynamic, robust correlation between radical democracy and public education, which could be implemented in emerging democracies like Brazil. (shrink)

The Dialogues of Confucius (Kongzi Jia Yu 孔子家語) is an unexplored resource for the philosophy of Confucius. In this article, I make a first attempt at mining its riches. Focusing on Chapters 21 and 32, I reconstruct a multilevel theory of governing that is a cyclic process proceeding from the moral psychology of the individual to social organization, to the society as grounded in natural processes, and to the metaphysics of the natural processes themselves, thus adumbrating a metaphysics of morals (...) from the microcosmic to the macrocosmic. This movement between macrocosmic and microcosmic levels encompasses moral psychology, economics, politics, aesthetics, and metaphysics. The metaphysical forces that account for the blowing of the wind and the motivation of human behavior are forces that flow when functioning properly and that otherwise stagnate. Maintaining that flow is the task of the leadership. Once that task is accomplished, and the flywheel spins of its own momentum, the people become self-governing. This multilevel cyclic process is compared to contemporary Western economic and political theory that is based on the unimpeded individual, aggregated into majoritarian democratic rule, based on the social contract, and vulnerable to the tragedy of the commons. Contrary to current Confucian-based correctives to democracy that seek to limit the power of the people, this Confucian argument empowers the people via a frugal, caring, well-regulated leadership. (shrink)

One of the most important motifs within (medical) ethics is scarcity: where essential (health) resources are scarce, urgent ethical questions arise. Over the last decade, at least 250 papers addressing the allocation of scarce health resources have been published in the Journal of Medical Ethics alone.1 In the typical set-up, the authors introduce a situation of scarcity and then review and adjudicate the available or recommended courses of action, sometimes through the lens of a pet normative ethical theory. It is (...) much less common for (medical) ethicists to focus their enquiries on the origins of scarcity. Why aren’t there sufficient health resources to go around? Who caused the scarcity, and how should they be held responsible? These questions are also firmly within the remit of the discipline. Discussions of scarcity tend to circumvent these difficult questions by focussing on exceptional cases in Global North settings, where scarcity is relatively rare, and is sometimes defensible or insoluble. For example: it would be wasteful for a hospital to overstock expensive, bulky, energetically intensive, specialist equipment whose supply would only be challenged under the most extreme and unforeseen circumstances (eg, a pandemic), and there may never be sufficient usable donor organs to meet the demand for transplants. Much less attention is given to under-resourced settings, generally in the Global South, where scarcity is common, and is often both indefensible and soluble. The literature appears to favour what is ‘unusual’ and ‘interesting’ in some contexts, rather than what is commonplace, and by that fact more worrying, in others. This division of attention entrenches the idea that scarcity is a fixed feature of certain places and lives. Why do medical ethicists so often fight shy of these meta-questions? They are, of course, harder and messier. More work and greater care are needed to contextualise …. (shrink)

Gökhan Murteza, “Ahlak, İktisat ve Bilim: Adam Smith Felsefesine Giriş” isimli eserinde genellikle İktisat disiplininin birçok farklı konusunu felsefi açıdan tartışmaya açmıştır. Murteza’nın bu eseri, devleti ve toplumu ilgilendiren bu araştırma alanının, A. Smith ile birlikte bir bilim dalı olarak görülmeye başlanmasının sonucunda, gerçekten ahlaki olanı içerip içermediği problemi üzerinde durmaktadır.

This unique volume brings together leading academics and researchers from different legal traditions to discuss the work and impact of Hans Kelsen, the most influential legal philosopher with global reach. Using his Pure Theory of Law and his theory of democracy as a lingua franca, the book allows for dialogues between jurisdictions and legal traditions and serves as a point of departure for further research on several themes such as state, international, and non-state law. -/- The volume covers four themes. (...) The first part focuses on Kelsen's often overlooked assumptions and the resultant conception of law. The second section refers in particular to Kelsen's understanding of legal norms and some of its most salient elements and features such as sanction and validity. The third part explores a variety of questions concerning Kelsen's views on international and non-state law in general and their implications in some jurisdictions. The final section brings Kelsen's legal and political theory together by assessing its relevance to democracy. (shrink)

While not considered the focus of Marx, aesthetics, and art have become a project of Marxism. But understanding art in a Marxist world requires taking Marx’s philosophy and understanding how art behaves in capitalism. I transplant the artwork to a Marxist analysis by investigating art as described by Heidegger, Dufrenne, and Merleau-Ponty, how art relates to the idea of the commodity in Marx, culture in Deleuze, and art in modern capitalism through Marcuse.

Recently, some authors have claimed that, from a republican perspective, market relations are dominating. However, _prima facie_, this idea does not fit within the (neo-)republican conceptualization of domination, which models domination on the master-slave relation. The aim of this article is to twofold. First, I try to argue that market relations can be seen as dominating. Second, I attempt to show that this can be done through an extension of the (neo-)republican conceptualization of domination. I try to achieve this by (...) comparing the master-slave relation with the accounts of those authors who maintain that market relations entail domination. This comparison reveals that there are fundamental similarities between the master-slave relation and the dynamics within market relations that are identified as dominating. What they have in common is the specific harm of domination, which I call the ‘logic of domination’. However, where the master-slave relation and market relations diverge is in the characteristics of the relation that causes the logic of domination to materialize. I argue that Pettit’s concept of discursive control allows us to extend his account of domination in such a way that we can conceive of market relations as dominating. (shrink)

Many contemporary thinkers of the Anthropocene, who attempt to articulate a non-modern and relational ontology, all too readily dismiss critical theory inherited from the Frankfurt School for being anthropocentric, failing to acknowledge certain basic similarities. Instead, this article argues that the scaffolding of Anthropocene thinking—the recognition of the origins of the contemporary condition of ‘loss of world’ and the hope of ‘living on in the ruins’—share much with earlier critical theorists’ recognition that the Holocaust necessitated a fundamental break with the (...) past. In reading these two sets of literatures together, we suggest we can get a better grasp of the stakes involved in the contemporary crisis of critique, and in the speculative framings enabling alternative futures to come into being. (shrink)

This article examines crowds, leaders, and media after the 1979 Revolution of Iran. It focuses on media that contests hegemonic power by acting as a “guide” for an otherwise “leaderless movement,” especially in contexts where conventional “guides” are illegitimate or absent. It argues that such media reveals the partisan reality of political order obscured by the myth of leadership, the idea that the presence of a leader implies a political order. I focus on International Women’s Day 1979 when crowds protesting (...) the Ayatollah Khomeini’s decision to enforce the mandatory veil were caught in a paradox: as subjects of history and objects of representation. With focus on the non-partisan newspaper _Ayandegan_, the article shows how the crowds, objects of representation, became political subjects, as potential guides. Despite its efforts to remain neutral, _Ayandegan_ became partisan when it unwittingly challenged the “charismatic leader” by giving presence to the partisan crowds. The mediated relation between leader and led on 8 March 1979 and after is instructive for our understanding of the role media can play in leaderless movements. (shrink)