European Journal of Political Theory recent issues

Contributors

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 02:56:28 PDT

Totalitarianism as a Non-State: On Hannah Arendt's Debt to Franz Neumann

Iakovou, V. — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 02:56:28 PDT

The objective of this article is to show that Hannah Arendt’s understanding of totalitarianism is indebted to the analysis of National Socialism elaborated by Franz Neumann in Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism . It is argued that Arendt adopted the central thesis of Neumann according to which Nazi Germany is a ‘non-state’ and that this thesis as well as its presuppositions are discernible in her overall approach, developed in The Origins of Totalitarianism.

Epistemological Modesty within Contemporary Political Thought: A Link between Hayek's Neoliberalism and Pettit's Republicanism

Kacenelenbogen, E. — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 02:56:28 PDT

In this paper, I expound Philip Pettit’s political thought as an example of a ‘spontaneous and naturalistic’ view of politics and place his account within a liberal tradition of epistemological modesty which Pettit imagines he has transcended. To this end, I highlight the affinities between Pettit’s theory of freedom and a paradigmatically ‘modest’ social theory, namely, Hayek’s theory of the spontaneous social order. In light of the comparison with Hayek, I show that Pettit’s distinction between liberal and republican thought is not as vivid as he suggests. My contention is that the republican ideal of freedom offers not so much the makings of a viable non-liberal theory of political association as the expression, under a ‘new’ language of citizenship, of specifically Hayekian intuitions that lie at the core of contemporary neoliberalism.

Three Paradigms of Modern Freedom

Kioupkiolis, A. — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 02:56:28 PDT

The paper makes a case for the new paradigm of freedom which has been elaborated by thinkers such as Cornelius Castoriadis and Michel Foucault. In response to the critique of the subject, freedom is construed now as limited and agonistic, calling for an ongoing struggle against various constraints. But this idea is coupled with a heightened appreciation of contingency and creativity. Individuals can bring new possibilities into existence, which go beyond any predefined alternatives. The paper argues that this is a tenable and empowering figure of freedom which overcomes the deficiencies of earlier modern views. Essentialist notions, which can be found in Kant and Marx, contract freedom by tying it down to unchanging universal laws and definite conditions of realization, while alternative accounts of negative liberty fail to address the constrained nature of human agency.

Adorno's Mimesis and its Limitations for Critical Social Thought

Verdeja, E. — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 02:56:28 PDT

Adorno’s philosophy has enjoyed a resurgence of attention in political theory over the past decade. In this paper, I challenge contemporary efforts to adopt his critical theory by arguing that his conceptions of mimesis and negative dialectics, which are central to his thought, are ultimately unsatisfactory. I begin by critiquing the normative content of the negative dialectic, and then move on to explore its problematic relation with mimesis. In the following sections I argue that mimesis cannot do the normative work that Adorno requires of it. Rather, his idea of mimesis fails to inform critique (understood as ‘negative’ thought), relies on a problematic pre-modern idea of authenticity, and is incompatible with theoretical analyses of modern complex societies.

Contributors

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 02:40:28 PDT

Between Contumacy and Obsequiousness: Tacitus on Moral Freedom and the Historian's Task

Kapust, D. — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 02:40:28 PDT

This article explores Tacitus’ negotiation of the dilemmas of writing due to the emergence of the Principate and the displacement of Republican politics. These developments constrained the orator and the historian, and required a distinctive approach to the writing of history. I argue that Tacitus develops a conception of the historian’s task that centers on the historian’s moral freedom and educative role in the Principate. This freedom is evident in Tacitus’ depiction of good and bad principes, as well as his discussion of how one ought to behave under the Principate. The historian’s task and moral freedom are important given Tacitus’ desire to avoid the twin dangers of writing under autocratic rulers: contumacy and obsequiousness.

The 'Republican Dilemma' and the Changing Social Context of Republicanism in the Early Modern Period

Kennedy, G. — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 02:40:28 PDT

This article relates the evolving relationship between republicanism and the problem of ‘empire’ to the changing social contexts within which republican political theory emerges in the early modern period. It is argued that the initial antagonism between republicanism and empire was a politically constituted dilemma that related to the specific configuration of economic and political power characteristic of pre-capitalist societies. With the development of capitalism in England in the early modern period, the problem of empire becomes partially resolved due to the way in which the separation of economic and political power under capitalism reconstitutes the nature of empire itself. This new social context — characterized by new social, economic and political relationships specific to an emerging capitalist context — laid the foundations for the resolution of the ‘republican dilemma’ of empire and the ideological establishment of the first ‘Republican Empire’ in 18th century America.

Democracy, Multitudo and the Third Kind of Knowledge in the Works of Spinoza

Del Lucchese, F. — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 02:40:28 PDT

In Spinoza, what I call (adapting a phrase from J.-L. Nancy) the ‘Being Individual Multiple’ is the multitudo. Its form of life is Democracy, understood as the autonomous and conflictual organization of collective dynamics and not one form of government among others. Combining an original mode of argumentation with a critical discussion of opposing interpretations, I maintain that democracy is the translation into politics of the third and highest kind of knowledge in Spinoza, intuitive science. I argue moreover that the multitudo self-organized in a democracy has the capacity to experiment and express a different rationality with respect to the singular individual. Wisdom and democracy thus converge to give life to something unknown and original in western political modernity.

Philosophies of Political Myth, a Comparative Look Backwards: Cassirer, Sorel and Spinoza

Bottici, C. — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 02:40:28 PDT

The aim of this article is to recover a tradition of political philosophy which has been largely neglected and show its relevance for contemporary political thought. By arguing for the need of rethinking political myth today, the article reconstructs the philosophical reflections on this topic of Cassirer, Sorel and Spinoza, discussing both their strength and shortcomings. By adopting a comparative look backwards, it shows why they provide an ideal starting point for a philosophical approach to political myth which is aimed at both understanding what political myths are and how should they be evaluated.

Assemblages and the Multitude: Deleuze, Hardt, Negri, and the Postmodern Left

Tampio, N. — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 02:40:28 PDT

The article enters a heated debate about the ideals and organization of the postmodern left. Hardt and Negri, two key figures in this debate, claim that their concept of the multitude — a revolutionary, proletarian body that organizes singularities — integrates the insights of Deleuze and Lenin. I argue, however, that Deleuze anticipated and resisted a Leninist appropriation of his political theory. This essay challenges the widely accepted assumption that Hardt and Negri carry forth Deleuze’s legacy. At the same time, the essay advocates Deleuze’s concept of left assemblages — protean political bodies working for freedom and equality — as a valuable but underappreciated contribution to the liberal-democratic tradition.

Review Article: Behind the Nostalgia for Ancient Liberty: Giovanni Paoletti Benjamin Constant et les anciens: Politique, religion, histoire, tr. into French by Marie-France Merger. Paris: Honore Champion Editeur, 2006. ISBN: 2745315609 (hbk), 76

Garsten, B. — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 02:40:28 PDT

Review Article: Monarchisms and Republicanisms: Hans Blom, John Christian Laursen and Luisa Simonutti (eds) Monarchisms in the Age of Enlightenment: Liberty, Patriotism, and the Common Good. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, ISBN: 0802091776, 2007. x + 306 pp., {pound}40

Whatmore, R. — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 02:40:28 PDT

Contributors

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 08:03:50 PDT

Does Europe Need Common Values?: Habermas vs Habermas

Lacroix, J. — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 08:03:50 PDT

This article argues that there is a discrepancy between Jürgen Habermas's initial plea for critical and rational identities and his more recent glorification of the European model. Initially, Constitutional Patriotism could be apprehended as a critical standard for existing political practices. However, Habermas's recent political texts tend to lose all kind of reflexive distance in their apprehension of the European identity — which is presented as distinct and even superior to its counter-model, the US. Such a `Europatriotic' temptation should be resisted. The `thick' European identity advocated by Habermas has no truly federative dimension and could undermine the unique normative potential of a political entity composed of distinct identities. Consequently, the article suggests an elucidation of liberal postnationalism with a view to explaining its refusal to tie Europe's legitimacy to an identification logic.

Out of Darkness, Light: Arendt's Cautionary and Constructive Political Theories

Berger, B. — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 08:03:50 PDT

Most scholarly interpretations of Hannah Arendt's political writings account for her idiosyncratic understanding of politics and freedom in one of two ways. They interpret Arendt's more sensational claims about politics either literally or figuratively, but not in both ways. This essay proposes a new interpretation of Arendt's political writings based on a neglected, dichotomous pattern of metaphors in her collected works. That pattern, once mapped, yields insights into the meaning, applications, and limitations of Arendt's controversial political ideals and rhetoric. Neither a wholly literal nor a wholly figurative interpretation will do; I propose a reading that makes use of both strategies and gives Arendt her due while acknowledging her challenges.

Rereading Honneth: Exodus Politics and the Paradox of Recognition

Rogers, M. L. — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 08:03:50 PDT

Is Honneth's theory sufficiently sensitive to practices of recognition that have historically emerged? This article answers in the negative by revisiting his ground-breaking study The Struggle for Recognition. The first two sections of this article reconstruct the connection he draws between the practices of recognition, the psychological damage experienced in its absence and the motivation for social conflict that results. In doing so, we discover the paradox of recognition: Honneth makes psychological and moral development depend on precisely the `legally' instantiated system that is the source of disrespect in the first instance. Correspondingly, the paradox of recognition denies other alternative ways oppressed groups have achieved and sustained psychological and moral development. The third section offers the contrasting example of how black Americans used their religious imagination to overcome the effects of slavery. In doing so, they developed structures of mutuality to affirm self and community against misrecognition.

Hobbesian Absolutism and the Paradox of Modern Contractarianism

Baumgold, D. — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 08:03:50 PDT

Hobbes's defense of absolutism involves the dual claims that consent is the foundation of legitimate authority and that sovereignty is necessarily absolute. It is a paradoxical combination of claims: If absolute government is the product of choice how can it also be the sole possible constitution? While all of Hobbes's contractarian successors have rejected his preference for absolutism, his dual claims have become commonplace. Since Hobbes, contract thinkers routinely assert that people will choose their preferred constitution and that it is the only possible one. The essay examines the genesis of this paradoxical argumentation: Hobbes's genius lay in merging Grotius's contractarian rationale with Bodin's analytic view that sovereignty must be absolute. The final section discusses related criticisms of Rawls's contract theory. Rawls inherited a genre already flawed by the impluse to combine voluntarist with non-voluntarist reasoning.

The Meaning of Charity in Locke's Political Thought

Lamb, R., Thompson, B. — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 08:03:50 PDT

The recent `religious turn' within Locke scholarship has stressed the need to understand his theological commitments when approaching his political thought. One area of interpretation that has been completely transformed by this heightened sensitivity to the religious roots of Locke's thought is his account of property ownership which, it is claimed, contains a `right to charity' — a subsistence entitlement that trumps established ownership rights. However, this increasingly accepted interpretive claim has been made without significant attention to the way in which charity is deployed throughout Locke's writing. The aim of this article is to try and get to grips with Locke's various usages of the term and determine whether the concept he deploys is a consistent one. After discussion of the uncertain role charity plays in his account of property, we examine how it is defined in the Essay Concerning Human /nderstanding, and then turn to the crucial position it occupies in his theological corpus. Though Locke's understanding of charity seems fraught with ambiguities, the reason for these ambiguities relate to his configuration of charity as a disposition rather than a mere act , a configuration linked inextricably to his account of toleration.

Review Article: The Continuing Challenge of Isaiah Berlin's Political Thought: Isaiah Berlin Political Ideas in the Romantic Age: Their Rise and Influence on Modern Thought, ed. Henry Hardy with an introduction by Joshua L. Cherniss. London: Pimlico, 2007, 292 + lx pp. Isaiah Berlin and Beata Polanowska-Sygulska Unfinished Dialogue. Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 2006. 317 pp. George Crowder and Henry Hardy (eds.) The One and the Many: Reading Isaiah Berlin. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2007. 335 pp

Reed, J. — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 08:03:50 PDT

Review Article: Rhetoric and Power in Machiavelli: Joseph V. Femia Machiavelli Revisited. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2004. Mikael Hornqvist Machiavelli and Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Paul A. Rahe (ed.) Machiavelli's Liberal Republican Legacy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006

Fontana, B. — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 08:03:50 PDT

Review Article: The Conceptual History of Politics as the History of Political Conceptualizations: Kari Palonen The Struggle with Time: A Conceptual History of `Politics' as an Activity, LIT Verlag: Hamburg, London and Munster, 2006

Szabo, M. — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 08:03:50 PDT

Contributors

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 03:19:59 PST

Introduction: Recognition: Philosophy and Politics

McBride, C., Seglow, J. — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 03:19:59 PST

Recognition, Needs and Wrongness: Two Approaches

Laitinen, A. — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 03:19:59 PST

`Due recognition is a vital human need', argues Charles Taylor. In this article I explore this oft-quoted claim from two complementary and equally appealing perspectives. The bottom—up approach is constructed around Axel Honneth's theory of recognition, and the top—down approach is exemplified by T. M. Scanlon's brief remarks about mutual recognition. The former can be summed up in the slogan `wronging by misrecognizing', the latter in the slogan `misrecognizing by wronging'. Together they provide two complementary readings of the claim that due recognition is a vital human need: one starts from needs, shows how we have a multifarious need for adequate recognition and builds up to a view about wronging; the other starts from wronging and discusses the kind of interest or need that we have of standing in relations where wronging is absent.

A Vital Human Need: Recognition as Inclusion in Personhood

Ikaheimo, H. — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 03:19:59 PST

Why is recognition of such an importance for humans? Why should lack of recognition motivate people to fight or work for recognition? In this article, I first discuss shortly Axel Honneth's somewhat psychologizing strategy for answering these questions, and suggest that the psychological harms of lack of recognition pointed out by Honneth are neither sufficient nor necessary for motivation to fight or work for recognition to arise. According to the alternative that I then spell out, recognition and lack of it are so intimately intertwined with some of the most fundamental and intuitively appealing facts about what it is to be a person in a full-fledged sense — arguably in any culture — that there are reasons to be optimistic about a more or less universal existence of latent motivation to fight or work for more or more equal recognition.

Work and the Struggle for Recognition

Smith, N. H. — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 03:19:59 PST

This article examines a neglected but crucial feature of Honneth's critical theory: its use of a concept of recognition to articulate the norms that are apposite for the contemporary world of work. The article shows that from his first writings on the structure of critical social theory in the early 1980s to the recent exchange with Nancy Fraser on recognition and redistribution, the problem of grounding a substantive critique of work under capitalism has been central to Honneth's enterprise. This answers the routine objection that the recognition paradigm fails to take into account economic or material realities. At the same time, Honneth's approach to the critique of work has undergone significant shifts, and it is yet to be fully developed. The article traces these changes in direction, and it proposes an expressivist conception of work that builds upon the `normative content' of the concept of work described by Honneth in his 1980 essay `Work and Instrumental Action'.

Rights, Contribution, Achievement and the World: Some thoughts on Honneth's Recognitive ideal

Seglow, J. — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 03:19:59 PST

This article explores Axel Honneth's theory of recognition as the most worked out account of recognition available to political philosophy. I argue that Honneth over-estimates the degree to which rights deliver recognition; faces internal problems if his theory is extended to evaluate global injustice; and shows an ambivalence over the criterial basis for esteem. I go on to argue that the institutional fabric of everyday life has a more significant role in delivering recognition than Honneth acknowledges — a point which partially resolves some of the problems identified.

Beyond Dignity and Difference: Revisiting the Politics of Recognition

Cooke, M. — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 03:19:59 PST

Revisiting Taylor's 1992 account of the politics of recognition, I argue that he is right to discern a strand in contemporary politics that goes beyond the demand for recognition of dignity. Against Taylor I contend that this is best understood as a concern not for recognition of difference but for the value of something that is not universally shared, such as a particular ethical conception, cultural tradition or religious belief and practice. Using the examples of three social movements I show the relevance of this for contemporary politics. My empirically based argument is supported normatively by a discussion of Hegel's critique of `morality as conscience' in his Phenomenology. Referring to Axel Honneth's theory of recognition I highlight the lack of attention to this kind of concern for recognition in contemporary political and social theory. I conclude by specifying the key features of the concept of recognition most appropriate for responding to it publicly under conditions of value-pluralism.

Demanding Recognition: Equality, Respect, and Esteem

McBride, C. — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 03:19:59 PST

This article argues that we must distinguish between two distinct currents in the politics of recognition, one centred on demands for equal respect which is consistent with liberal egalitarianism, and one which centres on demands for esteem made on behalf of particular groups which is at odds with egalitarian aims. A variety of claims associated with the politics of recognition are assessed and it is argued that these are readily accommodated within contemporary liberal egalitarian theory. It is argued that, pace Taylor, much of what passes for `identity' or recognition politics is driven by demands for equal respect, not by demands for esteem/affirmation. Given the inherently hierarchical nature of esteem recognition, no liberal state can consistently grant such recognition. Furthermore, these demands pose the risk of intensifying intergroup competition and chauvinism. Esteem recognition is valuable for individuals, but plays a problematic role for egalitarian politics.

Parity of Participation and the Politics of Status

Armstrong, C., Thompson, S. — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 03:19:59 PST

Over the past decade, Nancy Fraser has developed a sophisticated theory of social justice. At its heart lies the principle of parity of participation, according to which all adult members of society must be in a position to interact with one another as peers. This article examines some obstacles to the implementation of that principle. Concentrating on the contemporary status order, it asks two specific questions. Is it possible to produce a precise account of how the status order might need to be ordered for parity of participation to be realized? And is it possible to derive a detailed and coherent political strategy capable of achieving such parity within the status order? The argument of this article is that, while Fraser has recognized the difficulties that the complexity of the contemporary status order poses for achieving parity of participation, she has nevertheless underestimated those difficulties. If parity of participation requires status equality, important and difficult work remains to be done in delineating the nature, and demands, of equality in the contemporary status order.

Recognition and Redistribution in Theories of Justice Beyond the State

O'Neill, S., Walsh, C. — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 03:19:59 PST

We consider here how cultural and socioeconomic dimensions of justice beyond the state are related. First we examine cosmopolitan theories that have drawn on John Rawls's egalitarian liberal framework to argue that a just global order requires substantive, transnational redistribution of material resources. We then assess the view, ironically put forward by Rawls himself, that this perspective is ethnocentric and insufficiently tolerant of non-liberal cultures. We argue that Rawls is right to be concerned about the danger of ethnocentrism, but wrong to assume that this requires us to reject the case for substantive redistribution across state boundaries. A more compelling account of justice beyond the state will integrate effectively socioeconomic and cultural aspects of justice. We suggest that this approach is best grounded in a critical theory of recognition that responds to the damage caused to human relations by legacies of historical injustice.