Social and Political Philosophy

Democratic erosion is an increasingly worrying phenomenon, affecting not only both young and transitional democracies but also more consolidated ones. A particularly important aspect of this process (in its contemporary incarnation) is that, because of its subtle and incrementalist character, it is difficult to perceive by citizens, who often fail to mobilize in support of democracy as they are unaware that the regime is being threatened. I aim to address this challenge in the present article, by drawing on a historical (...) case study where a democratic citizenry is confronted with a very similar epistemic difficulty. I outline the institutional solution devised in the historical context and use its features as a basis for articulating a normative framework underlying the respective solution. I then explore some alternative institutional proposals for contemporary politics that are derived on the basis of this framework. (shrink)

In the book, The Compassionate Court? Support, Surveillance, and Survival in Prostitution Diversion Programs, the authors, Drs. Corey S. Shdaimah, Chrysanthi S. Leon, and Shelly A. Wiechelt (2023)...

McAuliffe’s (2022) updated edition of Interprofessional Ethics: Collaboration in the Social, Health and Human Services situates the importance of interprofessional ethics within the context of the...

Work is often said to be hard to define. A precise working definition may nevertheless be valuable for analytical purposes, such as discussing justice in the distribution of work or the future of work. This paper takes a conceptual engineering approach to the concept of ‘work’. It examines the most common features of definitions of work in the contemporary philosophy of work: pay, negation of leisure, effort, social contribution, necessity/instrumentality and production of a benefit/external good. Of these, it argues that (...) the latter two can be refined into two equally suitable, co-extensive working definitions: Work is activity that is instrumental and intermediary to satisfy needs and wants, and Work is activity that produces a benefit (or intermediary product to a benefit) external to the worker(s) doing the activity. These are useful working definitions by virtue of coming close to a core of ordinary language ‘work’, being easily adaptable for various purposes, and for tracking a central feature of the human condition of particular importance for the philosophy of work. (shrink)

Recent methodological debates about normative political theory have raised questions about the relation between facts and values and between empirical social science and normative political theory. Jonathan Floyd’s normative behaviorism and Tariq Modood’s normative sociology are two prominent views about these relations. The two approaches see different kinds of social science facts as relevant. Floyd argues that behavioral patterns involving insurrection and crime are especially relevant as grounds for normative principles, whereas Modood argues that discussions of principles of multicultural equality (...) should pay special attention to the expressed views of members of the minorities in question. The two approaches, furthermore, have different views of the nature of normativity and of the type of social science that is relevant to normative political theory. These differences show how such methodological differences have implications for what political theorists should do and which methods they should employ. (shrink)

This essay engages with some theoretical issues emerging from Amy Allen’s book The End of Progress: Decolonizing the Normative Foundations of Critical Theory. It begins by situating Allen’s work within the broader relationship between critical theory and progress, a relationship traditionally carried on by the practice of self-criticism – an immanent and reflexive endeavour that seeks to expose internal odds, paradoxes and pitfalls of concepts and transform them from the inside. Drawing on post-colonial studies and Foucauldian genealogy, Allen’s book contributes (...) to and enriches such distinctive feature of critical theory in its engagement with the language of progress and development. However, this essay attempts to raise two main critical remarks/open questions regarding Allen’s pars construens, specifically her claim for a negativistic meta-normative contextualism and the dismissal of backward-looking progress. Whilst Allen’s explicit intention is to avoid delivering an “abstract negation of modern morality”, her normative solutions, in both instances, risks being overly one-sided and undetermined, and eventually preserving little of that inheritance. The guiding idea of such critical analysis is the advocacy of self-criticism as an immanent task and discourse ethics as the framework for an emancipative dialogue with the subalterns and colonised subjects. (shrink)

This paper redresses the neglect of interregimatic solidarity—solidarity between collective anti-oppressive struggles in purportedly antithetical regimes—in transnational feminist scholarship. I argue that authoritarian and demostatist regimatic contexts of oppression give rise to regimatically distinct oppressive kinds, which track their regimatic subjects of oppression respectively, and that this fact significantly increases the risk of interregimatic missolidarization in lieu of interregimatic solidarity. In response, we need to cultivate antiauthoritarian resilience, which is both an epistemic virtue and a moral virtue. Epistemically, it helps (...) us navigate a world characterized by the dynamics of authoritarian spillover, demostatist sellout, imperial standoff and capitalist scaleup, comprehend how regimatic oppressions are interconnected, and appreciate the practical import of interregimatic solidarity. Morally, antiauthoritarian resilience helps us discern and discard moral parochialism and cynical moralism, both impeding the exercise of interregimatic solidarity. I conclude with tentative thoughts on when, for whom and to what extent interregimatic solidarity is morally obligatory, if its realization depends on cultivating the virtue of antiauthoritarian resilience. (shrink)

The idea of liquid democracy is increasingly being discussed in the academic literature as an innovation that could complement or even replace certain existing democratic practices. A liquid assembly is an innovative legislature through which liquid democracy could be implemented. The present article asks why it would be desirable to inject liquid-democratic principles into existing democratic systems in the form of a liquid assembly. All other things being equal, which normative problems can a liquid assembly help us solve in place (...) of a traditional, election-based legislature? Building on the thought experiment of LiquidDemocrita, this article argues that a liquid assembly may provide benefits in at least six areas: (1) positive political freedom, (2) participatory equality, (3) selective participation, (4) selection-oriented, proportional representation, (5) deliberative accountability and area-specific deliberation, and (6) expertise and collective intelligence. For the sake of developing a comprehensive theory of liquid democracy, future studies could test the external validity of these normative claims and flesh out more negative arguments as well. (shrink)

Common-sense morality has it that parents are morally justified in acting partially toward their own children. More controversial, however, is the form of partiality that obtains between prospective parents and their yet-to-be-conceived future children – or ‘pre-parental partiality’, for short. Is pre-parental partiality morally justified? On one hand, our intuitions seem to tell us that it is. On the other hand, we have philosophers like Douglas (2019) and Podgorski (2021) seeking to undermine its moral justifiability by arguing that we possess (...) no reasons of special concern at all to engage in pre-parental partiality. This paper aims to rescue the moral justifiability of pre-parental partiality in light of these arguments. In particular, a novel account of our pre-parental partiality obligations is developed; one which sees our special reasons (as prospective parents) for engaging in pre-parental partiality as arising from the special reasons for engaging in standard parental partiality that we come to possess (as parents) in the future. The result is a compelling moral justification for pre-parental partiality that amends itself to a whole platitude of views of what our standard parental obligations of partiality amount to. (shrink)

In this article, I diagnose a key weakness in contemporary defenses of transformative prefigurative politics: they appear to expect existing institutions, like the existing state, to erode or change in tandem with prefigurative experimentation, opening them to be dismissed as implausible. Though some abjure engagement with existing state power while others embrace it, both appear to assume state power will have a given effect on prefigurative experimentation, and their theories of social transformation seem to turn on these assumptions. To address (...) this shortcoming, I turn to the political thought of M.K. Gandhi. Unlike contemporary theorists, Gandhi connects his theory of prefigurative construction to his theory of noncooperation, which explains the intentional breaking of institutions. In providing a theory of the destructive moment of social transformation, Gandhi reconciles his state-skepticism with his limited embrace of the state, which contemporary defenses of prefigurative politics struggle to do. Because he understands state power as conditional on cooperation, Gandhi accounts for both the constructive and destructive moments of social transformation and provides a theory less likely to be dismissed. His example, I argue, is instructive for defenders of prefigurative politics today, especially as they think through working with and against the existing state. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt is well known to articulate distinctions based on the separation between the public-political and the private-pre-political spheres that impact her understanding of violence and power. Starting with the hypothesis that the classic approach to Arendt’s theorisation of “prepolitical violence” from the opposition to “political power” conceals the much more complex character of violence in her work, this paper aims to demonstrate that the shift in the focus of analysis to the web of relationships between identity and violence allows (...) us, first, to explore the ontological implications of her conceptualisation of personal identity through its link to Arendtian conception of politics as a “space of appearance”. Secondly, it allows a critical analysis of her own understanding of violence from a wider point of view, one that goes beyond the restriction to a physical and instrumental dimension and invites us to consider it in connection to the (de)configuration of personal identity or as a producer of “spaces of disappearance”. Finally, this rereading also expands the Arendtian concept of “space of appearance”, by revealing porous areas of her thought that nuance her distinctions between the public-political and the private-prepolitical spheres, power and violence, and between the spaces of appearance and disappearance. (shrink)

In Critique of Forms of Life, Rahel Jaeggi develops an immanent critique to evaluate and criticize forms of life. Jaeggi seeks a criterion that relies neither on external nor internal standards but rather on an imminent, non-teleological quasi-standard rooted in ongoing social dynamics. She claims that social learning processes can serve as a standard or indicator of progress within forms of life; however, she does not fully explain how these learning processes demonstrate both normative and functional progress. In this paper, (...) I argue that Jaeggi’s immanent critique requires a more robust conception of agency, one that emphasizes the role of creativity in the dialectical relationship between active and passive learning processes. Such a framework would better capture the progressive and regressive movements within forms of life. Furthermore, I expand on how creativity in narrating forms of life animates active learning processes and determines the success or failure of social transformations from both functional and normative perspectives. I suggest that the focus should be on how individuals and collective groups, as learners, actively transform their social environments through new experiences and imaginative narratives, in order to detect the immanent problems that occur in the learning processes of forms of life themselves. (shrink)

In his Struggle for Recognition, Axel Honneth takes up in positive terms the System of Ethical Life written by Hegel in Jena 1802 with the aim of claiming the promising path of intersubjective recognition of individuals’ identity in order to describe the internal structure of primitive ethical relationships, which he places at the origin of the human socialisation process. However, in our opinion, such a founding situation does not exist. Indeed, intersubjectivity takes place in relation to a sphere of given (...) meaning already established in a determined time and space, where the sense of the world precedes any individual constitution of meaning. Hence, the importance of context in which all sense giving takes place. The purpose of this article is therefore to criticise the theory of intersubjective recognition presented by Axel Honneth and to show the need for an objective mediation on the intersubjective constitution of identity, namely, a context that makes recognition possible. (shrink)

In recent years, avowal has become increasingly central to the trans practice of gender. In this paper, I argue such avowal-based practices represent an attempt to escape the limitations and vulnerabilities of our bodies. But I also argue that this strategy is costly. For in draining the body of any relation to gender, we risk depriving ourselves of what is most valuable about our lives with gender in the first place.

Frankfurt School methodology involves a lasting commitment to immanent critique. What distinguishes immanent critique from other forms of social criticism, scholars in this tradition argue, is that social practices are to be judged according to norms and potentials already contained within their objects. This article considers critical theory's relationship to coloniality by developing a three‐part challenge to the practice of immanent critique, drawing on insights of decolonial philosophers Anibal Quijano, Enrique Dussel, Maria Lugones, and Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí. Immanent critics, I conclude, (...) risk being inattentive to constitutive exclusions, reinscribing asymmetrical burdens on certain critics, and unwittingly replaying a mechanism of domination familiar from colonialism in and through their preferred method of critique. Accordingly, I argue that immanent critics should attend to relations of power that govern the practice of critique itself and offer reasons for being more pluralistic about our methods of criticism. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

This paper argues that if the critics of the currently dominant notice-and-consent model of governing digital data transactions are correct, then they should oppose political reforms of the model. The crux of the argument is as follows: the reasons the critics give for doubting the effectiveness of notice-and-consent in protecting user privacy (namely, ordinary users’ various cognitive deficiencies and the inherent inscrutability of the subject matter) are also reasons for doubting the effectiveness of protecting user privacy through democratic or regulatory (...) means. Furthermore, insofar as attempts to improve the notice-and-consent model through more legislation or regulation would also involve more coercion than the status quo, they should be resisted on normative grounds. So, out of the bad options we have when it comes to protecting digital privacy, it seems – contrary to the majority position advanced in the literature – that we should stick with notice-and-consent. (shrink)

This paper argues that if the critics of the currently dominant notice-and-consent model of governing digital data transactions are correct, then they should oppose political reforms of the model. The crux of the argument is as follows: the reasons the critics give for doubting the effectiveness of notice-and-consent in protecting user privacy (namely, ordinary users’ various cognitive deficiencies and the inherent inscrutability of the subject matter) are also reasons for doubting the effectiveness of protecting user privacy through democratic or regulatory (...) means. Furthermore, insofar as attempts to improve the notice-and-consent model through more legislation or regulation would also involve more coercion than the status quo, they should be resisted on normative grounds. So, out of the bad options we have when it comes to protecting digital privacy, it seems – contrary to the majority position advanced in the literature – that we should stick with notice-and-consent. (shrink)

Legal scholars, privacy advocates and major tech corporations all coalesce around one single idea. Data should be considered property. Legal analysts point to the ability of governments to regulate property, privacy advocates argue that personal rights would be better protected through a property model, and large tech companies want to claim ownership over data as a proprietary trade secret. I argue that the tendency to view data as property is a result of the long legacy of enlightenment philosophy surrounding property. (...) In particular, John Locke has a special hold on the public imaginary, and his twin concepts of self-ownership and the labor theory of accumulation lead us to conceptualize data as a special form of property. However, the property model of data has significant drawbacks. By commodifying data, we commodify ourselves and allow for colonial theories of enclosure to dominate the discourse. Instead, I propose an alternative framing of data, drawn from the work of Judith Butler, whose ideas allow us to see data as an extension of the performance of identity. Drawing on both Gender Trouble and Bodies that Matter I argue that viewing data as part of the performance of identity allows us to mitigate the harms of a property model and reconsider our relationship with our data. (shrink)

This article starts from an academic researcher’s written ethics case drawn from a participatory action research project in a residential care home for older people in Germany. The case contains an implicit dilemma for the academic researcher about whether to intervene to protect a resident giving a talk from perceived discomfort and humiliation in front of her peers. The case was discussed and acted out at several meetings of the ethics working group of the International Collaboration for Participatory Health Research. (...) This article comprises: two commentaries on the case from micro and macro perspectives; the case author’s further reflections and reframing of the situation as less about protection and more about resident-determined empowerment following the discovery and transcription of an audio-recording; and discussion of the value of multiple perspectives and iterative dialogue in enabling in-depth and new understandings of the ethical nuances of everyday interactions. This article demonstrates the value of the ‘ethics co-laboratory’ process adopted in the ethics working group as a method of deepening researchers’ ethical sensitivity and extending their ethical competence. (shrink)

Frantz Fanon’s relationship to the politics of recognition is ambiguous; securing recognition from one’s fellow members of a political community is necessary for the full realization of dignified freedom, and yet seeking such recognition can be equally damaging to this very freedom. This article seeks to clarify the ways that Fanon attempts to navigate this tension—what I call the “recognition trap”—and pave a middle path between the theorists of the recognition paradigm and its radical critics. Focusing on the ways that (...) cultural considerations figure into Fanon’s later clinical writings and practices, this article argues that the Fanonian alternative to the recognition paradigm is a view of freedom as self-constitution, for which certain forms of recognition serve a necessary albeit subordinate function. (shrink)

Plutarch and Machiavelli: What could they have in common? Machiavelli may have mined Plutarch for historical exempla, but his political arguments could not be more different. Or could they? In this article, I make the case that Plutarch in fact is the source of some of the more iconoclastic claims of The Prince, from the conquest of fortune to the importance of being feared, and even the necessity, on occasion, of immoral acts. If this connection has been overlooked, I suggest, (...) in conclusion, it is because we have artificially segregated Plutarch and Machiavelli into “moralist” and “realist” camps when both actually participate in a common style of political thought, which can be called “prudential politics.”. (shrink)

Classic game theory assumed that agents could only reason at the individual level. This is an assumption not only of ontological individualism but also of methodological individualism. But this assumption was unnecessary, a heritage from the previous generations of economists and the strong fear of the communist menace at the time. I will explain the roots of this assumption and its limitations, most specifically, how it faces problems when explaining cooperation. Next, I will show how this assumption slipped into evolutionary (...) theory, through the works of John M. Smith (1982) and Richard Dawkins (2017). Yet, as Peter Kropotkin’s (2009 [1902]) work on mutual aid illustrates, evolutionary theory need not assume individualism. To develop this, I will present a contemporary version of game theory that allows the possibility of collective reasoning. This will allow me to explain why altruism is a form of individual reasoning and why solidarity is a form of collective reasoning. On this reading, solidarity is not reducible to the radical individualism present in neoclassical economics and Dawkins’s evolutionary theory, that is, it is not reducible to reciprocal altruism. As long as we do not maintain the assumption of individualism, game theory and evolutionary theory can provide an account of solidarity. (shrink)

: The integration of Machine Learning (ML) in Real-Time Biomedical Signal Processing has unlocked new possibilities in the field of telemedicine, especially when combined with the high-speed, low-latency capabilities of 5G networks. As telemedicine grows in importance, particularly in remote and underserved areas, real-time processing of biomedical signals such as ECG, EEG, and EMG is essential for accurate diagnosis and continuous monitoring of patients. Machine learning algorithms can be used to analyze large volumes of biomedical data, enabling faster and more (...) precise detection of anomalies. This paper proposes a novel system for machine learning-based real-time biomedical signal processing that leverages the capabilities of 5G networks to enhance the transmission, processing, and analysis of critical medical data in telemedicine applications. The system integrates convolutional neural networks (CNNs) for signal classification, anomaly detection, and predictive analysis, ensuring that patients receive timely and accurate medical feedback. Additionally, the 5G network’s low latency and high bandwidth provide seamless data transmission, improving remote diagnostics and enabling high-quality teleconsultations. This paper evaluates the current challenges in real-time biomedical signal processing in telemedicine, discusses the potential of machine learning and 5G networks, and presents an innovative solution for improving healthcare delivery through this integrated approach. (shrink)

Following the July-August mass uprising, debates have arisen over whether the National Citizen Party (NCP), formed under student leadership, qualifies as a "King's Party." While this column does not directly address whether the NCP fits that label, it challenges the assertion that the formation of a King's Party is unrealistic in Bangladesh.

Who were the first theorists of liberal democracy? Since the mid-20th century, scholars have attributed this title to figures like Locke, Montesquieu, Kant, Madison, Constant, Tocqueville, Mill, and Lincoln. Yet none of these thinkers used the term “liberal democracy.” Rather than retroactively applying this label, this essay adopts an actor's categories methodology to examine what “liberal democracy” meant to those who first used it. The term originated in 1860s France, coined by liberals opposing Napoleon III. This article argues that liberal (...) democracy was conceived as a polemical concept, designed to counter rival definitions of democracy. It also explores one of its foundational meanings: rule by public opinion. The essay concludes by showing how this polemical character and emphasis on public opinion continue to shape liberal-democratic theory in France and beyond. (shrink)

What happens to liberal political philosophy, if we consider not only the freedom of present but also future people? In this article, I explore the case for long-term liberalism: freedom should be a central goal, and we should often be particularly concerned with effects on long-term future distributions of freedom. I provide three arguments. First, liberals should be long-term liberals: liberal arguments to value freedom give us reason to be (particularly) concerned with future freedom, including freedom in the far future. (...) Second, longtermists should be liberals, particularly under conditions of empirical and moral uncertainty. Third, long-term liberalism plausibly justifies some restrictions on the freedom of existing people to secure the freedom of future people, for example when mitigating climate change. At the same time, it likely avoids excessive trade-offs: for both empirical and philosophical reasons, long-term and near-term freedom show significant convergence. Throughout I also highlight important practical implications, for example on longtermist institutional action, climate change, human extinction, demography, and global catastrophic risks. (shrink)

A profession from a mere private teacher to an International Linguistic Author, Rituparna Ray Chaudhuri, whom Literary World often calls an “innate creator” or ‘Divine Vengeance’, has proved herself when she had won to her surprise Harvard World Records and London Book of World Record. Living now in a suburb called Madhyamgram (West Bengal), this Semantic Scholar and Writer on English and British Literature, has widely-acclaimed her name in World of Literature with title ‘Blood is Memory without Language: A Litterateur’ (...) to The Daily Guardian. Precious Kashmir has called this Author, “Art is never finished; only abandoned” means “Artists are never really done with a project – there's always more that can be improved.”. (shrink)

Dissatisfaction with democratic institutions has run high in recent years. Perhaps as a result, political theorists have begun to turn their attention to possible alternative modes of political decision-making. Many of the most interesting among these involve reliance on lotteries in one way or another – as a means of distributing the franchise, selecting representatives, or making social choices. Advocates of these ‘lottocratic’ systems contend that they retain the egalitarian appeal of democracy, while promising improved political outcomes. The aim of (...) this article is to defend democracy (or, at least, universal suffrage and majority rule) against the challenge posed by these proposals. I argue, firstly, that lottocratic systems necessarily involve the establishment of objectionable social and political inequalities in a way that democracies do not. Secondly, I raise a number of doubts with respect to the purported instrumental benefits of these proposals. (shrink)

Challenging the popular perception that Confucianism provides mostly a moral defense of political hierarchy, this article demonstrates that Confucianism is more than compatible with democracy and fundamentally contradicts political hierarchy, be it autocracy or meritocracy. Drawing on Zhu Xi (1130–1200 CE), the spokesperson for the state orthodoxy in late imperial China and one of the towering figures in the Confucian tradition, I argue that to realize the Confucian self-cultivation program for all requires popular participation in politics beyond casting ballots. My (...) argument builds on Zhu Xi’s moral egalitarianism that all human beings can pursue sagehood by self-cultivation and should be given the equal opportunity to do so. Since Zhu Xi’s self-cultivation program requires acquiring and perfecting political knowledge in political practice, to realize his moral egalitarianism requires political equality for all. As such, my participatory theory of Confucian democracy exhorts all people to engage in self-governance and daily administration of the state more proactively. Thus, it enriches the prevalent liberal theory of Confucian democracy that focuses on political representation but not on popular participation in politics. (shrink)