This article assesses to what extent the future of democratic liberty depends upon its citizens employing a proper approach to the past, by analyzing Tocqueville’s views of three kinds of historical consciousness—aristocratic, revolutionary, and democratic. It is argued that democracies require certain aristocratic assumptions about historical dynamics to cultivate a historical consciousness that fosters liberty. Key to this is the belief in the human capacity to influence the trajectory of history. Tocqueville’s historical approach, which blends aristocratic and democratic elements, (...) is identified as the most effective method for tempering the fatalistic tendencies of the democratic point of view. Thus, for democracies to maintain liberty, citizens should recognize the dual role of general causes and human agency in directing the course of historical events. Tocqueville’s insights on the effects of historical consciousness on the future of democratic liberty remain particularly relevant today when Western democracies confront internal polarization and external anti-democratic challenges, whether neoliberal, illiberal, populist, or fascist. (shrink)

The notion of moral exemplarity, though repeatedly alluded to in John Stuart Mill’s writings, is rarely treated as an essential element of his democratic theory. This article, however, highlights and explains the centrality of exemplarity in Mill’s project of fostering public-minded citizens for a successful democracy. In Representative Government, Mill conceives the exemplary influence of deliberative elites as a necessary condition for making local deliberative bodies the main site for the cultivation of a public spirit. Mill’s Romantic reading of Plato’s (...) Gorgias suggests that this move resulted from his radical skepticism about the power of reason to motivate virtuous behavior along with his corresponding faith in the moral exemplar’s aesthetic force of beauty to improve the spectator’s conduct. Mill’s emphasis on the necessity of exemplary influence for achieving a civic ideal based on a detailed account of its moral psychology reveals him to be a unique political thinker who continues to invite contemporary interest. (shrink)

Politics and Modernity provides a critical review of the key interface of contemporary political theory and social theory about the questions of modernity and postmodernity. Review essays offer a broad-ranging assessment of the issues at stake in current debates. Among the works reviewed are those of William Connolly, Anthony Giddens, J[um]urgen Habermas, Alasdair MacIntyre, Richard Rorty, Charles Taylor and Roy Bhaskar. As well as reviewing the contemporary literature, the contributors assess the historical roots of current problems in the works (...) of Nietzsche and Max Weber. (shrink)

This book explores Friedrich Nietzsche's understanding of modern political culture and his position in the history of modern political thought. Surveying Nietzsche's entire intellectual career from his years as a student in Bonn and Leipzig during the 1860s to his genealogical project of the 1880s, Christian Emden contributes to a historically informed discussion of Nietzsche's response to the political predicaments of modernity, and sheds new light on the intellectual and political culture in Germany as the ideals of the Enlightenment (...) gave way to the demands of the modern nation state. This is a distinguished addition to the series of Ideas in Context, and a major reassessment of a philosopher and aphorist whose stature among post-enlightenment European thinkers is now almost unrivalled. (shrink)

What is startling about the debate that emerged between Ernst Nolte and Jiirgen Habermas with the Historikerstreit of West Germany in the summer of 1986 is not just the two scholars' sometimes fervent opposition to each other, but the similarity of their arguments. While Nolte argues for a new sobriety and matter-of-factness in dealing with history and Habermas for an engaged, critical history leading to a "postconventional," postnational identity, both are in agreement in their implicit assumption about the (...) necessary role of history/historiography in politics as an ideological provider of meaning, a Sinnstifter, and both sides see the political present as intimately connected with the interpretation of the past. What is surprising also is the apparent wish on both sides to ignore the historical precedents for the debate: the concept of Sonderweg, or German historical uniqueness, and the idea of history as the privileged location for the Kulturnation of Germany. The debate about German history in a Federal Republic newly conscious of its own strength is only just beginning. (shrink)

Despite his hostility to religion in his early career, since the turn of the century Habermas has devoted his research to the relationship between faith and knowledge. His two-volume Auch eine Geschichte der Philosophie is the culmination of this project. Spurred by the attacks of 9/11 and the growing conflict between religion and the forces of secularization, I argue that this philosophy of history is the centerpiece of an important turning point in Habermas’s intellectual development. Instead of interpreting religion (...) merely as part of the history of postmetaphysical thinking, Habermas now sees it as a crucial normative resource for both philosophy and social cohesion in the future aswell. Despite its backward-looking approach,my basic thesis is that this book is best understood as a forward-looking appeal for a tolerant, self-reflective democratic politics that brings religious and secular citizens together dialogically through the cooperative use of their rational freedom. (shrink)

The eight short explorations in the first part of this paper attempt to identify some crucial developments in the history of Western learning which eclipsed pluralist educational practices in their (Socratic) infancy and thereafter, and which contributed to the widespread employment of education as a force for cultural uniformity, or assumed superiority. Drawing together the lessons of the first part with contemporary insights from hermeneutic philosophy, the second part sets forth briefly the promising educational possibilities for human self-understanding and (...) co-existence which are furnished by a newly-inspired reclamation of the long-eclipsed heritage. (shrink)

Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality argues that human socio-political inequality is product of human activity and not a function of natural processes. Recent studies have begun to address the role of natural history in the Discourse and have argued that Rousseau anticipated modern developments in evolutionist theory, sociobiology, ethology, and primatology. I take issue with this trend in Rousseau scholarship. In this work I demonstrate that Rousseau should not be counted as a forerunner of either Darwin or more recent attempts (...) at integrating politics and the life sciences; that, on the contrary, Rousseau's Discourse is best understood as a call to resist this approach to political inquiry. ;I begin my discussion by examining the structure and political implications of the dominant eighteenth-century theory of natural history--the "chain of being". I demonstrate that this view of nature held that inequality was both natural and just, and that in order for Rousseau to sustain his egalitarian commitments he needed to refute this claim. ;Next, I begin to reconstruct Rousseau's understanding of natural history in order to demonstrate that Rousseau should not be included as a forerunner of Darwin. I demonstrate that on issues central to natural history he shows a marked willingness to accept key presuppositions of the chain of being. I then examine how he is nonetheless able to escape the inegalitarian implications of this theory of natural history by making the issue of objectivity central to his investigation of the origin and foundation of human inequality. ;I demonstrate how Rousseau argues that competing conceptions of human nature and the natural condition of the human species should be rejected as insufficiently objective. I discuss Rousseau's solution to the problem of objectivity and its effect on his own description of human beings in the state of nature. I conclude by arguing that the main relevance of the Second Discourse to contemporary biopolitics is the extent to which it anticipates the concerns of its critics. (shrink)

The case for an unprecedented penetration of life mechanisms into the politics of Western modernity has been a cornerstone of 20th-century social theory. Working with and beyond Foucault, this article challenges established views about the history of biopower by focusing on ancient medical writings and practices of corporeal permeability. Through an analysis of three Roman institutions: a) bathing; b) urban architecture; and c) the military, it shows that technologies aimed at fostering and regulating life did exist in classical (...) antiquity at the population scale. The article highlights zones of indistinction between natural and political processes, zoē and bíos, that are not captured by a view of destructive incorporation of or over life by sovereign power. In conclusion, the article discusses the theoretical potential of this historical evidence for contemporary debates on ‘affirmative biopolitics’ and ‘environmental biopower’. (shrink)

The papers collected in this volume, although dealing with several different themes, congeal around a debate about the ways and extent of the dominance of linear time and progressive history and the concomitant delineation of the nation in Chinese and Japanese historiography.

Pocock, J. G. A. (John Greville Agard) 1924- "Quentin Skinner: The History of Politics and the Politics of History" Common Knowledge - Volume 10, Issue 3, Fall 2004, pp. 532-550.

Written during the period of his emigration to the United States, during and just after World War II, the originality of Karl Löwith's book Meaning in History lies in its resolute critique of all forms of philosophy of history. This critique is based on the now famous idea that modern philosophies of history have only extended and deepened an illusion fabricated by a long tradition of Christian historical reflection: the illusion that history itself has an intrinsic (...) goal. This modern extension and deepening of the chimera propagated by Christian historical reflection is what Löwith terms "secularization." Drawing on the arguments in Meaning in History as well as those proposed in other contemporaneous and earlier writings, including Löwith's heretofore unpublished correspondence with Leo Strauss, this article attempts to set in relief the frequently neglected, yet eminently political implications of Löwith's idea of secularization. Among the problems implicitly considered in relation to the theory of secularization in Meaning in History is a theme frequently addressed in earlier writings: the motives that led German intellectuals like Friedrich Gogarten, Martin Heidegger, and Carl Schmitt to adhere to the Nazi movement. (shrink)

The theoretical problem Bensaïd tries to confront from the 1990s onwards is the problem of the categories that are necessary to account for the traumatically new experience of history opened up by the defeat of the revolutionary experiments of the twentieth century. Hence the necessity of new answers to these fundamental and inexhaustible questions: How are we to understand history in its relation to human practice and to politics? Can we talk of ‘necessity’ in history, of (...) ‘laws of history’, of ‘determination’, or ‘determinism’, or of modes of causality operating within it? How are we to conceive the notions of ‘historical possibility’, of ‘conflict’ and ‘struggle’? Bensaïd’s contribution will focus on a dialectical notion of temporality that implies a primacy of politics over history and a break with the traditional Marxist notions of a historical subject as an internally homogeneous and fully-sovereign collective force. (shrink)

This article reconstructs the forgotten friendship between Georges Bataille and the Russian émigré poet and philosopher Boris Poplavsky. Comparing their solar metaphysics, I focus on conceptions of friendship, sacrifice and depersonalisation. First, I retrace Bataille’s relationship to early Surrealis and Russian circles in interwar Paris, with a focus on his friendship with Irina Odoevtseva. I then offer a novel reading of Poplavsky’s poetry through the lens of Bataille’s philosophy, analysing a recurring motif that I call ‘dark solarity’. Uncovering a hidden (...) intertextual dialogue between Poplavsky and Bataille, I argue for Poplavsky’s lasting impact on Bataille’s anti-Icarian sun cult. Finally, my paper demonstrates how Poplavsky’s writings on solar sacrifice, excess and friendship left marks on Bataille’s vision of a solar community, embodied in the secret society Acéphale. The dialogue between Poplavsky and Bataille, I finally suggest, is a missing piece in the entangled history of Russian and French philosophy, as well as an original contribution to discourses on friendship in twentieth-century continental thought. (shrink)

The way in which mainstream human rights discourse speaks of such evils as the Holocaust, slavery, or apartheid puts them solidly in the past. Its elaborate techniques of "transitional" justice encourage future generations to move forward by creating a false assumption of closure, enabling those who are guilty to elude responsibility. This approach to history, common to late-twentieth-century humanitarianism, doesn't presuppose that evil ends when justice begins. Rather, it assumes that a time _before_ justice is the moment to put (...) evil in the past. Merging examples from literature and history, Robert Meister confronts the problem of closure and the resolution of historical injustice. He boldly challenges the empty moral logic of "never again" or the theoretical reduction of evil to a cycle of violence and counterviolence, broken only once evil is remembered for what it _was_. Meister criticizes such methods for their deferral of justice and susceptibility to exploitation and elaborates the flawed moral logic of "never again" in relation to Auschwitz and its evolution into a twenty-first-century doctrine of the Responsibility to Protect. (shrink)

Age of Anxiety: Meaning, Identity, and Politics in 21st Century Film and Literature applies historical and contemporary political and rhetorical theory to current popular culture to discuss the problem of the displaced autonomous self and the quest for a meaningful life.

Since the publication of The Sexual Politics of Meat in 1990, activist and writer Carol J. Adams (2000 [1990]) has put forth a feminist defence of veganism based on the argument that meat consumption and violence against animals are structurally related to violence against women, and especially to pornography and prostitution. Adams’ work has been influential in the growing fields of animal studies and posthumanism, where her research is frequently cited as the prime example of vegan feminism. However, her (...) particular radical feminist framework, including her anti-pornography and anti-prostitution arguments, are rarely acknowledged or critiqued. This article challenges the premises of Adams’ argument, demonstrating that her version of vegan feminism is based upon an unsubstantiated comparison between violence against women and violence against other-than-human animals, and on the silencing and exclusion of sex workers as subjects. The article contests the limited reading of Adams, and of feminism, offered in some key works in animal studies and posthumanism, at the same time that it recognises the need to challenge the anthropocentrism evident in much feminist theory. By way of alternative approaches to the sexual politics of veganism, the article highlights the interventions of artist and activist Mirha-Soleil Ross, proposing that her situated and embodied commitment to animal rights brings sex worker agency into the story, while resisting simple comparisons among different forms of violence. The concerns raised by Ross overlap in compelling ways with recent research in performance studies and labour history, bringing the question of work and workers, animal and human, to the fore. These studies point towards a potentially more useful framework than that of Adams for understanding the human violence suffered by different species, including those destined to be eaten by people. (shrink)

In The Struggle for Democracy, Christopher Meckstroth looks at history and context in the development of democratic theory to provide a principled way of sorting out deep conflicts over who has the right to speak for the democratic people. He tests this theory by applying it to contemporary debates over same-sex marriage, military intervention, and gun control.

In the early twentieth century, with the development of Western scientific imperialism, Asia, South America, and Africa became sites for Western scientific exploration. Many paleontological specimens, including dinosaur bones, were discovered in China by foreign scientists and explorers and exported to museums in France, Sweden, and the United States. After the establishment of the Nationalist Government in Nanjing in 1927, anti-imperialist Chinese intellectuals attempted to prevent foreigners from exporting specimens unearthed on Chinese territory. In the summer of 1928, the fossils (...) discovered in the Gobi Desert by the Central Asiatic Expedition of the American Museum of Natural History were detained in China. A series of negotiations ensued between Chinese and American diplomats and scientists over the issues of the ownership of fossils and the format of international scientific collaborations. By studying the interests and stakes for players in the different social worlds involved in the dispute, this essay explores the relations among science, diplomacy, and the politics of deep time. (shrink)

This collection of scholarly essays analyzes the concept of the acceleration of history, or moments in which the rate of change increases and leads to rapid alteration of the status quo. The contributors outline a theoretical framework and examine specific examples of such historical moments"--Provided by publisher.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Ethics and Time: Ethos of Temporal Orientation in Politics and Religion of the Niger DeltaMelissa BrowningEthics and Time: Ethos of Temporal Orientation in Politics and Religion of the Niger Delta Nimi Wariboko Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2010. 193 pp. $60.00In Ethics and Time: Ethos of Temporal Orientation in Politics and Religion of the Niger Delta, Nimi Wariboko offers a new definition of temporal orientation, arguing (...) that this new understanding of time can help us rethink social ethics, particularly economic ethics. He begins by citing literature showing that temporal orientation has always been used to speak about how a sociocultural group sees itself in light of a “time or origin” (such as a sacred past) or “time preference” (such as a preference for past, present, or future). Wariboko proposes a third way, redefining temporal orientation as a break or clearing in time between the past and the future—a kairos event. He goes on to say that understanding how members of a sociocultural group understand time is essential to understanding how they see themselves and their moral sources.Wariboko speaks of temporal orientation in terms of “time gaps,” contending that freedom and new beginnings are found within these gaps. Suggesting that these gaps are important to the process of defining subjectivity—since human beings live in a time-defined gap between birth and death—he coins the term “chronomethics” to refer to a new methodology where ethics is studied [End Page 213] through the lens of temporal orientation with attention to the analysis of cultural forms.Wariboko provides an exemplar of this methodology by doing an in-depth analysis of the Kalabari community of the Niger Delta in southern Nigeria. Through the use of ethnography, Wariboko explores politics, religious imagination, apocalypticism, and the philosophy of history in Kalabari beliefs and practices—setting African studies in dialogue with Western philosophy and theology. Here, and throughout the book, he draws heavily on the work of Hannah Arendt in his analysis.Although this ethnographic analysis makes an important contribution to ethical reflection, it is not without problems. Wariboko focuses almost exclusively on the chiefs of the Kalabari community, using both male language and male concepts. When Wariboko moves to a discussion of traditional Kalabari religion, he speaks mainly of the male or neuter aspect of God (which is called So, or so) and only briefly mentions the female aspect (Teme-órú). This leaves the reader to wonder whether the actors and agents Wariboko refers to include women. In sum, his descriptive analysis of Kalabari culture lacks a critique of patriarchy, which should be present in any analysis that seeks to make a contribution to Christian ethics.Perhaps the most significant contribution of the book is found in its chapter on imagination. Here Wariboko examines the ways in which the Kalabari people imagine their own society and construct a moral imagination. He pays significant attention to African conceptions of community and the ways in which individuals relate to their communities. Although Wariboko contributes an important original voice to this dialogue, this voice could be strengthened by incorporating the voices of other African philosophers and theologians rather than relying primarily on Western sources in his analysis of Kalabari culture.The book concludes by relating the newly proposed methodology (and to some extent the ethnography) to concrete applications within the realm of economic development. Here Wariboko focuses on the “kairos-ordering of society,” arguing that economic development will only be attained when the state maintains the rules of just conduct, nurtures kairos, develops human capabilities, embraces pluralism, and uses social practices to disperse knowledge. Although this final section is brief, it invites further reflection by delineating how temporal orientation could be used as a new methodology for Christian ethics. [End Page 214]Melissa BrowningLexington Theological SeminaryCopyright © 2012 The Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

Kaci Hickox was a nurse who worked with persons who were infected with Ebola in West Africa. When she returned to the United States, the governors of New Jersey and Maine intervened to confine her to inpatient quarantine despite the fact that she was asymptomatic and had no serological evidence of infection. She defied the quarantine which resulted in enormous public attention and discussion of quarantine and public fear. This article summarizes the case discussing the history of the case, (...) the government actions, and the final legal rulings. (shrink)

New materialism challenges conventional theories of understanding human being and subjectivity, which it regards as shaped by mechanistic models characteristic of early modern philosophy that regarded matter as largely passive. Instead it gives weight to topics often overlooked in such accounts: the body, the role of affect and the emotions, gender, temporality, agency and vitalism. This collection, which includes an international roster of contributors from philosophy, history, literature and science, is the first to ask what is 'new' about the (...) new materialism and place it in interdisciplinary perspective. Against current theories of new materialism it argues for a deeper engagement with materialism's history; questions whether matter can be 'lively'; and asks whether new materialism's wish to revitalize of politics and the political lives up to its promise. (shrink)

Historians of ideas, and students of nationalism in particular, have traced the origins of much of our current vocabulary and ways of thinking about the nation back to Johann Gottfried Herder. This volume provides a clear, readable, and reliable translation of _Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit_, supplemented by some of Herder's other important writings on politics and history. The editors' insightful Introduction traces the role of Herder's thought in the evolution of nationalism and highlights (...) its influence on fields such as history, anthropology, and politics. The volume is designed to give English-speaking readers more ready access to the thinker whom Isaiah Berlin called the father of the related notions of nationalism, historicism, and Volksgeist. (shrink)

A growing literature on scholarly and practical approaches to conservation and development uses a livelihood approach to understand rural peoples’ diverse assets and activities, especially as they serve to minimize vulnerability to economic and ecological shocks. In recent years, the suite of potential assets available to rural households has been theorized as human, natural, physical, social, and cultural capitals and includes the context in which they are used. Here we explore Wounaan livelihood strategies and how they articulate with the dynamic (...) political economic history of eastern Panama. Known in Panama as forest dependent swiddeners, semi-structured interviews and participant observation revealed Wounaan’s increasing reliance on fishing, artisanship, and ecotourism in their income profiles. While these income sources are linked to decreasing land availability and increasing market opportunities, we address the role of cultural beliefs and values in Wounaan negotiation of their income strategies. (shrink)

The discourses of Antillanité and Créolité are both based on the absence of women. This is more important in the discourse of Créolité since it silences the grandmothers, great aunts and village midwives who are the transmitters of folk tales, folk medicines and oral culture. In the struggle for recognition between Caribbean males and western males folk medicine may be too closely associated with the denigrated female role to be considered a suitable inclusion into modern development.

HEGEL'S POLITICAL THOUGHT COMBINES ROUSSEAU'S POLITICAL THEORY AND KANT'S PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. IT COMBINES (1) RATIONAL FREEDOM REALIZED THROUGH A GENERAL WILL OR CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE, (2) A THEORY OF HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT LIKE KANT'S WHERE CONFLICTING PARTICULAR INTERESTS LEAD TO A MORAL SOCIETY, (3) AND CUSTOM, TRADITION, OR COMMUNITY LIKE THAT FOUND IN ROUSSEAU. TO DO THIS HEGEL MUST REJECT CERTAIN ASPECTS OF ROUSSEAU AND KANT AND EXPLAIN HOW COMMUNITY INSTEAD OF BEING CORRUPTED BY PARTICULAR INTERESTS, AS ROUSSEAU THOUGHT IT (...) WOULD, CAN COME TO BE COMPATIBLE WITH THEM. THE KEY TO THIS WILL BE HEGEL'S CONCEPT OF SPIRIT. (shrink)