The irony of Michael Novak:Niebuhr, democratic capitalism, and climate change

The late influential American intellectual Michael Novak was a self-declared devotee of Reinhold Niebuhr, arguably the foremost twentieth-century American theologian. Novak’s The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism (1982) was an attempt to fill the political-economic lacuna in Niebuhr’s thought. The present article offers a Niebuhrian irony–focused response to Novak’s democratic capitalism in view of climate change as probably the greatest threat facing humanity. Novak quite successfully extended Niebuhrian ideas into a theology-based vision of democratic capitalism as the only political-economic system effective in widely lifting people out of poverty. Yet he failed to acknowledge human-induced climate change as beyond reasonable doubt and rooted in the predominantly American invention of a fossil energy–based capitalist political economy. This article’s thesis is that Novak’s democratic capitalism entails Niebuhrian irony: the virtue it displays about resources becomes a vice due to Novak’s irresponsible post–Spirit of Democratic Capitalism attempt to represent democratic capitalism as innocent of any dangerous climate-change implications

The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism of Michael Novak. An Analysis and Evaluation in the Context of Christian Ethics

The paper refers to Michael Novak’s book The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism. In his book Novak advances, among others, the thesis that in the light of the encyclical Laborem Exercens, published by John Paul II (1981), one can speak about some converging elements of Catholic and liberal social thought, e.g.: the creativity of modern labour, which would reflect, however, in the two doctrines the theological symbols of the Creator and His creation. But this paper cools down the enthusiasm of Novak and in six analysed aspects seeks to show that, despite some convergence in the phraseology between “the spirit of democratic capitalism” and “the spirit of Christian ethics”, there extends between them an essential abyss, which is the result of basing each “spirit” on different models of ethics

Beyond capitalism and liberal democracy: on the relevance of GDH Cole’s sociological critique and alternative

This article argues for a return to the social thought of the often ignored early 20th-century English thinker GDH Cole. The authors contend that Cole combined a sociological critique of capitalism and liberal democracy with a well-developed alternative in his work on guild socialism bearing particular relevance to advanced capitalist societies. Both of these, with their focus on the limitations on ‘free communal service’ in associations and the inability of capitalism to yield emancipation in either production or consumption, are relevant to social theorists looking to understand, critique and contribute to the subversion of neoliberalism. Therefore, the authors suggest that Cole’s associational sociology, and the invitation it provides to think of formations beyond capitalism and liberal democracy, is a timely and valuable resource which should be returned to

Liberalism, Republicanism And The Spirit Of American Politics: A Critique Of Sandel

Michael Sandel sees Rawls' liberal theory of justice as abstractly uncomprehensive of another, republican view of the essential relation of political life to moral culture. But, as reference to the debates of the Civil War and the New Deal show, his own jeremiadic account of American history equally misrepresents the dialectical interplay of liberal and republican moments that is essential in American freedom

Theology, Culture and Sustainable Development in Africa

En face des dangers de la globalisation qui menacent les cultures et les peuples et en raison de son accent sur la dignité humaine, cet article présente la Théologie comme un outil véritable pour la préservation de l\u27identité culturelle. En utilisant des termes de développement, ce travail critique la toile de fond anthropologique et philosophique du développement comme une simple croissance économique. Il suggère en outre une structure de développement intégral qui s\u27intéresse à l\u27échelle de valeur afin de fournir des plans répétitifs pour le bien du développement de la personne humaine. Il examine aussi son implication pour le développement intégral en Afrique

Generalized Trust in Taiwan and (as Evidence for) Hirschman’s doux commerce Thesis

Data from the World Values Survey shows that generalized trust in Mainland China—trust in out-group members—is very low, but generalized trust in Taiwan is much higher. The present article argues that positive interactions with out-group members in the context of Taiwan’s export-oriented economy fostered generalized trust—and so explains this difference. This line of argument provides evidence for Albert O. Hirschman’s doux commerce thesis, that market interaction can improve persons and even stabilize the social order. The present article defends this point by separating two theses that Hirschman combines under that label, a countervailing forces thesis and a doux commerce thesis narrowly understood. These theses offer different explanations (or mechanisms) for how commerce could have those positive effects. The data about Taiwanese trust practices provides evidence for the latter

The inverted postnational constellation: Identitarian populism in context

As exemplified by the pan‐European ‘Identitarian movement’ (IM), contemporary far‐right populism defies the habitual matrix within which right‐wing radicalism has been criticised as a negation of liberal cosmopolitanism. The IM's political stance amalgamates features of cultural liberalism and racialist xenophobia into a defence of ‘European way of life.’ We offer an alternative decoding of the phenomenon by drawing on Jürgen Habermas's ‘postnational constellation.’ It casts the IM's protectionist qua chauvinistic populism as ‘inverted’ postnationalism, engendered through territorial and ethnic appropriation of universal political values. As such, inclusionary ideals of cosmopolitan liberalism and democracy purporting humanistic postnationalism have been transformed by Identitarians into elements of a privileged civilisational life‐style to be protected from ‘intruders.’ Remaining within the remit of the grammar of the postnational constellation, trans‐European chauvinism, we contend, is susceptible to inclusive articulation. Foregrounding radical emancipatory social transformation would however require not more democracy, but a principled critique of capitalism

The Critical Theory of Artistic Capitalism

This article takes up Lipovetsky‟s discussion on artistic capitalism in L’esthétisation du monde. Vivre à l’âge du capitalisme artiste, to trace its definitions and methodological construction, but also in order to create a critical theory of artistic capitalism, based on the following working-hypothesis: the production of art and the production of self, understood in the sense of a Foucauldian project of the aesthetics of existence, represent correspondent purposes in artistic capitalism. My research will be focused on examining previous attempts of developing such a critical inquiry, claimed by Luc Boltanski, Eve Chiapello, and Luc Ferry. It is my thesis that the failure of a homogeneous critical theory of artistic capitalism is owed to different inconsistent interpretations of contaminating ethics with aesthetics in order to create an ideal of morality and authenticity for the existence of the individual inspired by contemporary techniques of art production, aspects that were conceived by Lipovetsky as parts of the process of the “aestheticization of the world”