52 research outputs found
Taking Politics Seriously - but Not Too Seriously
John Rawlsâ gamification of justice leads him â along with many other monist political philosophers, not least Ronald Dworkin â to fail to take politics seriously enough. I begin with why we consider games frivolous and then show how Rawlsâ theory of justice is not merely analogous to a game, as he himself seems to claim, but is in fact a kind of game. As such, it is harmful to political practice in two ways: one as regards the citizens who participate directly in it, and the other as regards those who do no more than follow it. Similar harms, I then argue, come from taking politics too seriously, which is the attitude I ascribe to pluralist political philosophers such as Isaiah Berlin, Stuart Hampshire, and Bernard Williams. To them, the plural, incommensurable nature of values means that they cannot be reconciled and so that politics must be a matter of negotiating dirty, and often tragic, compromises. What we need instead, I conclude, is a third way, one that is neither monist nor pluralist but in-between the two extremes
Liberalism after Communitarianism
The âliberal-communitarianâ debate arose within anglophone political philosophy during the 1980s. This essay opens with an account of the main outlines of the debate, showing how liberals and communitarians tended to confront each other with opposing interpretations of John Rawlsâ Theory of Justice (1999; originally published in 1971) and Political Liberalism (2005; originally published in 1993). The essay then proceeds to discuss four forms of âliberalism after communitarianismâ: Michael Freedenâs account of liberalism as an ideology; Joseph Raz and Will Kymlickaâs perfectionist liberalisms; the liberalism of value pluralists such as Isaiah Berlin and Bernard Williams; and Judith N. Shklarâs liberalism of fear. It concludes with the suggestion that there are times when liberals of every kind should set aside their ideology, even if only temporarily, in order to listen to their interlocutors with truly open minds
Secular Nationhood? The Importance of Language in the Life of Nations
Scholars of nationhood have neglected the artists. On the creative origins of nations
Kierkegaardâs Deep Diversity: The One and the Many
Kierkegaardâs ideal supports a radical form of âdeep diversity,â to use Charles Taylorâs expression. It is radical because it embraces not only irreducible conceptions of the good but also incompatible ones. This is due to its paradoxical nature, which arises from its affirmation of both monism and pluralism, the One and the Many, together.
It does so in at least three ways. First, in terms of the structure of the self, Kierkegaard describes his ideal as both unified (the âpositive thirdâ) and plural (a ânegative unityâ). Second, he affirms a process which brings together unity, as implied by the linear notion of âstagesâ, with plurality, in the form of âspheres of existenceâ (aesthetic, ethical, and religious). And third, the culmination of the process implies that we should embrace both a unified dialectic (âReligiousness Aâ) alongside the plural remnants of the ethical/aesthetic, that is, both the infinity of the former and the finitudes of the latter.
Unsurprisingly, while Kierkegaard describes those who are able to exemplify his ideal in practice as âalways joyful,â he also considers the ideal to be âextremely hard, the hardest task of all.â This is why those such as Hubert L. Dreyfus are wrong to claim that it provides an experience of bliss; on the contrary, those who realize it âare always in danger.â As I shall show, one form this danger takes is that it threatens to dirty the hands of those who manage to uphold Kierkegaardâs ideal. Moreover, it does so in ways that, I claim, tend to be missed by Kierkegaard himself. Nevertheless, the danger is also essential to the creativity of his approach, and I conclude by pointing out how this creativity makes it capable of tackling one of the profoundest challenges in contemporary ethics: that arising from what just war theorists call a âsupreme emergency.
Gaps: When Not Even Nothing Is There
A paradox, it is claimed, is a radical form of contradiction, one that produces gaps in meaning. In order to approach this idea, two senses of âseparationâ are distinguished: separation by something and separation by nothing. The latter does not refer to nothing in an ordinary sense, however, since in that sense whatâs intended is actually less than nothing. Numerous ordinary nothings in philosophy as well as in other fields are surveyed so as to clarify the contrast. Then follows the suggestion that philosophies which one would expect to have room for paradoxes actually tend either to exclude them altogether or to dull them. There is a clear alternative, however, one that fully recognizes paradoxes and yet also strives to overcome them
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