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It is sometimes argued that ideal theories in political philosophy are a form of ideology. This article examines arguments building on the work of Charles Mills and Raymond Geuss for the claim that ideal theories are cognitively distorting belief systems that have the effect of stabilizing unjust social arrangements. I argue that Mills and Geuss neither succeed in establishing that the content of ideal theories is necessarily cognitively defective in the way characteristic for ideologies, nor can they make plausible which mechanisms ensure the alleged negative effects of the widespread acceptance of ideal theorizing. This does not mean that all hope is lost for the ideology objection, however. By turning to a second Marxian model of ideology, I argue that the ideological character of ideal theories is not so much a matter of their content, but rather of their form. Ideal theories falsely present the normative concepts that they use as semantically practice-independent and thereby block potential challenges from subordinate groups to dominant ideologies. It is therefore not the normative content of ideal theories which proves to be objectionable, but the particular role their concepts play in wider political discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although Hobbes presents his political philosophy as an original theory and without conceptual debts with tradition, a study on his solid humanist training, up to 1630, shows that some theoretical considerations of the Greek and Roman authors are present, although with the cloak of language scientist, in key concepts of the modern philosopher. This article deals with the appropriations that Hobbes has made of two classic historians: Tacitus and Thucydides. The first will show Hobbes how to build a new political configuration, the empire, emerged from civil wars; while the second, how is human nature when man does not recognize a power greater than himself. In these two classical authors, then, the reasons for political order and disorder are presented respectively, a knowledge that will be taken up with interest by the modern philosopher. These appropriations, on the one hand, allow establishing a doctrinal affiliation between Hobbes and these classical authors; and, on the other hand, rethinking the link between tradition and modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the parliamentary elections in Germany in September 2017, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the Christian Social Union (CSU), The Greens (Bündnis90/Die Grünen) and the Free Democratic Party (FDP) started to negotiate about forming a coalition government. But, surprising to many, the FDP decided to let these coalition talks collapse, and many commentators in Germany found it highly problematic for a political party to refuse to take responsibility in government. Interestingly, the question whether (or: when) democratic parties may legitimately refuse to govern has so far been neglected in political theory and political philosophy. The article develops a general answer by discussing several possible reasons for thinking that it is sometimes wrong to refuse to govern and thereby engages both democratic theory and the recent literature on compromise. The resulting view is that parties have an 'integrity prerogative' that allows them to refuse to govern, except when there is no reasonable and stable alternative government coalition available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term 'world order' is perhaps the most enticing, consequential and vague concept in the diplomatic lexicon. There are countless scholars, analysts and policy-makers wrestling over its theoretical and practical dimensions. But often taken for granted in these examinations is the philosophical aspect—in other words, those fundamental reflections on the very purpose and nature of order across regional and international systems. Using a historical precedent as an example of this mode of thinking, this article makes the case for why questions related to political philosophy and political theory are essential to abstract and practical considerations of future world order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: "Moral personality" is required in order to be entitled to justice in John Rawls's theory of justice, a famous and influential theory in political philosophy. The concept of moral personality involves the possession of two "moral powers". One moral power is a capacity for a conception of the good, being a conception of what is regarded as worthwhile in life, while the other is a capacity for a sense of justice. Rawls claims that non-human animals (hereafter, "animals") do not possess these moral powers, and accordingly he omits them altogether from his theory of justice. In this article, I raise doubts about this omission, outlining how at least some animals may indeed possess the moral powers, albeit to a lesser extent than most humans. In this regard, the distinction between humans and animals can be seen as one of degree rather than kind. A proper acknowledgement of animal abilities suggests that Rawls's theory requires alteration to accommodate the position of animals. The relationship between animal rights and contractarian theories of justice such as that of Rawls has long been vexed. In this article, I contribute to the debate over the possibility of inclusion of animals in Rawls's theory of justice by critiquing the rationale he gives for their omission: that they do not possess moral personality. Contrary to Rawls's assumptions, it appears that some animals may possess the moral powers that comprise moral personality, albeit to a lesser extent than most humans. Some animals can act in pursuit of preferences and desires (and communicate them non-verbally), which might be taken as implicitly selecting a conception of the good; further, scientific research demonstrating inequity aversion and social play behaviors suggests that some animals can have a sense of justice relating to their own social groups. I conclude that Rawls's theory needs to acknowledge any animals that can be considered to meet the threshold of moral personality, while the concept of moral personality as a range property may also require reconsideration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a sonic reading of Gilles Deleuze's political philosophy. It argues that Deleuze adopts a sonic-musical vocabulary to account for the affective and corporeal dimensions of politics or the ways that bodies and nonconscious forces shape political and epistemological experience. Suggesting that sonic expressions operate on both the musical and the linguistic register and inflect bodies before being consciously recognized, the article thus explores how the sound flows involved in political assemblages also find entrance into philosophical concepts. To make this argument, the article traces several sonic figures – most prominently refrain, rhythm, and resonance – throughout Deleuze's oeuvre and puts those into conversation with sound studies scholarship. With this, the article makes two wider contributions. First, it traces connections between Deleuze's early philosophical works and his later more overtly political collaborations with Guattari by way of sound to establish a notion of the political as an aesthetic-ecological field composed with and beyond human activity. Second, the article outlines parameters of a sonic political philosophy centered on affective involvement, embodied listening, and experimental thinking, thus also articulating the relevance of sound studies scholarship for political theory and Deleuzian philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores Norberto Bobbio's thought regarding the complex relationship between theory and ideology, and the possible mutual influences between them. The essay first clarifies what Bobbio means by 'theory' and what connection he establishes between theory and political philosophy. The first section reconstructs Bobbio's distinction between four ways of conceiving political philosophy, and his preference for the formal value-free approach of what he defines as a 'general theory of politics'. The second section focuses on whether a general theory of politics, seeking to clarify the basic concepts of political language and provide purely descriptive definitions, is in fact possible. The third section deals with this same question starting from a debate between Bobbio, Passerin d'Entreves and Scarpelli sparked in 1954 by Felix Oppenheim's book Dimensions of Freedom. Likewise, Bobbio's last course in political philosophy on the topic of 'revolution' offers insights into his 'empirical-analytical' method, in which conceptual analysis is deeply related to the observation of reality and the study of history (fourth section). To conclude, the last paragraph returns to the complex relationship between theory and ideology in Bobbio's thought, by highlighting elements of continuity and discontinuity, with the tradition of analytical philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corresponding to the party-state's expressed ambition to build a just society, Chinese citizenship education involves educating students for social justice. This paper critically examines the discursive subject of social justice in official citizenship education by analyzing school textbooks and interviewing schoolteachers. It sheds light on the discursive construction of social justice primarily through narratives of justice rather than injustice. Drawing upon the notion that injustice is distinct from and has priority over justice in moral and political philosophy and social theory, this paper argues that the positive discursive construction of social justice enables the party-state to manipulate social consensus and manufacture depoliticized, individualized and authoritarian citizenship. Seeing the lack of opportunity to teach and learn social injustice as epistemic injustice in itself, the paper suggests that education for social justice should be oriented as education against social injustice in China and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article mobilizes ethical questioning to understand the inclusive dynamic that cannot be reduced to reasoning, however critical. Indeed, ethics goes beyond the content promoted in the fields of practice, theory and politics by questioning them and challenging them in the name of issues and values that it considers superior to each of them. It is a form of practical reason, precisely because it makes it possible to influence the course of life, to orient actions, to exercise the power to act. However, if all ethics are by definition perfectionist, the meaning of perfectionism can vaiy from one conception to another. What ethics(ies) does the inclusive paradigm need? Firstly, we will examine the problem from the angle of a macro analysis relating to contractualist theories in political philosophy; in a second, the problem will be apprehended in the light of the ethics of care in connection with disability studies; in a third part, we will consider some ethical activities related to the inclusive paradigm, more specifically in the educational field, before concluding with some perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Perífrasis. Revista de Literatura, Teoría y Crítica is the property of Universidad de los Andes and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Shklar self-reflectively viewed her own intervention, I After Utopia i , as sharing in the spirit of the age "to the extent of being neither able nor willing to build an original theory of politics" (xix). Shklar's book is a valuable narrative, more so in hindsight of the gradual decline of transformative political aspirations since the Enlightenment and simultaneously of the very transformation of modern philosophy. Shklar's book provides a rich and informative account of how the Enlightenment did not triumph and why its main feature, namely, its radical hope, is now forlorn. [Extracted from the article]

Drawing on the example of the French-speaking world, this article makes the case for the valuable contribution of a systematic ethics-based approach to understanding linguistic pluricentricity. Following a critical review of three key definitional dimensions of the concept - political, linguistic and representational/attitudinal - it argues for the inclusion of a fourth ethical dimension to assess whether there are moral arguments which might also favour the recognition of distinct national standards. It builds on the recent linguistic justice literature in the fields of political theory and political philosophy to propose the notion of "pluricentric linguistic justice" as a framework for evaluating the ethics of local norm-setting and enforcement in pluricentric contexts. To demonstrate how pluricentric linguistic justice might be assessed, it examines a series of valued-based arguments discussed in the linguistic justice literature relating to the instrumental and identity functions of language, considering how they might apply to specific contexts in the French-speaking world. Besides contributing to existing theory, the notion of pluricentric linguistic justice has the potential to help advance social equality, by drawing attention to some of the social and political injustices associated with diatopic variation in spatially diffused languages more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been recently conceptualized and studied as a political phenomenon. Most debates in this scholarship have thus far focused on normative issues. Less attention has been paid to the explanatory potential of CSR research grounded in political theory and philosophy. In this article, we conduct a pragmatist reading of political scholarship on CSR and seek to deploy existing knowledge for research pursuing political explanation. We argue that the political ontologies that underlie scholarship on CSR can be used to transform normative and descriptive research also for explanatory uses. We show how ontologies vary in terms of potential research objects and scopes of political explanation, and argue that the main types of political-ontological stances adopted in scholarship on CSR, foundational and post-foundational stances, offer explanatory analysis of different schematic guidelines. Our pragmatist reading of previous research and an empirical case illustration of political explanation of change in corporate responsibility in the biofuel industry demonstrate the opportunities, limitations, and challenges different political-ontological commitments provide for political explanation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The individual essays explore what it actually means to be "contemporary", how the present and presentness are even possible, and how and through which media, techniques and processes they can be produced. All but two essays in this volume astutely situate their inquiry within a sound and extensive theoretical framework. Present, Presentness, Re-Presentation, edited by Gabriele Gene, Ludger Schwarte, Angela Stercken. [Extracted from the article]

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Social decisions are often made under great uncertainty - in situations where political principles, and even standard subjective expected utility, do not apply smoothly. In the first section, we argue that the core of this problem lies in decision theory itself - it is about how to act when we do not have an adequate representation of the context of the action and of its possible consequences. Thus, we distinguish two criteria to complement decision theory under ignorance - Laplace's principle of insufficient reason and Wald's maximin criterion. After that, we apply this analysis to political philosophy, by contrasting Harsanyi's and Rawls's theories of justice, respectively based on Laplace's principle of insufficient reason and Wald's maximin rule - and we end up highlighting the virtues of Rawls's principle on practical grounds (it is intuitively attractive because of its computational simplicity, so providing a salient point for convergence) - and connect this argument to our moral intuitions and social norms requiring prudence in the case of decisions made for the sake of others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a message from the editors of Utopian Studies, a journal celebrating its 35th year of publication. The editors introduce the new members of the editorial team, including Associate Editor Christian P. Haines and Managing Editor Kirsten Harris. The article also provides a brief overview of the current issue, which includes essays on political philosophy, sustainable communities, literature, and art. Additionally, the article includes conference briefings on recent academic events related to utopian studies. [Extracted from the article]

Over the past decade, Anne Boyer has published a series of poems detailing the most intimate, mundane aspects of her life in Kansas. Focusing on gender, production, and work, her poems foreground precarity, sex, reproduction, child-rearing, consumption, exhaustion, writing, and the refusal of writing. Often, they describe her attempts to exist outside a world where all human activity is reduced to economic productivity, a world that Boyer describes as operating on principles of “inescapable shock.” While Boyer’s poetry provides a detailed phenomenology of doing and being able to do, it also addresses the situation of not doing and being unable to do. With these issues in mind, this chapter will explore connections between poems in Garments Against Women and philosophies such as Giorgio Agamben’s theories of potentiality and impotentiality and contemporary feminist approaches to being and doing, such as Adriana Cavarero’s work on “inclination” as political category. Reading Boyer’s poetry alongside philosophy and political theory, will, I suggest, enhance our understanding of questions of potential, actuality, and feminist critiques grounded in ontology and phenomenology. At the same time, these readings will complicate certain categories with implications for feminist politics, from transparency and uprightness, to their counterparts, vulnerability, inclination, and lack. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Detailed comparisons between Weber and Hegel's political and social thought are rare and are usually written by sociologists and legal theorists. Also, not infrequently, they tend to generate more problems than they solve. This contribution aims to compare Weber's and Hegel's views on authority, bureaucracy and capitalism from a broader political-theoretical perspective, taking into account especially such issues like normativity, freedom, political economy and religion. The overall aim of this article is to argue that Weber and Hegel have both less and more in common than is usually thought. In particular, my purpose is to argue in favour of a claim that normativity, understood here in a prescriptive, i.e. ethical, and not the juridical sense, should be read as a key element in understanding the differences between the two thinkers in the areas of political theory and political philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review discusses some of the most prominent contributions of Giorgio Agamben to philosophy and political theories that are relevant to management scholars. By addressing Agamben's theological genealogy of economy and government included in The Kingdom and the Glory, I introduce management scholars to innovative significations and understandings of power and management, including the notion that power is a form of management. I also offer some reflections on the ramifications for management scholarship of Agamben's engagement with management as a praxis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Analisi e Diritto is the property of Edizioni ETS s.r.l. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Educational Review (1563-3527) is the property of National Kaohsiung Normal University, Department of Education and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Political theory and philosophy need to widen their view of the space in which what matters politically takes place, and I suggest that integrating the conditions of sustainability of all affected—that is, all participants in nature's relations—is a necessary first step in this direction. New materialists and posthumanists have challenged how nature and politics have traditionally been construed. While acknowledging the significance of their contributions, I critically examine the ethical and political implications of their ontological project. I focus particularly on how the decentering of human agency that they advocate for raises a set of concerns that need to be addressed in developing an appropriate ecological ethics. I argue that the latter must be attuned to the vulnerability of living beings who participate in relationships that sustain life on earth. This brings me to conclude that qualitative distinctions between the worlds of bios and techne are necessary. This is because we need to think critically about ways of evaluating types of relationships so that we can assess them and establish which are worth nurturing and protecting and which are not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Escritura e Imagen is the property of Universidad Complutense de Madrid and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Within the framework of political theory and political philosophy, theories of linguistic justice aim at establishing universal principles in order to determine what are just language policies, and, at the same time, supply tools for the analysis and assessment of existing language policies according to the principles considered. These theories identify values and interests derived from languages and propose ways to fairly distribute interests. This article presents, firstly, the current paradigms of linguistic justice: their philosophical framework, the main contemporary theories (linguistic instrumentalism, territorialism and pluralism) and the patterns for organising linguistic diversity suggested by these theories. Secondly, it offers a critical analysis focused on three points identified as theoretical deficits, namely a lack of attention to the relational dimension of language, a dichotomist view of communication and identity as values associated with languages, and the underestimation of the relevance of empirical contexts in both the conception and application of theoretical frameworks. Finally, it proposes a contextual approach to the case of Catalonia, paying attention to the relationship between language policy and self-government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses the thesis that ne- gates the idea that Marxist theory has its own political philosophy and theory of state. Said thesis, coinciding with Stalinism, interprets Capital and all the other works of Marx as being merely economic in nature. To refute this, the author demonstrates that Marx studies the processes of economic exploitation, power, and political domination at the same time. Later he constructs a Gramscian reading of Marx based on Notes from Prison, and arrives at the conclusion that Gramsci based on his reflections on hegemony, surpasses the eco nomic analysis, and returns to Marxism all of its disruptive and critical force. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The work of John Rawls is central to contemporary political philosophy. A Theory of Justice provides a model for the justification of substantive principles of justice, and it defends principles that reject utilitarianism. Ultimately, justification is a matter of what the participants in a relationship or an institution can justify to one another. Unlike utilitarianism, which assumes that there is one good that it is the job of morality to maximize, Rawls holds that there are multiple conceptions of the good associated with different individuals. Furthermore, he holds that there are multiple principles of morality associated with different relationships and institutions. His principles of justice are designed for one of these-the basic structure of society. They establish a moral minimum that all members of a society owe to one another, but additional principles are required to govern other special relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers the author's insights on the political implications of philosopher Jacques Derrida's theory of forgiveness. It highlights the political implications of the philosopher's theory, which centers on the idea of the unforgivable, who is assumed as the sole possible subject of forgiveness. It evaluates the political meanings of forgiveness in the perspective of the moralizing and monological decline of political discussion in the post-September 11 terrorist attack era.

Political theory and political philosophy (used interchangeably in this article) have always played a role in public life. The argument pursued here is that this is not accidental. We cannot understand in an explanatory sense developments in public policy without understanding the structure of ideas that influence those developments, including the normative presuppositions at the core of those structures of ideas. However, we can pass from explanation in the narrow sense to justification and the evaluation of the merits of those ideas. The techniques of normative political theory are invaluable in this context of justification and evaluation. Two examples are given to illustrate this last claim. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the geo-political implications of neo-universalist tendencies in current Chinese political philosophy. It is stated how Chinese philosophy can contribute to overcome a 'clash' theory of intercultural relations. The author underlines that the growing economic and political role of China in this century forces China to develop a real global world-view tradition, and discusses Zhao Tingyang's philosophy of Tian-xia as a paradigmatic example of such new universalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The assumption of strict obedience, and other features of the well ordered society (WOS), is a great idealization that Rawls does from the actual and historical circumstances in which contemporary societies exist. From there comes the objection according to which the whole project of justice as fairness is just useless, for it has no purpose at all to know what would it be the principles of justice for a well ordered society that only exist in theory. The aims of this paper are to make clear the meaning of the well ordered society's assumption - the society which the ideal theory takes care of -; to point out the links between this kind of theory and the methodology of the political philosophy and the notion of feasibility; and to look again at the useless objection in the light of the above considerations. Before the useless objection, a twofold answer is proposed that could be inferred from Rawls work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are two aspects for academic activities: recent research results with certain value and some originality, and the lessons, experiences and methods obtained from the results. On the basis of Rawls 'theory of justice and equality, Rawls' academic training background and methods are discussed, the neglected points in Rawls' theory are analyzed, the deficiencies in Rawls' argumentation are pointed out, and some complementary argumentations are added to Rawls' theory. By comparing Rawls with his two contemporaries, Rawls' theory is further defined for its property and complexity, and an evaluation is made of Rawls' theory for its similarity to China's reality. Most important of all, by analyzing Rawls' theory, new conclusion is" drawn as to how to research the Western philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marxism theory course is one of the compulsory political theory courses in China's institutions of higher learning. However, due to the new problems arising from the current socialist modernization construction and the new contradictions, many students lose their interest in the theoretical thoughts of Marxism theory course, and they pay more attention to practical purposes, isolating the relationship between theory and practice. Only by solving the various contradictions can Marxism theory course be made to play its due role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses transcendental philosophy by Johann Gottlieb Fichte and the writings related to the allegations of atheism that were lodged against Fichte in the autumn of 1798. It explores the understanding of transcendental philosophy as a theory of experience and the reasons underlying Fichte's reminder to philosopher Karl Leonhard Reinhold about the essence of transcendental philosophy. It examines how transcendental philosophy bears on the allegation that the Wissenschaftslehre is a crypto-atheistic philosophy.

The article examines the theory John Rawls on political philosophy, which are premised on the social contract theory and on the art of democratic statesmanship. It criticizes his theories, such as the redistribution theory and on how Rawls perceived the social contract of John Locke. Under the social contract theory, people form an organization where they surrender certain extent of their rights to the authority, so that the authority can protect them from outside threat. Corollary to the social contract theory are justice and fairness among the members of the society, in which Rawls argument of political systems is partly based. Hanna Pitkin interposed that the proper question about social contract theory is on what the people are ought to consent and not what the people has consented.

This essay argues that political theorists interested in analysing, understanding or evaluating political problems in the ‘real world’ should consider the ways in which such problems are specified through a rhetorical process of definition. It discusses, in general terms, the relationship of rhetoric to political theory and examines in some detail the way in which different writers, developing applications of political theory to Northern Ireland, employ literary and figurative techniques in specifying the problem they propose to ‘resolve’. I argue that much of the dispute between such writers turns on different claims about the ‘facts’ and thus on different ways of conceiving the ‘problem’. In conclusion the essay calls for closer attention to the rhetoric of problem‐setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the principle and theory of political liberalism and liberal education. Functional definition of liberal education; Link between political liberalism and pluralism; Aspirations of political liberalism to create a political order.

This article discusses the teaching life of Micheal Sprinker. Discussions of aesthetics, historical materialist theory, political theory, philosophy, the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins, and the prose of William James; Sprinker's lasting impression on his students and his strength as a teacher; Committment to the object of scrutiny; Sprinker's help in getting many of his graduate students their jobs.

The article focuses on ethics and interdisciplinarity in philosophy and literary theory. Although thinkers have continued to enter into basic questions in ethics, the writings of Charles Taylor, Will Kymlicka, Iris Young, Seyla Benhabib, and others attest to a shift from ethics to politics powerfully influenced by John Rawls. These changes in emphasis are a clear sign of how the effects of globalization have begun to draw a response from political theorists. Links between ethics and political theory have not always been self-evident. By entering into questions of political philosophy, ethics becomes "applied ethics." Political philosophers have, in different ways, endeavored to take stock of the interconnectedness of the world and its implications for ethics and politics. Interdisciplinarity in ethical and political philosophy has thus meant an attention to global problems as they have emerged in law, economics, and ecology. This traffic between disciplines amounts to a testing of philosophers' ability to formulate ethical protocols equipped to keep pace with an exacerbated movement of people, goods, information, and capital across borders, and the political, legal, and economic practices associated with it.