II: Political Thinkers and Ideas/Penseurs et Idées Politiques
| DOI | 10.1177/002083451606600602 |
| Published date | 01 December 2016 |
| Date | 01 December 2016 |
| Subject Matter | Abstracts |
688
II
POLITICAL THINKERS AND IDEAS
PENSEURS ET IDÉES POLITIQUES
66.6514 ARNOLD, Jeremy — Philosophical anarchism and the
paradox of politics. European Journal of Political Theory
15(3), July 2016 : 293-311.
I compare two prominent positions within contemporary “Analytic” and
“Continental” political philosophy: philosophical anarchism and the
paradox of politics. I compare each through an analysis of their respec-
tive criticisms of state legitimacy and the internal difficulties each posi-
tion has in accounting for the legitimacy of state violence. I argue that
these internal difficulties force each position to ask questions and
criticize assumptions commonly found in the other position. I hope to
show through this comparison that work across the analytic/continental
divide can tell us a great deal about a range of intractable political
phenomena. [R]
66.6515 BEJAN, Teresa M. — Locke on toleration, (in)civility and
the quest for concord. History of Political Thought 37(3),
Autumn 2016 : 556-587.
Lockean toleration has long been criticized as ethically minimal and
indifferent to the interactions of private individuals. Yet these critic isms
ignore Locke's lasting preoccupation with intolerance and incivility as
obstacles to coexistence. These concerns were instrumental in the
development of his understanding of toleration as a complex package of
negative and positive virtues informed increasingly by a vision of con-
cordia — a Christian ideal of unity in diversity. But by linking the outward
virtue of civility ever more closely with sincere esteem and inward
charity, Locke ultimately premised affective concord on an agreement
between individuals more "fundamental" than the disagreements that
divided them. Re-interpreting Lockean toleration — and its limits — in
this light has important implications for both its critics and its defenders,
who likewise prefer concord to mere toleration while neglecting its
exclusionary potential. [R]
66.6516 CALABRÒ, Carmelo — Associative democracy : la "terza
via" di Paul Q. Hirst (Associative democracy in Paul Q.
Hirst's "Third Way"). Pensiero politico 48(3), 2015 : 449-
474.
Between the late 1980s and the mid 1990s, P.Q. Hirst proposed a "third
way" different from [that] of Tony Blair, a set of institutional proposals
inspired by two linked principles, pluralism and autonomy. The end of
the "golden years" made the social democratic "recipe" unsustainable
and inefficient in a Western world economically less affluent, politically
unstable, and socially more complex. In the face of these great chang-
es, Hirst proposed to tackle new times using old ideas. According to the
forgotten lesson of English pluralist thought dating back to the beginning
of the 19th c., Hirst considered association the core institution for con-
temporary society. Regarding the pars construens of the Associative
Democracy, the author critically evaluates the ways Hirst suggested
combining traditional representative institutions and intermediate corpo-
rate bodies. [R, abr.]
66.6517 CEREZO GALÁN, Pedro — Razón, ciudad y democracia
en Benito Spinoza (Reason, citizenship and democracy
in B. Spinoza). Revista de Estudios políticos 172, Apr.-June
2016 : 13-45.
This paper shows the internal unity of the three elements — ratio,
civitas, libertas — which constitute the political philosophy of Spinoza.
Methodologically his thought corresponds to the objective model of the
new science, which implies a break with the normative model of practi-
cal reason in natural law. Spinoza departs from a physicalist ontological
conception of nature, which reduces freedom to rational necessity and
natural right to the natural power of man. His illustrated program "from
bondage to freedom by knowledge" does not imply a normative moral
solution to the problem of living together, but a genetic solution by virtue
of the need to find an emergency exit to the impasse of the natural state
of war under the fear of death. [R, abr.]
66.6518 CHEN Naiwei ; YANG Tsai-Chen — Islam and democracy
[in Asia] — a dynamic perspective. Japanese Journal of
Political Science 17(3), Sept. 2016 : 329-364.
This study examines the relationship between Islam and democracy
with emphasis on the issue of whether and how Islam has bearings on
democratic adjustment speed. Using comprehensive data on 17 Asian
countries from 1996 to 2010, the study demonstrates that religion is a
significant factor for determining democracy. Results indicate that the
level of democracy in Islamic countries is generally lower than that in
non-Islamic countries. However, the level of democracy in Islamic
countries exhibits an upward trend, whereas that in non-Islamic coun-
tries displays a downward trend. Moreover, when benchmark variables
are controlled, democratic adjustment in Islamic countries is faster than
in non-Islamic countries. Hence, despite the current lower level of
democracy in Islamic countries, the results refute the conventional
wisdom that Islam hinders democracy. [R, abr.]
66.6519 CRUZ SOUSA, André Luiz — Thoughts on Leo Strauss's
interpretation of Aristotle's natural right teaching. Re-
view of Politics 78(3), Summer 2016 : 419-442.
The essay discusses the interpretation of Aristotle's natural right teach-
ing by Leo Strauss. This interpretation ought to be seen as the result of
an investigation into the history of philosophy and of an attempt to
philosophically address political problems. By virtue of this twofold
origin, the Straussian commentary is unorthodox: it deviates from
traditional Aristotelianism (Aquinas and Averroes) and it seems alien to
the text of the Nicomachean Ethics. Strauss's criticism of medieva l
variants results from their incapacity to address a perplexing issue:
political exception. He sees in Aristotle's political teaching a way to
escape from this failure: the unification, in natural right, of the require-
ments of statesmanship and ethics. The discovery of this way allowed
Strauss to produce an interpretation of natural right that articulates
important points pertaining to Aristotelian political science. [R]
66.6520 DAVIS, Michael — Plato's Minos: the soul of the law.
Review of Politics 78(3), Summer 2016 : 343-363.
The account of law in Plato's Minos is on its surface strange. Law is a
faculty in us like sight or hearing, and its stability requires that it be
independent of us. It makes universal claims but always does so for a
particular people in a particular place. Law must be grounded in what is
beyond the law, and yet, once established, must assert its own final
authority. Lawgivers must be at once above the law, almost a different
species from those for whom they legislate, and, like everyone else,
subject to the law. These ambiguities, indeed duplicities, are not so
much defects of law to be resolved as indications of its fundamental
nature. What follows is an account of this dual nature, especially in its
necessary connection to poetry. [R, abr.]
66.6521 DEEN, Phillip — Recontextualizing John Dewey's The
Public and its Problems. History of Political Thought 37(3),
Autumn 2016 : 509-529.
Dewey's political thought, particularly his best known The Public and its
Problems [1927], is better understood in the context of his lecture notes
on social and political theory from the 1920s. This article sketches his
unpublished triad of economic processes, political-legal structures and
social-moral functions. Particular emphasis is given to the priority of
basic social groups as mediators of our transaction with nature and the
function of the state to harmonize these groups, and to the slippage
between economic processes and political-legal structures. The former
deepens Dewey's connection to early 20th c. political pluralism while the
latter connects his thought to cultural lag theory. [R]
66.6522 DÖNMEZ, Pinar E. ; SUTTON, Alex — Revisiting the
debate on open Marxist perspectives. British Journal of
Politics and International Relations 18(3), Aug. 2016 : 688-
705.
This article reviews the recent incarnation of a long-standing engage-
ment in IPE and critical theory between open Marxist perspectives
(OMPs) and their critics. It identifies the enduring relevance of this
debate in order to think about the possibility and future of critical social
inquiry in our time constructively. It criticizes elements on both sides of
the debate that hinder achieving this objective. We argue that the recent
criticisms make a number of important constructive points that could
help enhance the explanatory power of OMPs yet still portray the latter
uncharitably. We take the em phasis on openness in OMPs seriously as
a scholarly and political orientation without immersing the debate with
the charges of reductionism, instrumentalism, deter minism and func-
tionalism. [R, abr.]
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