Political Thinkers and Ideas/Penseurs et Idées Politiques
| Date | 01 August 2010 |
| Published date | 01 August 2010 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020834510380619 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
462
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POLITICAL THINKE RS AND IDEAS
PENSEURS ET IDÉES POLITIQUES
60.4744 ALTINI, Carlo — "Potentia" as "potestas": an interpreta-
tion of modern politics between Thomas Hobbes an d
Carl Schmitt. Philosophy and Social Criticism 36(2), Feb.
2010 : 231-252.
This article discusses the relationship between might (potentia) and
power (potestas) as it has unfolded throughout the modern age, from T.
Hobbes to C. Schmitt. H obbes indicates the way forward for a progres-
sive linguistic and conceptual coincidence of potentia and p otestas: the
goal of Hobbesian political philosophy (the search for peace and secu-
rity) necessitates t he reduction of potentia to potestas through the elimi-
nation of the content of actus. Schmitt accepts this reduction, by assign-
ing priority to potestas: the image of modern technology as a privileged
dimension of potentia-potestas comes together as the modern state. The
language of potentia-potestas has triggered a process, that of a naturali-
zation of power relations, based on and justified by the social inequality
arising from t he differing extent of ownership of the instruments of tech-
nological production. [R, abr.]
60.4745 BRENNER, Neil ; PECK, Jamie ; THE ODORE, Nik — Varie-
gated neoliberalization: geographies, modali ties, path-
ways. Global Networks 10(2), Apr. 2010 : 182-222.
This article considers th e handling of “neoliberalism” within three influen-
tial strands of heterodox political economy: the varieties-of-capitalism
approach; historical materialist inter national political economy; and
governmentality approaches. While each of these r esearch traditions
sheds light on contemporary processes of market-oriented regulatory
restructuring, we argue that each also underplays and/or misreads the
systemically uneven, or “variegated”, character of these processes.
Enabled by a critical interrogation of how each approach interprets the
geographies, modalities and pathways of n eoliberalization processes, we
argue that the problematic of variegation must be central to any ade-
quate account of marketi zed forms of regulatory restructuring and their
alternatives under post-1970s capitalism. [R, abr.]
60.4746 CARNEVALI, Giorgio — Norberto Bobbio : note su egemo-
nia e democrazia (Norberto Bobbio: notes on hegemony
and democracy). Teoria politica 25(3), 2009 : 49-54.
Bobbio's papers on hegemony a re anything but marginal. The reflections
on hegemony of the philosopher have brought a new interpretation of A.
Gramsci's thought. They are also essential for who wants t o look at
Italy’s history in the 20th c. from an ideological and political point of view.
[R]
60.4747 CARVER, Terrell — The German Ideology never took
place. History of Political Thought 31(1), Spring 2010 : 107-
128.
[Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’] The German Ideology as a "book"
dates o nly from the early 1920s and 193 0s. The opening " chapter" "I.
Feuerbach" was factitiously constructed to solve the problem posed by
Marx's enigmatic reference in 1859 to "self-clarification". This was in
autobiographical passages detailing his "outlook", termed by Engels the
"materialist interpretation of history". Factual evidence presented here
makes this framing untenable. "The German ideology" manuscript
materials of 1845-1846 are best studied not as a "smooth text" of the
"last hand" but as a "variant-rich" t ext that allows access to a "laboratory"
where Marx and Engels were learning to think as they did. [R]
60.4748 CHRISTIANO, Thomas — Estlund on democratic author-
ity. Journal of Politi cal Philosophy 17(2), June 2009 : 228-
240.
The author defends "epistemic procedu ralism" as a normative framework
for justifying democracy, whereby collective decision- making procedures
should be justified in terms of their epistemic value, i.e., their ability to
produce the right solutions to collective problems. This is constrained by
the fac t that equality is a fundamental standard for evaluating political
procedures. D. Estlund's approach [in Democratic Authority: A Philoso-
phical Framework, Princeton, 2007] is much closer to the mixture of fair
proceduralism and epistemic a ccounts he criticizes in others. The better-
than-random condition fo r a procedure may not be as strong a condition
of legitimacy as presented. [See also Abstr. 60.4753]
60.4749 COLE, Creagh McLean — The ethic of the producers:
Sorel, Anderson and MacIntyre. History of Political Thought
31(1), Spring 2010 : 155-178.
The unifying moral theme represe nted by the ethic of the producer was
critically important to the political and moral educati on of the generation
of socialists that came to maturity in the era of cultural modernism, 1910-
1930. The most interesting of these was J. Anderson, who left Scotland
in 1926. He was the most important philosopher to hav e worked in
Australia, and for more than thirty years he represented to his stu dents a
sophisticated un derstanding and appreciation of G. Sorel's ethic of the
producers. Anderson's social and political th ought reveals a neglected
aspect of the Scottish int ellectual and cultural synthesis of Calvinist
theology and Aristotelian virtue ethics identified by A. MacIntyre. It also
suggests an unexpected connection between MacIntyre's virtue ethics
and the distinctively Augustinian r esponse to the modernist crisis in
authority represented by Sorel. [R, abr.]
60.4750 DASKAL, Steve — Libertarianism left and right, the
Lockean pr oviso, and the reformed welfare sta te. Social
Theory and Practice 36(1), Jan. 2010 : 21-43.
My aim in this paper will be to demonstrate that if we adopt a libertarian
framework, we can in fact derive results that c onstrain the set of permis-
sible redist ributive social institutions, but that these constraints are not
the ones that have traditionally been endorsed by libertarians. Specifi-
cally, I will argue that in modern capitalist countries, s uch as US, the
constraints derived from libertarianism impose a requirement for sub-
stantial redistributive welfare programs. Such a conclusion is relatively
standard among left-libertarians, but I will argue that even a right-
libertarian framework contains commitments sufficient to derive this
result. [R]
60.4751 DELAHUNTY, Robert J. ; YOO, John — Kant, Haberm as
and democratic peace. Chicago Journal of International L aw
10(2), Winter 2010 : 437-474.
This article exami nes the ideas of Kant an d Habermas, especially as
reflected in Habermas' s long essay, “The Kantian Project and the Di-
vided W est” (English translation, “The Divided West”, 2006). The rela-
tionship between Kant and H abermas, both in that essay and throughout
Habermas's work, is an extremely close one, and few later thinkers have
done as much as Habermas t o demonstrate the continuing importance
and relevance of Kant's political th ought for the contempora ry world. [R]
[See Abstr. 60.4735]
60.4752 DESCENDRE, Romain — Le cose di stato : sémanti que de
l'État et rel ations internationales chez Machiavel (State
affairs: state semantics an d international relations in Ma-
chiavelli). Pensiero politico 41(1), Jan.-Apr. 2008 : 3-18.
Federico Chabod u nderlined the danger of using modern concepts to
describe a reality belonging to other times, even if sometimes they can
be used for practical reasons. Analyzing the use of the noti on of “state” in
Machiavelli’s writings can help understanding the development of his
political thought in regard to what we now call “geopolitics” and “interna-
tional affairs”. I ndeed, his idea of cose di stato (state affairs) shows that
in a context of widespread conflicts that threatened the existence of
fragile states, he was ve ry conscious of the influence of exterior events
on domestic politics, w hich implied an adequate use of diplomacy by the
rulers. This international dimension of Machiavelli’s concept of the state
has been underestimated.
60.4753 ESTLUND, Da vid — On Christiano’s The Constitution of
Equality. Journal of Political Philosophy 17(2), June 2009 :
241-252.
Th. Christiano's argument for political equality [The Constitution of
Equality: Democratic Authority and its Limits, Oxford, 2008] rests on an
egalitarian principle of distributi ve justice. This accounts for two vulner-
abilities. If the theory of justice is mistaken, the argument for democracy
collapses. Second, even if the theory of justice is correct, the connection
between that and political equality is contingent and uncertain. Thus the
idea of distributive equality plays no helpful role in grounding democratic
convictions. In epistemic p roceduralism political equality is defended
without invoking any particular substantive theory of justice. [See Abstr.
60.4748]
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