Thomas L. Pangle
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780226642475
- eISBN:
- 9780226642505
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226642505.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
In a famous pronouncement, Cicero observes that prior to Socrates, philosophic science “dealt with number and motion, and that from which all things originate and into which they return, and studied ...
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In a famous pronouncement, Cicero observes that prior to Socrates, philosophic science “dealt with number and motion, and that from which all things originate and into which they return, and studied the size, distance between, and course of stars and of all celestial things”: it was Socrates who “was the first to call philosophy down from heaven and to set it in cities and to introduce it into the household and to compel it to inquire into life and mores and good and bad things.” Cicero follows above all the eyewitness presentation of Socrates by Xenophon, whose Socratic dialogue The Economist (Oikonomikos = “Skilled Household Manager”) Cicero translated into Latin. The aim of the present book (a sequel to The Socratic Way of Life: Xenophon’s Memorabilia) is to show how the account of Socrates in Xenophon’s Memorabilia—Xenophon’s longest and best known, but highly defensive, portrayal of Socrates—is decisively deepened as well as complemented by the three shorter writings that Xenophon devoted to portraying Socrates in action, as Socrates founded and initiated what has come to be known as political and moral philosophy.Less
In a famous pronouncement, Cicero observes that prior to Socrates, philosophic science “dealt with number and motion, and that from which all things originate and into which they return, and studied the size, distance between, and course of stars and of all celestial things”: it was Socrates who “was the first to call philosophy down from heaven and to set it in cities and to introduce it into the household and to compel it to inquire into life and mores and good and bad things.” Cicero follows above all the eyewitness presentation of Socrates by Xenophon, whose Socratic dialogue The Economist (Oikonomikos = “Skilled Household Manager”) Cicero translated into Latin. The aim of the present book (a sequel to The Socratic Way of Life: Xenophon’s Memorabilia) is to show how the account of Socrates in Xenophon’s Memorabilia—Xenophon’s longest and best known, but highly defensive, portrayal of Socrates—is decisively deepened as well as complemented by the three shorter writings that Xenophon devoted to portraying Socrates in action, as Socrates founded and initiated what has come to be known as political and moral philosophy.
Christopher Adair-Toteff
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474447089
- eISBN:
- 9781474465298
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474447089.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
This book explores the crucial concept of responsibility and the critical role it plays in Raymond Aron’s political philosophy. This book argues that it is a key concept that is found throughout ...
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This book explores the crucial concept of responsibility and the critical role it plays in Raymond Aron’s political philosophy. This book argues that it is a key concept that is found throughout Aron’s political thinking. Aron learned to appreciate the importance of responsibility from several authors; most notably, Max Weber and von Clausewitz and it is present throughout many of his writings. The concept is found in Aron’s discussions of war and peace, ideology and totalitarianism, and on freedom. The book also discusses Aron’s political legacy and suggests that his political thinking can help us address many of the issues of the 21st century.Less
This book explores the crucial concept of responsibility and the critical role it plays in Raymond Aron’s political philosophy. This book argues that it is a key concept that is found throughout Aron’s political thinking. Aron learned to appreciate the importance of responsibility from several authors; most notably, Max Weber and von Clausewitz and it is present throughout many of his writings. The concept is found in Aron’s discussions of war and peace, ideology and totalitarianism, and on freedom. The book also discusses Aron’s political legacy and suggests that his political thinking can help us address many of the issues of the 21st century.
Alexandre Matheron
Filippo Del Lucchese, David Maruzzella, and Gil Morejón (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781474440103
- eISBN:
- 9781474484961
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474440103.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
Alexandre Matheron (1926–2020) worked and wrote substantially on the 17th century philosopher Benedict de Spinoza beginning with the publication of his influential 1969 masterpiece Individu et ...
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Alexandre Matheron (1926–2020) worked and wrote substantially on the 17th century philosopher Benedict de Spinoza beginning with the publication of his influential 1969 masterpiece Individu et communauté chez Spinoza. Widely considered one of the most important and original interpreters of Spinoza’s philosophy in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, but whose work was rarely translated into English, the 20 essays gathered here span the entirety of Matheron’s prolific career and present to the Anglophone the first collection of its kind outside of France. From texts on Spinoza’s epistemology and metaphysics to his signature interpretation of Spinoza’s political philosophy, Matheron’s work touches on every imaginable theme in the Spinozist corpus from Spinoza’s views on sexuality to his relationship to his predecessors, contemporaries, and inheritors such as Aquinas, Hobbes, Machiavelli, and Rousseau to Spinoza’s latent communism and importance for the development of Spinozist Marxism in France. Complete with a substantial interview conducted by two of Matheron’s best known students, Laurent Bove and Pierre-François Moreau, and a comprehensive bibliography of Matheron’s publications, this is a crucial collection for anyone seeking to understand 20th-century continental Spinozism. Whether it be the established scholar looking for translations of difficult to find essays or the advanced undergraduate or graduate student in search of reliable secondary literature on Spinoza, this volume is the perfect introduction to Matheron’s rigorous, masterful, and original interpretation of Spinoza’s philosophy.Less
Alexandre Matheron (1926–2020) worked and wrote substantially on the 17th century philosopher Benedict de Spinoza beginning with the publication of his influential 1969 masterpiece Individu et communauté chez Spinoza. Widely considered one of the most important and original interpreters of Spinoza’s philosophy in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, but whose work was rarely translated into English, the 20 essays gathered here span the entirety of Matheron’s prolific career and present to the Anglophone the first collection of its kind outside of France. From texts on Spinoza’s epistemology and metaphysics to his signature interpretation of Spinoza’s political philosophy, Matheron’s work touches on every imaginable theme in the Spinozist corpus from Spinoza’s views on sexuality to his relationship to his predecessors, contemporaries, and inheritors such as Aquinas, Hobbes, Machiavelli, and Rousseau to Spinoza’s latent communism and importance for the development of Spinozist Marxism in France. Complete with a substantial interview conducted by two of Matheron’s best known students, Laurent Bove and Pierre-François Moreau, and a comprehensive bibliography of Matheron’s publications, this is a crucial collection for anyone seeking to understand 20th-century continental Spinozism. Whether it be the established scholar looking for translations of difficult to find essays or the advanced undergraduate or graduate student in search of reliable secondary literature on Spinoza, this volume is the perfect introduction to Matheron’s rigorous, masterful, and original interpretation of Spinoza’s philosophy.
Thomas L. Pangle
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780226642475
- eISBN:
- 9780226642505
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226642505.003.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
The most obvious limitation of, or constraint upon, the Memorabilia is that the work is overwhelmingly defensive—in purpose, message, and tone. To demonstrate that Socrates lived in accordance with ...
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The most obvious limitation of, or constraint upon, the Memorabilia is that the work is overwhelmingly defensive—in purpose, message, and tone. To demonstrate that Socrates lived in accordance with unwritten as well as written lawful custom (nomos), Xenophon highlights throughout the Memorabilia all the ways in which Socrates through his virtues—not only of justice, but of piety and self-control and moderation and prudence—resembled conventionally respectable “gentlemen”. In contrast, the three shorter Socratic writings of Xenophon, led by The Economist, make more vivid how Socrates, in his virtues, or in his peculiar version of “gentlemanliness,” and in his conception of scientific household management or “economics,” diverges from normal gentlemen: from their virtues, from their “nobility-and-goodness,” and from their ideas of sound household management and governmental rule over fellow human beings. In the shorter Socratic writings, both Xenophon and his Socrates are somewhat less guarded, less reticent, more forthcoming than in the Memorabilia.Less
The most obvious limitation of, or constraint upon, the Memorabilia is that the work is overwhelmingly defensive—in purpose, message, and tone. To demonstrate that Socrates lived in accordance with unwritten as well as written lawful custom (nomos), Xenophon highlights throughout the Memorabilia all the ways in which Socrates through his virtues—not only of justice, but of piety and self-control and moderation and prudence—resembled conventionally respectable “gentlemen”. In contrast, the three shorter Socratic writings of Xenophon, led by The Economist, make more vivid how Socrates, in his virtues, or in his peculiar version of “gentlemanliness,” and in his conception of scientific household management or “economics,” diverges from normal gentlemen: from their virtues, from their “nobility-and-goodness,” and from their ideas of sound household management and governmental rule over fellow human beings. In the shorter Socratic writings, both Xenophon and his Socrates are somewhat less guarded, less reticent, more forthcoming than in the Memorabilia.
Xenophon
Gregory A. McBrayer (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781501718496
- eISBN:
- 9781501718519
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501718496.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
This volume contains new, literal translations of Xenophon’s eight shorter writings along with interpretive essays on each work: Hiero, or The Skilled Tyrant; Agesilaus; Regime of the Lacedaemonians; ...
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This volume contains new, literal translations of Xenophon’s eight shorter writings along with interpretive essays on each work: Hiero, or The Skilled Tyrant; Agesilaus; Regime of the Lacedaemonians; Regime of the Athenians; Ways and Means, or On Revenue; The Skilled Cavalry Commander; On Horsemanship; and The One Skilled at Hunting with Dogs. The Agesilaos is a eulogy of a Spartan king, and the Hiero, or the Skilled Tyrant recounts a searching dialogue between a poet and a tyrant. The Regime of the Lacedaemonians presents itself as a laudatory examination of what turns out to be an oligarchic regime of a certain type, while The Regime of the Athenians offers an unflattering picture of a democratic regime. Ways and Means, or On Revenues offers suggestions on how to improve the political economy of Athens’ troubled democracy. The other three works included here—The Skilled Cavalry Commander, On Horsemanship, and The One Skilled at Hunting with Dogs—treat skills that are appropriate for gentlemen. By bringing together Xenophon’s shorter writings, this volume aims to help all those interested in Xenophon understand better the core of his thought, political as well as philosophic.Less
This volume contains new, literal translations of Xenophon’s eight shorter writings along with interpretive essays on each work: Hiero, or The Skilled Tyrant; Agesilaus; Regime of the Lacedaemonians; Regime of the Athenians; Ways and Means, or On Revenue; The Skilled Cavalry Commander; On Horsemanship; and The One Skilled at Hunting with Dogs. The Agesilaos is a eulogy of a Spartan king, and the Hiero, or the Skilled Tyrant recounts a searching dialogue between a poet and a tyrant. The Regime of the Lacedaemonians presents itself as a laudatory examination of what turns out to be an oligarchic regime of a certain type, while The Regime of the Athenians offers an unflattering picture of a democratic regime. Ways and Means, or On Revenues offers suggestions on how to improve the political economy of Athens’ troubled democracy. The other three works included here—The Skilled Cavalry Commander, On Horsemanship, and The One Skilled at Hunting with Dogs—treat skills that are appropriate for gentlemen. By bringing together Xenophon’s shorter writings, this volume aims to help all those interested in Xenophon understand better the core of his thought, political as well as philosophic.
Christian Gilliam
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474417884
- eISBN:
- 9781474435178
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474417884.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
Christian Gilliam argues that a philosophy of ‘pure’ immanence is integral to the development of an alternative understanding of ‘the political’; one that re-orients our understanding of the self ...
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Christian Gilliam argues that a philosophy of ‘pure’ immanence is integral to the development of an alternative understanding of ‘the political’; one that re-orients our understanding of the self toward the concept of an unconscious or ‘micropolitical’ life of desire. He argues that here, in this ‘life’, is where the power relations integral to the continuation of post-industrial capitalism are most present and most at stake.
Through proving its philosophical context, lineage and political import, Gilliam ultimately justifies the conceptual necessity of immanence in understanding politics and resistance, thereby challenging the claim that ontologies of ‘pure’ immanence are either apolitical or politically incoherent.Less
Christian Gilliam argues that a philosophy of ‘pure’ immanence is integral to the development of an alternative understanding of ‘the political’; one that re-orients our understanding of the self toward the concept of an unconscious or ‘micropolitical’ life of desire. He argues that here, in this ‘life’, is where the power relations integral to the continuation of post-industrial capitalism are most present and most at stake.
Through proving its philosophical context, lineage and political import, Gilliam ultimately justifies the conceptual necessity of immanence in understanding politics and resistance, thereby challenging the claim that ontologies of ‘pure’ immanence are either apolitical or politically incoherent.
Eli Park Sorensen
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- May 2022
- ISBN:
- 9781474481847
- eISBN:
- 9781399509145
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474481847.003.0008
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
The overall aim of this book has been to explore the political potential of sci-fi film from the late twentieth century to the beginning of the twenty-first century. Sci-fi is perhaps the aesthetic ...
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The overall aim of this book has been to explore the political potential of sci-fi film from the late twentieth century to the beginning of the twenty-first century. Sci-fi is perhaps the aesthetic genre most insistently devoted to exploring the potential of the future, and more specifically the collective future. It is the latter that links the sci-fi genre eminently to the specifically political. From a political perspective, the individual future is relatively insignificant. How we live together is a profoundly political question, a balancing act between collective security concerns and individual freedom—now and later, in the future. Political philosophy is essentially the history of how such a balance may be reached in any given present, and how such a present may be prolonged; the genre of sci-fi more specifically asks important questions about how and under what circumstances such a balance may be preserved in the future.Less
The overall aim of this book has been to explore the political potential of sci-fi film from the late twentieth century to the beginning of the twenty-first century. Sci-fi is perhaps the aesthetic genre most insistently devoted to exploring the potential of the future, and more specifically the collective future. It is the latter that links the sci-fi genre eminently to the specifically political. From a political perspective, the individual future is relatively insignificant. How we live together is a profoundly political question, a balancing act between collective security concerns and individual freedom—now and later, in the future. Political philosophy is essentially the history of how such a balance may be reached in any given present, and how such a present may be prolonged; the genre of sci-fi more specifically asks important questions about how and under what circumstances such a balance may be preserved in the future.
Liam Shields
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780748691869
- eISBN:
- 9781474427029
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748691869.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
Whether people in some society are able to secure enough food, healthcare or education seems to be an important way of assessing that society. However, as a philosophical ideal sufficiency faces many ...
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Whether people in some society are able to secure enough food, healthcare or education seems to be an important way of assessing that society. However, as a philosophical ideal sufficiency faces many problems. Chief among these is that the ideal has been understood in ways that give rise to powerful objections that make it seem less attractive than ideals of equality. This book offers a new characterization of sufficiency as a demand of justice called shift-sufficientarianism. The book argues that shift-sufficientarianism is an attractive ideal that is indispensable to sound assessments of societies. In particular, the author argues that securing enough education, enough autonomy and a good enough upbringing are important requirements of any just society. This author also goes on to argue that this understanding of sufficiency sheds important light on what we may owe to non-compatriots as a matter of global justice.Less
Whether people in some society are able to secure enough food, healthcare or education seems to be an important way of assessing that society. However, as a philosophical ideal sufficiency faces many problems. Chief among these is that the ideal has been understood in ways that give rise to powerful objections that make it seem less attractive than ideals of equality. This book offers a new characterization of sufficiency as a demand of justice called shift-sufficientarianism. The book argues that shift-sufficientarianism is an attractive ideal that is indispensable to sound assessments of societies. In particular, the author argues that securing enough education, enough autonomy and a good enough upbringing are important requirements of any just society. This author also goes on to argue that this understanding of sufficiency sheds important light on what we may owe to non-compatriots as a matter of global justice.
Eoin Daly and Tom Hickey (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780719095283
- eISBN:
- 9781781708842
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719095283.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
Recent years have witnessed a revived interest in civic republicanism in Ireland, in tandem with a growing consciousness of republican ideas across the English-speaking world. Yet while republicanism ...
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Recent years have witnessed a revived interest in civic republicanism in Ireland, in tandem with a growing consciousness of republican ideas across the English-speaking world. Yet while republicanism is posited as a catch-all public philosophy and as a framework for political reform in Ireland and elsewhere, its content remains highly ambiguous and contested. Its implications for constitutional structure and constitutional theory are the subject of wide debate in both legal and political thought. In this book, Eoin Daly and Tom Hickey consider republican themes in the Irish constitutional tradition. While the Irish Constitution has been understood as oscillating between a liberal concern for individual freedoms against the state and a communitarian concern for promoting a shared identity, the authors argue that many of its central features and devices can be interpreted in a distinctively republican light – and specifically, as providing a framework for participation in self-government. They consider how institutions and concepts such as popular sovereignty, constitutional rights, parliamentary government and judicial review might be re-interpreted in light of the republican themes of civic virtue and freedom as non-domination.Less
Recent years have witnessed a revived interest in civic republicanism in Ireland, in tandem with a growing consciousness of republican ideas across the English-speaking world. Yet while republicanism is posited as a catch-all public philosophy and as a framework for political reform in Ireland and elsewhere, its content remains highly ambiguous and contested. Its implications for constitutional structure and constitutional theory are the subject of wide debate in both legal and political thought. In this book, Eoin Daly and Tom Hickey consider republican themes in the Irish constitutional tradition. While the Irish Constitution has been understood as oscillating between a liberal concern for individual freedoms against the state and a communitarian concern for promoting a shared identity, the authors argue that many of its central features and devices can be interpreted in a distinctively republican light – and specifically, as providing a framework for participation in self-government. They consider how institutions and concepts such as popular sovereignty, constitutional rights, parliamentary government and judicial review might be re-interpreted in light of the republican themes of civic virtue and freedom as non-domination.
Wes Furlotte
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474435536
- eISBN:
- 9781474453899
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474435536.003.0014
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Metaphysics/Epistemology
Concluding, the monograph attempts to address the major objections that might be raised against this rereading of Hegel’s final system. Specifically, it responds to the claim that such a reading ...
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Concluding, the monograph attempts to address the major objections that might be raised against this rereading of Hegel’s final system. Specifically, it responds to the claim that such a reading conflates the inchoate activity of spirit in nature with nature itself and so proceeds by way of conflation. Resisting this criticism, the conclusion returns to crucial passages from Hegel’s writings on nature that explicitly characterize nature as impotent and radically external—two features antithetical to the concept of spirit. Consequently, the conclusion argues that there must be a reticent independence assigned to the domain of nature that is not the result of misreading Hegel’s mature philosophy. Instead, this reticence is the very expression of material nature and it functions as a problem for the project of spirit, a problem which permeates the entirety of Hegel’s final system, specifically his philosophy of the real (Realphilosophie). The conclusion then highlights three symptomatic expressions of nature’s paradoxical and problematic status. Subsequently, the conclusion also shows how spirit’s project of freedom persistently transgresses two distinct senses of nature.Less
Concluding, the monograph attempts to address the major objections that might be raised against this rereading of Hegel’s final system. Specifically, it responds to the claim that such a reading conflates the inchoate activity of spirit in nature with nature itself and so proceeds by way of conflation. Resisting this criticism, the conclusion returns to crucial passages from Hegel’s writings on nature that explicitly characterize nature as impotent and radically external—two features antithetical to the concept of spirit. Consequently, the conclusion argues that there must be a reticent independence assigned to the domain of nature that is not the result of misreading Hegel’s mature philosophy. Instead, this reticence is the very expression of material nature and it functions as a problem for the project of spirit, a problem which permeates the entirety of Hegel’s final system, specifically his philosophy of the real (Realphilosophie). The conclusion then highlights three symptomatic expressions of nature’s paradoxical and problematic status. Subsequently, the conclusion also shows how spirit’s project of freedom persistently transgresses two distinct senses of nature.
Anke Snoek
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474423632
- eISBN:
- 9781474438520
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474423632.003.0016
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
From his earliest book (The Man Without Content) to one of his latest (The Use of Bodies) Agamben’s work is inhabited by Kafka’s characters: messengers, assistants, land surveyors, students, ...
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From his earliest book (The Man Without Content) to one of his latest (The Use of Bodies) Agamben’s work is inhabited by Kafka’s characters: messengers, assistants, land surveyors, students, courtroom clerks, the bobbin Odradek and the mythical horse Bucephalus which becomes an attorney. The references to Kafka are often brief but in strategic places: Kafka frequently pops up in the title of a chapter, or at the end of one of Agamben’s arguments to illustrate and further deepen the point he has just made. Agamben regularly states that Kafka is the author who has most coherently or profoundly addressed the issues that he is working on (MC 112); however, the work of the Prague author has not only influenced the content of Agamben’s philosophy, but also his style.
Less
From his earliest book (The Man Without Content) to one of his latest (The Use of Bodies) Agamben’s work is inhabited by Kafka’s characters: messengers, assistants, land surveyors, students, courtroom clerks, the bobbin Odradek and the mythical horse Bucephalus which becomes an attorney. The references to Kafka are often brief but in strategic places: Kafka frequently pops up in the title of a chapter, or at the end of one of Agamben’s arguments to illustrate and further deepen the point he has just made. Agamben regularly states that Kafka is the author who has most coherently or profoundly addressed the issues that he is working on (MC 112); however, the work of the Prague author has not only influenced the content of Agamben’s philosophy, but also his style.
Benjamin H. Bratton
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780262029575
- eISBN:
- 9780262330183
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262029575.003.0002
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
This chapter considers the history and future of political geography, particularly in relation to Carl Schmitt’s notion of the nomos. Nomos refers to both the essential logic by which political ...
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This chapter considers the history and future of political geography, particularly in relation to Carl Schmitt’s notion of the nomos. Nomos refers to both the essential logic by which political sovereignty subdivides space as well as the stable geopolitical order that emerges in the image of that logic. The architecture of Modern Nation-States codified by the Treaty of Westphalia is exemplary. The chapter discusses how planetary-scale computation challenges the “horizontal” model of the Westphalian global system, and argues that we must also now include “vertical” and stratified understandings of political geography as normative, not exceptional. It asks whether we can identify a nomos of the Cloud (as in Cloud Computing) and what the specific forms of sovereignty it might enable, demand or preclude.Less
This chapter considers the history and future of political geography, particularly in relation to Carl Schmitt’s notion of the nomos. Nomos refers to both the essential logic by which political sovereignty subdivides space as well as the stable geopolitical order that emerges in the image of that logic. The architecture of Modern Nation-States codified by the Treaty of Westphalia is exemplary. The chapter discusses how planetary-scale computation challenges the “horizontal” model of the Westphalian global system, and argues that we must also now include “vertical” and stratified understandings of political geography as normative, not exceptional. It asks whether we can identify a nomos of the Cloud (as in Cloud Computing) and what the specific forms of sovereignty it might enable, demand or preclude.
Kent Greenawalt
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780199756162
- eISBN:
- 9780190608897
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199756162.003.0003
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
The second essay, “On Religion and Politics in Liberal Democracies,” addresses whether citizens, legislators, and judges may sometimes rely on religious grounds they find convincing. It urges that ...
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The second essay, “On Religion and Politics in Liberal Democracies,” addresses whether citizens, legislators, and judges may sometimes rely on religious grounds they find convincing. It urges that this is most appropriate when public reason provides no definite answer, for example regarding the status of highly capable nonhuman animals. The constraints of public reason are greatest on judges, less on legislators, and least on private citizens. For legislators, the constraints on appropriate discourse may exceed those regarding all their actual bases of decision. Basic constraints of public reason are not generally imposed by the law itself: individuals must determine both what constitute those reasons and how far they should be constrained by them. Given various common misconceptions, this makes any claim of complete restraint depend far too heavily on how people see things. The essay challenges various distinctions articulated by John Rawls in his influential development of the basic concepts.Less
The second essay, “On Religion and Politics in Liberal Democracies,” addresses whether citizens, legislators, and judges may sometimes rely on religious grounds they find convincing. It urges that this is most appropriate when public reason provides no definite answer, for example regarding the status of highly capable nonhuman animals. The constraints of public reason are greatest on judges, less on legislators, and least on private citizens. For legislators, the constraints on appropriate discourse may exceed those regarding all their actual bases of decision. Basic constraints of public reason are not generally imposed by the law itself: individuals must determine both what constitute those reasons and how far they should be constrained by them. Given various common misconceptions, this makes any claim of complete restraint depend far too heavily on how people see things. The essay challenges various distinctions articulated by John Rawls in his influential development of the basic concepts.