본 논문은 니체의 자유의지 개념과 실천 교설 사이의 비일관성과 관련하여, 기존의 ‘양립론’과 ‘비양립론’의 주요 논증을 비판적으로 검토하고, 새로운 대안을 제시하기 위한 목적으로 작성되었다. 비양립론에 의하면, 니체는 자유의지를 인과적으로 무력한 ‘부대현상’으로 이해하기에, 그의 실천 교설은 보편성을 확보하는 데에 실패했다고 본다. 반면, 양립론에 의하면, 니체는 새로운 형태의 자유 개념을 제시하였기 때문에 실천 교설과의 비일관성은 존재하지 않는다고 주장한다. 그러나 기존의 비양립론은 니체의 자유의지 개념이 20세기 형이상학의 논쟁보다 더 복잡한 맥락에서 탐구된 결과물이며, 따라서 더 신중한 접근을 할 필요가 있다는 점을 간과하고 있다. 반면, 기존의 (...) 양립론은 니체가 제시했다는 새로운 형태의 자유 개념이 형이상학적 논쟁의 성과에 비추어 보아 정확히 어떤 형태인지에 관해 지적하고 있지 못하다. 본 논문은 ‘욕구들의 생성과 충돌’로 보는 니체의 자유의지 개념을 ‘사건-인과 자유론(event-causation libertarianism)’으로 독해할 만한 근거가 있으며, 이러한 독해가 실천 교설과의 비일관성 문제를 해결할 수 있는 가장 설득력 있는 견해임을 보여주고자 한다. (shrink)

I define and defend a non-democratic authority with the power to annul the decisions of democratic branches of government when such decisions infringe upon citizens’ basic rights and liberties. I refer to this non-democratic authority as Liberal Aristocracy. The argument for Liberal Aristocracy has two parts: the first part demonstrates that Liberal Aristocracy will arrive at decisions that further the moral end of sustaining citizens’ rights; the second part holds that Liberal Aristocracy is a moral means (...) to this end. First, I discuss two existing arguments for non-democratic authorities – Platonic Aristocracy and Constitutional Court Judges. I claim that Plato’s argument is unsuccessful because it relies on controversial metaethical premises that are unlikely to provide a basis for rights. Liberal justifications of the power of Constitutional Courts are argued to be incomplete because they do not designate an authority that is qualified to decide when citizens’ rights are infringed by democratic branches of government. Nor do they show that such an authority is in fact required if citizens’ rights are to be protected. In order to supplement the liberal argument for the power of Constitutional Courts I develop an account of Liberal Aristocracy, which rests on the idea that Constitutional Court Judges should possess moral expertise. I claim that moral expertise qualifies Judges to decide when citizens’ rights are violated by democratic decisions. Furthermore, I argue that decisions taken democratically will sometimes encroach on citizens’ rights. Claims and are shown to justify the non-democratic authority of Liberal Aristocracy. The second part of the argument for Liberal Aristocracy examines arguments to the effect that only democratic procedures can be morally legitimate, even if other decision procedures arrive at outcomes that provide greater support for citizens’ rights. Three claims are offered in support of this idea. First, democracy is claimed to be necessary to support deliberation. Second, democracy is seen as the only procedure that can uphold the value of autonomy by securing citizens’ consent. Third, it is argued that non-democratic procedures will not recognise the equal status of citizens. I hold that these three claims are false and that Liberal Aristocratic procedures can be morally legitimate. (shrink)

The 18th-century French political theorist the Baron de Montesquieu described honour as the ‘principle’ – or animating force – of a well-functioning monarchy, which he thought the appropriate regime type for an economically unequal society extended over a broad territory. Existing literature often presents this honour in terms of lofty ambition, the desire for preference and distinction, a spring for political agency or a spur to the most admirable kind of conduct in public life and the performance of great deeds. (...) Perhaps so. But it also seems to involve quite a bit of what the contemporary philosopher Aaron James calls ‘being an asshole’, and the article will explore what happens to Montesquieu’s political theory of monarchy – which is foundational for an understanding of modern politics – when we reverse the usual perspective and consider it through the lens of the arsehole aristocracy. (shrink)

Aristocracy of sex -- Industrial aristocracy -- Expertocracy -- Mass and elite politics -- Democratic religion.

Leftist political theory remains trapped between two dominant conceptions of sovereignty: the liberal conception of popular sovereignty and the decisionist conception of sovereignty as the power to declare a state of exception. This essay offers a historical critique of the liberal and decisionist conceptions of sovereignty and develops a descriptive theory of aristocratic sovereignty, which is more suited to the history and the needs of radical political theory and praxis. By tracing the genealogy of sovereignty through early modern European political (...) thought to the founding of the United States, this essay reveals the debilitating shortcoming of notions of sovereignty derived from both Carl Schmitt and the liberal tradition and provides a basis for a distinctively radical analysis of the sovereign aristocracy in Amerika. (shrink)

The author discusses Rawls’s conception of socioeconomic justice, Democratic Equality. He contrasts Rawls’s account, which includes the difference principle constrained by the principle of fair equality of opportunity, with Natural Aristocracy, which constrains the difference principle only by the principle of careers open to talents. According to the author, many of Rawls’s own arguments support NaturalAristocracy over Democratic Equality. In particular, Natural Aristocracy appears well placed to avoid a challenge that naturally arises in consideration of Democratic Equality, with (...) respect to which formal distributive principle should deal with social and natural causes of inequality. The challenge is to cite a morally relevant distinction which supports the appropriateness of dealing with natural causes of inequality differently to those generated by social causes. In support of his proposal, the author also appeals to certain arguments in Rawls’s Political Liberalism. (shrink)

The structure of Russian science of the XIX century was dominated by state forms of its organization. At the same time, there were also a few private (non-governmental) forms of research communities. One of the little-studied phenomena of scientific privacy is the so-called “kruzhok” (a little circle in Russian). The article examines the history of the formation and activity of one of such “kruzhoks”, formed in the 1880s–1890s around Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich, who was seriously engaged in research in the (...) field of lepidopterology (the branch of entomology studying butterflies, Lepidoptera). The role and significance of this “kruzhok” for the development of descriptive entomology in the situation of its weak institutionalization in Russia at the end of the XIX century are briefly considered, the course of scientific research of the Grand Duke and his entourage and the reasons for the termination of their activity are discussed. The history of this informal association is interpreted by us as a manifestation of the purposeful life-making of the Grand Duke, who thus tried to professionalize his hobby and enter the scientific community of entomologists on an equal footing, without breaking with his social environment and without going beyond the behavioral norms established by society for persons of his status. It is shown that the Nikolai Mikhailovich’s “kruzhok” became not only an instrument of his life-making, but also an influential center of Russian lepidopterology, the development of which was thereby given a powerful impetus. (shrink)

In the practice of education and educational reforms today ‘meritocracy’ is a prevalent mode of thinking and discourse. Behind political and economic debates over the just distribution of education benefits, other kinds of philosophical issues, concerning the question of democracy, await to be addressed. As a means of evoking a language more subtle than what is offered by political and economic solutions, I shall discuss Ralph Waldo Emerson's idea of perfectionism, particularly his ideas of the ‘gleam of light’ and ‘genius’, (...) as an alternative mode of thinking of human power. Through this Emersonian lens, a provocative shift will be made from meritocracy and ‘mediocracy’ to aristocracy. Emersonian aristocracy destabilizes balanced measures and prevailing discourse about fairness and justice, and makes us reconsider how to achieve a just society in democracy. As an educational implication, I shall propose the idea of citizenship without inclusion—a vision of education for a democratic society in which we learn to live as and with the Great Man. (shrink)

Alliances in the aristocracy of the Republic, that theme has engaged eager and assiduous study in the recent time. Not without the danger of exaggerations and schematism. In consequence, abundant controversy. Moreover, tedium ensues when the method is applied to periods devoid of testimony about persons who can be grasped as persons.

Is there something about the deep logic of democracy that destines it to succeed in the world? Democracy, the form of politics that includes everyone as equals – does it perhaps suit human nature better than the alternatives? After all, surely any person who is excluded from the decision-making in a society will be more liable to rise up against it. From ancient thinkers like Seneca to contemporary thinkers like Francis Fukuyama, we can see some version of this line of (...) thought. Seneca thought that tyrannies could never last long; Fukuyama famously argued that liberal democracy is the end of history. I want to focus instead on the person credited with giving the most direct and uncompromising statement of this thought: Benedict de Spinoza. However, in this article, I argue to the contrary that Spinoza’s view of aristocracy should give pause to radical democrats. He does not see a historical movement towards democracy, nor does he see the superiority of democracy as written into human nature. (shrink)

According to a recent interpretive orthodoxy, Spinoza is a profoundly democratic theorist of state authority. I reject this orthodoxy. To be sure, for Spinoza, a political order succeeds in proportion as it harnesses the power of the people within it. However, Spinoza shows that political inclusion is only one possible strategy to this end; equally if not more useful is political exclusion, so long as it maintains what I call the depoliticised acquiescence of those excluded.

In Tocqueville Between Two Worlds, Sheldon Wolin offers a challenging reinterpretation of Tocqueville as a political thinker. Among Wolin’s major themes is a novel concept of the place of 'aristocracy' in Tocqueville's theory and practice of politics. Wolin asserts that, contrary to scholarly consensus, Tocqueville was engaged in a lifelong pursuit of anciennete, the retrieval of a rapidly disappearing aristocratic past in order to counteract new forms of despotism. However, a careful analysis of the whole range of Tocqueville’s theoretical (...) works and political action leads one to the opposite conclusion. None of his major works appears to corroborate Wolin's thesis. Both Tocqueville's theory and practice were deeply informed by a contrasting premise. The only possible means of sustaining modern liberty and avoiding, or curing, modern despotism lay in a wholehearted acceptance of the irretrievable triumph of modern democracy and its distinctive political institutions. (shrink)