Moral leadership matters. As world politics enters a new and dangerous era, judgment, constancy, moral purpose, and a willingness to overcome partisan politicking are essential for America's leaders. Tempered Strength finds the alternative standard of leadership that Americans are seeking in the classical philosophy of prudence. Ethan Fishman's new work brings together leading American political scientists—including Ronald Beiner, Kenneth L. Deutsch, and George Anastaplo—to discuss the evolution of a standard of prudential leadership both reasonable in nature and practical in (...) scope. Section One studies the meaning of prudence and its evolution in the history of political science from Aristotelian phronesis to Xenophon, Thomas Aquinas, Edmund Burke, and Michael Oakeshott. Section Two demonstrates how the theory of prudential leadership can be applied to practical political issues. (shrink)

In Dangerous Minds, Ronald Beiner traces the deeper philosophical roots of such far-right ideologues as Richard Spencer, Aleksandr Dugin, and Steve Bannon, to the writings of Nietzsche and Heidegger—and specifically to the aspects of their thought that express revulsion for the liberal-democratic view of life.

Civil Religion offers philosophical commentaries on more than twenty thinkers stretching from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. The book examines four important traditions within the history of modern political philosophy and delves into how each of them addresses the problem of religion. Two of these traditions pursue projects of domesticating religion. The civil religion tradition, principally defined by Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Rousseau, seeks to domesticate religion by putting it solidly in the service of politics. The liberal tradition pursues an (...) alternative strategy of domestication by seeking to put as much distance as possible between religion and politics. Modern theocracy is a militant reaction against liberalism, and it reverses the relationship of subordination asserted by civil religion: it puts politics directly in the service of religion. Finally, a fourth tradition is defined by Nietzsche and Heidegger. Aspects of their thought are not just modern, but hyper-modern, yet they manifest an often-hysterical reaction against liberalism that is fundamentally shared with the theocratic tradition. Together, these four traditions compose a vital dialogue that carries us to the heart of political philosophy itself. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt develops an immensely attractive account of `judgment', both as a supremely important human mental capacity and with respect to its place in political life, and this account rightly draws attention from a broad array of political theorists. Her essay `Truth and Politics' is one of the texts in which she first articulates this account of judgment. However, the account of truth offered in that essay is full of both puzzles and problems — notably, the puzzle of why Arendt, (...) committed as she is to elevating the dignity of political life, thinks she needs to drive a wedge between politics and truth to the extent that she does in her account of the relation between them. The question pursued in this article is: why does Arendt think that, in order to give judgment and opinion the dignity that are appropriate to them, she needs, as it were, to slander truth as `coercive', `tyrannical', and so on? (shrink)

In the wake of the revolutions of 1989, the ongoing political turmoil in the Soviet Union, and the democratization of most of Latin America, what is the task of political theorists? Ronald Beiner's invigorating critique of liberal theory and liberal practices takes on the shibboleths of modern Western discourse. He confronts the aridity of liberal societies that possess incommensurable "values" and "rights," but no principles. To Beiner, this neutralist view is both a false description of liberal society and (...) an incoherent political ideal. Rather, he encourages the theorist to remain faithful to the important task of questioning and criticism, instead of serving as a source of ideological reassurance about our own superiority. Beiner looks to the Socratic tradition for guidance. Permitting ethos to replace values, and discourse about "the good" to replace talk about "rights," the theorist is able to reorder social priorities. Considered in this light, the liberal political philosophy of the 1970s and 1980s appears insufficiently Socratic, as does a liberal way of life that presents itself as a model of imitation. Polemical, impassioned, and brilliantly argued, What's the Matter with Liberalism? is essential reading for everyone who cares about contemporary theory and the future of liberal society. In the wake of the revolutions of 1989, the ongoing political turmoil in the Soviet Union, and the democratization of most of Latin America, what is the task of political theorists? Ronald Beiner's invigorating critique of liberal theory and liberal practices takes on the shibboleths of modern Western discourse. He confronts the aridity of liberal societies that possess incommensurable "values" and "rights," but no principles. To Beiner, this neutralist view is both a false description of liberal society and an incoherent political ideal. Rather, he encourages the theorist to remain faithful to the important task of questioning and criticism, instead of serving as a source of ideological reassurance about our own superiority. Beiner looks to the Socratic tradition for guidance. Permitting ethos to replace values, and discourse about "the good" to replace talk about "rights," the theorist is able to reorder social priorities. Considered in this light, the liberal political philosophy of the 1970s and 1980s appears insufficiently Socratic, as does a liberal way of life that presents itself as a model of imitation. Polemical, impassioned, and brilliantly argued, What's the Matter with Liberalism? is essential reading for everyone who cares about contemporary theory and the future of liberal society. (shrink)

The ethical value—and to some scholars, necessity—of providing trial patients with post-trial access (PTA) to an investigational drug has been subject to significant attention in the field of research ethics. Although no consensus has emerged, it seems clear that, in some trial contexts, various factors make PTA particularly appropriate. We outline the atypical aspects of psychedelic clinical trials that support the case for introducing the provision of PTA within research in this field, including the broader legal status of psychedelics, the (...) nature of the researcher-therapist/participant relationship, and the extended time-frame of the full therapeutic process. As is increasingly understood, the efficacy of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy is driven as much by extrapharmacological elements and the cultural therapeutic container as by the drug itself. As such, we also advocate for a refocusing of attention from post-trial access to a broader concept encompassing other elements of post-trial care. We provide an overview of some of the potential post-trial care provisions that may be appropriate in psychedelic clinical trials. Although the World Medical Association’s Declaration of Helsinki calls on researchers, sponsors, and governments to make provisions for post-trial access, such provision may feel impracticable or out-of-reach within psychedelic trials that are already constrained by a high resource demand and significant bureaucratic burden. We show how conceiving of post-trial provision as an integral site of the research process, and an appropriate destination for research funding, will serve to develop the infrastructure necessary for the post-legalisation psychedelic medicine ecosystem. (shrink)

Fourteen contributions from international academics examine the themes of judgment, imagination, and politics in the philosophy of Hannah Arendt and Immanuel Kant. In the introduction, Beiner and Nedelsky (both political science, U. of Toronto) discuss the problem of political judgment and the recognition of subjectivity. Other topics include the challenges of diversity to the law, the public use of reason, and Arendt's lectures on Kant. c. Book News Inc.

"Williams's masterful translation satisfies (at last!) a long-standing need. There are lots of good translations of Augustine's great work, but until now we have been forced to choose between those that strive to replicate in English something of the majesty and beauty of Augustine's Latin style and those that opt instead to convey the careful precision of his philosophical terminology and argumentation. Finally, Williams has succeeded in capturing both sides of Augustine's mind in a richly evocative, impeccably reliable, elegantly readable (...) presentation of one of the most impressive achievements in Western thought--Augustine's Confessions." --Scott MacDonald, Professor of Philosophy and Norma K. Regan Professor in Christian Studies, Cornell University. (shrink)

What is political philosophy? Ronald Beiner makes the case that it is centrally defined by supremely ambitious reflection on the ends of life. We pursue this reflection by exposing ourselves to, and participating in, a perennial dialogue among epic theorists who articulate grand visions of what constitutes the authentic good for human beings. Who are these epic theorists, and what are their strengths and weaknesses? Beiner selects a dozen leading candidates: Arendt, Oakeshott, Strauss, Löwith, Voegelin, Weil, Gadamer, Habermas, (...) Foucault, MacIntyre, Rawls, and Rorty. In each case, he shows both why the political philosophies continue to be intellectually compelling and why they are problematic or can be challenged in various ways. In this sense, Political Philosophy attempts to draw up a balance sheet for political philosophy in the twentieth century, by identifying a canon of towering contributions and reviewing the extent to which they fulfil their intellectual aspirations. (shrink)

The Moral Nexus develops and defends a new interpretation of morality—namely, as a set of requirements that connect agents normatively to other persons in a nexus of moral relations. According to this relational interpretation, moral demands are directed to other individuals, who have claims that the agent comply with these demands. Interpersonal morality, so conceived, is the domain of what we owe to each other, insofar as we are each persons with equal moral standing. The book offers an interpretative argument (...) for the relational approach. Specifically, it highlights neglected advantages of this way of understanding the moral domain; explores important theoretical and practical presuppositions of relational moral duties; and considers the normative implications of understanding morality in relational terms. The book features a novel defense of the relational approach to morality, which emphasizes the special significance that moral requirements have, both for agents who are deliberating about what to do and for those who stand to be affected by their actions. The book argues that relational moral requirements can be understood to link us to all individuals whose interests render them vulnerable to our agency, regardless of whether they stand in any prior relationship to us. It also offers fresh accounts of some of the moral phenomena that have seemed to resist treatment in relational terms, showing that the relational interpretation is a viable framework for understanding our specific moral obligations to other people. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt develops an immensely attractive account of `judgment', both as a supremely important human mental capacity and with respect to its place in political life, and this account rightly draws attention from a broad array of political theorists. Her essay `Truth and Politics' is one of the texts in which she first articulates this account of judgment. However, the account of truth offered in that essay is full of both puzzles and problems — notably, the puzzle of why Arendt, (...) committed as she is to elevating the dignity of political life, thinks she needs to drive a wedge between politics and truth to the extent that she does in her account of the relation between them. The question pursued in this article is: why does Arendt think that, in order to give judgment and opinion the dignity that are appropriate to them, she needs, as it were, to slander truth as `coercive', `tyrannical', and so on? (shrink)

This paper offers a restatement of the basic project of Hannah Arendt's Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy, tries to trace its theoretical motivation, and presents some criticisms of Arendt's interpretation of Kant's Critique of Judgment. Arendt's political philosophy as a whole is an attempt to ground the idea of human dignity on the publicly displayed 'words and deeds' that con stitute the realm of human affairs. This project involves a philo sophical response both to Plato's impugning of the dignity of (...) the polis and to Hegel's founding of modern historicism. The Kant Lectures bring this philosophical project to its completion because the enact ment of public deeds presupposes a company of judging spectators who draw meaning from the spectacle by judging and appreciating what is enacted. But this conception, precisely because it relates so deeply to Arendt's own theoretical impulse, leads to a sometimes onesided and misleading reading of Kant. Key Words: aesthetic judgment • dialogue/communication • Hannah Arendt • Immanuel Kant • political judgment. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Donald Trump’s thinking is too erratic and scattershot to count as a real system of ideas. Steve Bannon’s version of populism seems significantly more focused, more self-conscious, and hence more open to theory-based critical analysis, which this paper attempts to provide. That is not at all to say, however, that Bannon’s ideas achieve intellectual coherence or consistency. Close examination of the defining components of his worldview suggest the opposite. Still, engagement with contemporary right-populism cannot, or should not, avoid Bannon (...) and his attempts to cook up a new ideology. (shrink)

What is citizenship? This question goes back to the political philosophy of Aristotle, and how one answers it will be decisive in determining one's vision of political life. In the last ten to fifteen years, the question of citizenship has aroused a renewed set of extremely lively debates within political philosophy, and Iris Marion Young has certainly occupied an important place within these theoretical debates. In particular, Young—especially in her seminal article, Polity and Group Difference: A critique of the ideal (...) of universal citizenship—has presented a sharp challenge to all political theorists who are in some broad sense intellectually nourished by the tradition of civic republicanism and who think about the theme of citizenship under the influence of civic‐republican conceptions. In essence, Young's argument is that the practices of contemporary liberal society show that the implicit normative promise contained in the idea of a universal citizen identity has not been fulfilled, and therefore we must rethink this notion from the ground up. The purpose of my essay is to review the arguments that constitute Young's challenge to the civic‐republican tradition, with a view to clarifying the following questions: Is Young's political theory aimed at a reconstruction of the idea of citizenship on a normatively more sound basis? Or does her project imply a rejection of the idea of citizenship, and its displacement by an alternative understanding of political membership? (shrink)

In the last two centuries, our world would have been a safer place if philosophers such as Rousseau, Marx, and Nietzsche had not given intellectual encouragement to the radical ideologies of Jacobins, Stalinists, and fascists. Maybe the world would have been better off, from the standpoint of sound practice, if philosophers had engaged in only modest, decent theory, as did John Stuart Mill. Yet, as Ronald Beiner contends, the point of theory is not to think safe thoughts; the point (...) is to open intellectual horizons. In Philosophy in a Time of Lost Spirit, Beiner reflects on the dualism of theory and practice. The purpose of the theorist is not to offer sensible guidance on the conduct of social life but to test the boundaries of our vision of social order. Whereas the liberal citizen should embody the practical virtues of prudence and moderation, the theorist should be radical, probing, and immoderate. Looking back at the liberal-communitarian debate of the 1980s, Beiner recognizes that the antidote to our spiritless times lies neither in the embrace of community over individualism nor of individualism over community: both individual and community need to be submitted to radical questioning. It is by exposing ourselves to the challenge of fearless thinking encountered at the philosophical extremities that we are most likely to understand our own world at a deeper level. In this collection of essays and reviews, Ronald Beiner helps us to think critically about the thought-worlds of our foremost contemporary thinkers, including Hannah Arendt, Allan Bloom, Michel Foucault, Hans-Georg Gadamer, J¦rgen Habermas, Will Kymlicka, Christopher Lasch, Richard Rorty, Judith Shklar, Leo Strauss, Charles Taylor, and Michael Walzer. (shrink)

Richard Rorty, with his tendency to shock, to provoke, and to seize on Continental fashions, might be thought an unlikely liberal. Nevertheless, Rorty illustrates very well some of the characteristic weaknesses of contemporary liberalism. To the extent that he draws upon postmodern and deconstructionist sources, he highlights, and radicalizes, the liberal urge to break out of frozen identities and to destabilize static roles and fixed stations in life. His distinctive version of pragmatism yields a way of drawing liberal boundaries between (...) private and public, culture and justice. And his antifoundationalism helps to legitimize a typical liberal reluctance to engage in any very ambitious social criticism. What distinguishes Rorty's liberalism is its higher degree of candor, which at least acknowledges that a liberal vision of things, far from being “neutral” toward rival ideas of the good, is implicated in the defense of a particular way of life. (shrink)

According to one model of social theory, the social theorist seeks to give as rich an account as possible of a society's own self?understanding or self?interpretation. The second model, by contrast, involves challenging the society's self?understanding on the basis of a radical vision of ultimate standards of. judgment. Charles Taylor claims that neither of these models should be privileged over the other, that both are equiprimordial ways of theorizing social life. However, Taylor does privilege the first model in his own (...) practice of social theory?which can be summed up in the phrase, ?the rhetoric of understanding.? (shrink)

In recent years there has been a major revival of interest in the political philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Thinkers have looked to Kant's theories about knowledge, history, the moral self and autonomy, and nature and aesthetics to seek the foundations of their own political philosophy. This volume, written by established authorities on Kant as well as by new scholars in the field, illuminates the ways in which contemporary thinkers differ regarding Kantian philosophy and Kant's legacy to political and ethical theory. (...) The book contains essays by Patrick Riley, Lewis White Beck, Mary Gregor, and Richard L. Velkley that place Kant in the tradition of political philosophy; chapters by Dieter Henrich, Susan Shell, Michael W. Doyle, and Joseph M. Knippenberg that examine Kantian perspectives on history and politics; contributions by William A. Galston, Bernard Yack, William James Booth, and Ronald Beiner that judge the Kantian legacy; and classic discussions by John Rawls, Jürgen Habermas, Charles Taylor, and Hans-Georg Gadamer that present different perspectives on contemporary debates about Kant. (shrink)

Canadian theorists and philosophers are recognized internationally for their contributions to normative debates about citizenship, multiculturalism, and nationalism. The superb essays collected here reflect a broad range of contemporary political and philosophical issues: liberalism and citizenship; equality, justice, and gender; minority rights and identity; nationalism and self-determination; and the history of political philosophy.

Hannah Arendt's last philosophical work was an intended three-part project entitled _The Life of the Mind_. Unfortunately, Arendt lived to complete only the first two parts, _Thinking_ and _Willing_. Of the third, _Judging_, only the title page, with epigraphs from Cato and Goethe, was found after her death. As the titles suggest, Arendt conceived of her work as roughly parallel to the three _Critiques_ of Immanuel Kant. In fact, while she began work on _The Life of the Mind_, Arendt lectured (...) on "Kant's Political Philosophy," using the_ Critique of Judgment_ as her main text. The present volume brings Arendt's notes for these lectures together with other of her texts on the topic of judging and provides important clues to the likely direction of Arendt's thinking in this area. (shrink)

In the last few years, there has been a notable surge of interest in the themes of civil religion and the battle against “priestcraft” among historians of political thought. Examples include Eric Nelson’s The Hebrew Republic; Paul Rahe’s Against Throne and Altar; Jeffrey Collins’s The Allegiance of Thomas Hobbes; Jonathan Israel’s work on the legacy of Spinoza; Justin Champion’s work on John Toland; and my own book, Civil Religion. Within the intellectual space created by this recent scholarship, this article focuses (...) on relevant themes in the work of the one of the two thinkers who J.G.A. Pocock identified as most responsible for the “implantation of the values of civic humanism in English political thought” – namely, James Harrington (the other being the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury). (shrink)

Among the theorists commonly associated with the communitarian critique of liberalism of the 1980s (Charles Taylor, Michael Sandel, Michael Walzer, and Alasdair MacIntyre), MacIntyre is the one who offers the most radical set of challenges to ways of thinking that typify contemporary liberalism. But does MacIntyre's thought add up to a fully worked‐out political philosophy? The specifically political implications of MacIntyre's contributions to moral philosophy are surprisingly underdeveloped in MacIntyre's most influential writings, notwithstanding the rhetorical force of his polemics against (...) liberalism. Happily, MacIntyre has more recently published works in which his political vision is more clearly spelled out. (shrink)

Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger hold firmly entrenched places within the canon of modern philosophy. And rightly so: both are penetrating critics of liberal modernity. Yet we need to ask ourselves whether, as academics teaching these thinkers, we are doing full justice to the more disturbing aspects of their thought. They don’t simply interrogate the axioms of modern life as a subject for intellectual reflection; they have a praxis-oriented project to demolish the post-1789 moral-political dispensation that we tend to take (...) for granted and replace it with a new radically illiberal and anti-egalitarian dispensation. The task of reconsidering the perils of going too easy on these thinkers, or giving them the benefit of the doubt, is made more urgent by the apparent return of fascist or ‘fascoid’ modes of politics, and in particular, the emergence of a far-right intelligentsia all too keen to appropriate these thinkers for far-right purposes. (shrink)

In the last years of his life, Michel Foucault sought to address ?ethical? questions, having to do with the self's relation to itself, by trying to locate in the Roman Stoics and other philosophers of antiquity what he called ?an aesthetics of existence.? By this Foucault meant ?the idea of a self which has to be created as a work of art.? This article aims at a critical dialogue with the texts that compose this last phase of Foucault's thought, probing (...) the moral and political adequacy of Foucault's Nietzschean vision of the self's aesthetic self?creation. (shrink)

In The Stillborn God, Mark Lilla illuminates why “political theology” remains relevant today, in a world we might have assumed was thoroughly secularized. Lilla suggests that political theology is the norm, and that Christianity inadvertently gave birth to an exception. But the exception—liberal theology, or a separation of church and state that would give full play to religious impulses—was doomed. Religious impulses were not satisfied by mere moral sentiment, as offered by Rousseau and Kant; and Hegel opened the door to (...) messianism—and eventually to Hitler—by bringing a philosophical version of redemption into liberal theology. (shrink)