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)

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)

The latest collection of essays from the cutting edge of psychedelic research, based on talks given by their authors at Breaking Convention 2019, held at The University of Greenwich, London. The largest symposium of its kind, Breaking Convention features more than 120 academic presentations biennially, and is widely regarded as the foremost global platform for serious research into psychedelic science and culture. Within these pages are essays demonstrating a shift in psychedelia. Topics include sustainability, death, the shadow, archetypes, conservation, history, (...) phenomenology, war, power, madness, and the marriage of energy and matter. An eclectic collection that reflects the diverse array of speakers that present at Breaking Convention, and echoes the shifts currently occurring in psychedelia: a build up of tension before new ground is created. (shrink)

My purpose in this essay is to give an account of the kind of robust social criticism that I associate with the very enterprise of theory and to explain why the liberal philosophy that prevails in the contemporary academy is averse to this sort of social criticism. My purpose, then, is both to explore a certain conception of radical socialtheory and to defend this conception against familiar objections posed by those who represent the dominant liberal political philosophy.

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)

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 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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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.

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)

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)

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 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)

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 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)

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)

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 (novel) 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)

The liberal political morality developed in Will Kymlicka's Liberalism, Community and Culture is in various respects stronger and more coherent than many theories of Kymlicka's liberal predecessors and contemporaries, but it still suffers from important weaknesses that characterize other liberalisms. By ridding liberal theory of unnecessary defects, Kymlicka helps to clarify why even a liberalism capable of repelling the communitarian challenge will continue to be subject to theoretical criticism.

The central purpose of this ambitious book is to bring to bear theories of developmental psychology upon the liberal-communitarian debate of the 1980s: Lawrence Kohlberg meets Michael Sandel. The book is based on a conceptual contrast between "individualism" and "compound individuality". Crittenden insists that his aim is not merely to split the difference between liberal autonomy and communitarian Gemeinschaft; rather, his aim is to ascend to a higher synthesis, a genuine Aufhebung that incorporates what is valuable in opposing conceptions of (...) the self that he thinks are, by themselves and left unsynthesized, deficient. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 29.4 (1999) 116-127 [Access article in PDF] Authority, Solidarity, and the Political Economy of Identity: The Case of the United States David A. Hollinger Theorists of nationalism tend to circle around the United States like boy scouts who have spotted a clump of poison oak. The nationalism of the United States has figured small in the robust and wide-ranging discourse about nationalism that has involved sociologists, historians, political (...) scientists, philosophers, and literary scholars during the past two decades. Although there are significant exceptions to this pattern of avoidance--David Miller and Liah Greenfeld are convenient examples--several prominent cases illustrate the pattern. The United States is mentioned in only a single footnote in Ernest Gellner's Nations and Nationalism. The United States is given short shrift in three of the most important collections of the 1990s: Homi Bhabha's Nation and Narration, John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith's Nationalism, and Geoff Eley and Ronald G. Suny's Becoming National. Montserrat Guibernau mentions the United States only twice, and in passing, in her Nationalisms: The Nation-State and Nationalism in the Twentieth Century. The United States gets less attention than Canada and the Ukraine in John A. Hall's rich, state-of-the-art collection of 1998, The State of the Nation. Ronald Beiner's Theorizing Nationalism has much more to tell us about Quebec than about the United States, which is alluded to even in passing by only half the contributors to this valuable anthology of 1999. That "nationalism is unknown" in the United States is claimed by Elie Kedouri, even in the fourth edition of his classic text Nationalism [143]. But the most interesting case of all is that of nationalism's most creative and influential theorist, Benedict Anderson.Anderson provides only episodic treatment of the United States while discussing "creole nationalism" in his influential book Imagined Communities. To be sure, Anderson's demonstration of the similarities between a large number of similarly situated, comparably developing national projects among creole populations in the New World is no cause for complaint. It is a signal contribution, and still insufficiently absorbed by a persistently Europe-centered discourse about nationalism. Anderson's recent book, The Spectre of Comparisons, also deals episodically with the United States, which Anderson now tells us explicitly has proved "too sui generis for ready-to-hand" [336] comparisons with other national projects in the Western Hemisphere. Most of Spectre of Comparisons is about Southeast Asia, just as the preponderance of Imagined Communities is about Latin America. Fair enough. [End Page 116]My point is not to find fault with Anderson for being an Area Studies specialist in so many areas of the world outside the United States. Nor do I have any significant quarrel with what little Anderson does say about the United States. What is worth remarking upon is simply that even the least Eurocentric of our era's leading theorists of nationalism in general has emerged not from the study of the United States, but from the study of Southeast Asia and Latin America. This is less a comment about Anderson than about the class of theorists of which he is a member. The scholars whose careers focus on the United States are "area studies specialists" of a kind, but few of them have intervened tellingly in the cross-disciplinary discussion of nationalism. One who did was the historian David Potter, whose still-powerful article "Historian's Use of Nationalism and Vice Versa" was published nearly forty years ago but is rarely cited today.The poison oak effect among theorists of nationalism would not be worthy of notice were it not for one fact that might be expected to attract rather than repel these theorists: the United States is the most successful nationalist project in all of modern history. What makes it "successful" is its longevity, its absorption of a variety of peoples, and its sheer power. Two-and-one-quarter centuries after its founding and 135 years after its Civil War, it is by far the most powerful nation-state... (shrink)

In the literature on Hannah Arendt’s Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, two sorts of claim have been made by different interpreters. First, there is Beiner’s observation that there is a shift in Arendt’s thoughts on judgment, which has led to the idea that Arendt develops two distinct theories of judgment. The second sort of claim concerns Arendt’s use of Kant’s transcendental principles. At its core, it has led to the critique that Arendt detranscendentalizes — or empiricalizes — Kant, by (...) linking Kant’s judgments of taste to an empirical sociability. In this article, I argue against both of these claims. Early fragments of Arendt’s on judgment make clear that she develops only one theory of judgment. It is only that it is not until later in her life that she fully elaborates it. Nor does Arendt confuse Kant’s idea of enlarged thinking with an actual dialogue with others. In fact, Arendt introduces an interesting interdependence between judgment and speech, or communication. I develop my argument by first outlining the problems Arendt hoped to resolve via judgment. Through my reading of the Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, I show how Arendt interprets Kant’s Critique of Judgment not as his theory of aesthetic judgments, but as an answer to the more general question ‘How do I judge?’ I also clarify the difference Arendt draws between common sense and community sense. With community sense, Arendt uncovers a foundation not only for men as political beings but also for the idea of humanity. This finding is often overlooked in the literature. I conclude with another Arendtian distinction that is often overlooked, that between spectators and the solitary philosopher. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Saving Persuasion: A Defense of Rhetoric and JudgmentJames Arnt AuneSaving Persuasion: A Defense of Rhetoric and Judgment. Bryan Garsten. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2006. Pp. xii + 276. $45.00, hardcover.Something of what rhetoricians perennially run up against in modern political philosophy is illustrated by a recent article by Jürgen Habermas in Communication Theory. In a searing indictment of contemporary democracy and the mass media, Habermas writes, "Issues (...) of political discourse become assimilated into and absorbed by the modes and contents of entertainment. Besides personalization, the dramatization of events, the simplification of complex matters, and the vivid polarization of conflicts promote civic privatism and a mood of antipolitics" (2006, 422). Any historian of political communication in the Western democracies since the early nineteenth century is bound to be puzzled by this observation, for the emergence of mass democracy in the United States and England, at least, was characterized by intense popular participation in politics, precisely because political campaigns were heavily personalized, dramatized, simplified, and polarized. At the beginning of the article, Habermas praises Aristotle's Politics for its union of normative theorizing and empirical research, forgetting apparently that Aristotle also wrote a normative and empirical Rhetoric.That Habermas distrusts persuasion is obvious, but what is less clear is how the rhetoriphobia he shares with virtually every modern and contemporary philosopher came about. Bryan Garsten's book—the most important work on rhetoric and political philosophy since Ronald Beiner's Political Judgment—makes the startlingly original argument that the anti-rhetorical stance not only is grounded in a suspicion of private judgment, but that it can be traced back to Hobbes's, Rousseau's, and Kant's fear of the persuasive power of post-Reformation religious enthusiasm. Garsten not only provides provocative rereadings of these three fathers of modern liberalism but also extends our understanding of rhetorical and political judgment in Aristotle and Cicero. His analysis of the problems of persuasion and democracy in the twentieth century, while somewhat less satisfying, includes cogent criticisms of Rawls, Habermas, and theorists of deliberative democracy from what might be called a Ciceronian-Madisonian republican stance. [End Page 94]Saving Persuasion began as a doctoral dissertation in Government at Harvard, under the direction of Harvey Mansfield—after Allan Bloom, perhaps the most influential and controversial of the disciples of Leo Strauss. Although Garsten's book displays both the virtues and vices of Straussianism, it would be unfair to dismiss it as a neoconservative manifesto for rhetoric. (An enthusiastic review of the book appeared in the neoconservative Weekly Standard in February 2007, illustrating the curious fact that the Right "gets" rhetoric in ways that liberals and leftists do not (Deneen 2007).) Currently an assistant professor of political science at Yale, Garsten also received an MA from Cambridge in political theory and intellectual history. His book reveals the influence of Quentin Skinner and the Cambridge School of political theory, whose insistence on reading political philosophy in its historical context is the antithesis of the Straussian rejection of historicism. Garsten thus combines the Straussian emphasis on close reading with the contextual-rhetorical perspective of Skinner; this unique synthesis enables Garsten to solve some ongoing problems in textual interpretation (especially the relationship between Academic skepticism and Stoic natural law theory in Cicero) while developing interesting causal arguments about the rise of the public sphere in the eighteenth century, the decline of interest in rhetoric by liberal political theorists, and the pathologies of contemporary democratic politics.The book is divided into two main parts, following an introduction in which Garsten lays out his central thesis: "[A] politics of persuasion—in which people try to change one another's minds by appealing not only to reason but also to passions and sometimes even prejudices—is a mode of politics worth defending. Persuasion is worthwhile because it requires us to pay attention to our fellow citizens and to display a certain respect for their points of view and their judgments" (3). Persuasion rightly understood cannot be reduced either to manipulation or pandering. Rather, persuasion is inextricably linked to judgment, a human faculty threatened by modernity. Judgment is "the mental activity of responding to particular situations" by... (shrink)

A revista Revue Internationale de Philosophie publicou recentemente um número dedicado à filosofia de Alasdair MacIntyre, incluindo artigo dele respondendo às críticas apresentadas no volume por Vincent Descombes, John Rist, Ronald Beiner e James Bernard Murphy.

Hannah Arendt's theory of judgment has been the object of considerable interest in the last three decades. Political theorists in particular have hoped to find in her theory of judgment a viable account of how diverse modern societies can sustain a commitment to dialogue in the absence of shared basic principles. A number of scholars, however, have critiqued Arendt's account of judgment in various ways. This article examines criticisms from Richard Bernstein, Ronald Beiner, George Kateb, Jürgen Habermas, and Linda (...) Zerilli. On the basis of early sources from Arendt's manuscripts and Denktagebuch that have not been used in these debates, this article contends that Arendt's position on judgment can be defended against these critics and that her account warrants further exploration. (shrink)

Kantian political philosophy is a rich mine, and one which is hardly played out after two centuries. This substantial collection of essays validates both of those claims. Although Kant's moral philosophy has understandably received the lion's share of attention from contemporary philosophers, Beiner and Booth, both political scientists, have gathered essays which nicely illuminate the historical and political facets of Kantian practical philosophy. Anyone interested in Kantian ethics would benefit from a look at most of the essays included.

What is the principal function of political philosophy? This question has long been the source of discourse and debate, especially amongst those who practise this ancient art. For Ronald Beiner, the primary and proper function of political philosophy is, always has been, and forever will be, to expand our analytical horizons and thereby improve our ability to judge accurately the desirability and subsequent acceptability of our existing social order. Beiner contends, however, that contemporary theorists have so restricted the (...) scope and focus of their investigations that political philosophy is no longer able to fulfil its intended function. This is a theme which has animated much of Beiner’s recent work, and provides the foundation and focus for his book Philosophy in a Time of Lost Spirit: Essays on Contemporary Theory, the subject of this essay. (shrink)

Many of Hannah Arendt's readers argue that differences between her earlier and later work on judgment are significant enough to constitute an actual break or rupture. Of Arendt's completed works, the 'Postscriptum' to Thinking , the first volume of The Life of the Mind , and her Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy are widely considered to be her definitive remarks on judgment. These texts are privileged for two primary reasons. First, they were written after Arendt's controversial text, Eichmann in Jerusalem (...) . It was Arendt's recognition of the role that Eichmann's inability to think played in his war crimes which motivated her to analyse more fully not only the 'mental activity' of thinking, but those of willing, and judging as well. Second, in The Life of the Mind and the Kant Lectures , Arendt treats judgment as a distinct mental activity; in her earlier work judgment is connected to both politics and thought. In this essay I argue that while Arendt does indeed reformulate her notion of judgment, she does not depoliticize it. I begin by calling into question Ronald Beiner's claim that Arendt's later work on judgment can stand in for the unwritten third volume of The Life of the Mind . I then consider two more specific claims, the first of which is that judgment is relevant only in 'rare' times of 'crisis'. I argue that a crisis as Arendt understands it is not necessarily and merely a 'rare' and short-lived phenomenon. The effects of what Arendt refers to as 'dark times' are long-term and pervasive and, moreover, the function of making judgments within such an expanded context is politically germane. Second, I problematize the idea that conceiving of judgment as a distinct mental faculty necessarily disconnects it from politics. I examine the nature of Arendt's relationship to Kant and argue that she appropriates and reconceptualizes his work in such a way that judgment, while a distinct faculty, nonetheless retains its political relevance. I conclude by suggesting that the impulse to systematize Arendt's unsystematic treatment of judgment ought to be resisted. (shrink)

In What's the Matter with Liberalism? Ronald Beiner diagnoses the ills of liberalism along the three broad fronts where it is now widely challenged: its pretensions to moral neutrality; its lack of cultural standards; and its inability to deal with crime, unemployment, family breakdown, homeless‐ness, rampant consumerism, and global environmental and economic problems. But even in its minimalist classical formulation, liberalism entails a substantive moral position, and is committed to resisting the violations of rights that lead to the crises (...) with which Beiner is concerned. (shrink)

What is the principal function of political philosophy? This question has long been the source of discourse and debate, especially amongst those who practise this ancient art. For Ronald Beiner, the primary and proper function of political philosophy is, always has been, and forever will be, to expand our analytical horizons and thereby improve our ability to judge accurately the desirability and subsequent acceptability of our existing social order. Beiner contends, however, that contemporary theorists have so restricted the (...) scope and focus of their investigations that political philosophy is no longer able to fulfil its intended function. This is a theme which has animated much of Beiner’s recent work, and provides the foundation and focus for his book Philosophy in a Time of Lost Spirit: Essays on Contemporary Theory, the subject of this essay. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt v svoji interpretaciji Kantove teorije »razsodne moči«, le-to vzame iz njenega prvotnega sobesedila, razmisleka o dobrem in lepem, ter ji podeli politični pomen. Po eni strani Kantov pojem »reflektirajoče razsodne moči« Arendtovi omogoči prikaz določene nujnosti v politični presoji, za katero je značilno, da se vedno odvija v singularnih okoliščinah in se ne more sklicevati na nobeno vnaprejšnje, univerzalno ali splošno merilo. Po drugi strani Arendtova interpretira »nezainteresirano ugajanje«, ki je pri Kantu predpostavka za estetsko sodbo, kot nujni (...) pogoj teoretičnega motrenja zgodovine. Pomembni interpreti, kot sta Beiner in Vollrath, so na osnovi tega trdili, da gre za protislovje. V svojem besedilu želim pokazati, da se to protislovje razreši v »hermenevtični etiki«, ki jo je možno pokazati v delih Hannah Arendt, celo v najbolj zgodnjih.Hannah Arendt’s interpretation of Kant’s conception of the »power of judgment« extracts this faculty from its intended context, considerations of the beautiful and of nature, and grants it a political significance. On the one hand, Kant’s conception of a »reflective power of judgment« offers Arendt the possibility of referring to a certain necessity in political judgments; judgments which always take place under singular conditions and which cannot presume a universal or general measure. On the other hand, Arendt interprets »disinterested pleasure«, which is for Kant a presupposition of aesthetic judgment, as a necessary condition for theoretical considerations of history. Between these two aspects of Arendt’s Kant interpretation, important scholars, such as Beiner and Vollrath, have claimed to find a contradiction. In my article I would like to show that this contradiction is dissolved by way of a »hermeneutical ethics«, which can be identified throughout the work of Hannah Arendt, even in its earliest forms. (shrink)

A revision of George Kennedy's translation of, introdution to, and commentary on Aristotle's On Rhetoric. His translation is most accurate, his general introduction is the most thorough and insightful, and his brief introductions to sections of the work, along with his explanatory footnotes, are the most useful available.

Recent research on algebraic models of _quasi-Nelson logic_ has brought new attention to a number of classes of algebras which result from enriching (subreducts of) Heyting algebras with a special modal operator, known in the literature as a _nucleus_. Among these various algebraic structures, for which we employ the umbrella term _intuitionistic modal algebras_, some have been studied since at least the 1970s, usually within the framework of topology and sheaf theory. Others may seem more exotic, for their primitive operations (...) arise from algebraic terms of the intuitionistic modal language which have not been previously considered. We shall for instance investigate the variety of _weak implicative semilattices_, whose members are (non-necessarily distributive) meet semilattices endowed with a nucleus and an implication operation which is not a relative pseudo-complement but satisfies the postulates of Celani and Jansana’s strict implication. For each of these new classes of algebras we establish a representation and a topological duality which generalize the known ones for Heyting algebras enriched with a nucleus. (shrink)

This book consists of two parts: Hannah Arendt’s notes for a lecture series and seminar on Kant, which she gave in 1970, and an essay by Ronald Beiner on Arendt’s theory of judgment.

This book consists of two parts: Hannah Arendt’s notes for a lecture series and seminar on Kant, which she gave in 1970, and an essay by Ronald Beiner on Arendt’s theory of judgment.