The philosophy of Ayn Rand has had a role equal or greater than that of Milton Friedman or F.A. Hayek in shaping the contemporary neo-liberal consensus. Its impact was powerful on architects of Reaganomics such as Alan Greenspan, former Director of the World Bank, and the new breed of American industrialists who developed revolutionary information technologies in Silicon Valley. But what do we really know of Rand's philosophy? Is her gospel of selfishness really nothing more than a reiteration of a (...) quintessentially American "rugged individualism"? This book argues that Rand's philosophy can in fact be traced back to a moment, before World War I, when the work of a now-forgotten German philosopher called Max Stirner possessed an extraordinary appeal for writers and artists across Europe. The influence of Stirnerian Egoism upon that phase of intense creative innovation we now call Modernism was seminal. (shrink)

ABSTRACTJurgen Moltmann is one of the most important theologians in the XXth century who intended to leave aside a rigid and impassible notion of God. However, although Moltmann opens new ways to consider God’s life by stressing God’s passivity and relationality, the concepts of activity and self-sufficiency are still structuring the whole theological argument. I intend to show how our understanding of life has been shaped by a bio-theo-political paradigm of autarchy that defines life by the use of the Greek (...) prefix ‘autos,’ and how this paradigm is still working on Moltmann’s theology, who is not able yet to overcome the metaphysical impassible God. I claim that only a radical deconstruction of this paradigm and the construction of a new way of defining life by the use of the Greek prefix ‘syn’ could enable to think seriously on God’s relationality and love. (shrink)

The idea of a self-organized system brings both political and biological discourses together, for they both aim at explaining how a certain compound can achieve self-unity out of plurality. Whereas biological metaphors in politics have been much examined, political metaphors in biology have not. In this paper I intend to show how political metaphors can enlighten biological discourses, taking the work of Aristotle as a case-study. The relationship between the main elements of a living-body could be better understood within a (...) political scheme: the soul rules over the body through pneuma, its prime minister. This scheme entails, thus, to re-examine Aristotle’s definition of soul in the light of the key concept of pneuma, and to replace the hylemorphic explanation with a triadic one. On the one hand, soul is the entelecheia of the body as it keeps both the form and the end of the organism, which is its unity. On the other hand, the moving-efficacious principle that performs unity by circulating through the body, and by linking the body to its environment is pneuma. Therefore, the political formula: “the king does not govern” could shed light upon the structure of the living body: whereas the soul rules the body, pneuma governs it. Although Aristotle does not build his biology upon political concepts, metaphors are already there, shaping his explanations, within the bio-theo-political paradigm of autarchy. (shrink)

O caráter comunitário da filosofia de Aristóteles resulta das diversas formas de análise da política que o filósofo apresenta na articulação dos seguintes aspectos: a tese de que o ser humano é um animal político; o modo como esta é realizada na comunidade política, na qual o logos se manifesta como atividade discursiva compartilhada; o cultivo de determinadas virtudes ético-políticas presentes na convivência humana, sobretudo, a amizade; a autossuficiência do cidadão e o seu vínculo com a autarquia da comunidade política. (...) A retomada de um moderno conceito de comunidade, na tentativa de reatualizar os princípios gerais do comunitarismo aristotélico, pode ser compatível com determinadas teses liberais, sobretudo a questão da liberdade (autonomia) individual e o fato do pluralismo ético e político nas sociedades modernas. The communal nature of Aristotle's philosophy results from the various forms of analysis of the politics the philosopher shows in the articulation of the following features: the thesis that man is a political animal; the way the political community is accomplished through this thesis, in which the logos itself manifests as a shared discoursive activity; the cultivation of certain ethical and political virtues present in the human companionship, above all, friendship; citizen self-sufficiency and its relationship with the autarchy of the political community. In an attempt to bring up to date the general principles of Aristotelian communitarianism, the resumption of a modern concept of community can be compatible with certain liberal theses, especially the issue of individual freedom (autonomy) and the fact of the ethical and political pluralism in the modern societies. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Secrecy and Autonomy in Lewis CarrollSusan ShererVictorian novels quiver with morbid secrets and threatening discoveries. Unseen rooms, concealed doors, hidden boxes, masked faces, buried letters, all appear (and disappear) with striking regularity in the fiction of Victorian England. So many of these secret spaces contain children, and especially little girls, little girls in hidden spaces. The young Jane Eyre sits behind a curtain in the hidden window seat, escaping (...) the vindictive wrath of John Reed. Repulsed by her angry brother, Maggie Tulliver flees to the house attic, fantasizing that her family will fear that she has died. Little Dorrit withdraws from the common space of the Marshalsea into her private room above the prison, and Little Nell hides behind trees and walls, silently observing clandestine meetings. Finally the seven-year-old Alice falls down a rabbit-hole into a Wonderland, the dreamspace of her own psyche.Of these images, none can be more embedded in our cultural imagination than the child Alice dropping into the subterranean well of Wonderland. Indeed, of the many celebrated scenes in the Alice narratives, the most memorable, most potent, most quoted is Alice’s initial descent to the bottom of the rabbit-hole. The lastingness of this scene seems even greater when we realize that, although neither Carroll in Alice’s Adventures Underground nor Tenniel in the first edition of Wonderland illustrated the moment with a picture, it still became (along with the Mad Hatter’s tea party) one of the signature images of the Alice stories. Why, we must ask, did the Victorians retain, with a powerful tenacity, this vision of a little girl moving through a tight space toward the hidden world of Wonderland?The answer to this question is not—at least not wholly—that the scene simply represents a child’s metaphorical progress through the [End Page 1] birth canal 1 and that this, in turn, symbolizes some kind of rite of passage, a movement towards some deeper knowledge. For then how do we explain Alice’s conspicuous lack of internal development in both stories? Indeed, for a narrative that thematizes motion, Alice’s psychical growth remains disturbingly static. Throughout both narratives, Alice displays little emotional variation, for when she is not frustrated or anxious, she is, for the most part, vapid or expressionless. In fact, one is immediately struck by her coolness and indifference as she drops through the rabbit-hole. 2 Thus, because scene changes in Wonderland and Looking-Glass rarely betoken any emotional or intellectual modulations, Alice’s falling into Wonderland signals no internal transition.But the image does relocate her body and within this fictive world, location is everything. The scene gestures Alice’s departure, her separation, her movement towards an autonomy of which every child dreams when, in play, retreating to a hidden space. A child’s impulse to hide, to create a secret space, is one of the most compelling of all human wishes, the wish for autonomy and autarchy—“to be cut off from the word and yet owner of the world.” 3 Throughout Victorian literature, the fantasy of autonomy sets children dreaming of far-away worlds and hidden gardens. The young Cathy and Heathcliff flee to the isolated moors, filling the open, empty space with dreams of unrestricted freedom. Little Dorrit envisages the locked garden behind the Marshalsea as an alternative world to the foul prison atmosphere. And what are the Brontës’s Angria and Gondol but disconnected, self-governing realms imagined from the standpoint of childhood powerlessness? The image, then, of Alice’s fall begins to fulfill this powerful wish for autonomy, which culminates, finally, in Alice’s self-coronation at the end of Looking-Glass. Yet it is only within the child’s willing imagination that a secret space can encroach so closely upon autonomy, for as we shall see, secrecy and autonomy are irreconcilable not only in the demanding world of realism, but even in the more elastic world of Carrollian fantasy.IAlice’s descent into Wonderland and her entrance into the Looking-Glass kingdom would seem like ripe metaphors for Carroll to explore the thoughts and fantasies of Alice’s psyche. What could be more... (shrink)

The study of the post-Communist towns of East Europe and Russia does not only present the social sciences with the opening of a new field and the attraction of exoticism close at hand. They are a remarkable observatory of the complex relations which unite the material facets of urban life (extension of the built-up area, architectural forms, types of distribution of infrastructures and services) and the social structures (mode of government, nature of the economic initiative, expressions of sociability). In three-quarters (...) of a century for Russia, in fifty years for the countries of East Europe, cities many ages old were to have two changes of system: from liberal industrial capitalism to the controlled Communist economy, from interventionist autarchy to the globalized market. To give the lie to the poet (Baudelaire), towns change no faster than the hearts of mortals but beat to the rhythm of their continuities, their aspirations and their dreams. (shrink)

Elias’s view of democracy and German Sonderweg is discussed by looking at his analysis of intellectuals. How should the figuration of culture and politics be conceived at a time when the civilizing process could trigger both democracy and autarchy? It is argued that Elias’s answer was that democracy is always accompanied by discontinuity in existence, and that the Weimar Republic therefore needed intellectual spokespersons promoting tolerance of political uncertainty. Such democratic culture demanded a fair balance between involvement and detachment. Elias (...) claimed that intellectuals ought to act as defenders of chance and a fragmented society, and moreover as critics of political romanticism and utopian myths. (shrink)

Seweryn Blandzi Plato and the Protestant Principle of Autarchy of the Scripture (sola scriptura)The author gives reasons why the new holistic Tübingen-interpretation of Plato (H. Krämer, K. Gaiser, Th. A. Szlezák), which combines the Dialogues with his unwritten teaching is still difficult to accept (especially in Germany). The discovery (on the basis of indirect testimonies of Aristotle and his commentators) that there was a separate oral (“exoteric”) metaphysics of principles, which was parallel to dialogues but more valuable (timiotera) in content, (...) and which Plato did not popularize in his writings, has been an antithesis to the traditional romantic paradigm (particularly strong in Germany) of F. Schlegel-Schleiermacher, founded on the conviction of the primacy of autarchy of the written (“exoteric”) text in general. This conviction leads us to the Protestant postulate of Biblical exegesis treated as self-sufficient (sola scriptura), interpreted exclusively on its own basis (sui ipsius interpres), and Schleiermacher transposes this requirement onto Plato’s writings. On the other hand, F. Schlegel, who emphasizes the fragmentary and asystematic character of Plato’s thought in dialogues, sees Plato as a thinker who constantly moves toward infinity, unable ever to reach it. With respect to the dialogues, the reader finds himself in a similar situation as the limited individuality of finite being to infinity. For the romantics (inspired by the idealistic philosophy of subjectivity and identity), man’s greatness as a finite being manifests itself in creating works which reflect infinity. The infinity of the Absolute manifests itself in the absolute freedom and the power of creation, which man – so to speak – meets halfway, with his infinite reflection, creativity, invention, interpretation as an expression of spirit’s freedom. Hence the lasting attraction of this traditional approach, which is unlike the new paradigm that imposes great requirements and constraints on the reader (studying doxographic literature, finding in it testimonies of Plato’s disciples regarding the intra-academic teaching). When Plato’s literary dialogue is treated as a kind of an “open text,” it thus justifies all the possible “hermeneutic” attempts at free and creative interpretations. Keywords: Plato, Hans Krämer, Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher, Friedrich Schlegel, romantic paradigm, sola scriptura, infinity of reflection, new paradigm, unwritten teaching, metaphysics of principles. (shrink)

Machiavelli's ideas are as important in our time as in his own. His insights and prescriptions help us make sense of today's political upheavals and natural calamities and reduce them to a working order. The chapters in Machiavelli Then and Now explore Machiavelli's central concerns: statecraft and order, liberty and citizenship, diplomacy and leadership, modes of strategization, the quest for empire - all set against the basic contention between autarchy, oligarchy and democracy. They also address the ethical and behaviourial factors (...) behind political practice, such as force, suasion, ambition, corruption and vigilance in public discourse. The contributors consider the role of language, text and the imagination in Machiavelli, and they also bring the Machiavellian discourse closer to our own times, in relation to Gandhi, Gramsci and Althusser. The book will interest historians, political scientists and students of public policy; philosophers, rhetoricians and literary critics; and no less institution builders, diplomats and, administrators. (shrink)

Introduction: "Against innocence": Barth, neo-Kantianism, and modernity's pelagianism -- "Complete autarchy": self-determination, absolutism, and the politics of enlightenment -- Particularity regained: kenōsis, obedience, and christology -- In via: toward a pedagogy of discipleship -- Resurrection, life in divine plenitude: Trinity, judgment and apophasis -- Postscript: Persuasion, overdetermination, repetition.

This thesis constitutes a conceptual inquiry into the nature of social freedom, which is held to be logically distinct from other freedom-concepts although it presupposes free-will/autarchy. The thesis argues for a 'responsibility view' of negative freedom according to which an agent B is socially free to do x iff he is not constrained by another agent A from doing x. A constrains B when A can be held morally responsible for imposing or not removing a real obstacle to choice/action that (...) impedes B's doing x. This responsibility condition is satisfied when it is appropriate, in the given context, to ask A for a justification of his act/omission. Social freedom is a relational concept. Its irreflexive nature implies that internal bars, for which no other agent is responsible, cannot constrain our own freedom. Moreover, it is argued that autonomy is not a necessary condition of particular cases of freedom; nor is freedom in general a necessary condition of autonomy. Accounts of positive liberty assume that a) a person can constrain his own freedom; b) freedom is an exercise-, not an opportunity-concept. Hence, they are not accounts of social freedom but uphold other, logically distinct, values. The last part of the thesis deals with questions of method. It is argued that the widely held essential contestability thesis is either circular or paradoxical, and that it is methodologically possible to construct an authoritative definition of freedom which is normative and critical but non-relative. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Secrecy and Autonomy in Lewis CarrollSusan ShererVictorian novels quiver with morbid secrets and threatening discoveries. Unseen rooms, concealed doors, hidden boxes, masked faces, buried letters, all appear (and disappear) with striking regularity in the fiction of Victorian England. So many of these secret spaces contain children, and especially little girls, little girls in hidden spaces. The young Jane Eyre sits behind a curtain in the hidden window seat, escaping (...) the vindictive wrath of John Reed. Repulsed by her angry brother, Maggie Tulliver flees to the house attic, fantasizing that her family will fear that she has died. Little Dorrit withdraws from the common space of the Marshalsea into her private room above the prison, and Little Nell hides behind trees and walls, silently observing clandestine meetings. Finally the seven-year-old Alice falls down a rabbit-hole into a Wonderland, the dreamspace of her own psyche.Of these images, none can be more embedded in our cultural imagination than the child Alice dropping into the subterranean well of Wonderland. Indeed, of the many celebrated scenes in the Alice narratives, the most memorable, most potent, most quoted is Alice’s initial descent to the bottom of the rabbit-hole. The lastingness of this scene seems even greater when we realize that, although neither Carroll in Alice’s Adventures Underground nor Tenniel in the first edition of Wonderland illustrated the moment with a picture, it still became (along with the Mad Hatter’s tea party) one of the signature images of the Alice stories. Why, we must ask, did the Victorians retain, with a powerful tenacity, this vision of a little girl moving through a tight space toward the hidden world of Wonderland?The answer to this question is not—at least not wholly—that the scene simply represents a child’s metaphorical progress through the [End Page 1] birth canal 1 and that this, in turn, symbolizes some kind of rite of passage, a movement towards some deeper knowledge. For then how do we explain Alice’s conspicuous lack of internal development in both stories? Indeed, for a narrative that thematizes motion, Alice’s psychical growth remains disturbingly static. Throughout both narratives, Alice displays little emotional variation, for when she is not frustrated or anxious, she is, for the most part, vapid or expressionless. In fact, one is immediately struck by her coolness and indifference as she drops through the rabbit-hole. 2 Thus, because scene changes in Wonderland and Looking-Glass rarely betoken any emotional or intellectual modulations, Alice’s falling into Wonderland signals no internal transition.But the image does relocate her body and within this fictive world, location is everything. The scene gestures Alice’s departure, her separation, her movement towards an autonomy of which every child dreams when, in play, retreating to a hidden space. A child’s impulse to hide, to create a secret space, is one of the most compelling of all human wishes, the wish for autonomy and autarchy—“to be cut off from the word and yet owner of the world.” 3 Throughout Victorian literature, the fantasy of autonomy sets children dreaming of far-away worlds and hidden gardens. The young Cathy and Heathcliff flee to the isolated moors, filling the open, empty space with dreams of unrestricted freedom. Little Dorrit envisages the locked garden behind the Marshalsea as an alternative world to the foul prison atmosphere. And what are the Brontës’s Angria and Gondol but disconnected, self-governing realms imagined from the standpoint of childhood powerlessness? The image, then, of Alice’s fall begins to fulfill this powerful wish for autonomy, which culminates, finally, in Alice’s self-coronation at the end of Looking-Glass. Yet it is only within the child’s willing imagination that a secret space can encroach so closely upon autonomy, for as we shall see, secrecy and autonomy are irreconcilable not only in the demanding world of realism, but even in the more elastic world of Carrollian fantasy.IAlice’s descent into Wonderland and her entrance into the Looking-Glass kingdom would seem like ripe metaphors for Carroll to explore the thoughts and fantasies of Alice’s psyche. What could be more... (shrink)

In his World Culture and the Black Experience Professor Ali Mazrui states that “by being left behind scientifically African languages gradually became incapable either of coping with or stimulating new areas of reflection and analysis”. He agrees with Professor Mohammed Hyder of Nairobi that “if a serious attempt were made to develop a ‘technical limb’ to Swahili, this would indeed be possible” by the simple device of writing redioaktivu for radioactive and thairodi for thyroid and so forth. He thinks, however, (...) that “the majority of African languages have too few speakers to warrant a serious undertaking to convert them into scientific and technological languages.” In any case such an attempt “would be an extreme form of cultural autarchy”. (shrink)

Russia did not participate in the bourgeois revolution, the revolution occurred in Russia after the Tsar absolute doctrine, dictatorship, terrorism, superstition and personal police state. Stalinist Marxism beyond recognition, damaged Marx's own image. Impoverishment of the proletariat of Marx and Engels theory, crisis theory has been declared invalid, the Marxist dialectics is still valid is that the theory of contradiction. Contradictions of capitalism can be accurately understood as the general alienation, self-alienation. Inherited estate will determine the natural rights of free (...) face of communism. Straight orthopedic surgery is the most urgent task of socialism, and humane socialism contains the highest human rights as straight. Marxism is not is not a utopia, but a concrete utopia. Russia did not join in the bourgeois revolution, and there appeared absolutely Tsarism, autarchy, terror, individual superstition and police country after its revolution. Stalinism made the Marxism distorted beyond recognition and destroyed the figures of Marx himself. The theory of Proletarian poverty and the theory of crisis of Marx and Engles' were declared invalid, while its dialectic, that is Contradiction, is still valid. The contradiction of Capital can be understood precisely as Total-alienation and Self-alienation. Inheriting natural rights will decide the freedom face of Communism. Orthopaedic surgery of upright way is the most urgent mission of Socialism, and human Socialism contains the upright way as the highest human rights. Marxism is not non-Utopia, but concrete Utopia. (shrink)

This book uses neuroscience discoveries concerning religious experiences, the Self and personhood to deepen, enhance and interrogate the theological and philosophical set of ideas known as Personalism. McNamara proposes a new eschatological form of personalism that is consistent with current neuroscience models of relevant brain functions concerning the self and personhood and that can meet the catastrophic challenges of the 21st century. Eschatological Personalism, rooted in the philosophical tradition of "Boston Personalism", takes as its starting point the personalist claim that (...) the significance of a self and personality is not fully revealed until it has reached its endpoint, but theologically that end point can only occur within the eschatological realm. That realm is explored in the book along with implications for personalist theory and ethics. Topics covered include the agent intellect, dreams and the imagination, future-orientation and eschatology, phenomenology of Time, social ethics, Love, the challenge of AI, privacy and solitude and the individual ethic of autarchy. This book is an innovative combination of the neuroscientific and theological insights provided by a Personalist viewpoint. As such, it will be of great interest to scholars of Cognitive Science, Theology, Religious Studies and the philosophy of the mind. (shrink)

Il saggio intende indagare le radici di ermeneutica politica del termine orexis così come Aristotele lo utilizza a partire dall’argomento biologico e antropologico, fino a quello sociologico e narrativo nei confronti del rapporto individuo-Città. Una teoria del desiderio come perfezione antropologica a partire da una concezione di Città democratica e dinamica, nei termini contestuali della polis greca. In quest’ambito lo scritto sviluppa il confronto con la concezione di eros di origine platonica inteso come mancanza, e la dimensione di socialità individuale (...) in Aristotele come pienezza. (shrink)

Globalization and cosmopolitanism, on the one hand, and autarchy and nationalism, on the other, are two extremes between which humankind is destined to balance constantly, due to diversity and the natural confrontation of various cultural and civilizational systems by which it is represented. At the same time, globalization and cosmopolitanism are natural phenomena and are the most important characteristics of social development. That is why we should not put obstacles in the way of their dissemination and rooting in social life, (...) but to aim at deeper understanding of their essence and what is hidden behind them in order, preventing ourselves from rash evaluations and one-sided conclusions, to contribute to the formation of a stable and just global world. (shrink)

What makes Christopher P. Long’s study of Aristotle’s ontology especially rewarding is that it is philosophically motivated. The goal is not simply to “get right what Aristotle said,” but rather to think in dialogue with Aristotle, which implies a willingness to think beyond and even against him. Long makes the general philosophical motivation of his book perfectly clear: it is the desire to find “a way between the totalizing tendencies of modernism and the anarchy of postmodernism”. This is an ethical (...) motivation, since for Long justice requires both a recognition of the fundamental autarchy of each being and a recognition of principles. But why turn back to an ancient Greek philosopher in this contemporary debate? The reason is that Long sees Aristotle as pointing “to a form of knowledge that is neither totalizing nor anarchic”. This third way of knowing is described by Long as a matter of conceptualizing the individual in such a way as to acknowledge its singularity and not reduce it to the mere instantiation of a concept. It is to see the individual neither as an inexplicable singularity nor as only the particular instantiation of a universal. Long finds this neither/nor in Aristotle’s concept of the τόδε τι, which he at one point aptly describes as “the very conceptualization of that which always escapes the concept” : “The term τόδε τι designates this individual emerging out of its isolated singularity, prior to its being reduced to particularity, the mere instantiation of a dominating concept”. Thus we get the following account of what a non-totalizing and non-anarchic form of knowledge would be like and therefore of what Long seeks to find in Aristotle. (shrink)

What makes Christopher P. Long’s study of Aristotle’s ontology especially rewarding is that it is philosophically motivated. The goal is not simply to “get right what Aristotle said,” but rather to think in dialogue with Aristotle, which implies a willingness to think beyond and even against him. Long makes the general philosophical motivation of his book perfectly clear: it is the desire to find “a way between the totalizing tendencies of modernism and the anarchy of postmodernism”. This is an ethical (...) motivation, since for Long justice requires both a recognition of the fundamental autarchy of each being and a recognition of principles. But why turn back to an ancient Greek philosopher in this contemporary debate? The reason is that Long sees Aristotle as pointing “to a form of knowledge that is neither totalizing nor anarchic”. This third way of knowing is described by Long as a matter of conceptualizing the individual in such a way as to acknowledge its singularity and not reduce it to the mere instantiation of a concept. It is to see the individual neither as an inexplicable singularity nor as only the particular instantiation of a universal. Long finds this neither/nor in Aristotle’s concept of the τόδε τι, which he at one point aptly describes as “the very conceptualization of that which always escapes the concept” : “The term τόδε τι designates this individual emerging out of its isolated singularity, prior to its being reduced to particularity, the mere instantiation of a dominating concept”. Thus we get the following account of what a non-totalizing and non-anarchic form of knowledge would be like and therefore of what Long seeks to find in Aristotle. (shrink)

A novel focus on "personal responsibility" has transformed political thought and public policy in America and Europe. Since the 1970s, responsibility--which once meant the moral duty to help and support others--has come to suggest an obligation to be self-sufficient. This narrow conception of responsibility has guided recent reforms of the welfare state, making key entitlements conditional on good behavior. Drawing on intellectual history, political theory, and moral philosophy, Yascha Mounk shows why the Age of Responsibility is pernicious--and how it might (...) be overcome. Mounk shows that today's focus on individual culpability is both wrong and counterproductive: it distracts us from the larger economic forces determining aggregate outcomes, ignores what we owe our fellow citizens regardless of their choices, and blinds us to other key values, such as the desire to live in a society of equals. Recognizing that even society's neediest members seek to exercise genuine agency, Mounk builds a positive conception of responsibility. Instead of punishing individuals for their past choices, he argues, public policy should aim to empower them to take responsibility for themselves--and those around them. (shrink)