Healthcare services should be provided according to contemporary ethical norms that require patients’ active engagement in all the relevant processes. However, authoritarian attitudes and behaviors in healthcare, one of which is paternalism, put patients in a passive role. But, as Avedis Donabedian emphasizes, patients are co-producers of care, reformers of healthcare, informants, and definers and evaluators of quality. Overlooking these significant functions and merely focusing on physicians’ benevolence due to their medical knowledge and skills in the production of (...) healthcare services would leave the fate of patients in the hands of clinicians and impose physicians’ hegemony on patients and their choices. Nevertheless, the concept of co-production is a practical and effective mechanism to redefine the language used in healthcare by recognizing patients as co-producers and equal partners. The application of co-production in healthcare would improve the therapeutic relationship, decrease ethical violations, and promote the patient’s dignity. (shrink)

What is the basis for intolerance? This book addresses that question by developing a universal theory about what causes intolerance of difference in general, which includes racism, political intolerance, moral intolerance and punitiveness. It demonstrates that all these seemingly disparate attitudes are principally caused by just two factors: individuals' innate psychological predispositions to intolerance interacting with changing conditions of societal threat. The threatening conditions, resonant particularly in the present political climate, that exacerbate authoritarian attitudes include national economic (...) downturn, rapidly rising crime rates, civil dissent and unrest, loss of confidence in social institutions, presidential unpopularity, divisive presidential campaigns, and internal or external crises that undermine national pride or confidence. Using purpose-built experimental manipulations, cross-national survey data and in-depth personal interviews with extreme authoritarians, the book shows that this simple model provides the most complete account of intolerance. (shrink)

The present study investigates (1) the relationship of different leadership styles (transactional, transformational, authoritarian, paternalistic) with mobbing behaviors of superiors (i.e., downward mobbing) and (2) organizational attitudes (job satisfaction, organizational commitment, turnover intention) of mobbing victims. Data were collected from 251 white-collar employees. Path analysis findings showed that transformational and transactional leadership decreased the likelihood of mobbing, whereas authoritarian leadership increased it. Paternalistic leadership was mildly and negatively associated with mobbing. Regarding the consequences of mobbing for employees’ (...) organizational attitudes, the same analyses suggested that higher perceptions of downward mobbing was significantly associated with lower job satisfaction, lower affective commitment, higher continuous commitment, and higher turnover intention. (shrink)

Background:Nursing is an occupation that deals with humans and relies upon human relationships. Nursing care, which is an important component of these relationships, involves protection, forbearance, attention, and worry.Objectives:The aim of this study is to evaluate the ethical beliefs of psychiatric nurses and ethical problems encountered.Research Design:The study design was descriptive and cross-sectional.Research context:Methods comprised of a questionnaire administered to psychiatric nurses (n = 202) from five psychiatric hospitals in Istanbul, Turkey, instruction in psychiatric nursing ethics, discussion of reported ethical (...) problems by nursing focus groups, and analysis of questionnaires and reports by academicians with clinical experience.Participants:Participants consist of the nurses who volunteered to take part in the study from the five psychiatric hospitals (n = 202), which were selected with cluster sampling method.Ethical considerations:Written informed consent of each participant was taken prior to the study.Findings:The results indicated that nurses needed additional education in psychiatric ethics. Insufficient personnel, excessive workload, working conditions, lack of supervision, and in-service training were identified as leading to unethical behaviors. Ethical code or nursing care -related problems included (a) neglect, (b) rude/careless behavior, (c) disrespect of patient rights and human dignity, (d) bystander apathy, (e) lack of proper communication, (f) stigmatization, (g) authoritarian attitude/intimidation, (h) physical interventions during restraint, (i) manipulation by reactive emotions, (j) not asking for permission, (k) disrespect of privacy, (l) dishonesty or lack of clarity, (m) exposure to unhealthy physical conditions, and (n) violation of confidence.Discussion:The results indicate that ethical codes of nursing in psychiatric inpatient units are inadequate and standards of care are poor.Conclusion:In order to address those issues, large-scale research needs to be conducted in psychiatric nursing with a focus on case studies and criteria for evaluation of service, and competency and responsibility needs to be established in psychiatric nursing education and practice. (shrink)

We argue that, to effectively understand media effects in authoritarian societies, researchers must assess different types of media strategies adopted by authoritarian leaders. Using survey data from two Chinese cities, we examine the effects of two types of media strategies adopted by the Chinese government, targeting political attitudes and nonpolitical values and norms, respectively. Following a new line of research, we contrast China’s domestic-controlled media to foreign free media. After accounting for the selection bias in Chinese urbanites’ (...) media access, we do not find sufficient evidence for the effect of the media strategies directly targeting their democratic conceptions. However, sufficient and robust evidence shows that more intensive consumption of diverse media sources, including foreign media, does significantly but indirectly counteract the Chinese government’s political campaigns targeting its citizens’ democratic conceptions, via thwarting the government’s media strategies to cultivate a collectivistic norm in the society. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION[|]This paper has been planned as a critical response to Murat Civaner's article entitled 'Medical Ethics arguments should be concordant with scientific knowledge and certain values', published in the Autumn 2015 issue of Turkish Journal of Bioethics. It also aims to provide an evaluation of the way the authoritarian discourse manifests itself in ethical arguments.[¤]METHODS[|]For this purpose, the paper first presents the views of Orhan Hançerlioğlu on Karl Marx and Karl Popper and treats these views as a written example (...) of such authoritarian discourse, which is essentially a problematic attitude that results from an inability to acknowledge the value-laden aspects of a given perspective. [¤]RESULTS[|]In order to show that problems in Hançerlioğlu's approach is also present in Civaner's arguments, several examples where the author did not recognize the value-laden aspects and the subjective nature of information are provided. The paper then examines the recent claim by Celal Şengör, who asserted that force feeding of feces to individuals do not qualify as torture. Based on the presentation and the justification of this reductionist claim, it is emphasized that the relationship between information and values is much more complicated than those presented by Civaner. Civaner's claim, which asserts that the concept of conscience should have no place in medical ethics arguments, is also evaluated on this basis and the dangers of excluding the moral agent in ethical evaluation are underlined. In addition, the relationship of the paternalist tradition with the perspective which I refer to as the 'macro axis' is examined. Last but not least, the paper deals with the concept of 'ethics of ethics' by using examples from national and international ethics literature and emphasizes the reason why it is important for the ethicist to become aware of her own scheme of values. [¤]DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION[|]The paper concludes that contrary to what Civaner has asserted, it is not possible to exclude subjective aspects from ethical argumentation and that such an appraoch will inevitably have an authoritarian quality. For this reason, the need for other approaches for revealing, rather than repressing or ignoring, the subjective aspects of ethical inquiry is underlined.[¤]. (shrink)

In 1950 Adorno et al .'s The Authoritarian Personality study warned that American society contained a minority of individuals whose characters made them prone to become fascists in certain circumstances and that this was a danger common to contemporary industrial society. After early acclaim critics argued that the main threat came from left-wing authoritarian individuals. But research in several countries failed to establish their existence. We trace and evaluate this debate, largely defending the original research. Subsequent argument suggested (...) that the concept of authoritarianism was becoming outdated in post-industrial society, a view that we strongly challenge. While defending the diagnosis and purpose of the original research, we conclude by endorsing the argument that authoritarianism is better described in terms of attitude rather than personality. This gives a clearer psychological description of political movements of the far right and offers more direct measures for their reduction. (shrink)

A survey amongst 602 Flemish secondary school pupils, aged 17-18, shows that a distinction can be made between two different, albeit closely related, dimensions of royalism : the emotional attachment to the king as a person and to the royal family on the one hand, and the political support for the monarchy on the other. Respondents are predominantly indifferent or negative about the monarchy, particularly on the emotional dimension. A multivariate analysis shows that male and non-churchgoing pupils are more negative (...) on both dimensions. Pupils from migrant families are more positive on the emotional dimension. The scores on both dimensions are higher amongst pupils who identify with Belgium rather than with Flanders, who have strong patriotic feelings and who tend towards an authoritarian attitude. The scores are lower amongst pupils with apreference for a regionalist party. The hypothesis that intense royalist feelings coincide with a general attitude of trust in the political authorities was only confirmed with regard to the emotional dimension, while the political support for the monarchy appears to be detached from the trust in the political authorities. (shrink)

The Dual Filial Piety Model offers a universally applicable framework for understanding essential aspects of intergenerational relations across diverse cultural contexts. The current research aimed to examine two important issues concerning this model that have lacked investigation: the roles of parental socialization and social ecologies in the development of reciprocal and authoritarian filial piety attitudes. To this end, a two-wave short-term longitudinal survey study was conducted among 850 early adolescents residing in urban and rural China, who completed questionnaires (...) twice, 6 months apart, in the spring semester of grade 7 and the fall semester of grade 8. Multigroup path analyses revealed bidirectional associations over time between perceived parenting styles and adolescents’ filial piety attitudes, with both similarities and differences in these associations between urban and rural China. In both settings, perceived authoritative parenting predicted increased reciprocal filial piety 6 months later, whereas perceived authoritarian parenting predicted reduced reciprocal filial piety among urban adolescents over time. Moreover, in both settings, reciprocal filial piety predicted higher levels of perceived authoritative parenting and lower levels of perceived authoritarian parenting 6 months later, with the latter effect being stronger among urban adolescents. Adolescents’ perceived parenting styles did not predict their authoritarian filial piety over time; however, authoritarian filial piety predicted higher levels of perceived authoritative parenting 6 months later in both settings. The findings highlight the roles of transactional socialization processes between parents and youth as well as social ecologies in the development of filial piety, thus advancing the understanding of how the universal human motivations underlying filial piety may function developmentally across different socioeconomic and sociocultural settings. (shrink)

In 2012–13, we signed up for Facebook in seven Middle East and North Africa countries and used Facebook advertisements to encourage young people to participate in our survey. Nearly 18,000 individuals responded. Some of the questions in our survey dealing with attitudes about women’s work and cosmetics were adopted from a survey conducted by the Frankfurt School in 1929 in Germany. The German survey had shown that a great number of men, irrespective of their political affiliation harbored highly (...) class='Hi'>authoritarian attitudes toward women and that one sign of authoritarianism was men’s attitude toward cosmetics and women’s employment. We wanted to know if the same was true of the contemporary MENA. Our results suggest that lipstick and makeups as well as women’s employment are not just vehicles for sexual objectification of women. In much of MENA world a married woman’s desire to work outside the house, and her pursuit of the accoutrement of beauty and sexual attractiveness, are forms of gender politics, of women’s empowerment, but also of antiauthoritarianism and liberal politics. Our results also suggest that piety among Muslims per se is not an indicator of authoritarianism and that there is a marked gender difference in authoritarianism. Women, it seems, are living a different Islam than men. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 38.3 (2004) 73-90 [Access article in PDF] Intellectual Friendship in Architectural Education Yonca Hurol Introduction Limits are causes of repression, and it is usually accepted that repression affects creativity. There are two different approaches to the effects of limits on creativity. According to the first approach, creativity increases parallel to the increase of limits and repression. According to the second approach, any artificial increase (...) of limits produces passionate "locked in" mechanisms. A decrease of limits is necessary for an increase in creativity. Since it is never possible to eliminate some "natural" limits, it is not necessary to create some other "artificial" ones by introducing authoritarian attitudes. Creativity should be directed only toward the natural problems and limits.The aim of this essay is to develop a theoretical base for the following philosophical statement: "Decreasing authoritarian limits causes an increase in creativity in architectural design education." The concepts in such a philosophical statement must be operationalized in order to be applied to the practice of architectural education. The concepts of "limits" and "creativity" should be replaced with some other concepts (variables) which are observable so that they can be applied to the cases in practice.The essay is based on the poststructuralist philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, specifically their understanding of the relation betweenthe body and the mind;1 even though other thinkers have related emotion and rationality, for example, Fredrich Nietzsche's nomadic thought, Gaston Bachelard's "childhood dreams," and Antonin Artaud's "theatre of cruelty."2 In this essay, Deleuze and Guattari's philosophy is used more intensively over that of others, because of the clarity of the concepts it contains.The concept of creativity is operationalized by replacing it with the variable of the "design psychology of the student" which can, in turn, be replaced by the constants of "passionate mechanism" and "desire machine." [End Page 73] These psychological states and the their architectural indications are analyzed in the first section. The concept of limits is replaced by the "limiting role of the studio teacher," instead of the natural limits in architecture such aseconomy and technology. This role has two constants: the "role of the authority figure" and the "role of the intellectual friend."In architectural design courses students design buildings which combine the demands of strength, usefulness, and aesthetics. This process relates rationality (mind) to irrationality (body/feelings). Students learn about the rational aspects of architecture in their own ways, while designing the irrational aspects of their projects. They make contact with the studio teachers whenever they need advice or supportive criticism. This is a one-on-one relationship. The early approaches to design education depend on authoritarian "correction," while the new models propose "objective criticism."However, none of these concepts cover the existing power relations between teachers and students. Some teachers believe in the positive role of authority, while others do not. A conflict arises between the authority figures, and the friendly teachers.The formation of an intellectual friendship between students and teachers of architecture is not new. It has existed since postmodernism was first founded in architecture with the differing viewpoints about architecture. Sinan Omacan, was a student of architecture when he described the changing demands of education as follows: School is not simply a structure that is abstract. It is not only an institution of discipline that programs, deals with quantities, and evaluates. The name of it, the building of it, and the people in it, always give it a certain personality, and the strongest part of this story can only start with the relationship between these personalities. While this medium of personal relationships forms an unpredictable and unavoidable situation for the institution, it becomes exactly the right thing that students are looking for, because the most important aspect for students in a school is the possibility created by unprogrammed time and unplanned space.3This essay provides a theoretical explanation of these existing categories for the first time. The concepts which are analyzed in the first two parts are used as variables for comparative research. The third part contains comparative... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 38.3 (2004) 73-90 [Access article in PDF] Intellectual Friendship in Architectural Education Yonca Hurol Introduction Limits are causes of repression, and it is usually accepted that repression affects creativity. There are two different approaches to the effects of limits on creativity. According to the first approach, creativity increases parallel to the increase of limits and repression. According to the second approach, any artificial increase (...) of limits produces passionate "locked in" mechanisms. A decrease of limits is necessary for an increase in creativity. Since it is never possible to eliminate some "natural" limits, it is not necessary to create some other "artificial" ones by introducing authoritarian attitudes. Creativity should be directed only toward the natural problems and limits.The aim of this essay is to develop a theoretical base for the following philosophical statement: "Decreasing authoritarian limits causes an increase in creativity in architectural design education." The concepts in such a philosophical statement must be operationalized in order to be applied to the practice of architectural education. The concepts of "limits" and "creativity" should be replaced with some other concepts (variables) which are observable so that they can be applied to the cases in practice.The essay is based on the poststructuralist philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, specifically their understanding of the relation betweenthe body and the mind;1 even though other thinkers have related emotion and rationality, for example, Fredrich Nietzsche's nomadic thought, Gaston Bachelard's "childhood dreams," and Antonin Artaud's "theatre of cruelty."2 In this essay, Deleuze and Guattari's philosophy is used more intensively over that of others, because of the clarity of the concepts it contains.The concept of creativity is operationalized by replacing it with the variable of the "design psychology of the student" which can, in turn, be replaced by the constants of "passionate mechanism" and "desire machine." [End Page 73] These psychological states and the their architectural indications are analyzed in the first section. The concept of limits is replaced by the "limiting role of the studio teacher," instead of the natural limits in architecture such aseconomy and technology. This role has two constants: the "role of the authority figure" and the "role of the intellectual friend."In architectural design courses students design buildings which combine the demands of strength, usefulness, and aesthetics. This process relates rationality (mind) to irrationality (body/feelings). Students learn about the rational aspects of architecture in their own ways, while designing the irrational aspects of their projects. They make contact with the studio teachers whenever they need advice or supportive criticism. This is a one-on-one relationship. The early approaches to design education depend on authoritarian "correction," while the new models propose "objective criticism."However, none of these concepts cover the existing power relations between teachers and students. Some teachers believe in the positive role of authority, while others do not. A conflict arises between the authority figures, and the friendly teachers.The formation of an intellectual friendship between students and teachers of architecture is not new. It has existed since postmodernism was first founded in architecture with the differing viewpoints about architecture. Sinan Omacan, was a student of architecture when he described the changing demands of education as follows: School is not simply a structure that is abstract. It is not only an institution of discipline that programs, deals with quantities, and evaluates. The name of it, the building of it, and the people in it, always give it a certain personality, and the strongest part of this story can only start with the relationship between these personalities. While this medium of personal relationships forms an unpredictable and unavoidable situation for the institution, it becomes exactly the right thing that students are looking for, because the most important aspect for students in a school is the possibility created by unprogrammed time and unplanned space.3This essay provides a theoretical explanation of these existing categories for the first time. The concepts which are analyzed in the first two parts are used as variables for comparative research. The third part contains comparative... (shrink)

Modern theories of authoritarianism have stressed the importance of threat to the expression of authoritarian attitudes and intolerance. Arguably, authoritarian tendencies may have increased during COVID-19 pandemic, a major threat to life and security. One issue arising when comparing mean scores is that of measurement invariance. Meaningful comparisons are only possible, if latent constructs are similar between groups and/or across time. This prerequisite is rarely ever tested in research on authoritarianism. In this study, we aim to analyze (...) the short scale for authoritarianism KSA-3 by investigating its measurement invariance on two levels and latent mean changes using two German representative samples. Specifically, we look at differences before and during the pandemic. While measurement invariance holds across both levels in all conditions, we find a decrease in latent means in 2020, contrary to expectations and established theories. Moreover, latent means differ with regard to gender, education, and east–west Germany. We conclude that analyses of latent means and measurement invariance instead of mean comparisons with composites should become the standard. Future studies should focus on threat as a moderator between authoritarianism and intolerance, and on possible interactions with context variables. (shrink)

It is said that the social conflicts and disputes can be resolved by dialogue between opposing groups. Karl popper argues that if social conflicts are resolved with the authoritarian attitude that our arguments are conclusive then this attitude imposes its opinion and hence it cannot provide the ground for reasonable dialogue. Karl Popper rejects authoritarian attitude on the basis of his critique of absolute knowledge. He believes in fallibility of knowledge. He thinks that if disagreementsare resolved with an (...) attitude that our arguments are rational but are not conclusive then this attitude is ready to be convinced by other. Hence it can provide the ground for reasonable dialogue. Popper is of the view that an attitude is moral as it believes in equality of men. Hacohen and O’Hear critically examine Popper’s fallibilism. They identify a problem that fallibilism ultimately leads Popper to anti-foundationalism which makes ethics purely individualistic. In this paper I focus on this problem and workout how Popper’s moral individualism is inadequate for possibility of reasonable dialogue. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Adolescent mental health has become a growing concern. One unique challenge to adolescents’ willingness to seek professional mental health support is the concern of confidentiality breach by their parents. This concern may carry more weight in collectivistic cultures, such as China. The current study utilized a large parent sample (N = 460) recruited from six high schools and attempted to integrate cultural self-construal and parenting styles in the context of parental attitudes toward mental health professionals and desires to (...) breach confidentiality. Parental independent self-construal was related to more positive attitudes toward mental health professionals through higher authoritative parenting and negatively associated with authoritarian parenting. On the other hand, interdependent self-construal was related to less positive attitudes toward mental health professionals via higher authoritarian parenting and lower authoritative parenting. More positive attitudes toward mental health professionals, in turn, were related to lower desire to breach confidentiality. Permissive parenting did not play a significant role in this process. The present study illustrates the importance of understanding culturally specific factors and parental influences in therapeutic practices. (shrink)

The article considers Jürgen Habermas's views on the relationship between postmetaphysical philosophy and religion. It outlines Habermas's shift from his earlier, apparently dismissive attitude towards religion to his presently more receptive stance. This more receptive stance is evident in his recent emphasis on critical engagement with the semantic contents of religion and may be characterized by two interrelated theses: the view that religious contributions should be included in political deliberations in the informally organized public spheres of contemporary democracies, though translated (...) into a secular language for the purposes of legislation and formal decision making and the view that postmetaphysical philosophy should seek to salvage the semantic contents of religious traditions in order to supply the evocative images, exemplary figures, and inspirational narratives it needs for its social and political projects. With regard to, it argues that the translation requirement impairs the political autonomy of religious believers and other metaphysically inclined citizens, suggesting that this difficulty could be alleviated by making a distinction between epistemologically authoritarian and non-authoritarian religious beliefs. With regard to, it argues that the salvaging operation is not as straightforward as Habermas seems to suppose and that social and political philosophy may not be able to tap the semantic power of religious traditions without relying on metaphysical assumptions; it concludes that, here, too, a distinction between authoritarian and non-authoritarian approaches to knowledge and validity may be useful. (shrink)

In 1995 the People's Republic of China passed a controversial Eugenics Law, which, after a torrent of international criticism, was euphemistically renamed the Maternal and Infant Health Law. Aimed at "the implementation of premarital medical checkups" to ensure that neither partner has any hereditary, venereal, reproductive, or mental disorders, the ordinance implies that those deemed "unsuitable for reproduction" should undergo sterilization or abortion or remain celibate in order to prevent "inferior births." Using this recent statute as a springboard, Frank Dikötter (...) explores the contexts and history of eugenics in both Communist China and Taiwan. Dikötter shows how beginning in Late Imperial China, Western eugenics was imported and combined with existing fears of cultural, racial, or biological degeneration in Chinese society, leading to government regulation of sexual reproduction. _Imperfect Conceptions_ is a revealing look at the cultural history of medical explanations of birth defects that demonstrates how Chinese assumptions about the relationship of the individual to society form the very core of their attitudes toward procreation. Dikötter explains the patrilineal model of descent, where a person is viewed as the culmination of his or her ancestors and is held responsible for the health of all future generations. By this logic, a pregnant woman's behavior and attitude directly influence the well-being of her baby, and a deformed or retarded child reflects a moral failing on the part of the parents. Dikötter also shows how the holistic medicine practiced in China blurs any distinction between individual and environment so that people are held responsible for illness. Drawing on cultural, social, economic, and political approaches, Dikötter goes beyond a simple authoritarian model to provide a more complex view of eugenic policy, showing how a variety of voices including those of popular journalists, social reformers, medical writers, sex educators, university professors, and politicians all disseminate information that supports rather than questions the state's program. _Imperfect Conceptions_ reveals how Chinese cultural currents--fear and fascination with the deviant and the urge to draw clear boundaries between the normal and the abnormal--have combined with medical discourse to form a program of eugenics that is viewed with alarm by the rest of the world. (shrink)

In the context of the main principles, modernity has affected the relationship of individuals with society in two ways; either by promoting a comprehensive individualization or by paradoxically surrendering individual freedoms to new relations due to the many risks it carries. In the modernization process, religion has been affected not only in the context of traditional and everyday patterns; but also, it has been significantly influenced in terms of its dimensions corresponding to the public space. This study examined the relationship (...) between religion and modernization in the sample of Theology Faculty at Sivas Cumhuriyet University which is an organized and official field of religion. The aim of the research is to understand and explain the aspects of modernization in theology faculties that look at individual identity through some concepts such as religion and world designs, pluralism, perspectives on lifestyles, attitudes towards gender, and consumption. In line with these goals, the article problematizes the relations between the attitudes and behaviors of the participants due to modernization and the religious theory of orthodox Islam, political secularism, globalization, and socioeconomic and cultural environments. Within a qualitative method, the research was planned as a "single event" study. With the help of semi-structured interview questions, the data obtained from a sample group consisting of male and female students from different classes by techniques such as "problem-centered interview", "narrative", "participated observation" were theoretically analyzed from interactionist, ethnomethodological, and phenomenological perspectives. Considering its sources, theology in Turkey was shaped under the intense influence of Jacobin and elitist political secularism during the first three quarters of the Republic. In the last quarter of its century-old history, it can be said that a conservative, Islamist secularism was effective there. In this context, the status accorded to religion by the political institution in its authoritarian structure in Turkey, on the one hand, makes sense in terms of the shape and direction of religion and society relations, on the other hand, it gives an idea about the general situation of theology as an official educational institution and the contents of the roles and functions expected from it. For this reason, it is understood that the future of theology in Turkey will be shaped depending on the politics, religion, human, and society paradigms of the political bureaucracy for now, whether in terms of human resources and public visibility or within the scope of the relations of institutional religion with society. All these are related to the social realities as well as the central position and character of politics in the society in Turkey. Besides, these realities strongly show the close relationship of theology with Turkish modernization. For this reason, in this study, political secularism has been seen as an important component of religion and modernization relations in theology. However, this relationship is not with a one-sided point of view that secularism affects theology; from the perspective that theology also affects the direction and forms of modernization and secularization in Turkey, it is discussed in a mutual way. As a matter of fact, as it can be seen, while theology was functionalized for the construction of the nation-state and a secular society paradigm in most of the history of the republic, it also produced an alternative, Islamic secularization related to a postmodern ethics by approaching the ontological, epistemological, and aesthetic designs of religion and world of environmental movements in more modern periods. Today, theology students, like every student, are faced with fluidizing all the artificial and natural boundaries of modernity and their traditional environments outside their own borders, and at the same time being a member of a wider world without borders. These developments, which clearly point to a change in attitude and attitude towards the secular field, are not only for theology students to reach new values in religion and world relations; it has also been important in the context of their entering into very important conflicts and tensions in the context of their individual identities. Finally, when it was associated with “orthodox Islam”, it was seen that this new socialization environment and the tension created by these created a series of alienation in theology in the context of gender, lifestyles, leisure activities, and consumption. (shrink)

The Human Genome Project is an expensive, ambitious, and controversial attempt to locate and map every one of the approximately 100,000 genes in the human body. If it works, and we are able, for instance, to identify markers for genetic diseases long before they develop, who will have the right to obtain such information? What will be the consequences for health care, health insurance, employability, and research priorities? And, more broadly, how will attitudes toward human differences be affected, morally (...) and socially, by the setting of a genetic “standard”? The compatibility of individual rights and genetic fairness is challenged by the technological possibilities of the future, making it difficult to create an agenda for a “just genetics.” Beginning with an account of the utopian dreams and authoritarian tendencies of historical eugenics movements, this book’s nine essays probe the potential social uses and abuses of detailed genetic information. Lucid and wide-ranging, these contributions will interest bioethicists, legal scholars, and policy makers. Essays: “The Genome Project and the Meaning of Difference,” Timothy F. Murphy “Eugenics and the Human Genome Project: Is the Past Prologue?,” Daniel J. Kevles “Handle with Care: Race, Class, and Genetics,” Arthur L. Caplan “Public Choices and Private Choices: Legal Regulation of Genetic Testing,” Lori B. Andrews “Rules for Gene Banks: Protecting Privacy in the Genetics Age,” George J. Annas “Use of Genetic Information by Private Insurers,” Robert J. Pokorski “The Genome Project, Individual Differences, and Just Health Care,” Norman Daniels “Just Genetics: A Problem Agenda,” Leonard M. Fleck “Justice and the Limitations of Genetic Knowledge,” Marc A. Lappé. (shrink)

The German text of Cohen’s Spinoza on State & Religion, Judaism & Christianity (Spinoza über Staat und Religion, Judentum und Christentum) first appeared in 1915 in the Jahrbuch für jüdische Geschichte und Literatur. Two years before, in the winter of 1913, Cohen taught a class and a seminar on Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums. This was Cohen’s first semester at the Hochschule, after retiring from more than thirty years of teaching at the University of (...) Marburg. Cohen’s fame at the time was at its zenith, and his move to the Hochschule was a cause for celebration and excitement. According to the testimony of some students who attended the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus seminar, Cohen left no place for any expression of dissent (regrettably, the academy frequently encourages such authoritarian behavior). The text of Spinoza on State, which was the product of this seminar, still bears the marks of this “didactic” attitude. It is bombastic and feebly argued. Thus, in one moment of emotional crescendo in the text, we can literally hear Cohen shout: When Spinoza, with merciless severity, makes his own nation the object of contempt – at the time that Rembrandt lived on the same street and immortalized the ideal type of the Jew - no voices rises in protest against this humanly incomprehensible betrayal. Such patriotic rhetoric is quite typical of Cohen’s Spinoza on State, as the work reads more like a series of rants against the devil incarnated (“the demonic spirit of Spinoza”) in the figure of the traitor from Amsterdam than like a sustained and serious philosophical polemic. From time to time, one can observe hints of critical arguments, but hardly any are fleshed out. The text is also replete with rudimentary factual and interpretative errors. Thus, when Cohen argues that Spinoza traces his pantheism to Jewish sources, Cohen erroneously cites Spinoza’s reference in E2p7s to “some of the Hebrews [quidam Hebraeorum]” who argued for the identity of Sekhel, Maskil, and Muskal (the Intellect, the Intellecting Subject, and the Intellected Object) – a Maimonidean doctrine that has nothing to do with pantheism – while the text Cohen clearly had in mind was Spinoza’s claim, in Letter 73, that the traditions (traditionibus) of the “ancient Hebrews [antiquis Hebraeis]” agree with Spinoza’s claim that “all things are in God.” Similarly, and on the very same page, Cohen ascribes to Spinoza the claim that “the God of the Old Testament is only a body,” a claim which is nowhere to be found in Spinoza’s works, and which can be inferred from Spinoza’s text only through a patent fallacy. If I may add one last example, consider the following passage from Cohen’s Spinoza on State: [For Spinoza] divine law is grounded in our mind. Yet this does not mean that our mind bears responsibility for producing and obeying the law. Instead, it means that, by definition, the human mind and God are identical, inasmuch as He exists in the human mind. Hardly any claim in this brief passage is correct. Yet, what is most striking is Cohen’s derivation of the identity of God and the human mind from the claim that God exists in the human mind. If I exist in North America, this obviously does not imply that I am identical to North America (there are, for example, a couple of North American porcupines and alligators that are distinct from me). What rule of inference Cohen sought to employ in this argument, and how this impressive inference of the identity of God and the human mind is supposed to square with Cohen’s view of Spinoza as a pantheist – i.e., as considering the physical nature to be divine – is beyond my grasp. Instead of tracking down the dozens of crude errors and fallacies in Cohen’s text, I would like to concentrate here on one crucial issue: Cohen’s critique of Spinoza’s pantheism. By doing this, I will have to pass silently over a couple of surprising agreements between the two figures, such as the (false) claim that all of the prophets of the Hebrew Bible taught the same universal and simple morality. My discussion of pantheism will be divided into two sections. In the first, I will examine Cohen’s understanding of Spinoza’s pantheism. In the second, I will briefly examine the historical validity of Cohen’s claim that pantheism is a Christian doctrine, diametrically opposed to Judaism. (shrink)

John Locke has a good claim to the title of the greatest ever English philosopher, and was a founding father of both the empiricist tradition in philosophy and the liberal tradition in politics. This new book provides an accessible introduction to Locke’s thought. Although its primary focus is on the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, it also discusses the Two Treatises on Government, the Essay on Toleration, and the Reasonableness of Christianity, and draws on materials from Locke’s correspondence and notebooks to (...) shed light on the contexts of these major works. Locke’s arguments for his central claims are subjected to close scrutiny, and his replies to his main critics evaluated. A.J. Pyle takes as his guiding theme Locke’s own maxim, that God has given humans enough knowledge for our needs. The philosopher who emerges from these pages is a strikingly modern figure, anti-metaphysical in his attitude both to science and to theology, anti-authoritarian in his politics, and cautiously optimistic about human progress. Locke is indeed one of the founding figures of the Enlightenment, but for Pyle the Lockean Enlightenment is a modest affair of slow and hesitant groping towards the light. As well as serving as an introduction to Locke for students, the book also helps to correct a number of significant errors and misunderstandings that have marred our understanding of Locke and will spark discussion and debate amongst scholars of his work. (shrink)

Even in psychological literature, which describes many determining variables related to the school domain, few studies have investigated the universal mechanism underlying parent–child relations, which is a prototype matrix for future student–teacher relations. The role of the imprinted schema of children’s obligations toward parents seems to be crucial for school functioning in classroom society. The Dual Filial Piety Model is comprised of two higher-order factors that correspond to the two focal filial piety attributes: reciprocal and authoritarian, which have been (...) shown to have distinct implications on social adaptation and individuals’ psychological functioning. In this study, we investigate the relationship between filial piety and student attitudes in a more individualistic and egalitarian culture and in a more collectivistic and hierarchical society. The measurement invariances of three scales, i.e., the Vietnamese adaptation of DFP Scale, the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale, and the Study Satisfaction Scale, were improved in the MLM analyses. Our results show that in more individualistic cultures, the RFP is a stronger predictor of study engagement and study satisfaction; however, the AFP is a better factor to predict study engagement in more collectivistic cultures. What is more, only RFP positively correlates with study satisfaction in individualistic culture. Our findings revealed that in different cultures, different aspects of filial piety should be emphasized by parents in the context of the future academic achievements of their children. The conclusion is that the prevention and intervention strategies or techniques intended for children with school problems should be culturally appropriate and addressed to the parents of kindergarten and later to very early-stage education teachers. The results of studies based on the DFPM may stimulate practical applications and policy development within the domain of success and failure in the academic environment. (shrink)

I discuss first Adam Smith’s ethical theory and the peculiar function played by the quadrangle of sympathy, the social function of sympathy with the rich and powerful and the unavoidable corruption of moral sentiments it carries. Secondly, I examine human nature in Smith’s work, and show how diverging tendencies are carried by different social roles. Thirdly I discuss the modest normative claims advanced by his ethical theory and show how these are not from utilitarian ones, how ethical pluralism is mirrored (...) in Smith’s triad of private virtues, prudence, justice, benevolence and of public virtues, liberty, justice, equality, how these are far from being utilitarian virtues, being rather the result of overlapping between several reasonable normative ethics. Fourthly I discuss Smith’s attitude to merchants and master-manufacturers, showing how, far being the theorist of ‘bourgeois virtues’, he was a radical critic of both the aristocratic establishment and the new emerging class in the name of oppressed. My conclusion is that ‘The Wealth of Nations’ is not an argument for self-regulating markets but instead an argument for a less authoritarian society where political authority, under pressure from a newly formed public opinion made by people in the middling ranks of life, would cease favouring the most powerful pressure group and leave ‘civil society’ in a condition where an adjustment in the distribution of wealth, revenue, knowledge and power could take place through a quasi-spontaneous process. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Merging Traditional Technique Vocabularies with Democratic Teaching Perspectives in Dance EducationA Consideration of Aesthetic Values and Their Sociopolitical ContextsBecky Dyer (bio)IntroductionConventional aesthetic values in dance traditionally have been wed to long-established authoritarian teaching approaches in American professional dance companies and university dance programs. Developed over time from a mixture of enduring cultural tastes, aesthetic ideals, and historical influences, aesthetic values play a significant role in teaching and learning (...) processes in the classroom, although the impact of their presence on learning is often indiscernible or paid little attention. As dance educators in higher education make efforts to move toward more democratic teaching perspectives, they often find themselves philosophically lodged between established approaches to teaching traditional, codified vocabularies and aesthetics and more contemporary, student-centered, and democratically oriented perspectives to teaching and learning dance. Attention to the sociopolitical contexts of dance training gives practitioners opportunities to consider aesthetic values of dance from differing cultural vantage points and the perspectives by which these values are taught and learned.Each learning circumstance in dance is a complex weaving of personal and social experience involving individuals, communities, movers, and viewers. Movement aesthetic values emerge from personal and communal morals and ideals as well as social mores of the body, which create contextual lenses for experiencing, interpreting, and making meaning of movement vocabularies created and perpetuated in dance communities. It is important that teachers who seek to incorporate more democratically oriented, student-centered teaching perspectives become mindful of ways social values and perceptual/contextual frameworks impact personal [End Page 108] and communal practices in dance. Approaches to learning technique that consider sociocultural factors of dance movement aesthetics—wherein teachers and learners are led to recognize and reflect upon personal, social, and aesthetic values embodied in movement and embedded in movement vocabularies—can lead teachers and learners to better understand the significance of learning in dance as it relates to personal and social worlds beyond the classroom.This article will suggest how movement analysis from a socially contextualized perspective can inform understanding about the significance of sociopolitical contexts and aesthetic values in Western dance training. Perspectives of movement analysis will provide groundwork for discussing perceivable ways to address discrepancies between democratic and authoritarian teaching viewpoints and to challenge the prominent linking of conventional aesthetic values and vocabularies, as well as codified techniques, to authoritarian practices. The discussion will address relationships between pedagogical perspectives and ideologies held by teachers concerning the place and worth of conventional aesthetic values and the nature of aesthetic experiences in the dance technique classroom, and the potential understandings and meanings their students construct.Foundations of Movement Analysis: The Ideas and Practices of Rudolf LabanRecognizing embedded personal and social aesthetic values in movement is an important initial stage in developing more critically reflective practices that promote meaning, agency, and student interest in learning. The task is challenging because the only values accessibly evident to the bystander, and often the mover, are visual ones. Yet, as Rudolf Laban (1879-1958) suggested, intangible values also inspire movement. Laban created a theoretical framework—referred to as Laban Movement Analysis—for movement exploration, description, and analysis to consider both noticeably apparent and less-tangible values of movement by investigating movement phenomena and factors that generate them.1 The praxis-oriented system involves reflecting on movement observations, considering emotional and mental facets of movement, and taking into account experiential bodily perspectives of the mover.2Although one of Laban's fundamental purposes for developing a descriptive vocabulary for movement was to facilitate the mastery of dance technique,3 his teaching emphasized the "harmonious expressiveness of the whole individual," as he aimed to facilitate dancers' ability to understand and use their bodies in order to discover individual ways of expressing themselves and communicating.4 Laban's attitudes toward training were in sharp contrast to approaches of the day, yet interestingly, they were not [End Page 109] opposed to them. For example, common dance gestures and postures were expanded into free exploration and studied from diverse points of view rather than a narrow range of perspectives, aesthetic values, and movement qualities.5Laban's theory of "Effort," which he linked to emotions as well as... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Intersection of Heidegger's Philosophy and His Politics as Reflected in the Views of His Contemporaries at the University of FreiburgRichard DetschThere has been so much speculation in the last ten years or more about the reasons for and the extent of Heidegger's involvement in the Nazi movement that another attempt to come to grips with this important problem might seem superfluous. Amidst the weighty arguments advanced in what (...) has become a multitude of treatises and tomes, however, there has thus far been little interest in dealing with Heidegger's simple statement in his Spiegel interview that he was moved by the "confusion of opinions... from 22 parties... to adopt a political stance that was national and above all social."1 If we suspend our suspicion for the moment that Heidegger is here again manipulating the facts to fit his postwar predicament, as has been amply demonstrated [End Page 407] regarding other details, and examine the evidence we will find that there are indeed indications of the predominance of Heidegger's social concerns with respect to the political situation of the early '30s as well as of his leaning toward an authoritarian form of government an inclination shared, to be sure, by a significantly large number of his compatriots, academic and otherwise. There is one approach in particular toward answering the question of why Heidegger became a Nazi which the present attempt hopes to put in question: the emphasis on his abandonment of his Christian religious origins. The following statement by Theodore Kisiel expresses this line of reasoning most succinctly: "It will take a decade, but it will be not just an anti-Catholic, nor an anti-Christian, but the full-blown anti-religious attitude of the German Geist ripened from German Idealism that sweeps Heidegger into National Socialism, with all the romantic fervor of another religious conversion."2 John Caputo argues, based on the work of Kisiel and van Buren, that the Heidegger of the early twenties was drawing from two "equiprimordial" sources, "the Aristotelian and the Christian." "It was only in the 1930's, in the period of Heidegger's active political engagement with National Socialism, that the twofold root of the tradition was pruned to a single root... a Great Greek beginning from which everything Jewish and Christian, everything Roman, Latin, and Romance, was to be excluded as fallen, derivative, distortive, and inauthentic."3 This shift in perspective, this rejection by Heidegger of earlier Christian impulses in his work led to "fatal" lapses in the ethical realm: "... by leaving behind Kierkegaard and Luther... and by treating Aristotle as a fading echo of the primordially early Greek, Heidegger left the question of Being in a state of utter mystification about ethico-political matters, about the matter of our concrete responsibilities to one another."4 David Farrell Krell makes this lack of respect for and attention to the "other" the centerpiece of an entire study attempting to show Heidegger's propensity for the inhuman ideology of Nazism.5 These arguments derive perhaps from the rhetorical question posed by the Freiburg historian Hugo Ott in 1988: "Didn't this pseudo-religious expectation of salvation [through the mission of the Führer] conceal a monstrous hubris, wasn't the thinking of Heidegger in its radically contained, i.e., in its elementary [End Page 408] simplicity really a surrogate for the Christian view of life thrown overboard?"6 The problem with all such arguments is that "the Christian view of life" did not prevent others of a background similar to Heidegger's from an enthusiastic acceptance of Nazism without an abandonment of their religious faith. In this regard, let the case of Engelbert Krebs, Heidegger's one-time friend and mentor, the Jesuit priest who officiated at his marriage ceremony, serve as an example. Ott deals with Krebs fairly extensively in his Heidegger biography, stressing Krebs's chagrin when Heidegger turned his back on the Catholic Church, but fails to mention at all the enthusiasm for the Nazi movement that Krebs shared with his former friend.During his tenure as dean of the Theological Faculty at the University of Freiburg, Krebs delivered an address in a university lecture... (shrink)

The result and the duration of an analysis depend on how quickly a patient succeeds in penetrating the resistance which prevents the unconscious data from becoming conscious. In addition to the fears that the patient brings with him into the analysis, the attitude of the analyst is a factor strengthening or weakening the fears and, therefore, the resistance. It is not primarily relevant here what the analyst says or thinks consciously, but whether he unconsciously accepts the patient and his claim (...) to happiness unconditionally. Freud s attitude towards the patient might be characterized fundamentally as „tolerance“. He recommends facing the patient indifferently and coolly. The essay proceeds to demonstrate that this conscious liberalism involves unconsciously a strict repudiation and rejection of those impulses which are tabooed by bourgeois society, especially the sexual ones. Therefore, Freud in his authoritarian and patricentric character must be recognized as a typical representative of a society, which demands obedience and subjection. This attitude creates in the patient, despite its liberalism, new fears which make it more difficult to overcome the resistance and, therefore, blocks the success of the analysis.The liberal tolerance represents at the same time a conscious relativism towards all values and an unconscious recognition of the taboos of bourgeois society. To utilize the Freudian therapy in the best possible way, it is necessary to connect it with an independent philosophy to accept unconditionally the patient’s claim to happiness and eliminating from all valuations the taboos and abstract traits. Le succès et la durée de l’analyse dépendent de la rapidité avec laquelle le malade réussit à briser la résistance qui empêche les réalités inconscientes de parvenir à la conscience. Abstraction faite des angoisses avec lesquelles le malade arrive à l’analyse, l’attitude de l’analyste est elle-même un facteur susceptible de renforcer ou au contraire d’affaiblir les angoisses et, par suite, la résistance. Ce qui importe en première ligne ce n’est pas ce que l’analyste dit ou pense consciemment, l’essentiel est de savoir si, inconsciemment aussi, il prend une attitude entièrement favorable à T égard du malade et de la prétention au bonheur de celui-ci. L’attitude de Freud à l’égard du malade peut être caractérisée d’abord par le mot de „tolérance“. Il recommande de ne pas porter de jugements de valeur, d’être indifférent et froid à l’égard du malade. L’article montre que derrière ce libéralisme conscient se cache un refus brutal, une condamnation des désirs qui sont en opposition avec les tabous de la société, spécialement les tabous sexuels. En même temps Freud se révèle un représentant typique de la société actuelle par son caractère autoritaire „patrocentrique“ qui réclame obéissance et soumission. Cette attitude, en dépit de son libéralisme conscient, crée au malade de nouvelles angoisses qui augmentent la difficulté de l’effort pour surmonter les résistances et ainsi rendent plus difficile le succès de l’analyse.La tolérance libérale avec son double visage, relativisme conscient à l’égard de toutes les valeurs et respect inconscient des tabous bourgeois, marque les limites de la thérapeutique analytique. La mise en valeur maximum de la thérapeutique Freudienne ne serait assurée que si elle était liée à une philosophie indépendante. Accepter inconditionnellement l’exigence du bonheur du malade, dépouiller toutes les valeurs de leur caractère tabou et abstrait constitueraient les traits essentiels d’une telle mise en valeur. (shrink)

The article delves into Kazakhstan’s policies vis-à-vis the European Union, focusing on their driving motives and enabling conditions. Drawing upon published papers and, to a lesser degree, primary sources, the author argues that friendship with the EU largely serves the Kazakhstani elite as means of economic modernisation as well regime legitimation, perfectly fitting Kazakhstan’s dominant domestic discourse which portrays the country as Eurasian and its foreign policy—as multi-vector. The study also shows that Astana’s partnership with Brussels is to a large (...) degree possible because the EU holds a simultaneous positive attitude to such partnership regardless Kazakhstan’s authoritarian regime. According to the article, such reflects the great instrumental value collaboration with Astana gives Brussels, the EU’s general inactivity on democracy promotion in Central Asia and Kazakhstan’s looking more pro-European and economically/politically advanced against the background of its post-Soviet and Central Asian autocratic fellows. The paper concludes by reflecting on the configuration of pragmatism and identity in Astana’s approach to the EU and discussing the peculiarities of the bloc’s power over Kazakhstan. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 31.1 (2001) 73-90 [Access article in PDF] The Leader's Two BodiesSlavoj Zizek's Postmodern Political Theology Claudia Breger Over the course of the last decade, Slavoj Zizek and his "Slovenian Lacanian school" have gained renown in the Western theory market. Academics are fascinated not only by Zizek's performances as a speaker, his nondogmatic approach to issues of genre and (inter)mediality, 1 and the "literary" character of his theoretical texts (...) [Laclau, Preface xii], but also by the political turn given to psychoanalysis by the "Slovenian school." Already in his preface to Zizek's The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989), Ernesto Laclau wrote that this school's work made Lacanian theory "one of the principal reference points of the so-called 'Slovenia spring'—that is to say the democratization campaigns that have taken place in recent years" [xi]. More than ten years later—after a decade of authoritarian rule, war, and genocide in former Yugoslavia—recent revolutionary events in Serbia once more allow one to hope for a thorough democratization of the region. In a newspaper article evaluating the uprising, however, Zizek warned that these hopes might be premature: while Milosevic could find his new role as "a Serbian Jesus Christ," taking upon him all the "sins" committed by his people, Kostunica and his "democratic" nationalism might represent "nothing but Milosevic in the 'normal' version, without the excess" [Zizek, "Gewalt"]. 2Zizek was not alone in warning that the new government in Yugoslavia might not bring an end to Serbian nationalist politics. The pessimistic scenario Zizek evoked on this occasion, however, was not simply the result of his evaluation of the current political constellation in Serbia. Rather, the fantasy of the necessary return of the leader is connected to his political theory—a theory that does not allow for more optimistic scenarios of democratization and the diminution of nationalism in society. My reading of Zizek's work thus argues for a reevaluation of his theory in terms of its implicit authoritarian politics. The need for such a reevaluation is also suggested by Laclau toward the end of his recent exchange with Judith Butler and Zizek when he admits that "the more our discussions progressed, the more I realized that my sympathy for Zizek's politics was largely the result of a mirage" [Laclau, "Constructing Universality" 292]. Laclau now criticizes Zizek's radical Marxist rhetoric by suggesting that he "wants to do away with liberal democratic regimes" without specifying a political alternative [289], and describes Zizek's discourse as "schizophrenically split between a highly sophisticated Lacanian analysis and an insufficiently deconstructed traditional Marxism" [205]. On [End Page 73] the other hand, he also problematizes Zizek's "psychoanalytic discourse" as "not truly political" [289]. My argument primarily starts from this latter point: the antidemocratic—and, as I will argue, both antifeminist and anti-Semitic—moment of Zizek's theory is to be located not only in the way he performs Marxism, but also in the way he performs Lacanian psychoanalysis. While, in other words, Zizek's skepticism vis-à-vis democracy is obviously informed by, and inseparable from, Marxist critiques of "liberal," "representative" democracy, his failure to elaborate alternative visions of political change towards egalitarian and/or plural scenarios of society cannot be explained solely by his Marxist perspective. Rather, it is Zizek's reading of Lacanian psychoanalysis that does not allow for revisions of the Marxist paradigm toward, for example, a "radical democracy" as suggested by Laclau and Chantal Mouffe in their Hegemony and Socialist Strategy.In a chapter entitled "Formal Democracy and Its Discontents" in Looking Awry (1992), Zizek notes that "Lacan predicted a new rise of racism for the coming decades" as early as the 1960s [162]. 3 Zizek interprets this statement in the context of a "fundamental impasse of democracy" [162] created by the fact that the abstraction proper to democracy can never dissolve the "substantial ties"—of ethnicity, nation, and so on—that it negates [164]. 4 According to Zizek, "this constitutive paradox" has to be assumed: "The democratic attitude is always based upon a certain fetishistic... (shrink)

As reflected in the spirit of the times, certain fundamental changes have occurred in such concepts as nature, reason, and life. While in the liberal era nature appeared to man as a sphere to be conquered by him for the enhancement of his material happiness, today it is an ideal offering an escape from the vicissitudes of social life. Confidence in the power of reason and of science turns into hatred of intelligence, because the latter is an instrument of domination (...) for the privileged classes, and leads the majority of men to accept utopian dreams which cannot be realized. Whereas the philosophy of liberalism glorifies the individual as an active agent having a higher meaning, he now falls into disrespect as a merely passive link in the overpowering totality of life.This article analyses Hamsun as a typical representative of such a postliberal ideology. At all points where he develops his own interpretation of life and the world, he portrays the longings of a disillusioned bourgeois civilization in terms of these new concepts. The ideal which he pictures as an escape from the bourgeois civilization of our times is only superficially in conflict with it. His most important subjects and themes derive their social function from a historical situation which calls for an attitude of obedient subordination to authority.There are two elements in Hamsun's dream of a return to nature : the resentful disillusionment which wants to fence off nature as its private property, because it has little to expect from the social reality in which it lives, on the one hand ; and on the other, the adoration of the heroic as reflected in the overpowering sweep of the forces of nature. This admiration of power is further enhanced by the glorification of peasant life. The ideal of nature is finally characterized by a biological interpretation of erotic relationships. Brutality and sentimentality interchange abruptly within such an ideology as they do in actual authoritarian character types of the present day.Hamsun criticizes all important aspects of urban life, exhibiting another form of his anti-rational attitude. However, it is important to notice his relationship to industry : he has contempt for the working class but utters not one critical word against the employers.His philosophy of life, which minimizes the individual and exalts the powers that be, corresponds to the trends of the time : men are scurrying around like ants, without plan or aim ; most of them are crushed, and this is justified because the forces of life require unconditional obedience and absolute subordination of the individual.Finally the author presents some characteristic documents about the influence which Hamsun has exerted. In the post-war period socialists and liberals were singing the same paeans of praise for Hamsun as the fascists more recently.Les trois transformations les plus importantes de la conscience sociale au cours de ces cinquante dernières années, concernent les idées de nature, d'esprit et de vie. Dans le libéralisme, la nature apparaît avant tout comme une réalité que l'homme doit maîtriser pour accroître ses richesses matérielles. Aujourd'hui, dans son apparence immédiate, elle devient un idéal qui doit libérer les hommes des déceptions que leur inflige l'existence collective. Au lieu de la confiance ancienne en l'esprit et en la science, éclate maintenant la haine de l'intellect, qui sans doute offre aux classes privilégiées un instrument affiné de domination, mais n'apporte à la majorité des hommes que des utopies rationalistes sans signification concrète. L'individu, que la philosophie libérale transfigurait en lui attribuant une fonction supérieure, apparaît comme un élément passif d'une totalité toute puissante, la vie.L'article montre ensuite en Hamsun un représentant typique de cette idéologie post-libérale. Sur tous les points décisifs, sa conception de l'homme et de la nature révèle sa véritable signification : elle traduit dans des catégories nouvelles les aspirations de la bourgeoisie déçue. L'opposition entre son idéal et la société bourgeoise est d'ailleurs tout apparente. La fonction sociale de ses thèmes les plus importants est la préparation d'une humanité soumise, prête à s'incliner sans protester devant l'autorité.Derrière le rêve de Hamsun d'une existence en accord immédiat avec la nature, on aperçoit le ressentiment petit bourgeois, qui veut faire de la nature sa propriété privée parce qu’il a peu à attendre dans la réalité. On aperçoit aussi le culte de l'héroïque en soi, que symbolise la violence desphénomènes naturels. Le culte de la force est encore accentué par la transfiguration du paysan. L'idéal d’une vie conforme à la nature est finalement caractérisé par la représentation biologique que se fait Hamsun des rapports érotiques. Constamment, dans cette idéologie, sentimentalisme et brutalité se juxtaposent sans intermédiaire — mélange qui appartient en propre également au type d’homme autoritaire du présent.L’anti-intellectualisme de Hamsun se manifeste sous forme d’une critique des éléments les plus importants de la civilisation urbaine. En particulier, son jugement sur l’industrie est décisif ; il méprise le prolétariat, sans jamais dire un mot contre les entrepreneurs.Sa représentation, marquée par l’actualité, du néant de l’individu et du respect qui convient devant les puissances existantes, s’exprime aussi dans une philosophie de la vie. Les hommes grouillent comme des vers, beaucoup sont piétinés ; mais cette destinée est juste, car la puissance de la vie a le droit d’exiger de l’individu obéissance sans réserve et soumission absolue.A la fin, l’article rassemble quelques témoignages caractéristiques de l’accueil fait à Hamsun. Il en résulte qu’en particulier après la guerre, socialistes et libéraux ont admiré sans critique Hamsun de la même manière que des littérateurs fascistes. (shrink)

The Democratic Party government, covering the period 1950-60, is seen as one of the most important stages on the road to democracy in Turkey. The Republican People’s Party, which ruled the country from the proclamation of the republic in 1923 to the end of World War II, found itself in opposition for the first time after the 1950 elections, and thus Turkish democracy was given a first chance to stand on its own feet. This work aims to read the era (...) through the eyes of French diplomats, giving an external and disinterested perspective on DP power and the Menderes government, a critical time in the history of Turkish democracy. The study is based on the thoughts and analysis about the DP’s representation of democracy and attitudes towards opposition from 1956 to the coup on May 27, 1960 written down by the 69th and 70th French ambassadors to Turkey, Jean Paul Garnier and Henry Spitzmuller. The reports that Garnier and Spitzmuller sent to Paris contain harsh criticism of the Menderes government for its authoritarian and anti-democratic practices and for its religious policies. These criticisms provide us with important clues about the ways in which the DP transformed the fundamental principles and policies of the Atatürk era. (shrink)

Although Richard Hooker's private attitudes were clericalist and authoritarian, his constitutional theory subordinated clergymen to laymen and monarchy to parliamentary statute. This article explains why his political ideas were nonetheless appropriate to his presumed religious purposes. It notes a very intimate connection between his teleological conception of a law and his hostility towards conventional high Calvinist ideas about predestination. The most significant anomaly within his broadly Aristotelian world-view was his belief that politics is nothing but a means to (...) cope with sin. This too can be linked to his religious ends, but it creates an ambiguity that made his doctrines usable by Locke. (shrink)

Although there is no consensus about the exact span of time that corresponds to the American Enlightenment, it is safe to say that it occurred during the eighteenth century among thinkers in British North America and the early United States and was inspired by the ideas of the British and French Enlightenments. Based on the metaphor of bringing light to the Dark Age, the Age of the Enlightenment (Siècle des lumières in French and Aufklärung in German) shifted allegiances away from (...) absolute authority, whether religious or political, to more skeptical and optimistic attitudes about human nature, religion and politics. In the American context, thinkers such as Thomas Paine, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin invented and adopted revolutionary ideas about scientific rationality, religious toleration and experimental political organization—ideas that would have far-reaching effects on the development of the fledgling nation. Some coupled science and religion in the notion of deism; others asserted the natural rights of man in the anti-authoritarian doctrine of liberalism; and still others touted the importance of cultivating virtue, enlightened leadership and community in early forms of republican thinking. At least six ideas came to punctuate American Enlightenment thinking: deism, liberalism, republicanism, conservatism, toleration and scientific progress. Many of these were shared with European Enlightenment thinkers, but in some instances took a uniquely American form. (shrink)

A comparative study of business related values among business students was conducted over the last 10 years in two neighbouring countries. Although Estonia and Finland are culturally related, according to an empirical study of managerial values, including the ethical values of business students, the two countries display significant differences. During the last decade, Estonia has changed from being a country characterised by an authoritarian, centralized, totalitarian state socialism, to a democratic country with a free market economy and different (...) class='Hi'>attitudes and values. At the same time Finland has experienced almost a century of capitalism and democracy. It is argued that the differences in values exhibited by these two countries could be explained by using the institutional and historical context. The authors propose a model of value hierarchies in relation to institutionalism. (shrink)

The definition and measurement of filial piety in existing research primarily focuses on the narrow conceptualizations of Asian filial piety, which would inflate cultural differences and undermine cultural universals in how people approach caring for their elderly parents. Employing the Dual Filial Piety Model, this study aimed to examine the relationship between filial piety and attitude toward caring for elderly parents beyond the Asian context. In our study, we found that reciprocal filial piety does not differ across cultures while (...) class='Hi'>authoritarian filial piety does. We also found that collectivism, rather than ethnicity, predicted RFP and AFP, which in turn predicted positive attitude toward caring for elderly parents. Our work demonstrates the cross-cultural applicability of the DFPM and highlights the universal and culture-specific aspects of filial piety. (shrink)

The conclusion drawn was that this failure was due to underestimating the depth of Western Christian spiritual foundations, so the accent of subversive activity shifted from politico-economic struggle to "cultural revolution," to the patient intellectual-cultural work of undermining national pride, family, religion, and spiritual commitments, and the spirit of sacrifice for one's country was dismissed as involving the "authoritarian personality"; marital fidelity was supposed to express pathological sexual repression; following Benjamin's motto on how every document of culture is a (...) document of barbarism, the highest achievements of Western culture were denounced for concealing the practices of racism and genocide, and so on. MacDonald devotes many pages to The Authoritarian Personality, a collective project coordinated by Adorno, the purpose of which was, for MacDonald, to make every group affiliation sound as if it were a sign of mental disorder; everything, from patriotism to religion to family-and race-loyally, is disqualified as a sign of a dangerous and defective "authoritarian personality." In addition to ridiculing patriotism and racial identity, the Frankfurt school glorified promiscuity and bohemian poverty: "Certainly many of the central attitudes of the largely successful 1960s countercultural revolution find expression in The Authoritarian Personality, including idealizing rebellion against parents, low-investment sexual relationships, and scorn for upward social mobility, social status, family pride, the Christian religion, and patriotism". (shrink)

The essay takes as its starting point the specific social experiences of the composer with the radio, in other words, the relationship of the radio to contemporary music in particular, and to the broader problem of musical reproduction. This leads to questions which extend beyond the immediate orbit of the composer.The content of musical broadcasts is examined first. The production of serious and advanced modern music plays but a minor role. The content of the programs stems largely from the reservoir (...) of „cultural goods“, and in a deteriorated form at that. On the one hand, banal works are pushed to the fore in consideration of the pre-formed taste of the public, and on the other hand, great music undergoes a process of banalization on the radio. — The thesis of the article is that the declining musical forms take on an „informatory“ character in order to make the listener more susceptible to propagandistic information. Such music distracts him and has a general tendency to „entertain“. Radio business aims to have music received as a mere background, not as a central figure. Music on the radio is nothing more than an „applied acoustical articraft for the embellishment of everyday life“, a veil.The types of radio organization are examined next. In Europe, the state-controlled public utility type predominates, whereas in America the radio, like the press, is largely dependent on the interests of the advertisers. In the authoritarian states, economic interests are both concealed and conveyed through the totalitarian propaganda.Finally the author poses the problem of the way in which the radio affects the work of art and its social manifestation. The progressive moment is emphasized, for the new mode of presentation fosters an appropriate, anti-illusory attitude on the part of the listener which is conducive to knowledge. It is an attitude which is also necessary for the interpreter on the radio. The unillusory self-presentation of the work of art is construed as the positive aim of radio transmission. The progressive trends are seriously restricted, however, by the contemporary function of the radio. Today, under favorable circumstances, it can help „reveal the mass of contradictions in the existing world.L'article part des expériences sociales spécifiques que la radio livre au compositeur : d'abord la relation de la radio à la musique actuelle, plus généralement aux problèmes de la reproduction musicale. L'étude arrive à des conclusions qui débordent le cadre de l'expérience immédiate du compositeur.On examine en premier lieu le programme musical de la radio. La production contemporaine n'y figure que dans une très faible mesure. Le programme est alimenté surtout par le réservoir des „biens traditionnels de la culture44, à vrai dire défigurés. D'un côté, par égard pour le goût du public, les productions banales s'imposent ; quant aux oeuvres de la grande musique de l'autre côté, elles n'échappent pas, à la radio, à une sorte de banalisation. L'auteur soutient que la musique en décadence prend de plus en plus un caractère d'information, c'est-à-dire : elle veut rendre l'auditeur plus ouvert aux informations de propagande. Elle le distrait et tend à la récréation. L'exploitation bureaucratique de la radio vise à faire de la musique non plus une figure, mais un arrière-plan. La musique à la radio n'est plus qu'une „activité artisanale pour enjoliver la vie quotidienne44 et un décor dont la fonction est de dissimuler.Par la suite, on passe en revue les différents types de l'organisation de la radio. En Europe, c'est „l'entreprise mixte44, contrôlée par l'État, qui domine. En Amérique, la radio — comparable alors à la presse — dépend de celui qui passe les commandes de publicité. Dans les États totalitaires, la propagande est à la fois camouflage et intermédiaire des intérêts économiques.Enfin, K. pose la question de savoir de quelle façon la technique de la radio influe sur l'oeuvre d’art et sur sa condition sociale. Le facteur de progression est souligné : le nouveau mode de représentation exige de la part de l'auditeur une attitude objective, curieuse, critique, hostile au rêve. En même temps, cette attitude doit être celle de l’interprète lui-même. Présenter l'oeuvre d’art dépouillée, libre de tout faux semblant — voilà le but positif de l’émission radiophonique. Les tendances progressives, cependant, sont malheureusement inhibées par la fonction actuelle de la radio. Aujourd'hui, celle-ci peut, tout au plus, contribuer à rendre „évidentes les multiples contradictions de notre monde44. (shrink)

Michael Haneke’s film The White Ribbon narrates violent attacks that disrupt the cyclical life of a German village in 1913–14. The narrator frames the violence as a study of the origins of fascism: the alleged perpetrators are children, who rebel against the disciplinary powers of patriarchal authority. Coming to maturity during World War I, they will have become the generation of Nazism’s followers. In contrast to psycho-historical readings of The White Ribbon as a cinematic exploration of the causal relationship between (...) the authoritarian formation of the juvenile subject and her susceptibility to fascism’s redemptive illusions, I propose an anti-psychological interpretation of the film. This reading seeks to understand The White Ribbon in terms of Haneke’s aesthetic and formal choices, which underpin his notion of “ethical spectatorship.” I argue that the film offers a dual metaphorical construction of the nexus between memory and the cinematic image, and of the mnemonic and affective aspects of the history of violence. Haneke forges a link between the European attitude to its history of fascism and its ongoing politics of exclusion, arising from its covert fascist desire for the unified self. The significance of The White Ribbon in the ongoing debate on history/memory thus lies in its critique of Europe’s current self-understanding as having outgrown its violent past. (shrink)

Since COVID-19 is a global-scale pandemic, it can only be solved on the global level. In this context, intercultural dialogues are of utmost importance. Indeed, different models of traditional ethics might be of assistance in constructing a new, global ethics that could help us confront the present predicament and prepare for other possible global crises that might await us in the future. The explosive, pandemic spread of COVID-19 in 2020 clearly demonstrated that in general, one of the most effective tools (...) for containment of the epidemics is precisely human and interpersonal solidarity, which must also be accompanied by a certain degree of autonomous self-discipline. The present paper follows the presumption that these types of personal and interpersonal attitudes are—inter alia— culturally conditioned and hence influenced by different traditional models of social ethics. In light of the fact that East-Asian or Sinic societies were more successful and effective in the process of containing and eliminating the virus compared to the strategies of the Euro-American regions, I will first question the widespread assumption that this effectiveness is linked to the authoritarian political traditions of the Sinic East and Southeast Asian areas. Then, I will critically introduce the Confucian ethics of relations, which in various ways has influenced the social structures of these regions, and clarify the question of whether and in which way the relics of this ethics had an actual effect on the crisis resolution measurements. The crucial aim of this paper is to contribute to the construction of theoretical groundworks for a new, transculturally grounded global ethics, which is more needed today than ever before. (shrink)

SUMMARYDue to his famous conflict with John Stuart Mill, James Fitzjames Stephen is often assumed to have been an opponent of toleration and intellectual freedom and a defender of authoritarian or reactionary principles. These assumptions are misleading. Stephen was, and was known in his time to have been, a champion of toleration. This essay provides a comprehensive overview of his writing on these themes, drawing from a wider array of texts than is usually considered in the study of the (...) Stephen-Mill controversy. Contrary to popular belief, Stephen had a deep and multi-faceted argument in favor of toleration. As a critic of contending theories of toleration and freedom of discussion, Stephen was concerned to defeat what he saw as the resurgence of a priori principles in Victorian political philosophy and to combat the expansion of a proper notion of toleration to include a cluster of beliefs and attitudes of which he disapproved. In his approach to these issues Stephen was, arguably, as representative of Victorian thinking as the author of On Liberty. (shrink)

The social function of violence was described from the early beginnings of social research - not only in studies of in prejudice. But with the study Autorität und Familie, which was published in 1936, and The Authoritarian Personality, which was published in 1950, the strong connection between violence and subjectivation was figured out as a critique of the society. In this article the thesis of a „secondary authoritarian“ dynamic is developed. Firstly, the empirical findings of the „Mitte“-Studies, a (...) longitudinal research project measuring right wing extremist attitudes in Germany, will be presented to underpin in second step the function of a strong economy: as an authority economy is using force to integrate each individual into modern society. In this understanding right-wing extremist attitudes give a deeper insight into a society as well as into an individual’s prejudices. The society itself is highlighted with psychoanalytical social psychology: it is not research in individual behaviour but in the dynamic of a market society. With the concept of the ‚Secondary Authoritarianism‘, the contemporary social dynamic could be understood as failed process of secularisation. (shrink)

The main objective of this article is to provide a critique of the pandemic strategy suggested by the World Health Organization (WHO) and implemented by various countries from March 2020 onwards in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, China. Based on the theories of Michel Foucault, this critique aims to show that, in the first instance, the pandemic may be understood in terms of the art of governing human beings at the point of interaction between politics and medicine; (...) secondly, in Foucauldian terminology, such interaction may be referred to as ‘noso-politics’, that is, a mechanism used to control the body of the population via authoritarian measures exercised in the name of the health of the population; thirdly, such a mechanism exercises its power by invoking a mechanistic truth about the SARS-CoV-2 virus which may be countered by an argument that takes a historical perspective on the virus; fourthly, the pandemic strategy may be opposed by a syndemic approach that takes into account interactions between emerging diseases such as COVID-19 and non-communicable illnesses, as well as the biological and socio-economic conditions that the well-being of the population depends on. In short, by providing a critique of the politics of truth about the pandemic, the virus, and health measures, the article aims to encourage a critical attitude that will challenge both the authorities and the truth they invoke to prevent the pandemic strategy being used as a mechanism for governing, given the predictions of the recurrent emergence of new viruses. (shrink)

This paper investigates the Turkish Constitutional Court (TCC)’s treatment of legal challenges brought against Turkey’s legal responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on a detailed examination of the TCC’s institutional features, political origins and jurisprudential trajectory, and taking three politically salient judgments of the TCC concerning Turkey’s executive-dominated pandemic control as the point of departure, the paper argues that the TCC chose to exercise judicial restraint both in protecting fundamental rights and reviewing pandemic policies of the executive. It also argues (...) that the TCC’s judicial restraint during the pandemic was simply the re-manifestation of its ‘play-it-safe’ strategy — a judicial stance the TCC willingly adopted in the aftermath of the 2016 attempted coup despite possessing strong constitutional powers of judicial review, and its established attitude of assertive scrutiny in the past. From a more theoretical perspective, the analysis also explores how the passive role to which the TCC is consigned in an increasingly authoritarian regime since the 2016 failed coup relates to the global phenomenon of judicialization of authoritarian politics. (shrink)

It is well known that Hegel’s Philosophy of Right initiated, when it first appeared, a dispute about his philosophy in general that has not abated to the present day. The initial grounds for this dispute included: Hegel’s often virulent attacks, in the Philosophy of Right, on contemporaries such as Fries, Hugo, and von Haller; the question of his political stance within Prussia, which was then rapidly developing into a reactionary, authoritarian state; in other words, the question of Hegel’s political (...) accommodation, the question of his attitude to natural law, and so on. For a long time, therefore, the philosophical dispute was shaped by the political interests of the day. The struggle against Hegel’s philosophical system as a whole even resorted to personal defamation of the philosopher, so that, by revealing personal weakness, his system and the influential school of followers he had attracted could be discredited. Likewise, the diverse attempts at an adequate assessment of the historical influence of Hegel’s philosophy have come to a head. The two main questions, also deriving their inspiration from differing interpretations of the Philosophy of Right, are: How legitimate are the various Marxist references to Hegel as either the forerunner of Marxism or its principal opponent? How legitimate is the accusation that Hegel, by developing a totalitarian theory of the state, prepared the ground for twentieth century fascism, especially National Socialism? As previous research has pointed out, an adequate assessment of such relations will have to deal very carefully with Hegel’s position in his own day. For example, apart from his attitude to the situation in Prussia, his attitude to the most important event of the age, the French Revolution, must be examined. Furthermore, comparative perspectives must be established, so that the distinctive shape of Hegel’s philosophy of right can be seen clearly, against the background of the European constitutional debates of the day. In the last analysis, however, the essence of the disagreement still stems from the problem of the proper political classification of Hegel’s philosophy of right. (shrink)

“Just as philosophy begins with doubt, so also a life that may be called human begins with irony” (Kierkegaard The Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates, pg.6, thesis XV) What has proportion to do with humor or irony? And what do either of these have to do with being human? Jokes, laughter, and funniness connote excess, exaggeration, incongruity, dissonance, etc., the opposite of proportion--balance, symmetry, Aristotle’s golden mean. Yet, The Philosopher maintains, the wit has found the ideal moderate (...) position between the deficient boor who seems constitutionally incapable of laughing, and the excessive buffoon who doesn’t know how to laugh at the right time, in the right way, or for the right reasons--buffoonish laughter is indiscriminate. The title, paraphrasing Hume, is consistent with Kierkegaard’s valorization of irony, as philosophical doubt and the confusion induced through Socratic Irony both call for a special sort of proportion: ontological proportion. Put simply, one ought to proportion one’s being, as well as others’, as though along a shifting spectrum rather than essentially and hierarchically. The latter fosters a serious attitude that takes polarities as the rule with no exceptions; black or white, good or evil, with us or against us, one of us or one of them, always seeking the ideal of purity. We see this disproportion in authoritarians who manifestly lack a sense of humor--Hitler’s joke courts, Turkey’s president Erdoğan attempting legal punishment against a comedian who mocked him, and Trump’s thin-skinned inability to laugh at his own expense, a monumental character flaw for the most powerful person in the world. Their views are serious, rigid, closed, and dogmatic about themselves, others, and for each of them excepting Trump, the presumed absolute nature of values--Trump’s unironic pretense toward any value is merely a means to service his own absolute end, himself. The playfully ironic person can cope with reality, with ambiguity and, borrowing from Maria Lugones, “ontological confusion,” the not-fully-settled identity. (shrink)

The Arab Spring uprisings that led to the downfall of erstwhile authoritarian regimes in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya heralded the end of a state system introduced into the Middle East and North Africa by imperialist powers after the First World War. Characterized by an authoritarian model of modernization and secularization from above, these regimes are challenged by the rise of political Islam and its ideology of a transnational ‘ummah’. Islamist parties that have come to power in Egypt and (...) Tunisia, however, have proven remarkably unsuccessful in stabilizing governments and writing new constitutions. Are democracy and a religious revival compatible? What will replace the spent legitimacy of these regimes across the region? The legitimation crises of the Arab world have transnational dimensions as well as being influenced by the politics and attitudes of diasporic populations in Europe who need to contend with a different model of church–state relations referred to as ‘the Protestant model of religion’. Contemporary Turkey, which was often pointed to as a successful model of the synthesis of Islam with a pluralist representative democracy, is itself in the throes of another legitimation crisis in the aftermath of the Gezi Park protests which took place in the summer of 2013. What does all this bode for the region? (shrink)

T he article studies the answers collected for seven questions : four of these deal with the present functioning of the socio-political system ; the three last questions concern the future of the system. One has studied respectively : the attitudes towards the basic values of the consumers' society ; the level of satisfaction or dissatisfaction with life in Belgium ; the developments in satisfaction or dissatisfaction during the last four years ; how the various main social categories judge (...) their living conditions ; the attitudes towards an eventual redistribution of national income; the opinions about the probable development of the political system ; those opinions which reveal how one wants the political system to develop. The study of these two last items has allowed to tackle some problems of theoretical interpretation : revolutionary vs. authoritarian risk, dissatisfaction «within the regime» vs. «against the regime», ambivalence of political attitudes, social function of the political power, revolutionary attitudes and rational calculus. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 31.1 (2001) 73-90 [Access article in PDF] The Leader's Two BodiesSlavoj Zizek's Postmodern Political Theology Claudia Breger Over the course of the last decade, Slavoj Zizek and his "Slovenian Lacanian school" have gained renown in the Western theory market. Academics are fascinated not only by Zizek's performances as a speaker, his nondogmatic approach to issues of genre and (inter)mediality, 1 and the "literary" character of his theoretical texts (...) [Laclau, Preface xii], but also by the political turn given to psychoanalysis by the "Slovenian school." Already in his preface to Zizek's The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989), Ernesto Laclau wrote that this school's work made Lacanian theory "one of the principal reference points of the so-called 'Slovenia spring'—that is to say the democratization campaigns that have taken place in recent years" [xi]. More than ten years later—after a decade of authoritarian rule, war, and genocide in former Yugoslavia—recent revolutionary events in Serbia once more allow one to hope for a thorough democratization of the region. In a newspaper article evaluating the uprising, however, Zizek warned that these hopes might be premature: while Milosevic could find his new role as "a Serbian Jesus Christ," taking upon him all the "sins" committed by his people, Kostunica and his "democratic" nationalism might represent "nothing but Milosevic in the 'normal' version, without the excess" [Zizek, "Gewalt"]. 2Zizek was not alone in warning that the new government in Yugoslavia might not bring an end to Serbian nationalist politics. The pessimistic scenario Zizek evoked on this occasion, however, was not simply the result of his evaluation of the current political constellation in Serbia. Rather, the fantasy of the necessary return of the leader is connected to his political theory—a theory that does not allow for more optimistic scenarios of democratization and the diminution of nationalism in society. My reading of Zizek's work thus argues for a reevaluation of his theory in terms of its implicit authoritarian politics. The need for such a reevaluation is also suggested by Laclau toward the end of his recent exchange with Judith Butler and Zizek when he admits that "the more our discussions progressed, the more I realized that my sympathy for Zizek's politics was largely the result of a mirage" [Laclau, "Constructing Universality" 292]. Laclau now criticizes Zizek's radical Marxist rhetoric by suggesting that he "wants to do away with liberal democratic regimes" without specifying a political alternative [289], and describes Zizek's discourse as "schizophrenically split between a highly sophisticated Lacanian analysis and an insufficiently deconstructed traditional Marxism" [205]. On [End Page 73] the other hand, he also problematizes Zizek's "psychoanalytic discourse" as "not truly political" [289]. My argument primarily starts from this latter point: the antidemocratic—and, as I will argue, both antifeminist and anti-Semitic—moment of Zizek's theory is to be located not only in the way he performs Marxism, but also in the way he performs Lacanian psychoanalysis. While, in other words, Zizek's skepticism vis-à-vis democracy is obviously informed by, and inseparable from, Marxist critiques of "liberal," "representative" democracy, his failure to elaborate alternative visions of political change towards egalitarian and/or plural scenarios of society cannot be explained solely by his Marxist perspective. Rather, it is Zizek's reading of Lacanian psychoanalysis that does not allow for revisions of the Marxist paradigm toward, for example, a "radical democracy" as suggested by Laclau and Chantal Mouffe in their Hegemony and Socialist Strategy.In a chapter entitled "Formal Democracy and Its Discontents" in Looking Awry (1992), Zizek notes that "Lacan predicted a new rise of racism for the coming decades" as early as the 1960s [162]. 3 Zizek interprets this statement in the context of a "fundamental impasse of democracy" [162] created by the fact that the abstraction proper to democracy can never dissolve the "substantial ties"—of ethnicity, nation, and so on—that it negates [164]. 4 According to Zizek, "this constitutive paradox" has to be assumed: "The democratic attitude is always based upon a certain fetishistic... (shrink)

The historical situation in which the essays of Montaigne appeared is not unlike the situation in which the skepticism of antiquity developed. In both cases an old town civilization was declining, to be replaced by large, centrally administered states. Skepticism was developed by cultivated individuals of the town bourgeoisie who sought a base in their philosophical self-consciousness for the great transformations taking place in the external world. The essential difference between Montaigne and the skeptics of antiquity lies in his more (...) positive position with regard to the external world. Because of his social origin, he was able to identify himself with the rising French absolutism.This essay deals with the changing role of skepticism in modern history. First of all, it was confronted with the revival of religion both within Catholicism and in the Reformation. This religious temper had certain traits in common with skepticism in that it also replaced the medieval conception of the external world as a meaningful order by the notion of the world as a dark reality, and turned the individual back upon himself. The inner world of the individual, however, took different forms in Montaigne and in the Reformation. The development of a cultivated, worldly wise, and harmonious personality was appropriate to his skepticism, whereas the man of early Protestantism found in himself the conscience which compelled him to tireless labor and fulfillment of duty. Montaigne’s urbane humanism placed him above Protestantism ; the fanatic religious temper seems limited by comparison. The latter, however, includes the distinction between God and the world, and with it another principle besides mere surrender to the existing order. The Reformers had to concede to the masses that the inequitable earthly regime was not an absolute. For all its inadequacy, therefore, the new religion had an element which pointed beyond the prevailing relationships in society.In liberalism, religion became reconciled with the social reality, and skepticism lost its humanistic traits. The differences were obliterated. The predominant type was skeptical because he accepted religion without taking it seriously, and he was religious because his conscience drove him to more and more activity, not, however, in order to change the world into a better one, but merely for the well-being of himself and his family.Towards the new absolutism, particularly as it has developed in the authoritarian states, skepticism becomes universal. The high idealistic faith which is announced by the authoritarian ideology takes hold of man only superficially, and in reality he continues to pursue his individual ends. The period of transition, with its analogies to the decline of antiquity and to the Renaissance, appears to be the time once again for a more noble skepticism. But history does not consist of mere repetitions. The powers of mankind have grown in the meantime, and higher forms of social organization have become possible. The flight into oneself, therefore, takes on a retrogressive and nihilistic character, unlike earlier periods.Religion, like skepticism, can no longer be revived in its earlier form. Under the pressure of reality, it seeks to return to itself. It appears, however, that freedom of conscience cannot be maintained if it limits its demands to the sphere of religion. Separated from all other historical activity, religion has become impotent and self-contradictory. Conscience, originally set against the worldly regime as something vague, has become concrete. It can exist only insofar as it becomes part of the historical effort actually to eliminate prevailing injustice. Isolated religion is no longer religious.La situation historique dans laquelle apparurent les Essais de Montaigne n’est pas sans ressemblance avec les conditions dans lesquelles se formait le scepticisme antique. Ici et là, une vieille culture urbaine s’effondre et de grands États naissent avec un gouvernement centralisé. Le scepticisme est le fait d’individus cultivés qui sortent de la bourgeoisie urbaine, et, face aux bouleversements, cherchent dans la conscience philosophique un point fixe. La différence entre Montaigne et les sceptiques antiques se marque surtout dans l’attitude positive de Montaigne à l’égard du monde extérieur. Grâce à son origine sociale, il parvient à s’identifier avec l’absolutisme français qui commence.L’article examine les transformations du scepticisme dans l’histoire moderne. Tout d'abord, on le confronte avec le renouvellement de la religion, à l'intérieur du catholicisme ou dans la Réforme. La nouvelle religiosité a des traits communs avec le scepticisme dans la mesure où elle conçoit le monde extérieur non plus à la manière du moyen-âge comme un ordre harmonieux, mais comme une obscure réalité, et renvoie l'individu à l'intimité de sa conscience. Mais cette intériorité prend un aspect différent selon qu'il s'agit de Montaigne ou des Protestants. Au scepticisme de Montaigne correspond le développement d'une personnalité harmonieuse, riche d'expérience du monde et de la culture. L'homme du protestantisme naissant découvre en soi la conscience morale impérieuse qui le pousse à un travail sans trêve, à l'accomplissement d'un devoir indéfini. Il se révèle que Montaigne est supérieur au Protestantisme grâce à son humanisme compréhensif. Comparée à lui, la religion fanatique apparaît limitée, et cependant, dans sa brutalité, elle contient la distinction de Dieu et du Monde et partant un autre principe que la simple acceptation de ce qui est. Les réformateurs durent concéder aux masses que l'ordre terrestre injuste ne représente pas une règle absolue. Encore que sous un masque, la nouvelle religiosité contient en elle-même un élément qui va au delà des conditions existantes. Dans le libéralisme, la religion s'est réconciliée avec la conscience sociale, et le scepticisme perd son caractère humaniste. Les différences s'estompent. Le type dominant est sceptique dans la mesure où il reconnaît ja religion sans la prendre au sérieux ; et religieux dans la mesure où il déploie une activité qui, à vrai dire, n'a pas pour but d'améliorer le monde, mais uniquement d'assurer son bien et celui de sa famille.Avec l'absolutisme qui se montre particulièrement dans les États totalitaires, le scepticisme devient général. La haute croyance idéaliste qui y est prêchée ne s'empare des hommes que très superficiellement — en vérité ils ne poursuivent que leurs intérêts individuels. Dans la situation de transition, qui n'est pas sans similitude avec le déclin de la liberté dans le monde antique et avec la Renaissance, le temps semble revenu pour un scepticisme plus noble que celüi des masses. Mais l'histoire ne consiste pas en simples répétitions. Entre temps, les forces de l'humanité ont grandi, des formes plus élevées d'organisation sociale sont devenues possibles. La fuite dans le moi prend par suite — au rebours de ce qui se passait dans les époques anciennes — un caractère rétrograde, voire nihiliste.Pas plus que le scepticisme, la religion ne peut revivre dans sa forme originelle. Sous la pression des circonstances, elle tçnte, il est vrai, de revenir à elle-même. Mais il apparaît que la liberté de conscience ne peut se maintenir si elle ne limite sa prétention au domaine religieux. La religion en tant que mode de vie, séparée du reste de l'activité historique, est devenue impuissante et contradictoire. La conscience qui primitivement était opposée à l'ordre terrestre seulement de manière vague, s'est concrétisée. Elle ne peut exister qu'en se transformant en volonté historique de dépasser réellement l'injustice régnante. La religion isolée n'est plus religieuse.De même que la bonté et l'humanité, par suite de l’évolution historique, ont disparu du scepticisme, ainsi la conscience et le devoir de la religion isolée. La théorie critique de la société, dans laquelle ces deux éléments sont contenus, représente une forme plus élevée de l'activité philosophique. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Listening to the World:Engagement with Those Who SufferOuyporn KhuankaewBefore talking about listening to the world I would like to review what brought us to the need to listen. Riane Eisler, a thinker and peace activist who authored the book The Power of Partnership, summarizes the main characteristics of dominant culture as authoritarian, men over women, masculinity valued over femininity, hierarchical and centralized power of a few privileged groups, (...) and violence institutionalized and normalized. The culture that we are working toward is partnership, which is about a practice of power sharing, a flat structure for society and institutions that support decentralization, gender equality, justice for all, nonviolence, and love.To work and live in partnership cultures we need to shift, to unlearn, the world-view, skills, and behavior we have internalized from the dominant culture.Dominant culturePartnership culturePreaching or teachingLearning togetherTelling the answerListening with an open heartKnowingHaving a beginner’s mindHelpingWorking togetherFixingBeing a witness, being present with the sufferingOffering solutionsAsking questions: Let people touch their wisdom Click for larger view View full resolutionThe work of International Women’s Partnership for Peace and Justice (IWP) is to train social activists in South and Southeast Asia to deconstruct their worldview, attitude, and behaviors internalized from the dominant culture, to envision and practice skills and behaviors of a partnership culture. The main skill that we practice throughout our five-day to six-week workshops is deep listening with an open heart. Compassionate or mindful listening alone combines all the partnership values, concept, skills, and behavior mentioned above, and even beyond. When we use it with [End Page 59] Buddhists, we recognize deep listening as meditation in action. When we work with Christians, we acknowledge it as a practice of love. And we call deep listening a spiritual practice when we work with people who do not want to identify with religious institutions.Deep listening with an open heart is a way to crack open our numbness, internalized from the dominant culture that trains us to listen with our head. Listening with our head means we listen with a readiness to make comment, to judge, to ask for more information for our curiosity, to give solutions, or to share our stories. We all know this well when our parents, teachers, or persons with authority do this to us. And when we become adults, we automatically do the same thing that we used to oppose.When we listen with our heart open it means we are being present to hear the stories, the emotions, the hope, the joy, and the pains of people who simply only need a witness to their own existence, particularly when working with marginalized people whose power within has been taken away and their voices are not heard in the dominant cultures. Offering deep listening to the suffering of someone or a group of people is the first step to engage with their realities and to create opportunities for people to speak their truths.Often in our ten-day workshop we will have someone who has been living or working with an abusive partner, parents, or boss for many years. Our job as a workshop facilitator is to create a safe environment for such a person to talk about her suffering. We model and encourage other participants to be present without judgment, questions, or suggestions when the person is talking. This is very hard for the first few days because most participants are trained, as a result of the dominant culture, to want to tell the person what to do, or they simply act uncomfortable with the situation by writing a note, going to the toilet, or looking away. This is because they do not know how to be with the suffering of others or do not know how to engaged in the suffering itself. We suggest that participants use the breath and the awareness of their body sitting on a floor to help anchor their mind, which is trying to run away from the unpleasant situation. We share with them that when we can be present without fixing the problem or running... (shrink)

While traditionally Plato has been read as a critic of democracy and an advocate of philosopher-kingship, a number of more recent interpretations have argued that Plato’s views about these issues changed over the course of his life. Several scholars argue that Plato shifts from an authoritarian outlook in “middle period” dialogues, such as the Republic, to a more democratic view in “late” dialogues, such as the Laws. In contrast to these scholars, this article argues that Plato’s attitude towards authority (...) and democracy is consistent in his “middle” and “late” periods. I show that Plato defines law as the writing of political experts, and that the Laws turns to written law as a second-best method for instituting the rule of the wise. This interpretation enables us to understand the Laws as a dialogue about the political use of writing, which helps illuminate some of the more peculiar features of the Laws and account for its place in the Platonic corpus. (shrink)