A striking paradox underlies corporate governance reform during the past fifteen years: center-left political parties have pushed for pro-shareholder corporate governance reforms, while the historically pro-business right has generally resisted them to protect established forms of organized capitalism, concentrated corporate stock ownership, and managerialism. Case studies of Germany, France, Italy, and the United States reveal that center-left parties used corporate governance reform to attack the legitimacy of existing political economic elites, present themselves as pro-growth and pro-modernization, strike (...) political alliances with segments of the financial sector, and appeal to middle-class voters. Conservative parties’ established alliances with managers constrained them from endorsing corporate governance reform. (shrink)

This book intervenes in contemporary debates about the threat posed to democratic life by political emergencies. Must emergency necessarily enhance and centralize top-down forms of sovereignty? Those who oppose executive branch enhancement often turn instead to law, insisting on the sovereignty of the rule of law or demanding that law rather than force be used to resolve conflicts with enemies. But are these the only options? Or are there more democratic ways to respond to invocations of emergency politics? Looking (...) at how emergencies in the past and present have shaped the development of democracy, Bonnie Honig argues that democracies must resist emergency's pull to focus on life's necessities because these tend to privatize and isolate citizens rather than bring us together on behalf of hopeful futures. Emphasizing the connections between mere life and more life, emergence and emergency, Honig argues that emergencies call us to attend anew to a neglected paradox of democratic politics: that we need good citizens with aspirational ideals to make good politics while we need good politics to infuse citizens with idealism.Honig takes a broad approach to emergency, considering immigration politics, new rights claims, contemporary food politics and the infrastructure of consumption, and the limits of law during the Red Scare of the early twentieth century. Taking its bearings from Moses Mendelssohn, Franz Rosenzweig, and other Jewish thinkers, this is a major contribution to modern thought about the challenges and risks of democratic orientation and action in response to emergency. (shrink)

This paper uses Paul Ricœur’s analyses of ideology to argue for the mitigation of the possibility of political evil within the political paradox. In explicating the paradox, Ricœur seeks to hold in tension two basic aspects of politics: its benefits and its propensity to evil. This tension, however, should not be viewed as representative of a dualism. The evil of politics notwithstanding, Ricœur encourages us to view the political order as a deeply important part of (...) our shared existence. By thinking past the distorting function of ideology to the legitimating and integrating functions that Ricœur calls more basic than distortion, a mode of thought that is often at the heart of political evil, ideology can be used to mitigate that very evil. Keywords: Ri cœur, “The Political Paradox,” Ideology, Political Violence, Justice. Résumé Cet article s’appuie sur les analyses ricœuriennes de l’idéologie dans le but de montrer que l’idéologie est susceptible de contribuer à une atténuation du mal politique inhérent au paradoxe politique. Dans son explicitation de ce paradoxe, Ricœur cherche à mettre en relation tensionnelle deux aspects fondamentaux de la politique: ses avantages et ses maux. Cependant, cette tension ne devrait pas être interprétée comme l’expression d’un dualisme. En dépit du mal inhérent au politique, Ricœur nous encourage à voir l’ordre politique comme une partie profondément importante de notre existence partagée. Si l’on régresse en-deçà de la fonction de distorsion de l’idéologie vers ses fonctions légitimantes et integratrices, c’est-à-dire vers ses fonctions les plus fondamentales, il apparaît en effet que l’idéologie, tout en étant souvent au cœur du mal politique, peut néanmoins être utilisée pour atténuer ce mal. Mots-clés: Ricœur, paradoxe politique, ideologie, violence politique, justice. (shrink)

An Archaeology of Educational Evaluation: Epistemological Spaces and Political Paradoxes outlines the epistemology of the theories and models that are currently employed to evaluate educational systems, education policy, educational professionals and students learning. It discusses how those theories and models find their epistemological conditions of possibility in a specific set of conceptual transferences from mathematics and statistics, political economy, biology and the study of language. The book critically engages with the epistemic dimension of contemporary educational evaluation and is (...) of theoretical and methodological interest. It uses Foucauldian archaeology as a problematizing method of inquiry within the wider framework of governmentality studies. It goes beyond a mere critique of the contemporary obsession for evaluation and attempts to replace it with the opening of a free space where the search for a mode of being, acting and thinking in education is not over-determined by the tyranny of improvement. This book will appeal to academics, researchers and post-graduate students in the fields of educational philosophy, education policy and social science. (shrink)

How do the hard facts of political responsibility shape and constrain the demands of ethical life? That question lies at the heart of the problem of 'dirty hands' in public life. Those who exercise political power often feel they must act in ways that would otherwise be considered immoral: indeed, paradoxically, they sometimes feel that it would be immoral of them not to perform or condone such acts as killing or lying. John Parrish offers a wide-ranging account of (...) how this important philosophical problem emerged and developed, tracing it - and its proposed solutions - from ancient Greece through the Enlightenment. His central argument is that many of our most familiar concepts and institutions - from Augustine's interiorised ethics, to Hobbes's sovereign state, to Adam Smith's 'invisible hand', understanding of the modern commercial economy - were designed partly as responses to the ethical problem of dirty hands in public life. (shrink)

This article explores the paradoxical relationship between politics and violence in the concept of political violence. By examining the works of prominent theorists, such as Hannah Arendt and Frantz Fanon, the article highlights both the difficulty of separating politics and violence, and the improbability of formulating a harmonious relationship between them. Engaging with some of Michel Foucault’s work on power and violence, the article begins to formulate a theoretical approach that conceptualizes political violence in its inherently paradoxical condition.

Carl Schmitt's Concept of the Political advances an understanding of the political in which the political is assessed in terms of the autonomy of the friend-and-enemy distinction. This article questions the autonomous foundations of Schmitt's concept of the political. Ultimately, Schmitt's desire to establish the autonomous nature of the political, allowing the specifically political antithesis to achieve mastery over all other forms of discourse, is replete with paradox. Whilst Schmitt endeavours to establish the (...) autonomy of the political—where the political is free from interference from other domains—it is argued that his account of the political is highly dependent on the state. More critically, Schmitt's depiction of the political as autonomous is a strategic manoeuvre to establish the autonomy of the domain of the political vis-à-vis other conceptual domains. (shrink)

Summary This article examines the complex nature of post-war Italian political thought, stressing the importance of Italy's unusual institutional and historical political arrangements, but also the vibrancy of its political ideologies in this period. In the past it has often been argued that the dysfunctional nature of post-war Italian democracy with its rapidly changing governments, and widespread corruption—which nonetheless coexisted with the one party, the Christian Democrats, being constantly in power—led to the atrophying of political theory (...) in general, and political ideologies in particular. But this picture is strongly disputed here—on the contrary it is argued that Christian Democratic, Left and liberal political ideologies were all complex and interesting. Thus if Christian democracy should ultimately be seen as an ‘ideology of transition’ which existed to help Catholicism adapt to the parameters of modern mass democracy, and which lacked a thinker of the calibre of Jacques Maritain, it nevertheless contained within it important debates on the role of the state, between such interesting thinkers as Giuseppe Dossetti and Alcide De Gasperi. And if anything, political thinking on the Left in the post-war period was even more complex, with visceral debates within the (large) Communist Party (PCI) over whether to work within the law—between such thinkers as Palmiro Togliatti and the Il Manifesto group. Equally on the more revolutionary Left, there were important debates about how quickly capitalism could be made to collapse through revolutionary action between thinkers such as Raniero Panzieri and his more radical disciples, Mario Tronti and Antonio Negri, while later, due to the general failure of these revolutionary efforts, post-modern thinkers such as Gianni Vattimo sought to abandon grand metaphysical narratives, whilst retaining a commitment to Left of centre political commitments. Finally, although not part of a widespread mass movement, the liberal thought of Norberto Bobbio was also highly interesting and sophisticated—borrowing from Hobbes and Kelsen, he sought to advocate a modest form of liberal democracy which allowed for civilised forms of conflict, and the protection of minorities, and which rejected the contention of Marxists that civil rights could not be distinguished from economic ones. Overall, if normative aspirations in post-war Italian politics were often frustrated in practice, this was certainly not due to any lack of theoretical vibrancy. (shrink)

This article explores the paradox between local and global moral values in sexual politics in Sub-Saharan Africa. It shares the thesis that various forces of globalization—the web, media, social, economic, political, and religious––influence and to some extent shape sexual politics in Sub-Saharan Africa. Globalization has made it easy for anti-gay and pro-gay rights groups to connect globally, and share ideas and strategies, but it has also complicated the study of sexual politics in Sub-Saharan Africa. While anti-gay and pro-gay (...) groups accuse each other of being “influenced by foreign interests,” both sides have global groups that provide the ideological framework for the struggle. To some extent, the growing opposition to gay rights should be understood from the perspective of conservative global Christianity on one hand and the globalization on the other. The article concludes that global anti-gay activism invites global pro-gay activism, thereby leading to unintended consequences on sexual minorities. (shrink)

RESUMO:O presente artigo pretende abordar a forma original com a qual Rousseau focaliza a questão da origem do poder político, tema que é central na teoria política moderna. Em sua obra Do Contrato Social, o autor examina as razões, aparentemente paradoxais, pelas quais alguém, nascido livre, se escravizaria voluntariamente, obedecendo a outro e não a si próprio. Distanciando-se da influência de Hobbes e Locke, o autor apresenta a tese do contrato social, fundado no conceito de vontade geral, como o único (...) meio pelo qual o indivíduo se realizaria enquanto ser humano. Ao assumir sua condição de cidadão, unindo-se a todos em vista do bem comum e não obedecendo a ninguém a não ser a si próprio, o mesmo adquire tanto a igualdade quanto a liberdade civil, condições sem as quais deixaria de existir. Somente dessa forma, cada cidadão, exercendo seus direitos e deveres, seria detentor de parcela da soberania, enquanto membro da vontade geral, no direito de legislar. ABSTRACTThe article aims at discussing the new approach proposed by Rousseau regarding the question of the origin of political power, which is a central aspect of modern political theory. In his masterpiece The Social Contract, the author analyzes the apparently paradoxical reasons why someone born free could become a slave by his own free will, and, as such, subject to the authority of one other than himself. Going beyond the influence of Hobbes and Locke, the author presents the thesis of the social contract, based on the concept of the general will and considered the only way through which man can realize the human condition. By achieving the condition of citizen, each one as his own master and uniting with all others and looking toward the common good, man can reach the necessary conditions for his own existence: the conditions of equality and liberty. (shrink)

This article traces the evolution by which in the context of 1930s South Africa the liberal philosopher Alfred Hoernlé came to recognize the inability of classical liberalism to address the problems of a society in which a racial hierarchy had become deeply entrenched. Although he must be criticized for his patriarchal approach and for the pessimism that led him to take White attitudes toward Black South Africans as an unchangeable part of the situation that simply had to be accepted, his (...) insight into the limits of liberalism still resonates. While most White commentators were still thinking of racism in terms of beliefs and attitudes, he already understood that the problem lay in the systemic adoption of “techniques of domination” or what we today might call institutional racism. Although his proposal in 1939 that “Total Separation” was “a legitimate application of sound liberal ideas” was deeply problematic in context and might well have had a serious negative impact, it should be understood that it was intended to highlight the fundamental paradox into which liberalism fell when attempting to solve the problems it had helped to create by its belief in a civilizing mission that began with violence. (shrink)

Attention has turned from Hobbes the systematic thinker to his inconsistencies, as the essays in the Hobbes symposium published in the recent volume of Political Theory suggest. Deborah Baumgold, in "The Difficulties of Hobbes Interpretation," shifted the focus to "the history of the book," and Hobbes's method of serial composition and peripatetic insertion, as a major source of his inconsistency. Accepting Baumgold's method, the author argues that the manner of composition does not necessarily determine content and that fundamental paradoxes (...) in Hobbes's work have a different provenance, for which there are also contextual answers. Hobbes was a courtier's client, but one committed early to a materialist ontology and epistemology, and these commitments shackled him in treating the immediate political questions with which he was required to deal, leading to systemic paradoxes in his treatment of natural law, liberty, authorization, and consent. (shrink)

Creating education systems that promote democratic sustainability has been the concern of political thinkers as diverse as J. S. Mill, Dewey, Benjamin Barber and Derek Bok. The classic dichotomisation of democratic theory between deliberative democrats and Schumpeterian democrats suggests that education in the service of democracy can be constructive—that is, provide a student with the skills necessary to elect her leaders without changing her nature—or reconstructive—that is, fundamentally and radically reshape the student to produce a citizen whose goals are (...) transformed to be congruent with society. Michael Oakeshott, who has written extensively both on political regimes and on the purpose of liberal education, offers a third way to assess the connection between government and education. Despite his own dismissal of civic or political education as fundamentally vocational and thus beyond the boundaries of the liberal arts, this paper provides a potentially surprising Oakeshottian defence of political education within the liberal arts with reference to the importance he places on experience as a pedagogic tool. Thus, Oakeshott's educational philosophy has a certain resonance with the recent calls to locate the relevance of liberal arts within the burgeoning development of experiential civic engagement programmes in American universities. (shrink)

What role should rights play in feminist politics and the quest for equality? This article examines Wendy Brown's response to that question in her 'suffering rights as paradoxes' and shows that for all its merits, it draws our attention away from the central question of how to describe women's interests, given the many differences amongst women.

The political philosopher Leo Strauss is famous for contending that any synthesis of reason and revelation is impossible, since they are irreconcilable antagonists. Yet he is also famous for praising the secular regime of liberal democracy as the best regime for all human beings, even though he is well aware that modern philosophers such as Spinoza thought this regime must make use of biblical morality to promote good citizenship. Is democracy, then, both religious and secular? Strauss thought that Spinoza (...) was contradictory in teaching that reason and revelation should be separated from each other while also insisting that a secular democratic politics still requires the biblical morality of charity. The paradox that liberal democracy is both religious and secular, which is central to Spinoza, was dismissed by Strauss as a Machiavellian subterfuge or the cynical attempt to use religion for political purposes. In order to adhere to his dualistic separation of reason and revelation, Strauss turned to ancient Greek political philosophy, particularly the ideas of Plato and Aristotle, as the true ground of liberal democracy since this classical tradition was never exposed to biblical revelation. Yet, the illiberal and hierarchical implications of Greek political thought, which clash with Strauss’s modern views on human individuality and dignity, ultimately take him back to the biblically based philosophies of Spinoza and Kierkegaard, who teach the paradox that the Bible is the true foundation of human freedom. (shrink)

This paper connects the question of the rationality of voting to the question of what it is morally permissible for elected representatives to do. In particular, the paper argues that it is rational to vote to increase the strength of the manifest normative mandate of one's favored candidate. I argue that, due to norms of political legitimacy, how representatives ought to act while in office is tied to how much support they have from their constituents, where a representative’s “support” (...) is a function of the percentage of adults living in the political jurisdiction who voted for her. In a representative system, whether a particular law or policy is legitimate is in part a function of how much support the particular representative government has, rather than simply being a function of the governmental structure or the normative content of the law or policy. Representatives with more support can permissibly act more like trustees (doing what they think is best) and less like delegates (doing what their constituents presently prefer). I argue that this fact provides a reason for individuals to vote, even given the incredibly small chance an individual voter has of casting a pivotal vote. (shrink)

In his theory of the event, Alain Badiou argues that the realm of politics is particularly important. Drawing to an extent on Marx, Lenin and Mao, he argues that true politics is revolutionary, or at least 'eventmental'. Badiou's political thought places great emphasis on the role of the agent of change — the subject — but he argues controversially that subjecthood in politics as well as in other domains comes only after the event has taken place, leaving the potential (...) subject in a highly passive position before the event has taken place. He has relinquished some but not all of Marx's materialist and historical approach, in favour of a more idealist approach influenced in part by Plato, with the effect that his theory of politics is rather disjointed. Badiou's uneasy blend of idealism and materialism means that he has at times highly unorthodox things to say about the notion of democracy and has uneven positions regarding both parliamentary politics and political activism. A lonely, committed voice in contemporary France, Badiou's theory of politics nevertheless offers a rare opportunity to engage with a thinker who is attempting to offer a new philosophy of praxis. (shrink)

In this paper, I compare two prominent positions within contemporary “Analytic” and “Continental” political philosophy: philosophical anarchism and the paradox of politics. I compare each through an analysis of their respective criticisms of state legitimacy and the internal difficulties each position has in accounting for the legitimacy of state violence. I argue that these internal difficulties force each position to ask questions and criticize assumptions commonly found in the other position. I hope to show through this comparison that (...) work across the analytic/continental divide can tell us a great deal about a range of intractable political phenomena. (shrink)

Constellations, Volume 28, Issue 4, Page 522-536, December 2021.

Ronald J. Terchek offers insightful and original solutions to the intellectual rigidity and theoretical fragmentation that characterize much contemporary debate in political philosophy. Offering fresh interpretations of republicans such as Aristotle, Machiavelli, and Rousseau, and liberals such as Locke, Smith, and Mill, Terchek persuasively argues that these 'strong' republicans and 'anxious' liberals share certain fundamental principles and ideals, despite their conflicting beliefs about the primacy of community, rights, citizenship, moral development, and the roots of human behavior. This critical analysis (...) of the modern state of political theory challenges political theorists to avoid contentious debates and to abandon the apolitical and inflexible construction of the liberal-communitarian paradigm. This is important reading for anyone interested in political philosophy and theory. (shrink)

NoViolet Bulawayo’s recently published novel titled, Glory, fictionalises the tragic fall of Robert Mugabe from the helm of power. The removal of Mugabe from power through the 2017 “military coup” engendered a problematic narrative that depicted the former first lady, Grace Mugabe as the biblical Eve’s doppelganger. The purported resemblance of Eve, a character from sacrosanct text, and Grace of contemporary Zimbabwe is often based on mythical and misogynist (mis)interpretations of the former as an epitome of sin and the latter (...) as instrumental to Mugabe’s demise. Arguably, the construct of Eve in Zimbabwe and the personified allegory in the fictive society of Bulawayo is profoundly laden with semantics and tropes of power together interwoven with innuendoes that denigrate women. This article reflected upon the ‘blame Eve myth’ with interlocking discourses of toxic politics and religion that reinforce phallocentric attitudes and practices that denigrate the female gender in Zimbabwe. Ecofeminism enriches the discussions of the novel Glory as a satire that provides imperative fictional sites to chart these intricate discourses. Ecofeminist framework offers insights that enrich the discussions of Eve’s myth and other representations which disparage women in the novel, Glory. The study concludes that blaming Grace Mugabe in her fictional doppelganger Marvelous, symbolically illuminates how women and the feminised nature are both insulted and held accountable for woes that befall humanity in both the fictive nation of Jidada and its referent Zimbabwe. Contribution: Ecofeminist conceptual framework has rarely been used to examine the complex connection between gender, politics, religion and nature in Zimbabwean fictional writing. Thus, this study offered fresh insights that are significant in understanding these subjects from a multidisciplinary perspective because the analyses and readings of the novel were based on literary criticism, political discourse and theology. (shrink)

In engaging five of Plato's dialogues—Theaetetus, Euthyphro, Cratylus, Sophist, and Statesman—and by paying particular attention to Socrates' intellectual defense in the "philosophic trial" by the Stranger from Elea, Jacob Howland illuminates Plato's understanding of the proper relationship between philosophy and politics. This insightful and innovative study illustrates the Plato's understanding of the difference between sophistry and philosophy, and it identifies the innate contradictions of political philosophy that Plato observed and remain entrenched within the field to this day. This is (...) essential reading for anyone interested in the past, present, and future of political philosophy. (shrink)

This book expounds an analytical method that focuses on paradoxes - a method originally associated with deconstructive philosophy, but bearing little resemblance to the interpretive techniques that have come to be designated as 'deconstruction' in literary studies. The book then applies its paradox-focused method as it undertakes a sustained investigation of Thomas Hobbe's political philosophy. Hobbes's theory of the advent and purpose of government turns out to reveal the impossibility of the very developments which it portrays as indispensable.

De Lubac’s main contribution to political thought is his belief that human freedom is the quality in human nature with which divine grace resonates. His idea of the relation of grace to nature is best illustrated by Christ’s fulfilment of the Old Testament.

In his work on Wu wei, Edward Slingerland argues that the classical Chinese ideal is an inherently paradoxical concept that is first and foremost spiritual and political only secondarily. Through a close reading of the Dao de Jing, the first major classical text to substantially deploy and develop the concept, I argue that Wu wei isn’t inherently paradoxical and that this is seen precisely when it is viewed in terms of its political primacy. On my reading, the emergence (...) of Wu wei in the Daoist canon is an equilibrating moment of political mediation between the highly intentionalized sphere of human pursuits and the purposeless fluidity and boundless flux of the natural world. Wu wei here takes on a different aspect—mystery rather than paradox—when considered within a form of political collectivity in which the intentional and the innate, purposive and natural are constantly juxtaposed and contending with one another. (shrink)

For Hannah Arendt, spontaneous, ‘initiatory’ human action and interaction are suppressed by the normalizing pressures of society once ‘life’ - that is, sheer life - becomes the primary concern of politics, as it does, she finds, in the modern age. Arendt’s concept of the social is indebted to Martin Heidegger’s analysis of everyday Dasein in Being and Time , and contemporary political philosophers inspired by Heidegger, such as Jean-Luc Nancy, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, and Giorgio Agamben, tend to reproduce her account (...) of the withdrawal of the political in modernity. In this article, I complicate Arendt’s theory by turning to Michel Foucault’s parallel but diverging understanding of the nature of power in modern society to show, surprisingly, that Foucault’s narrative of the emergence of modern power pictures a society that is more, not less, politicized. Key Words: Hannah Arendt • bio-power • Michel Foucault • Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe • modernity • Jean-Luc Nancy • pastoral power • the social • rulership. (shrink)

Rawls in his later philosophy claims that it is sufficient to accept political conception as true or right, depending on what one's worldview allows, on the basis of whatever reasons one can muster, given one's worldview (doctrine). What political liberalism is interested in is a practical agreement on the political conception and not in our reasons for accepting it. There are deep issues (regarding deep values, purpose of life, metaphysics etc.) which cannot be resolved through invoking common (...) reasons (this is the fact of free reason itself), and trying to resolve them would involve us in interminable debates and would hamper the practical task of agreement on the political conception. Given the absolute necessity of a political society which is stable and enduring, it is thus wise to avoid these issues in founding a political society and choosing its basic principles - this is the pragmatic part of Rawls's position. In this paper I argue that this strategy leads Rawls into a paradox: (i) although the intention is to stay independent of comprehensive doctrines, the political conception is in fact totally (and precariously) dependent on comprehensive doctrines (not just on one doctrine but on each and every major doctrine in society). It is dependent on them: for its conceptualisation as an independent idea, for its justification, for the check of its reasonability in relation to the external world, for the formation of identities and value inculcation and hence for the formation of its model citizen; (ii) the very search for independence makes the political conception more dependent on comprehensive doctrines, and by extension makes it potentially more prone to intervention in and tampering with comprehensive doctrines (it is enough to show that it is a strong conceptual possibility to cast doubt on the whole strategy). Thus, for example, the political conception relies on the hope that “firmly held convictions gradually change” and that it would “in fact . . . have the capacity to shape those doctrines toward itself”. The purpose of the Rawlsian conjecture is to give these “hopes” a concrete, practical form by giving advice to proponents of the comprehensive doctrine on how they can do all this and “try to show them that, despite what they might think, they can still endorse a reasonable political conception”. I further argue that this paradox can be overcome by making the core of political liberalism more flexible. (shrink)

Most social roles require role identification from the side of the role occupant, yet whoever identifies him- or herself with his or her social roles thereby mistakes him- or herself for what he or she is not, because role identity is determined by other people’s normative expectations, whereas self-identity is self-determined. This paper first develops an interpretation of this existential paradox of role identity, and then suggests a Rousseauvian perspective on how the tension between being oneself and playing one’s (...) social roles may be a matter of politics rather than a matter of the metaphysics of selfhood. The paper concludes with a cautionary remark on just how much Jacobinism a political solution to the existential paradox of role identity might entail. (shrink)

Plato's dialogues are masterpieces of philosophy and literature. This insures their place in the firmament of human achievement, but it also makes their interpretation difficult. For example, does the literary artifice contribute to the philosophic argument? If it does, how does it do so and how are we to judge its contribution? Much of modern interpretation of Plato's dialogues focuses on the logical strength and direction of the philosophical arguments. One reason for this is that here we have something we (...) have means to evaluate; we can determine, for the most part, what the arguments are, whether they are consistent, and how much they demonstrate. Here we seem to stand, more or less, on a philosophical terra firma. Yet the contribution of Plato's literary artifice remains, for such interpretive efforts, a philosophical terra incognita precisely because there seem to be no evident, objective standards by which to judge this contribution. (shrink)

This book develops a framework for analysing strategic rationality, a notion central to contemporary game theory, which is the formal study of the interaction of rational agents and which has proved extremely fruitful in economics, political theory and business management. The author argues that a logical paradox lies at the root of a number of persistent puzzles in game theory, in particular those concerning rational agents who seek to establish some kind of reputation. Building on the work of (...) Parsons, Burge, Gaifman and Barwise and Etchemendy, Robert Koons constructs a context-sensitive solution to the whole family of liar-like paradoxes including, for the first time, a detailed account of how the interpretation of paradoxical statements is fixed by context. This analysis provides an understanding of how the rational agent model can account for the emergence of rules, practices and institutions. (shrink)

Identity and democracy and, more particularly, national identity and deliberative democracy account for a controversial relationship. However, from a classical deliberative democratic point of view, the controversy over who is the ‘we’ that needs to stand together in contemporary complex societies settled with the constitution of modern states. In this sense, the main contribution of this paper is twofold. On the one hand, I rebut the analytical appropriateness and conceptual coherence of Habermas’ discursive approach to democracy for the case of (...) plurinational societies in contemporary constitutional democracies. A discussion of a test case – Catalonia – demonstrates that this inadequacy renders incoherent the deliberative model regarding one of its most fundamental premises: the equal weight of the principles of law and the principle of democracy. On the other hand, I sustain that the challenge is not about identity but democracy, and more particularly, about the role deliberative democracy is called to play when controversy challenges whether the people of a state do conform to a single people or not. More concretely, I explore the opportunities offered by the systemic turn to sustain a more realistic approach to deliberative democracy regarding its capacity to steer society towards integration in the context of the system of public deliberation. (shrink)

ExcerptIntroduction Much of nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophy proclaimed the end the metaphysics and the death of God. The German, French, and English strands of the Enlightenment were united in their suspicion of metaphysical theism. Figures as diverse as Comte, Marx, Spencer, Nietzsche, and Russell defended the absolute autonomy of atheist reason against religious faith. Following the rise of partisan ideologies that terrorized the West from 1789 to 1989, the downfall of the Soviet empire appeared to herald the “end of history” (...) and a global convergence toward liberal market democracy. Ideas of freedom and justice would henceforth…. (shrink)

This book will examine paradoxes in diverse areas of thought: philosophy, mathematics, physics, economics, political science, psychology, computer science, logic, statistics, linguistics, law, etc. Though the treatment of each paradox is rigorous, the book will be written accessibly with a lighthearted and humorous tone so as to keep the reader engaged. Each chapter will focus on a single paradox, structured roughly like so: 1. A question is asked in the context of a story. As an answer, the (...) paradox is presented (which often results in an aha moment). The historical background of the paradox is recounted. 2. The dénouement explains how the paradox is resolved or why there is no resolution. 3. The chapter ends with further remarks, usually contemporary real-world examples or applications of said paradox. Some examples of the paradoxes covered are the Axiom of Choice (Mathematics), Monty Hall Problem (Statistics), Morgenbesser's Paradox (Linguistics), Tea Leaves Paradox (Physics), The Ultimatum Game (Economics), and The Chicken or Egg Question (Evolution). (shrink)