Hannah Arendt’s critical acceptance of the Jewish national liberation movement and her support for the formation of a Jewish Army during the Second World War stand in contrast to her later critique of armed anticolonial struggles. I address this tension in three steps. First, I explain the role of violence in her theory of liberation. Next, I address the problem with liberation in terms of a sovereign nation-state and the alternative of federation. Finally, I return to (...) the case of Jewish liberation to show that the apparent tension can be resolved if it is understood within the framework of federalism. Instead of understanding national liberation as self-determination, federalism allows for a non-sovereign freedom that supports the plurality of nations within a shared political community. (shrink)

What are the leading forces and ideas that are shaping our age? In the West, a decade of financial disruption, austerity, and stagnant wages has produced a popular rejection of market fundamentalism that prevailed for over forty years. Mass immigration and multiculturalism have contributed to rapid changes in both family and community life that leave many people feeling dispossessed or even humiliated. Unresponsive government is exacerbating people’s sense of powerlessness and anger. The revolt against the status quo is fuelling a (...) political insurgency against the establishment that replaces the old opposition of left versus right with a similarly simplistic dichotomy pitting the people against the elites. We are witnessing the failure of dualistic thinking and this will not be resolved by substituting one binary for another. Our contemporary conjuncture is such a period of interregnum and a war of position between the hitherto hegemonic ideology of liberalism and its populist rivals. The popular revolt against liberalism, which is driving the political insurgency across the West, highlights the collapse of the authority of the professional political class dominated by liberals. In what follows I shall argue that the emergent ideologies which are vying for hegemony are hyper-liberalism, nationalist traditionalism, and tech utopianism. All of them are variously anti-humanist, to which one can oppose updated versions of one-nation conservatism and ethical socialism. Before setting out the unfolding ‘war of position,’ I will first explore the new anti-humanism that underpins the main ideological movements. (shrink)

This essay presents some preliminary thoughts about the linkages between current human rights universalism and the practice of violence in the form of wars and interventions. I draw three parallels that may help us think about the current wars on terror and in Iraq. The first parallel concerns the progress of liberal universalist thought from the Enlightenment period in which a concern for rights coexisted with the justifications for imperialism. In the current era the succeeding line of universalist thought is (...) that of human rights which similarly coexists with the overt and tacit support for violence that deprives some humans of their lives.The second parallel concerns the use of national identity. In the imperial era, the justification for rights either given or withheld was closely linked to constructions of national identity. Similarly, today there is a resurgence of nationalist discourse in which the construction of U.S. national identity is used to justify the violence that is done against Iraqi citizens. This discourse which constructs the U.S. as ontologically civilized and the Iraqis as barbarians is used to justify the violence that is done to them.Finally, the last parallel concerns violence in general. During imperialism, the scrutiny for acts of violence was borne largely by the native. Because he was constructed as a barbarian, his violence was made far more obvious as further evidence of his lesser development. In the present circumstances, a similar scrutiny is borne by the Iraqi insurgent while the violence of the coalition forces remains veiled beneath euphemisms like collateral damage. The torture scandal at Abu-Ghraib presented an opportunity to reverse the gaze but because of its interpretation as an aberration that falls squarely outside the ``normal" and the failure to widen the debate to other violence, this opportunity was largely lost.These three parallels taken together suggest that the old liberal hegemonic order of imperialism with its conflicting narratives of rights and oppression has been carried forward and sublimated into a human rights regime. And human rights is now deployed to justify violence against ``human rights abusers." Because of this continuity, there is a need to create a new universalism born organically from the struggles of subordinated peoples that eliminates old-order imperialist justifications for the oppression of Others while claiming to support human rights. (shrink)

Using Australia to illustrate the case, in this paper it is argued that the transformation of universities into businesses and the undermining of the liberal arts is motivated by either contempt for or outright hostility to democracy. This is associated with a global managerial revolution that is enslaving nations and people to the global market and the corporations that dominate it. The struggle within universities is the site of a struggle to reverse the gains of the Radical Enlightenment, the tradition (...) of Enlightenment that, committed to upholding and developing the civic humanism of the Renaissance, strove for liberty, understood as democratic self-governance. The central place the liberal arts had in upholding this liberty is shown. Inspired by the Ancient Greek notion of paideia, the liberal arts, which originated in republican Rome, was the form of education required designed for free people, in opposition to the specialist education appropriate for slaves, to inspire them to maintain their liberty and enable them to govern themselves. While not always upholding this ideal, it is argued in this paper that the liberal arts always kept alive this quest for liberty, bequeathing this quest to the Renaissance philosophers and to the proponents of the Radical Enlightenment. With managerialism and the undermining of democracy, such education and the questioning, creative people it produced, are now seen as a threat to the new global corporatocracy who, to achieve cultural hegemony, have coöpted university managers and academics to impose their agenda to cripple the liberal arts. Their goal, never fully articulated as such but successfully prosecuted, is a dumbed-down population. (shrink)

Acclaimed throughout the world as a philosopher of liberation and revolution, Herbert Marcuse is one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century. His penetrating critiques of the ways modern technology produces forms of society and culture with oppressive modes of social control indicate his enduring significance in the contemporary moment. This collection of unpublished or uncollected essays, unfinished manuscripts, and correspondence between 1942 and 1951, provides Marcuse's exemplary attempts to link theory with practice, and develops ideas that (...) can be used to grasp and transform existing social reality. These papers vividly chronicle Marcuse's increasing, yet reluctant estrangement from Max Horkeimer, director of the Institute for Social Research and his years as an analyst with various U.S. government agencies. Marcuse's later attempts to link theory and practice in the 1960s and 1970s in regard to the New Left, National Liberation Movements and other new social movements were grounded in his work from the 1940s. As the 1940s witnessed the rise to global prominence of German fascism and its defeat in World War Two, and the emergence of the Cold War, Marcuse strived to preserve the radical vision of his youth during a difficult historical period while many turned toward more conservative positions. Precisely the sort of broad theoretical and political theorizing that Marcuse undertook througout his life is needed today to analyze the momentous changes that we are currently undergoing. Excerpt: Personal history is interwoven with intellectual and political events in these papers. We debated whether letters belonged here: whether some should be published at all. My father had a deep sense of personal privacy, both as a character trait and as a political expression of resistance to the commodification of the private. Yet the letters contain substantive discussions also. We could have edited out, expurgated some of the material. While not publishing every letter my father wrote, our selection was based on interest, and every letter that is included is included in full. That decision was in part painful for me personally. The juxtaposition of the letters to Horkeimer and the exchange with Heidegger highlights the point. --from the Foreword by Peter Marcuse. (shrink)

Uruguay is a prime example of how a peripheral country creatively digested foreign experiences and became not only Latin America’s first welfare state democracy, but also a pioneer of free, compulsory, and lay education, the work of two political generations, positivist varelistas and Krausist batllistas. This article, based on new archival sources, contemporary newspapers, official publications, and monographs by protagonists argues that one of their consistent reference points, largely ignored in historiography, was Belgium, a country founded almost at the same (...) time as Uruguay and admired for its liberal constitutionalism. Uruguayan reformers’ fascination with Belgium, but also their risk awareness, increased when, from the 1860s, both countries implemented conflictual secularizing school reforms that aimed at belated cultural nation-building. (shrink)

This article introduces the Völkerpsychologie of the German psychologist and liberal politician Willy Hellpach. It shows how Hellpach used the once venerable approach of Völkerpsychologie, introduced by Moritz Lazarus and Heymann Steinthal in the nineteenth century, to adapt to the Third Reich and distract the authorities from his political career. The article provides a close reading of Hellpach's main text on the subject, the Einführung in die Völkerpsychologie published in 1938, and explains the ease with which he was able to (...) make this approach compatible with Nazi ideology. Hellpach's case thus illustrates the proximity of national-liberal thinking to ?Nazi ideology?. Moreover, on account of the post-war reception of Hellpach's Völkerpsychologie by scholars such as Ralf Dahrendorf, the article examines the uneasy and incomplete repudiation of Völkerpsychologie after 1945. It concludes that the origins of widely used concepts such as ?national habitus? or ?national identity? can be traced back to the tradition of Völkerpsychologie and related studies of national character. (shrink)

Andrew Fiala's Against Religion, Wars, and States: The Case for Enlightenment Atheism, Just War Pacifism, and Liberal-Democratic Anarchism argues that we need to overcome the idea of the nation-state and look toward global justice, that we need to develop a more critical stance toward religion while embracing enlightened humanism and natural science, and that we need to look beyond violent solutions to social problems in order to build world peace.

The present epoch is one of socialist and national liberation revolutions, an epoch in which more and more peoples are taking the path of socialism. However, the distinguishing characteristic of this period is that world war has ceased to be a fatal inevitability. This means that many problems having to do with the relation of war and revolution must be posed differently than they were when wars were inevitable. The question arises as to the degree to which contemporary (...) revolutionary processes are associated with wars, whether the revolutionary process can develop under conditions of peace among peoples and, if it can, then how? All these questions are at present matters of the most acute ideological struggle. Therefore examination of the question of the relation between war and revolution is not only of theoretical but of practical political interest. (shrink)

America is at war with terrorism. Terrorists must be brought to justice.We hear these phrases together so often that we rarely pause to reflect on the dramatic differences between the demands of war and the demands of justice, differences so deep that the pursuit of one often comes at the expense of the other. In this book, one of the country's most important legal thinkers brings much-needed clarity to the still unfolding debates about how to pursue war and justice in (...) the age of terrorism. George Fletcher also draws on his rare ability to combine insights from history, philosophy, literature, and law to place these debates in a rich cultural context. He seeks to explain why Americans--for so many years cynical about war--have recently found war so appealing. He finds the answer in a revival of Romanticism, a growing desire in the post-Vietnam era to identify with grand causes and to put nations at the center of ideas about glory and guilt.Fletcher opens with unsettling questions about the nature of terrorism, war, and justice, showing how dangerously slippery the concepts can be. He argues that those sympathetic to war are heirs to the ideals of Byron, Fichte, and other Romantics in their belief that nations--not just individuals--must uphold honor and be held accountable for crimes. Fletcher writes that ideas about collective glory and guilt are far more plausible and widespread than liberal individualists typically recognize. But as he traces the implications of the Romantic mindset for debates about war crimes, treason, military tribunals, and genocide, he also shows that losing oneself in a grand cause can all too easily lead to moral catastrophe.A work of extraordinary intellectual power and relevance, the book will change how we think not only about world events, but about the conflicting individualist and collective impulses that tear at all of us. (shrink)

The Patriotic War of 1812 was a tremendous historical testing of our people against the world's most powerful enemy — the army of Napoleon. The treacherous invasion of Russia by the Napoleonic hordes called forth in our country a feeling of hatred for the foreign conquerors, self-sacrifice and heroism. The people as a whole rose to struggle against the invaders. Alongside the Russian Army there were numerous folk levies and guerrilla bands, all with the single motive of freeing their homeland (...) from the foreign conquerors. Whereas Napoleon's was a war of conquest against Russia, the War of 1812 was, from the very outset, a just war of national liberation for their country on the part of the Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian and other peoples. (shrink)

There has been much academic work outlining the complex links between women and the nation. Women provide legitimacy to the political projects of the nation in particular social and historical contexts. This article focuses on the gendered symbolization of the nation through the rhetoric of the ‘motherland’ and the manipulation of this rhetoric in the context of national struggle in Bangladesh. I show the ways in which the visual representation of this ‘motherland’ as fertile countryside, and its idealization primarily (...) through rural landscapes has enabled a crystallization of essentialist gender roles for women. This article is particularly interested in how these images had to be reconciled with the subjectivities of women raped during the Bangladesh Liberation War (Muktijuddho) and the role of the aestheticizing sensibilities of Bangladesh's middle class in that process. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviews PASSION AND PARADOX L G Religious Studies / McMaster U. Hamilton, , Canada   @. Joan Cocks. Passion and Paradox: Intellectuals Confront the National Question. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton U. P., . Pp. . .; pb .. ccording to an ancient legend, four Rabbis ventured into the garden of Aphilosophy. One, it is said, went insane, another became a heretic, a third died and only (...) the fourth emerged unscathed. A modern variation of this story might go like this. Four or perhaps  philosophers entered the jungle of nationalism and for the most part went insane. There were those who embraced nationalism and consequently abandoned the universality of philosophy for the promotion of xenophobia, racism and even Nazism. Others remained internationalist and hence became futile—philosophical Canutes—commanding the raging beasts of nationality to be still. No one struggled harder with nationalism than Bertrand Russell. In , writing as an internationalist, he announced the demise of the principle of nationality only to see nationalisms explode in every region of the world (see his “National Independence and Internationalism”, Papers ). He opposed it relentlessly and without compromise until near the end of his life when he found himself endorsing wars of national liberation. Nationalism is often depicted as a howling beast. It would be better to think of it as an anaconda that wraps itself around everyone who ventures into its domain. Joan Cocks’ Passion and Paradox is an important book on nationalism and the intelligentsia. She traces the intellectual encounter with nationalism of a number of figures—Karl Marx, Rosa Luxemburg, Isaiah Berlin and the Scottish nationalist Tom Nairn, among others. All are exiles, most are Jews, and all try to hack their way through a jungle of conundrums of nationalist thought. Her accounts of these thinkers sometimes read like complex legal briefs, but are always illuminating. Though an internationalist, she sees the power of nationalist imperatives. Her approach to the contradictory strains of nationalism and hostility to nationalism echoes that of Hegel. She presents critical but sympathetic accounts of each side of the nationalist problematic and shows how their difficulties might be resolved in a higher synthesis. Alas! her resolution suffers from the unworldliness that she finds in other versions of internationalism. Her argument begins with a personal experience. In the early ’s she joined a group of Arabs and Jews against the Gulf War. In the course of their associ- Reviews  ation she learned that the Jews were all internationalists, while the Arabs were outspoken nationalists. This experience presumably demonstrated that a happy collusion of nationalism and internationalism was possible. But, of course, there was another side: those prosecuting the war she opposed were also nationalists. Her central thesis addresses the tragedy of opposition. It states that nationalism is “dilemmatic”, that is, that “all paths of thought obscured equally telling contrary thoughts; all courses of action were strewn with causes for regret and remorse” (p. ). The horns of the dilemma are the valid claims of the internationalist who sees the underlying self-destructive deep structures of nationalism on one side, and the claims of the national particularistic who is engaged in the compelling theatre of national liberation and the protection of local customs and roots on the other. Her book is an account of how her thinkers are framed by this dilemma, locked in by the imperatives of either side. In the period between the Gulf War and the composition of this book in  Cocks was able to observe what she identifies as the destructive logic of nationalism. The ’s were a period of postmodernist celebration of the local, a sensibility that helped to legitimate nationalism. The explosion of nationalism that followed the breakup of the Communist imperium was a time of liberation of the imprisoned nations—a springtime when it was good to be alive. But as the decade wore on the concealed pit bulls came out—in Yugoslavia, in Rwanda and elsewhere. In Cocks’ view nationalism showed an inner logic, of a sort that Russell called attention to in the early ’s—a logic that led from euphoria to self-destruction (see his Prospects). Her aim is to revive the half-remembered internationalist tradition as formulated by Marx and Luxemburg—but also to show... (shrink)

Theories of global justice have moved from issues relating to crimes against humanity and war crimes or, furthermore, ?negative duties? with respect to non-citizens, towards problems of distributive justice and global inequality. Thomas Nagel's Storrs Lectures from 2005, exemplifying Rawlsian internationalism, argue that liberal requirements concerning duties of distributive justice apply exclusively within a single nation-state, and do not extend to duties of this nature between rich and poor countries. Nagel even argues that the demand for global equality is not (...) a demand of justice at all. In the present article I will try to offer a normative basis for the criticism of such a view. Following Kant and more recently Philip Pettit, I locate this normative basis on political freedom conceived as non-domination. Such a conception opens up the possibility of a political cosmopolitanism, which is based not on an empirical interdependence among people at a global level, but on a normative interdependence. Subsequent cosmopolitan duties extend both to the elimination of domination everywhere in the world and to the equal enjoyment of non-dominated choice. Thus, it will be argued that modern republicanism is falsely identified with a particular, bounded community, but supports a political, not simply a moral, cosmopolitanism. This kind of cosmopolitanism conceives of sovereign states neither as useless constructions, nor as mere instruments for realizing the pre-institutional value of justice among human beings. Instead, their existence is what gives the value of justice its application. Cosmopolitanism is not after all about the abolishment of all boundaries, but about the essential capacity to draw and redraw them infinitely under conditions of global justice. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 30.4 (2000) 102-122 [Access article in PDF] How To Tell a Mestizo from an Enchirito® Colonialism and National Culture in the Borderlands Michael Hames-garcia I began to think, "Yes, I'm a chicana but that's not all I am. Yes, I'm a woman but that's not all I am. Yes, I'm a dyke but that doesn't define all of me. Yes, I come from working class origins, but (...) I'm no longer working class. Yes, I come from a mestizaje, but which parts of that mestizaje get privileged? Only the Spanish, not the Indian or black." I started to think in terms of mestiza consciousness. What happens to people like me who are in between all of these different categories? What does that do to one's concept of nationalism, of race, ethnicity, and even gender? I was trying to articulate and create a theory of a Borderlands existence.... I had to, for myself, figure out some other term that would describe a more porous nationalism, opened up to other categories of identity. —Gloria E. Anzaldúa, InterviewsOne of the most crucial questions facing leftist activists and intellectuals today is the question of nationalism and its relation to liberation struggles. 1 A century ago, the period [End Page 102] of nation-state consolidation in Europe seemed to come to an end with the unification of Germany and Italy. European leftists of the era tended to address "the national question" primarily with regard to those European nations that were shut out or suppressed by nation-state formation. Debates about national culture resurfaced in a revolutionary context when independence movements swept Africa and Asia during and after World War II, and a substantial body of literature attempting to integrate anticolonial struggle, national liberation, and socialism arose from the capitalist "periphery." Much of this literature, and the wars for independence out of which it grew, adapted the language of nationalism to its own purposes. These movements gave new hope that national liberation struggles would prove compatible with greater human freedom and equality. Despite that hope, the destructive effects of nationalism are today visible everywhere: for example, the devastating wars in the Balkans, the repression of indigenous peoples by national bourgeoisie throughout the Americas, religious-national strife between Sinhalese and Tamils in Sri Lanka, the vertiginous intensification of national chauvinism in the United States, Western Europe, and Australia. Simultaneously, and in the context of feminist criticisms of nationalism [see, for example, Chatterjee, Nation; Lutz et al.; Mosse], attempts to unite the struggle to liberate "the nation" from colonial or neocolonial domination with progressive struggles against capitalist exploitation and against sexual- and gender-based domination continue [see, for example, Trask]. In Latin America, anticapitalist struggles lauded by Western socialists regularly take the form of national liberation struggles, such as the EZLN (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional [Zapatist National Liberation Army]) in Mexico and the FSLN (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional [Sandinist National Liberation Front]) in Nicaragua. Additionally, lesbian and gay activists and theorists in the United States have frequently sought to appropriate nationalist rhetoric even as black and Chicano nationalist movements have been on the decline [see, for example, Berlant and Freeman; Moraga 145-74].Debates about anticolonial struggle and "Third World" nationalism may seem at first to be an odd context into which to introduce the work of Gloria Anzaldúa. Critical writing on Anzaldúa's work has tended not to consider its relevance to debates on the relations among capitalism, colonialism, and national culture. 2 Instead, her major work, Borderlands/La Frontera, is usually discussed (or, more often than not, simply cited) as a contribution to feminist and antiracist discussions about the construction of the self within multiple contexts of domination and about that self's resistance to oppression and struggle for recognition. 3 While acknowledging the importance of Anzaldúa's contributions to these discussions, this essay examines Borderlands as offering a forward-looking alternative to nationalism, specifically, to Chicano cultural nationalist positions articulated during the... (shrink)

During the Cold War, political thinkers in the West debated the balance between the requirements of liberal democracy and national security. This debate is relevant to East Asia and especially to Korea, where an ideological-military standoff between a democracy and a totalitarian system persists. The thinkers often identified as "Cold War liberals"--Isaiah Berlin, Karl Popper, Raymond Aron, Friedrich Hayek, and Michael Oakeshott--are worth revisiting in this context. Of these, Oakeshott is the least well understood in East Asia and therefore (...) particularly deserving of attention. His ideas about the limits of rationalism in politics, the irrelevance of conventional views of liberalism and conservatism, how constitutional democracy should be defined, and how it can be defended against various forms of anti-liberal politics are especially valuable. In this book, leading Oakeshott scholars from around the world explore these ideas and their implications for East Asia in ten illuminating and readable essays. (shrink)

The "Socialist Calculation Debate" is little known outside the economics profession, yet this inter-war debate between liberal and socialist economists on the practical feasibility of socialism has important implications for all contemporary public sector bureaucracies. This article applies the Mises-Hayek critique of central planning that emerged from this debate to the crisis presently facing the British National Health Service. The Mises-Hayek critique suggests that the UK government's plan for a renewal of the National Health Service will fail because (...) of the epistemological pathologies that face any centrally planned system. It is argued that the key lesson of the Socialist Calculation Debate is that market prices and private property rights are essential for the efficient allocation of resources and the attainment of the best possible health outcomes. (shrink)

This article advances a critical analysis of John Rawls’s justification of liberal democratic nuclear deterrence in the post-Cold War era as found in The Law of Peoples. Rawls’s justification overlooked how nuclear-armed liberal democracies are ensnared in two intransigent ethical dilemmas: one in which the mandate to secure liberal constitutionalism requires both the preservation and violation of important constitutional provisions in domestic affairs, and the other in which this same mandate requires both the preservation and violation of the liberal commitment (...) to international legal arrangements and to the rule of law generally. On this view, the choice to violate constitutional provisions and international legal arrangements is evidence of nuclear despotism. Moreover, this choice does not imply that the ethical foreign policy dilemmas were resolved. Instead, it implies that the dilemmas force liberal democratic governments into implementing ethically paradoxical policy outcomes. (shrink)

This article considers the meanings attached to refugeehood, repatriation and liberal citizenship in the twentieth century. Refugees are those who have been unjustly expelled from their political community. Their physical displacement is above all symbolic of a deeper political separation from the state and the citizenry. ‘Solving’ refugees’ exile is therefore not a question of halting refugees’ flight and reversing their movement, but requires political action restoring citizenship. All three ‘durable solutions’ developed by the international community in the twentieth century (...) – repatriation, resettlement and local integration – are intended to restore a refugee's access to citizenship, and through citizenship the protection and expression of their fundamental human rights. Yet repatriation poses particular challenges for liberal political thought. The logic of repatriation reinforces the organization of political space into bounded nation–state territories. However, it is the exclusionary consequences of national controls over political membership – and through this of access to citizenship rights – that prompt mass refugee flows. Can a framework for repatriation be developed which balances national state order and liberal citizenship rights? This article argues that using the social contract model to consider the different obligations and pacts between citizens, societies and states can provide a theoretical framework through which the liberal idea of citizenship and national controls on membership can be reconciled. Historical evidence suggests that the connections in practice between ideas of citizenship and repatriation have been far more complex. In particular, debate between Western liberal and Soviet authoritarian/collectivist understandings of the relationship between citizen and state played a key role in shaping the refugee protection regime that emerged after World War II and remains in place today. Repatriation – or more accurately liberal resistance to non-voluntary refugee repatriation – became an important tool of Cold War politics and retains an important value for states interested in projecting and reaffirming the primacy of liberal citizenship values. Yet the contradictions in post-Cold War operational use of repatriation to ‘solve’ displacement, and a growing reliance on ‘state-building’ exercises to validate refugees’ returns demonstrates that tension remains between national state interests and the universal distribution of liberal rights, as is particularly evident when considering Western donor states’ contemporary policies on refugees and asylum. For both intellectual and humanitarian reasons there is therefore an urgent need for the political theory underpinning refugee protection to be closely examined, in order that citizenship can be placed at the centre of refugees’ ‘solutions’. ☆ The article is based on a paper given at a workshop on Citizenship organized by the Centre for History and Economics and held at Robinson College, Cambridge on 14–15 July 2008. It draws largely on archival research undertaken for my Ph.D., The Politics of Refugee Repatriation in the Twentieth Century, which was completed in July 2009 at the University of Cambridge. My particular thanks to Melissa Lane and Matthew Gibney for their help in developing these arguments, and to the archivists at UNHCR and the League of Nations Archives at UNOG. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Origins of War: A Catholic Perspective by Matthew A. ShadleJoyce Kloc BabyakThe Origins of War: A Catholic Perspective Matthew A. Shadle Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2011.246pp. $29.95Matthew A. Shadle’s The Origins of War, in Georgetown University Press’s Moral Traditions series, makes a genuinely fresh contribution to contemporary scholarship on Christianity and war. This is not a work on the morality of war, just war theory, or (...) alternatives to that theory. Instead, Shadle directs our attention to Christian understandings of war’s origins. Through a rich and careful analysis of the early tradition’s treatment of the origin of war in light of its overall understanding of human existence, Shadle sets the stage for his examination of the decentering of Christianity in modernity and the implication of this for assumptions about humanity and human possibilities that became encoded in both political theory and Catholic writings on war. In the process, Shadle offers us not only a primer on international theory but also an account of the transition of fundamental liberal assumptions from their beginnings as anti-Christian to their twentieth-century embrace by Catholic theologians and a thoughtful new approach to understanding the causes of war today.Making his case serially, Shadle moves from biblical and early Christian thought on the origins of war to the Middle Ages and onward. He argues that the overriding context for a Christian understanding of the origins of war is the Christian worldview that sees human life in a theological framework (25), and he locates the impulse to war in the human struggle between sin and grace (5). With modernity, however, war has come to be seen as a result not of sin but of unresolved conflicts, clashes of interest and power—all viewed in materialist rather than transcendent terms. Moving into the twentieth century, he demonstrates that Roman Catholic writings on war, including church writings, have adopted a liberal framework for articulating positions on the causes of war. This liberal framework has in turn supported the hope that international institutions will be able to resolve the conflicts of interests that lead to war by fostering dialogue across divides but at the same time have also led away from the more fundamental Christian view that sees war as the result of sin.Shadle criticizes the liberal optimism that has infused Catholic writings with the hope that international structures will succeed at preventing war. Linking [End Page 215] that optimism to dominant versions of international relations theory, he argues instead for a new version of international relations theory known as “constructivism.” This theory challenges presumptions of earlier versions of international relations theory and sees war as the result of “a clash of the identities, interests, and norms of states... all of which are socially constructed by both domestic and international factors” (86). In Shadle’s view, constructivism is a theory that is more compatible with traditional Christian views on the origin of war as well as contemporary Catholic theology because it focuses on clashes in socially constructed (though not entirely relativistic) identities and values as causes of war. Avoiding war on this view will take more than relying on international structures such as the United Nations to resolve conflicts by translating conflicting interests into terms erroneously presumed to be accessible to all.The Origins of War: A Catholic Perspective deserves serious study. From its careful account of the biblical and early Christian understanding of the origin of war to its analysis of the ways that liberal assumptions came to undergird Catholic writings on war, it sheds new light on how assumptions about the origins of war influence all aspects of our thinking about war. And it is in the end provocative. Shadle’s historicist orientation reminds us that the liberal optimism that undervalued the role of sin as a cause of war was itself tempting because of the challenges of the time and dominant political theories. Yet Shadle’s preference for constructivism is no less historically shaped. Liberalism’s fit with Catholic understanding of human existence has certainly been strained, but it remains to be seen whether a historicist, constructivist set of assumptions can do... (shrink)

There is still very little constitutional control over the decision to use armed force, and very limited domestic implementation of the international principles of jus ad bellum, notwithstanding the increasing overlap between international and domestic legal systems and the spread of constitutional democracy. The relationship between constitutional and international law constraints on the use of armed force has a long history. Aspects of constitutional theory, liberal theories of international law, and transnational process theory of international law compliance, suggest that constitutional (...) design could legitimately be used as a pre-commitment device to lock-in jus ad bellum principles, and thereby enhance compliance with that regime of international law. This paper examines the case of Japan's Constitution to determine the extent to which its war-renouncing provisions incorporated, and are consistent with, international law principles on the use of armed force, and whether the provisions operated to effectively constrain government policy. It concludes that the drafters of the Constitution did incorporate international law principles from jus ad bellum in Art. 9(1), though they also grafted on sui generis prohibitions and rules from jus in bello in Art. 9(2) as well, which complicates the story. The provision was embraced in the ratification process, and became the source of powerful constitutive norms that have helped shape Japan's sense of identity. The paper examines the interpretation of Art. 9, as informed by international law, and concludes that despite deep conflicts over competing narratives and understandings of the provision, the long-standing government interpretation of the provision is consistent with Japan's obligations under the jus ad bellum regime. In looking at the operation of Art. 9, the paper finds that despite the early use of Art. 9 by governments as a pretext behind which it could pursue desired policy objectives, the provision did operate to effectively constrain government policy in times of apparent crisis. During the Gulf War in particular, Art. 9 effectively bound a straining government to the mast, preventing Japan's participation in the war. It did so not only in its operation as a legal norm, effectively enforced by the Cabinet Legislation Bureau, but also as a powerful constitutive and social norm. As such, the experience of Japan with Art. 9 provides support for the argument that it is feasible to incorporate principles of jus ad bellum into national constitutions, so as to effectively constrain government policy with respect to engaging in armed conflict. Broader arguments as to why that might be desirable, or whether it has served Japan well or ill, are left for another day. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:CHRISTOLOGY IN POLITICAL AND LIBERATION THEOLOGY R. R. RENO Creighton University Omaha, Nebraska Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! He who sat upon it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems ; and he has a name inscribed which no one knows but (...) himself. He is clad in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God. And armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, followed him on white horses. From his mouth issues a sharp sword with which to smite the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron; he will tread the wine press of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name inscribed, King of kings and Lord of lords. Revelation 19:11-16 SHARP IS THE SWORD of The Word of God: so proclaims a growing body of literature in political and liberation theology. Although this literature evidences a deep pluralism when describing wherein the sword is sharp and toward what it is aimed, the unifying claim is that Christianity has decisive political significance. And this significance takes an explicitly theoretical form. Unlike other politically directed theological programs (e.g., Reinhold Niebuhr, Walter Rauschenbush, Paul Lehmann), political and liberation theologies do not restrict the practical to a pre- or post-theoretical moment. The practical questions of liberation and justice are internal to explicitly theological reflection. The manner in which questions of liberation and justice are 291 292 R. R. RENO woven into the fabric of theology is manifold. Juan Luis Segundo, in Liberation of Theology, presents an account of theological method which is necessarily political.1 He attempts to show that, to the degree that it is faithful, theological reflection must be constituted by ideological critique and transformative social commitment. In a similar although more ambiguous way, Matthew Lamb's Solidarity with Victims seeks to build social and political issues into the ground floor of method.2 On a different front, Jiirgen Moltmann's Theology of Hope emphasizes the necessarily political dimension of eschatology.3 Quite far removed from the radicalism of most political and liberation theologies, but equally important and increasingly self-conscious of its theological context, the Roman Catholic human rights tradition can be seen as a political theology which chooses to operate within the context of a strong doctrine of creation.4 1 Juan Luis Segundo, Liberation of Theology. (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1976). 2 Lamb's program is more than a methodological proposal for theology in itself. He promotes an interesting mixture of critical theory and interdisciplinary study as a path for all inquiry. The result is a pastiche of Adorno and Lonergan. Lamb explains his interdiscipinary vision as follows : " Such a noetic praxis of theologizing would develop academically institutionalized ways of promoting an intellectual conversion (metanoia) whereby the suffering witness of the victims of history would challenge the systems and theories constitutive of our world experience " (Victims, p. 17). However, the critical element of this interdisciplinary "noetic praxis" which Lamb draws from Adorno's Negative Dialectics militates against this " institutionalized" use. At the deepest level Adorno questions the very possibility of a noetic practice which mediates the reality of experience, and he certainly rejects any institutional reification of the small insights which we might garner. For Adorno, critical thought cannot mediate the actual suffering of concrete individuals ; rather, its ultimate impotence in the face of such a reality mirrors the suffering of finite beings. Thought bears witness formally not materially. This basic feature of Adorno's thought runs counter to Lonergan's cognitive optimism, making Lamb's program interesting but implausible. Matthew Lamb, Solidarity with Victims (New York: Crossroad, 1982). SJiirgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope. (New York: Harper & Row, 1967). 4 David Hollenbach's Claims in Confiict (New York: Paulist Press, 1979) provides an example of a recent attempt to uncover the theological foundations for a theory of rights. Showing that the language of rights flows from a basic respect... (shrink)

Abstract The early Ru or ?Confucian? figure Xunzi (?Master Xun,? c. 310?c. 220 BCE) gives a sophisticated analysis of war, which he develops on the basis of a larger social and political vision that he works out in considerable detail. This larger vision of human society is thoroughly normative in the sense that Xunzi both argues for the value of his ideal conception of society, and relates these moral arguments for the Confucian Dao or Way to what I take to (...) be fairly hardheaded assessments of the dynamics of international relations in his late Warring States historical context. This combination of moral vision and political realism, combined with his advocacy of strong political authorities that nevertheless rule justly in service to the common good, makes his thought arguably more relevant to the contemporary world of contending nation-states, and a rising, undemocratic China, than any other pre-modern Confucian. Xunzi's own context, both intellectual and political/military, led him to argue about war in ways that look distinctive to contemporary Western ethicists ? and yet his preferred issues are revealing in themselves and are suggestive in relation to current debates in military ethics. In the first part of this paper I analyze Xunzi's argumentative strategy in debate about war, where he chooses to attack his adversaries on the question of how to cultivate true loyalty and obedience in subordinates. The second part briefly explores Xunzi's vision of the good society and how it fits into a multi-state world, which undergirds his critique of alternate discourses about war and government. The third examines the Xunzian vision of politics and war as a source for a contemporary Confucian theory of civilian-military relations. The fourth section explores some implications of a Xunzian account for international relations, through a brief comparison with the Kantian notion of ?perpetual peace? among liberal states, and whether such ?zones of peace? might be conceivable on Confucian grounds. The conclusion reflects on the ambiguous legacy of Xunzi's moralism in his analysis of war and statecraft, and the possible light this shines on contemporary Chinese political culture. (shrink)

It is tempting to think of liberal democracy in terms of immortality. Democracies have survived wars and depressions, Nazis and communists – so much so that at the end of the Cold War Francis Fukuyama famously declared the “end of history.” In The Culturalist Challenge to Liberal Republicanism, Michael Lusztig assesses the risks that multiculturalism and other forms of culturalism pose to liberal democracy. Establishing the nature of the current regime and exploring the emergence of a cogent theory of justice (...) grounded in both liberal and republican theory, Lusztig demonstrates the inconsistencies between liberal republicanism and culturalist theories of justice. Exploring both the institutional and cultural effects of the tension between culturalism and liberal republicanism, he seeks a balanced view that falls somewhere between Fukuyama’s optimism for regime mortality and the pessimism inherent in the work of more conservative theorists like Samuel Huntington. Lusztig concludes that the narrowness of liberal republican justice is ameliorated by multiculturalism, but the hidden danger is that multiculturalism can serve as a stalking horse for more pernicious agendas. Given the increasing cultural diversity faced by North American and European nations, The Culturalist Challenge to Liberal Republicanism has important implications for political stability in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

The study analyzes two animated films - Japanese film Kuroneko Banzai released in 1933 and French film Nimbus Libere released in 1944 - as the examples of the anti-American military propaganda that uses famous American cartoon characters. Kuroneko Banzai tells the story of the inhabitants of one Pacific island who are attacked by vicious Mickey Mouse. The inhabitants are saved by the heroes of the Japanese tales. The film is an example of a national military training which, in one (...) hand, involves the images of Japanese fairy tales characters, that is, appeals to the Japanese national tradition hidden in the Japanese tales and Japanese national symbols, but, in other hand, it contrasts the Japanese fairy tales characters, which symbolize the Japanese national tradition and connection with ancestors and deities, with American cartoon character Mickey Mouse who stands as an enemy from the West. The portrayal of such popular character like Mickey Mouse as the enemy is actually aimed at demonization of Mickey Mouse and together with him the entire American culture to oppose it to own traditional Japanese culture portrayed by the fairy tales characters. Nimbus Libere tells the story of such American cartoon characters like Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, Popeye the Sailor and Felix The Cat who bomb France. The film attempts to demonize the Anglo-American allies landed in Normandy to make ordinary Frenchmen not to help the allies. (shrink)

Liberalism is in trouble. As a set of ideas, it has lost much of its historical authority in guiding public policy and personal behaviour. In this post-liberal climate, Russell Blackford asks whether liberalism is truly over. How We Became Post-Liberal examines how Western liberal democracies became nations where traditional liberal principles of toleration (religious and otherwise), individual liberty and freedom of speech are frequently dismissed as outdated or twisted to support conservative policies. Blackford traces the lineage of liberalism from problems (...) of toleration that emerged when Christianity triumphed in the late centuries of classical antiquity, with comparison to non-Western civilizations. The political and philosophical story culminates in the recent development - over the past 30 to 50 years - of post-liberal ideologies in the West. At each stage, Blackford discusses arguments for and against liberal principles, identifying why no argument to date has been totally successful in convincing opponents, while maintaining that liberalism's ideas and language are still worth saving. From campus wars over academic freedom to the Charlie Hebdo attack and the murder of Samuel Paty, this is an indispensable guide for anyone wanting to understand the why, what and how of the post-liberal world. (shrink)

ExcerptThe high-water mark of globalization has passed. New competitions continue to emerge in a decidedly multipolar international system. As the United States views China and Russia as strategic competitors or worse, an array of mid-level powers—Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, India, the BRICS, and so forth—try to navigate this complex system and pursue their national interests. Meanwhile, no matter how much the United States and the European Union both believe themselves part of a single “West,” divergent interests tend (...) to drive them apart, even as tensions within the EU itself have grown sharper. In order to describe part of this increasingly competitive environment, an analytic distinction between so-called “civilizational states” and “liberal empires” seems to provide a framework to analyze international political processes in starkly contrasting terms.1 To some extent, the two terms repackage the terminology of the Cold War era that contrasted closed and open societies, and if we are indeed entering a new Cold War, the return of these categories is arguably appropriate. Yet more is surely at stake than a repetition of the historical competition between Communism and democracy, and the focus on the contrast between allegedly civilizational states and liberal empires may be missing a key part of the picture. Let’s take a closer look at the two concepts and then ask whether this binary provides an adequate toolkit to understand, for example, the conflict in Ukraine. To anticipate the conclusion: those who celebrate Russia as a “civilizational state” doing battle with the evil “liberal empire” of the West miss the key point in the conflict, the will of the Ukrainian people to assert their autonomy as a nation and to resist foreign occupation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Scale of the Nation in a Shrinking WorldJoan Ramon Resina (bio)The 1990s saw the rise of political issues that, although by no means new, generated a great deal of discourse based on a semantic rupture with the past. The need to inscribe political analysis with a feeling of historical acceleration was nowhere as patent as in George W. Bush's New World Order. Although the "New World Order" quickly (...) gave way to the euphemism "globalization," it soon became obvious that political agendas would change considerably as would the terms of engagement with realities that had once seemed straightforward and now appeared riddled with theoretical problems.Nationalism was salient among those realities. Although it had driven decolonization in the fifties and sixties and throughout the Vietnam era, it seemed to flare up roughly at the time when Bush pronounced the bipolar order dead. As the political map was being redrawn after the breakdown of the Soviet empire, other foci of political struggle caught the world's attention. National struggles in other regions were interpreted as collateral of that breakdown rather than long-standing symptoms of similar tensions at different scales. Once more, the European continent was caught in the incongruity of its historical processes. While Western Europe was cautiously advancing toward economic and political integration, Eastern Europe found itself returning from a "posthistorical" experiment in supranationalism to the "historical" horizon of polities being reconfigured according to such social tangibles as a common language and religion, a traditional relation to place, and shared identifying memories.Until the 1990s the West smugly believed that it had consolidated state borders around seemingly homogeneous societies. Cultural integration was flaky in spots (Northern Ireland, the Basque Country, Corsica); those resistances, however, were looked on mostly as archaic irrelevances bound to disappear. But as nationalism began to haunt the cozy dream of a posthistorical balance of power, nonchalance gave way to a glut of intellectual exorcisms meant to conjure the evil that had caught at Europe's edges. In this new context, the Balkans represented for Europe, in Žižek's words, "the peculiar status of a ghost that haunts it." If the Balkans "are always somewhere else, a little bit more toward the southeast" [3], in the 1990s the danger of Balkanization seemed ubiquitous. At the time, a true Balkan hysteria rang out in the most self-satisfied European nations. In France and Spain, long-standing conflicts between center and periphery were recast in terms of the horror seen on CNN. Europe spatialized its fears, turning geographic distance into a metaphor for the racism directed against its internal others.Europe's internal others did not consist only of immigrants from non-EU countries, for whom liberals always had a soft spot, but also of those peoples and territorial units capable and culpable of tearing admirable nations apart. It was in those territorial units, which had been incorporated but not assimilated in the course of nation-state building, that nationalism was "raising its ugly head." It was here that "'reflexive' Politically Correct racism" (Žižek) applied the Balkans metaphor, projecting every conceivable horror into the intentions of unsuspecting citizens. As Žižek observed at the time, "[t]he [End Page 46] Balkans constitute a place of exception with regard to which the tolerant multiculturalist is allowed to act out his/her repressed racism" [6]. This perverse acting out was all the more acceptable, inasmuch as the peoples subjected to the logic of displaced racism were after all white and developed, and thus free game for the tolerant multiculturalist, who could always bring forward less-developed regions as potential victims of the centrifugal region's egotism. When the Balkans war broke out in May of 1991, the first Western European reactions were predominantly pro-Serbian. Never mind that Slovenia and Croatia were pro-Western and democratic. Western intelligentsias accused them of pettiness and lack of solidarity and began to restrain their large-state bias only when Serbian annexationists directed their all-out war against Bosnian Muslims, who, although white and no less developed than their attackers, were, by virtue of their religion, a patent instance of otherness. Overnight politically correct racism swung from tolerance for... (shrink)

The paper analyses the philosophical aspects of the 'religion - national mythology' synthesis. The main directions of the study are as follows: 1. Both on the individual and social plan, the orientation of the transcending universalizing power of religion could vary depending on the macro-social movements a community /or an individual/ is involved in. For the individual as for the community, religion could be a cultural position transcending ego and ethno-centrism, mono-cultural tendencies; in situations of internal differentiation and disintegration (...) of these entities, the universalizing binding role of religion is partialized and determined by various social groups, who are often in opposition to each other due to their economic political, ethnic, psychological features; 2. This process is usually related to the invalidation of universally uniting religious-moral bonds and values and intensification of differences: power, property, doctrinal differences to a shift of the weight center from internal spiritual movements /particularly typical of mysticism, asceticism, priesthood/ on to practical social action - reformist heresies, the various practical theologies of revolution, liberation, the religious-motivated wars; 3. When reduced to an ethnic, political, or state emblem, religious affiliation to Judaism, Islam Orthodoxy, Catholicism, Protestantism has become and still remain a tool for the sacralization of military and political conflicts. In religion-motivated conflict situations, opposing parties de-sacralize their Sacred Books as their acts contradict the books' moral content; 4. The power of historical mythologies is in reverse proportion to the capacity of a nation to periodically renew its social life world - its psychological attitudes labour relations, political stereotypes; 5. In this type of situation religion is usually reduced to 'belonging', as G. Davie put it, at the expense of 'believing' and a corresponding moral behavior. The religious universe becomes thus subordinated to partial group values, instead of standing above them. Ovaj tekst analizira filozofske aspekte sinteze 'religija - nacionalna ideologija'. Sledeci su glavni pravci studije: 1. I na individualnom i na drustvenom planu, usmerenje na transcendiranju, univerzalizaciji moci religije moze varirati u zavisnosti od makrosocijalnih kretanja zajednice koji je u njih ukljucen. Kako za pojedinca tako i za zajednicu, religija bi mogla biti kulturno stanoviste koje transcendira egocentrizam i etnocentrizam, kao i monokulturna kretanja; u situacijama unutrasnjih raslojavanja i dezintegracije tih entiteta, univerzalizujuca uloga religije je parcijalizovana i odredjena od razlicitih drustvenih grupa koje cesto stoje nasuprot jedna drugoj zbog njihovih politickih, ekonomskih etnickih i psiholoskih osobina. 2. Taj je proces obicno povezan s obezvredjivanjem univerzalno ujedinjujucih religijsko-moralnih vrednosti i intenziviranjem razlika: moc, svojina, doktrinalne razlike; 3. Kada su svedeni na etnicke, politicke ili drzavne simbole, religiozna pripadnost judaizmu, islamu, pravoslavlju, katolicanstvu, protestantizmu postaje i ostaje sredstvo za sakralizaciju vojnih i politickih sukoba. U situacijama sukoba koji religijski motivisani, protivnicke strane desakralizuju svete knjige druge strane kako njihova dela protivrece moralnom sadrzaju tih knjiga. 4. Moc istorijskih mitologija je u obrnutoj srazmeri sa sposobnoscu nacije da periodicno obnovi svoj drustveni svet zivota - svoja psiholoska drzanja, radne odnose, politicke stereotipe. 5. U situaciji tog tipa religija je obicno svedena na 'pripadnistvo', kako na to ukazuje G. Dejvi naustrb 'verovanja' i odgovarajuceg moralnog ponasanja. (shrink)

Position, values, activity of the highest Orthodox clergy, monasteries, monasticism in the era of numerous interstate wars, Cossack uprisings of the 20 - 30s of the 18th century, National Liberation War of 1648 - 1654, Pereyaslav council, and its succession that coincided with dramatic transformations on the European continent, a profound change of borders in Central and Eastern Europe, in the light of the present factual completeness and the possibility of scientific objective assessments, prove to be complex, multi-vector, (...) and often synchronous with many sociopolitical processes and diplomatic movements and, in general, far from the given unambiguous, straightforward or spiral "procedural", which the position of the Orthodox Church, monasteries or monks in the national liberation competitions in the Ukrainian lands. until recently. (shrink)

_Courting the Abyss_ updates the philosophy of free expression for a world that is very different from the one in which it originated. The notion that a free society should allow Klansmen, neo-Nazis, sundry extremists, and pornographers to spread their doctrines as freely as everyone else has come increasingly under fire. At the same time, in the wake of 9/11, the Right and the Left continue to wage war over the utility of an absolute vision of free speech in a (...) time of increased national security. _Courting the Abyss_ revisits the tangled history of free speech, finding resolutions to these debates hidden at the very roots of the liberal tradition. A mesmerizing account of the role of public communication in the Anglo-American world, _Courting the Abyss_ shows that liberty's earliest advocates recognized its fraternal relationship with wickedness and evil. While we understand freedom of expression to mean "anything goes," John Durham Peters asks why its advocates so often celebrate a sojourn in hell and the overcoming of suffering. He directs us to such well-known sources as the prose and poetry of John Milton and the political and philosophical theory of John Locke, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, and Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., as well as lesser-known sources such as the theology of Paul of Tarsus. In various ways they all, he shows, envisioned an attitude of self-mastery or self-transcendence as a response to the inevitable dangers of free speech, a troubled legacy that continues to inform ruling norms about knowledge, ethical responsibility, and democracy today. A world of gigabytes, undiminished religious passion, and relentless scientific discovery calls for a fresh account of liberty that recognizes its risk and its splendor. Instead of celebrating noxious doctrine as proof of society's robustness, _Courting the Abyss_ invites us to rethink public communication today by looking more deeply into the unfathomable mystery of liberty and evil. (shrink)

The essay addresses contemporary discussions on women?s transnationalism and women?s agency by looking at the first conference of the UN Decade for Women held in Mexico City in 1975, and at its specific embedding in Cold War geopolitics. Through an engagement with different feminist and activists voices, and particularly with the less visible anti-imperialist, Non-Aligned and socialist genealogies of women?s activism expressed during the meeting, the essay argues that the paradigm of Western feminist knowledge production needs to be revisited, in (...) order to encompass multiple forms of women?s political agency that are not expressed through the liberal framework of women?s individual autonomy from the state. By juxtaposing Betty Friedan?s and Vida Tomsic?s stances during the Mexico City event, the paper shows that women?s political agency during the Cold War era took different forms, which included both the refusal and the acceptance of women?s activism within existing national and international institutions. nema. (shrink)

The idea of a Europe of its peoples, or a post-nation-state ‘regionalist Europe’, is largely applauded by radical democratic and post-colonial theorists who considered this development an antidote to nationalism. What is hardly heeded by liberal as well as left-wing intellectuals, however, is that several fascist and neo-fascist intellectuals during the inter-war and the post-war eras have also been attracted by the idea of a post-nation-state, ‘Europe des peoples’. By analyzing the complementary ideologies of two French intellectuals associated with fascism (...) and post-war neo-fascism – Pierre Drieu La Rochelle and Alain de Benoist – this article traces the attempts to shed new light onto some of the shortcomings embedded in the concept of the ‘Europe des peoples’. Building upon Drieu and de Benoist’s ideas on the future of Europe as a post-national exclusionist ‘Europe of the peoples’, this article sets an alert that a new type of ethnic exclusionism may be strengthened precisely with the end of old states nationalism. (shrink)

Focusing in particular on the German-Soviet war in the East, this article explores variations in patterns of sexual violence associated with armed forces in Europe during and immediately after World War II. Besides soldier violence perpetrated against civilian populations, a significant role was also played by irregular forces: most notably, by partisan guerrillas and civilian vigilantes. Ethnic nationalist partisan forces perpetrated especially brutal sexual violence against women and girls of “enemy” nationalities. Likewise, after liberation civilian reprisals were fairly common (...) throughout Europe against so-called “sexual collaborators”—that is, against women excoriated for providing “sexual comfort” to the enemy during the German occupation. (shrink)

ArgumentUp until the French Revolution, European mathematics was an “aristocratic” activity, the intellectual pastime of a small circle of men who were convinced they were collaborating on a universal undertaking free of all space-time constraints, as they believed they were ideally in dialogue with the Greek founders and with mathematicians of all languages and eras. The nineteenth century saw its transformation into a “democratic” but also “patriotic” activity: the dominant tendency, as shown by recent research to analyze this transformation, seems (...) to be the national one, albeit accompanied by numerous analogies from the point of view of the processes of national evolution, possibly staggered in time. Nevertheless, the very homogeneity of the individual national processes leads us to view mathematics in the context of the national-universal tension that the spread of liberal democracy was subjected to over the past two centuries. In order to analyze national-universal tension in mathematics, viewed as an intellectual undertaking and a profession of the new bourgeois society, it is necessary to investigate whether the network of international communication survived the political, social, and cultural upheavals of the French Revolution and the European wars waged in the early nineteenth century, whether national passions have transformed this network, and if so, in what way. Luigi Cremona's international correspondence indicates that relationships among individuals have been restructured by the force of national membership, but that the universal nature of mathematics has actually been boosted by a vision shared by mathematicians from all countries concerning the role of their discipline in democratic and liberal society as the basis of scientific culture and technological innovation, as well as a basic component of public education. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe article recovers Henry Brailsford’s reflections on south-eastern and east-central Europe in a transformative period in international politics. Although the British journalist has been considered as key influence in the development of international relations in Britain, his commentary on the national questions in eastern Europe has remained relatively unexplored. The article argues that in response to the international politics of the Eastern Question and to concurrent imperial questions in Britain, Brailsford articulated an imperial anti-imperialist vision of international order based (...) on the support for local autonomy and self-government across eastern Europe and the colonial world. It then proceeds to chart his gradual distancing from the politics of self-determination during the Great War and argues that Brailsford’s international thought was influenced by a series of pragmatic considerations regarding the future of central and eastern Europe. The intricacies of Brailsford’s international thought offer an informative case-study of the symbiosis of liberal and socialist varieties of internationalism in early twentieth century Britain. (shrink)

Because the goal of reducing violence is nearly universally accepted, the uniquely prescriptive character of peace and conflict studies is rarely scrutinized. However, prescriptive pacifism in social psychological peace research (SPPR) masks a diversity of opinion on whether nonintervention is more effective in promoting peace than intervention to punish aggression, restore stability, and/or prevent atrocity. SPPR’s skepticism is sharper in the post–9/11 era when states use public fear of terrorist threat to promote sometimes-unrelated domestic and geostrategic interests. The most frequently (...) proposed remedy for this kind of abuse is some form of international legal positivism that permits the use of force only in self-defense, per strict interpretation of the United Nations Charter, or not at all—a position the author calls ‘prescriptive pacifism." This project critically examines the metaethical premises of prescriptive pacifism, positivism, and realism, how these animate the moral and political skepticism of peace studies, psychology, and international relations, respectively, and meet in SPPR. After comparing the intellectual development of these fields and just war theory, I present influential psychologist Albert Bandura’s social cognitive theory (SCT) of moral judgment and aggression as a case study. I present evidence of the problematic nature of Bandura and others’ formulation of moral engagement and disengagement, tracing their contradictions to the named premises. In brief, I argue that SCT’s underlying skepticism of individual moral judgment implies elite or consensus-driven models of social and political change whose institutional gradualism contradicts these authors’ and SPPR’s stated progressive aims, and whose utilitarian ethos undermines the egalitarian individualism that underpins both the liberal conception of the rule of law and the international human rights regime. Finally, I present an alternative model of moral reasoning and engagement based on a Kantian constructivist understanding of international ethics, and the theory of the just war. I outline two instruments inspired by these related normative frameworks that in addition to being more internally coherent, operationalize moral engagement and disengagement in a manner more consonant with political liberalism, existing international humanitarian law, and the emergent norm known as Responsibility to Protect. Intended for use in the collection and coding of qualitative responses to survey research of public opinion on morally ambiguous issues in international politics such as intervention and territorial integrity, these instruments avoid the tendency of existing SPPR frameworks toward false positives of militarism and pacifism. Their presentation also makes mutually comprehensible the often-confusing professional idioms of international relations, political theory, moral philosophy, and social psychology, standing to make a contribution to each. (shrink)

The question of the use of force and its relation to political power has resurfaced in an era of terror attacks and wars against terror. The liberal conceptualization of this relation is limited by the bipolar understanding of force as either legitimate or illegitimate. Turning to the history of the Irgun, a Jewish underground movement, and its struggle against the British Empire in 1947 Palestine, this article seeks to expand the understanding of force beyond the liberal paradigm. The article offers (...) a new model for understanding the use of force by the liberal nation-state and distinguishes between four different modes of force: violence, legality, terror, and empire. Whereas the liberal paradigm is limited to a conception of force as either justified and, hence, just, or unjustified and, hence, unjust, one may think of two additional forms of force, which, at first, may seem paradoxical: the unjust but justified force of terror and the force of empire, which is just but not in need of justification. Rather than using these forms as stable categories, the article seeks to understand the ways in which the uses of force became destabilized in times of political contestation. The article concludes by pointing out the broader implications of this model for the political analysis of the liberal nation-state and its use of force. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Religion, the Globalization of War, and Restorative JusticeNathan TierneyAs the pace of globalization increases, the world's religions find themselves in a perilous dilemma that they have yet to resolve in either practical or conceptual terms. On the one hand, the globalization of markets exerts a powerful pressure toward consumerist and materialist values, which undermine and undercut religious perspectives and sensibilities. On the other hand, the globalization of war heightens (...) the intensity of these religious perspectives and sensibilities, and distorts them in the direction of violence and religious extremism. This dilemma plays itself out in different ways in the developed and developing world, but, as the term "globalization" indicates, it is a problem for all of us. Governments, in developing countries especially, often find themselves forced to choose between one horn of the dilemma or the other, with often disastrous results as they take one or the other side in a "West versus the rest" scenario. In the long run, the only viable solution is one that addresses both horns of the dilemma at the same time, and this is possible only if, in turn, religions themselves become truly global. This will require a large-scale and focused cooperative effort in which the religions of the world actively and jointly engage with both problems, working with governments, NGOs, religious communities, and interfaith groups to harmonize religious life with economics and to promote a culture of peace and justice.Because "globalization" is a familiar term in relation to markets, I'll begin by clarifying what I mean by the globalization of war. There are two main aspects to this phenomenon. First, the term refers to a specific transformation in the nature, purposes, and conditions of warfare brought about by the forces of globalization. By globalization I mean the growing trend of the world's cultural, economic, and political forces to bypass national borders and operate on a world scale. This process creates new possibilities for both integration and conflict. When that conflict passes beyond the possibility of diplomatic negotiation, we have the conditions for globalized war. Globalized war is not necessarily world war. It can be relatively local in its sphere of combat; for example, the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan was a collective response to a worldwide threat of terrorism. What makes it a globalized war, as distinct from international war, is the global nature of the forces that produced it and [End Page 79] are affected by it. Globalized war in this sense has come only lately onto the scene, but its scale and impact is likely to grow in the coming century.The second aspect of the globalization of war is the tendency of conflict to mutate beyond the interests and concerns of nation-states and be taken up by broader civilizational units, even if they were not originally a response to global pressures. The most likely trajectory for this mutation has been well described by Samuel P. Huntington in his influential article "The Clash of Civilizations" (1993) and his book-length treatment of the same subject (1997). Huntington argues that the fault lines of conflict will not be primarily ideological or economic but cultural, where "cultural" is to be understood at its broadest level—the level of civilizations. He divides the world into seven or eight competing civilizations: Western, Sinic, Japanese, Hindu, Islamic, Orthodox, Latin American, and possibly African. Societies sharing cultural affinities will cooperate with one another, and the attempt by the West to universalize its dominant version of consumer capitalism and liberal democracy will be resisted in an increasingly determined way—eventually to the point of outright war: "the next world war, if there is one, will be a war between civilizations."1In Huntington's analysis, then, the globalization of war refers to a coming clash of civilizations. He believes that religion will play a central role in this clash as the focal point of civilizations: "Civilizations are differentiated from each other by history, language, culture tradition and, most important, religion."2 While Western civilization has experienced several decades of decline and decay, in both its cultural unity and its sense of identity, other civilizations have grown both in economic terms and... (shrink)

In her essay , 82–111), Shell wants to demonstrate that 1. Kant's theory of the right of nations ‘can furnish us with some much needed practical help and guidance’, and 2. ‘Kant is less averse to the use of force, including resort to pre-emptive war… than he is often taken to be’ . The first claim is unconvincing. The second one is in need of clarification. Shell turns Kant into a kind of realist and just-war theorist, into a liberal who (...) is prejudiced against illiberal regimes. In the end, her Kant is closer to Locke, Vattel and other early liberal international lawyers than to himself. Almost all that is unique in Kant's theory of the right of nations gets lost. In this, Shell follows a general trend among some Kant interpreters: the interpretation is only loosely based on Kant; it claims to follow his ‘spirit’ and offers creative ‘Kantian perspectives’. Amidst interpretational creativity, Kant's texts more or less disappear in the mist. (shrink)

The distinction between what is commonly regarded as the routine of impoverishment and what is acknowledged and remarked upon as violence is increasingly being questioned in scholarship and public policy circles. Interrogating the distinction between routine and remarkable not only reveals the habits and relationships constituting everyday life as the site of violence, but also foregrounds questions of gender. Given that the everyday is shaped by a given community's norms regarding the gendered division of labour that produces and reproduces the (...) conditions of the everyday, in what ways is violence as well as its experience gendered? This article examines this question in the particular context of Palestinian camp refugees’ lived experience of forced displacement in Lebanon. It explores the ways in which the violence used against Palestinian camp refugees draws on norms regarding masculinity and femininity shared by the refugees as well as their Lebanese oppressors. It also examines the ways in which Palestinian camp refugees’ everyday experience of impoverishment as well as the acknowledged violence of forced displacement, subjection to Lebanese military intelligence control, and participation in the armed struggle for national liberation are constituted by and constitutive of unequal subject positions of gender, class and citizenship. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Historical Representation and the Nation-State in Romantic Belgium (1830–1850)Jo TollebeekThe transformation of the Ancien Régime society of estates into the modern state system as it exists in Europe today was concluded during the “long nineteenth century.” This process of transformation came about in two waves. In a first wave—during the decades preceding and following the French Revolution, roughly the years 1780-1848—the framework for the nation-state was created. It was (...) mainly the liberal bourgeoisie which stood at the forefront. After the Congress of Vienna, where the “ante bellum” situation had been restored, it led more or less successful national revolutions in Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, and Poland. In a second wave, starting with the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and ending with the First World War, the framework of the nation-state was filled in. In those years a growing number of social groups found accommodation in the liberal house, which they also managed thoroughly to rebuild. This period can be described as the phase of integrated nationalism.Together with the nation-state came the rise of modern national his-toriography. The most well-known exponents of this typically nineteenth-century genre were the monumental outlines of national pasts which started appearing from 1890 onward. Karl Lamprecht in Germany (Deutsche Geschichte, 1890–1909), Pieter Jan Blok in the Netherlands (Geschiedenis van het Nederlandsche Volk, 1892–1908), Henri Pirenne in Belgium (Histoire de Belgique, 1900–1932), and Ernest Lavisse and his collaborators in France (Histoire de France, 1901–11) all gave their respective countries’ pasts an impressive, scholarly design. The first phase of the emergence of the nation-state, however, was also ac-companied by a stream of national histories. Johannes von Müller in Switzerland (Geschichten Schweizerischer Eidgenossenschaft, 1786–1808), Simonde de [End Page 329] Sismondi in Italy (Histoire des Républiques italiennes du Moyen Age, 1807–18), Augustin Thierry in France (Lettres sur l’Histoire de France, 1820–27), and Willem Bilderdijk in the Netherlands (Geschiedenis des Vader-lands, posthumously 1833–53) all became authors of patriotic and romantically tinted surveys and studies of (fragments from) their own national history.The work of this second group of historians fits with the cultural nationalism which took root during the last decades of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries and which is sometimes considered to have been the heart of romantic nationalism. 1 The supporters of this nationalism were con-vinced that culture, lifestyle, and social institutions could only be understood as the expression of the “soul,” the “spirit,” or the “character” of a people or nation. They tried to deduce this individual character through the language, popular literature, art, and “national” (as opposed to Roman) law, as is demonstrated by the Gaelic revival in Ireland. 2 History, however, also attracted their interest; the nation and the people were after all considered to be dynamic entities which developed along the lines of a multiple causal process. In England, for example, where nationalism arose as a protest against excessive foreign—French—cultural influence, a group of historians, among them Catherine Macaulay and John Pinkerton, started publishing nationalistic histories during the early years of George III’s reign, paying special attention to the origin of the English people. 3 Such cultural nationalism could, however, easily take on political overtones, especially when it was the nationalism of a people who were either stateless or dispersed throughout different states, or whose state was still young.These earliest national histories were meant as a contribution to the formation, consolidation, and confirmation of a national identity. Their writers had to lend unity, specificity, and continuity to the national past. They had to, as Novalis observed in 1798, “organize historical essentials.” 4 Their work was less a matter of reconstruction than of construction. It not only required the exploration of a hitherto unknown field, but first and foremost the resolution of new problems of representation inherent in the writing of “national biographies.” In this essay, I shall discuss some of these problems in the light of Belgian national historical writing from 1830 through 1850. The year 1830 constitutes an important watershed in the history of national movements... (shrink)

A careful reading of Harvey C. Mansfield's Manlines s and the recent translation of Daniel Tanguay's Leo Strauss; une biographie intellectuelle reveals that neither text supports the view that Leo Strauss was a harmless if qualified friend of liberal democracy. Key Words: Leo Strauss • Straussians • Nietzsche • Carl Schmitt • Heidegger • National Socialism • Liberalism • Redlichkeit • Hobbes • Hegel • Viktor Trivas.

In their efforts to apportion blame and channel retaliatory action in the post September 11 world, scholars and pundits alike have used a series of rhetorical techniques to great effect, manufacturing an image of Islam, the proverbial Other, that is highly conducive to the needs of liberal democracies but hardly a reflection of any one of the many 'authentic' Islams. This has largely been achieved by ignoring the many differences within the Islamic movement and asserting that social identities are based (...) on a stable, uniform kernel that moves unchanged throughout history and across the globe. This inevitably results in caricatures that have many uses; in portraits of dissenting groups it tends towards demonization. In this wide-ranging essay--which considers a variety of discursive sites, from contemporary film and art to the War on Terror--a scholar of religion asks the reader to consider how the classifications we use to name and thereby negotiate our social worlds--foremost among them the classification religion itself--are implicitly political and are being wielded in the public arena to carry out generally undisclosed/under analyzed social work. (shrink)

The article analyzes the influence of German thought on Baron Friedrich von Hügel’s philosophy of religion. The activities of the British scholar in the networks of Catholic modernism are placed within the broader framework of the international discussion on religion around 1900. His religious universalism was shaped to a great extent by the encounter of German intellectuals from a liberal Protestant background, most notably by Rudolf Eucken, Ernst Troeltsch and Friedrich Naumann. This encounter, started during the 1890s, focussed on the (...) concepts of historical individuality and historical development. It took a new direction with the public role adopted by German intellectuals in the propaganda of the World War. Von Hügel’s often ignored treatise The German Soul reacted to the fusion of liberal religious thought with German nationalism as observed in Troeltsch and Naumann. His criticism of a lack of „international morality“ of German thought and his approach to identify the reason for this deficit in the Lutheran and idealistic tradition shed light on the ongoing discussions of a „Sonderweg“ of German thought. Von Hügel’s late attempts to promote Christianity as an anti-nationalist force remind of other more theological rejections of nationalism after the war. However, these attempts are not based on a strict theological or confessional rationale but try to continue the interconfessional and interdisciplinary discussion of the beginning of the century. This is revealed best by von Hügel’s close but not uncritical relationship to Troeltsch in the early 1920s. (shrink)