Seyla Benhabib
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Load more
Recommended publications
-
Volume 35 E-Mail: [email protected] Tel: +39 055 603 251 / Fax: +39 055 603 383 Autumn 2015
The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies VILLA I TATTI Via di Vincigliata 26, 50135 Florence, Italy Volume 35 E-mail: [email protected] Tel: +39 055 603 251 / Fax: +39 055 603 383 Autumn 2015 Letter from Florence It’s the end of June 2015, and Anna and I are preparing to leave Mensola, and Boccaccio and Petrarca, and Laura Battiferra I Tatti for the last time. It has been an intense and wonderful too. We are grateful to all of them for opening our eyes to five-year period at the Villa, with exceptional groups of the beauty of this valley, and enhancing the experience of our Fellows, Visiting Professors, and guests joining us from all walk with their words. corners of the world. And it has seemed a very quick period, too. The last year has gone in a flash. It seems only yesterday Our walk also offers us a chance to talk about what’s going on that we were harvesting our grapes, and already our vineyards in the day, the ups and downs, the ins and outs of la vita tattiana: are once more covered in luxuriant foliage while the olive who is leaving, and who is coming next to I Tatti, the lectures, groves are rich with the promise of new oil for the fettunta. conferences, and concerts in preparation, and the books that Anna and I love this little Mensola valley and never miss an have just appeared and those that are due out soon. But it’s opportunity to admire the beautiful, peaceful order in which also a marvelous opportunity to see how the restoration of the everything – vigne, oliveti, giardini e case – is kept by our staff. -
John J. Mearsheimer: an Offensive Realist Between Geopolitics and Power
John J. Mearsheimer: an offensive realist between geopolitics and power Peter Toft Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen, Østerfarimagsgade 5, DK 1019 Copenhagen K, Denmark. E-mail: [email protected] With a number of controversial publications behind him and not least his book, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, John J. Mearsheimer has firmly established himself as one of the leading contributors to the realist tradition in the study of international relations since Kenneth Waltz’s Theory of International Politics. Mearsheimer’s main innovation is his theory of ‘offensive realism’ that seeks to re-formulate Kenneth Waltz’s structural realist theory to explain from a struc- tural point of departure the sheer amount of international aggression, which may be hard to reconcile with Waltz’s more defensive realism. In this article, I focus on whether Mearsheimer succeeds in this endeavour. I argue that, despite certain weaknesses, Mearsheimer’s theoretical and empirical work represents an important addition to Waltz’s theory. Mearsheimer’s workis remarkablyclear and consistent and provides compelling answers to why, tragically, aggressive state strategies are a rational answer to life in the international system. Furthermore, Mearsheimer makes important additions to structural alliance theory and offers new important insights into the role of power and geography in world politics. Journal of International Relations and Development (2005) 8, 381–408. doi:10.1057/palgrave.jird.1800065 Keywords: great power politics; international security; John J. Mearsheimer; offensive realism; realism; security studies Introduction Dangerous security competition will inevitably re-emerge in post-Cold War Europe and Asia.1 International institutions cannot produce peace. -
Political Science
A 364547 Political Science: THE STATE OF -THEDISCIPLINE Ira Katznelson and Helen V. Milner, editors Columbia University W. W. Norton & Company American Political Science Association NEW YORK | LONDON WASHINGTON, D.C. CONTENTS Ira Katznelson and Helen V. Milner Preface and Acknowledgments xiii Ira Katznelson and Helen V. Milner American Political Science: The Discipline's State and the State of the Discipline 1 The State in an Era of Globalization Margaret Levi The State of the Study of the State 3 3 Miles Kahler The State of the State in World Politics 56 Atul Kohli State, Society, and Development 84 Jeffry Frieden and Lisa L. Martin International Political Economy: Global and Domestic Interactions 118 I ]ames E. Alt Comparative Political Economy: Credibility, Accountability, and Institutions 147 ]ames D. Morrow International Conflict: Assessing the Democratic Peace and Offense-Defense Theory 172 Stephen M. Walt The Enduring Relevance of the Realist Tradition 197 Democracy, Justice, and Their Institutions Ian Shapiro The State of Democratic Theory 235 vi | CONTENTS Jeremy Waldron Justice 266 Romand Coles Pluralization and Radical Democracy: Recent Developments in Critical Theory and Postmodernism 286 Gerald Gamm and ]ohn Huber Legislatures as Political Institutions: Beyond the Contemporary Congress 313 Barbara Geddes The Great Transformation in the Study of Politics in Developing Countries 342 Kathleen Thelen The Political Economy of Business and Labor in the Developed Democracies 371 Citizenship, Identity, and Political Participation Seyla Benhabib Political Theory and Political Membership in a Changing World 404 Kay Lehman Schlozman Citizen Participation in America: What Do We Know? Why Do We Care? 433 Nancy Burns - Gender: Public Opinion and Political Action 462 Michael C. -
1 North American Critical Theory After Postmodernism
Notes 1 North American Critical Theory after Postmodernism 1. I use postmodernism to mark a point, c. 1980, after which it was necessary for critical theorists, in their engagement of contemporary ideas, to address the thesis of postmodernity as it was represented in the ideas of scholars such as Lyotard and Baudrillard. This period includes authors such as Foucault and Derrida, but I do not use postmodernism as a descriptor of their ideas. I use post- structuralism to distinguish Foucault and Derrida, whose ideas were being debated at the same time as the ‘postmodern turn,’ but which I would not classify as ‘postmodern.’ Thus, by ‘after postmodernism,’ I merely mean after the ‘postmodern’ turn had been declared and thus the point after which this generation of critical theorists began to critically engage the idea. This is briefly discussed in Fraser’s interview, where she prompts me to clarify my use of the word. 2. Peter Beilharz, introduction to Postwar American Critical Thought (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2006), xxxi. 3. Philip Wexler, preface to Critical Theory Now (New York: Falmer Press, 1991), viii. 4. Göran Therborn, From Marxism to Post-Marxism? (London and New York: Verso, 2008). 5. Therborn, From Marxism to Post-Marxism?, 105. 6. Robert J. Antonio, ‘The Origin, Development, and Contemporary Status of Critical Theory,’ Sociological Quarterly 24, 3 (1983): 342. 7. See Jules Townshend, ‘Laclau and Mouffe’s Hegemonic Project: The Story So Far,’ Political Studies 52, 6 (2004). 8. Chantal Mouffe, ‘Deliberative Democracy or Agonistic Pluralism,’ Social Research 66, 3 (Fall 1999). 9. Nancy Fraser, ‘A Future for Marxism,’ New Politics 6, 4 (1998): 95. -
At the Harvard Observatory
Book Reviews 117 gravitational wave physicists, all of whom are members of an international group of over a thousand scientists engaged with the detection apparatus at two widely separated sites, one in Livingston, Louisiana and the other in Hanford, Washington. The emails research- ers in the collaboration exchanged and the queries Collins sent to the physicists who acted for him as “key informants” provide the bulk of the material for Collins’ “real- time” observations of this discovery in the making. At times, Collins finds the community of researchers exasperating and wrong-headed in their, in his view, overly secretive attitudes to their results. But Collins is not a detached witness of the events he describes and analyses. Instead, he is overall a highly enthusias- tic fan of the gravitational wave community. Collins has not sought out for Gravity’s Kiss the kinds of evidence one might have expected a historian to have pursued. Gravity’s Kiss, however, should be read on its terms. It is a work of reportage from an “embedded” sociologist of science with long experience of, and valuable connections in, the gravitational wave community. Along the way, he offers sharp insights into the work- ing of these scientists. Collins proves to be an excellent guide to the operations of a “Big Science” collaboration and the intense scrutiny of, and complicated negotiations around, the “[v]ery interesting event on ER8.” Robert W. Smith University of Alberta [email protected] “Girl-Hours” at the Harvard Observatory The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars. -
1. 2. Students Will Be Able to Explain Two Research Hypotheses That Are Associated with Two Perspectives in Contemporary Theory;
Sociology 514: Contemporary Social Theory Seminar Richard L. Wood Spring, 2009 Associate Professor Office hours: Department of Sociology Wednesdays: 12:00 - 1:00 p.m. in SSCI #1078 phone 277-3945 University of New Mexico Plus most afternoons except Wednesdays, by appt via email or at 277-1117 [email protected] SEMINAR ON CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL THEORY Course goals: This course emphasizes theory as an active part of the working toolbox of social scientists. In studying the ideas of contemporary theorists from Europe, the United States, Latin America, south Asia, Canada, and elsewhere, we will be interested in how those theories help orient social scientific research and interpret and analyze the social world for the sake of social action. The course strives to do several things at once: $ provide an advanced introduction to salient contemporary social theorists (Habermas, Bourdieu, etc.); $ provide an in-depth exposure to one salient field of social theory (democratic theory: e.g. Jean Cohen & Andrew Arato, Jeffrey Alexander, Giddens); $ offer initial exposure to other fields (e.g. organizational theory); $ give students experience in systematic theoretical analysis (separating assumptions from theoretical claims; levels and units of analysis; thinking about the real-world, empirical implications of different theories, and how to adjudicate them; etc.); $ help students see how theory can illuminate their own research; $ most vitally, foster students’ own critical and appreciative engagement with social theory More specifically, students should emerge from the course with both more complex theoretical orientation to underlie your work and some specific skills: 1. Students will be able to briefly summarize the views of several major figures in recent social theory, and identify some implications or insights of their work, relevant to the student’s own interests; 2. -
1 Populism, Constitutional Courts and Civil Society1 Andrew Arato
Populism, Constitutional Courts and Civil Society1 Andrew Arato, November- December 2018 Introduction The antagonism of populist governments to apex courts is, as I will show, a matter of historical record. It started with Peronism, the first time that an openly populist movement established its own government.2 In section 1 below I will summarize current efforts by dominant executives to pack and disempower supreme and constitutional courts in Peru, Russia, Venezuela, Israel, Hungary, Turkey and Poland. After a preliminary definition of populism in section 2, I will consider, in the next section, the reasons why populist movements once in government attack the independence of apex courts. I will argue that such an effort is a key indication of populism in government moving toward establishing itself as a regime. I will next try to summarize the harm involved in these cases to constitutional democracy. In the final fourth section, using the examples of Poland and the United States, I will maintain that the way to oppose populist authoritarianism and its attack on courts requires a strategy that is both legal and political, based on the mutual support of associations and initiatives of civil society and courts. I will argue that such an effort requires facing the democratic deficit of liberal representative democracy, and reliance on an alternative conception, namely the “plurality of democracies.” I. Admittedly, no current populist government has gone as far Peron’s in 1947 when he has initiated the impeachment and trial of 4 out of 5 Supreme Court justices, with one of them resigning before impeachment succeeded.3 As indicated by the table below, removal and/or packing are only two of the possible forms of bringing a court under government control. -
Related Material in Democracy
RELATED MATERIAL IN DEMOCRACY Abizadeh, A. “Border Coercion and Democratic Legitimacy.” Territory and Justice network: repository of pre-publication papers. Presented at October 2009 workshop in Novi Vinodolski, Croatia. Accessed: 15/11/10. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1644290. ———. “Democratic Legitimacy and State Coercion: A Reply to David Miller.” Political Theory (Forthcoming). ———. “Democratic Theory and Border Coercion: No Right to Unilaterally Control Your Own Borders.” Political Theory 35, no. 1 (2008): 37-65. ———. “Does Liberal Democracy Presuppose a Cultural Nation? Four Agruments.” American Political Science Review 96 (2002): 495-509. Acemoglu, D., J. Robinson, and T. Verdier. “Kleptocracy and Divide-and-Rule: A Model of Personal Rule.” MIT Department of Economics Working Paper No. 03-39. Beran, H. The Consent Theory of Political Obligation. New York: Croom Helm, 1987. ———. “The Place of Secession in Liberal Democratic Theory.” In Nations, Cultures and Markets, edited by P. Gilbert and P. Gregory, 47-66. Ashgate: Aldershot, 1994. Buchanan, A. “Political Legitimacy and Democracy.” Ethics 112 (July 2002): 689-719. Christiano, T. “Democracy, Territory, and Global Institutions.” Journal of Social Philosophy 37, no. 1 (2006). ———. The Constitution of Equality: Democratic Authority and its Limits. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Copp, D. “Democracy and Communal Self‐Determination.” In The Morality of Nationalism, edited by R. McKim and J. McMahan, 277-300. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Dietrich, F. “Plebiscites and the Justification of Territorial Claims.” Territory and Justice network: repository of pre-publication papers. Presented at October 2009 workshop in Novi Vinodolski, Croatia. Accessed: 15/11/10. http://eis.bris.ac.uk/~plcdib/territory/papers/Dietrich_Plebiscites.pdf. -
Fichte's Contribution to Higher Education in Germany and the Foundation of the University of Berlin, 1810
Seeking Originality: Fichte’s Contribution to Higher Education in Germany and the Foundation of the University of Berlin, 1810 By Laura Eakes Utrecht University Department of History W.W. Mijnhardt, Ph.D. Adviser Leen Dorsman, Ph.D. Second Reader 2015 Abstract Seeking Originality: Fichte’s Contribution to Higher Education in Germany and the Foundation of the University of Berlin, 1810 By Laura Eakes Under the crisis of the failing university system and subsequent Napoleonic war, a number of German thinkers formulated a new idea of the university that spawned the modern concept of the research university. Among these thinkers, one man distinguished himself as a pedagogical giant in his own right due to the complexity and thoroughness of his plan. Yet, in history, his contributions are widely overlooked, in large part because his ideas were not implemented by his contemporary, Wilhelm von Humboldt. That man’s name was J.G. Fichte—a thinker perhaps best known for his extremist tendencies and his overwhelming desire to unite all existence under his philosophical system, the Wissenschaftlehre. This thesis is devoted to uncovering Fichte’s originality as an educational thinker, utilizing a methodology inspired by Quentin Skinner, so as to locate Fichte’s intentions within the intellectual matrix in which he found himself in 1807-1808. 2 Table of Contents 1. Introduction………………………………………………………………………….…………..……………4 2. Problems and Solutions……………………………………………………….…………...……………22 3. Fichte’s Contribution……………………………………………………...….………………………….48 4. Seeking Fichte’s Originality…………………………………………………………..………………..71 5. Epilogue……………………………………………………………………………………………………….90 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………………………………96 3 Introduction Around the turn of the nineteenth century, a number of civic-minded members of the German professoriate took it upon themselves to find a solution to the problems posed by a failing German education system, against the backdrop of the disappearance of the university as an institution all across Europe. -
1 Judgment and Imagination in Habermas's Theory of Law Thomas Fossen Institute for Philosophy Leiden University the Final Ve
Judgment and Imagination in Habermas’s Theory of Law Thomas Fossen Institute for Philosophy Leiden University The final version of this paper was published in Philosophy & Social Criticism: psc.sagepub.com/cgi/doi/10.1177/0191453714566485 Abstract: Recent debates in political theory display a renewed interest in the problem of judgment. This article critically examines the different senses of judgment that are at play in Jürgen Habermas’s theory of law. The paper offers (a) a new critical reading of Habermas’s account of the legitimacy of law, and (b) a revisionary interpretation of the reconstructive approach to political theory that underpins it. Both of these are instrumental to (c) an understanding of what is involved in judging the legitimacy of law that is richer than has been recognized thus far by both critics and defenders of Habermas. Keywords: Habermas, law, legitimacy, judgment, imagination, reconstruction, communicative action, deliberative democracy, agonistic politics Acknowledgments: I am grateful to Joel Anderson, Bert van den Brink, and Patchen Markell for critical discussions and inspiration, and I’ve also benefited from feedback from Wout Cornelissen, J.J. McFadden, Daniel Gaus, David Owen, Martine Prange, Herman Siemens, an anonymous referee, and an audience at the Dutch Research School for Practical Philosophy, especially discussant Stefan Rummens. Thanks also to Ciarán Ó Faoláin for his careful copy-editing. Work on this paper was funded by a grant from the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), entitled “Between Agonism and Deliberation: Rethinking Conflict and its Relation to Law in Political Philosophy.” 1 1. Introduction What is involved in judging the legitimacy of law? Much of the philosophical debate about legitimacy focuses on the content and justification of principles of legitimacy in light of which law (or political authority more broadly) ought to be considered legitimate or illegitimate. -
Elusiveness of the Particular: Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, And
The Elusiveness of the Particular Exile, Statelessness, and Migration Seyla Benhabib Print publication date: 2018 Print ISBN-13: 9780691167251 Published to Princeton Scholarship Online: May 2019 DOI: 10.23943/princeton/9780691167251.001.0001 The Elusiveness of the Particular Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor Adorno Seyla Benhabib DOI:10.23943/princeton/9780691167251.003.0003 Abstract and Keywords This chapter examines the subterranean affinities between Hannah Arendt and Theodor Adorno, two of the most famous exiles of the last century, through the so-called “Benjaminian moment” present in their work. It is widely known that any consideration of Arendt and Adorno as thinkers who share intellectual affinities is likely to be thwarted by the profound dislike that Arendt seems to harbor toward Adorno. However, such psychological attitudes and personal animosities cannot guide the evaluations of a thinker's work. This is particularly true in the case of Arendt and Adorno, who both shared a profound sense that one must learn to think anew, beyond the traditional schools of philosophy and methodology—a concept that will be referred to as their Benjaminian moment. Keywords: Hannah Arendt, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Benjaminian moment, exiles, think anew, traditional philosophy, traditional methodology Benjamin and the Chess Master Chess appears to have been not just a pastime for Walter Benjamin but a complex metaphor for thinking about history, progress, teleology, and the ironies of fate. The first thesis of Benjamin’s “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” composed in shock at the signing of the Hitler-Stalin pact, reads as follows: “The story is told of an automaton constructed in such a way that it could play a winning game of chess, answering each move of an opponent with a countermove. -
Covenant and Feminist Reconstructions of Subjectivity Within Theories of Justice
FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS COVENANT AND FEMINIST RECONSTRUCTIONS OF SUBJECTIVITY WITHIN THEORIES OF JUSTICE JANET MOORE* In this kingdom the sun never sets; under the pale oval of the sky there seems no way in or out, and though there is a sea here there is no tide. For the egg itself is a moon glowing faintly in the galaxy of the barn, safe but for the spoon's ominous thunder, the first delicate crack of lightning. - Linda Pastan, "Egg"' the occupation is complete." - Maxine Waters, D-California, describing the movement of federal troops into South 2 Central Los Angeles On one reading, Linda Pastan's poem neatly expresses the endangered status of the liberal subject-the agent, actor, or protagonist of any moral drama. The autonomous, self-conscious, and self-constitutive subject has drawn heavy fire from feminist and other critical theorists, as well as struc- turalist, poststructuralist, and postmodern philosophers engaged in critiques of classical liberalism and its social contract theories. These various voices compose an "ominous thunder" roiling about homo economicus, fissuring and Copyright © 1992 by Law and Contemporary Problems * J.D., M.A., Duke University. I am grateful to Professors Kate Bartlett, Garrett Epps, Martin Golding, Marcia Lind, Jeff Powell, Tom Rowe, and John Weistart for commenting on previous versions of this essay. 1. Linda Pastan, Egg, in The Five Stages of Grief 5 (W. W. Norton, 1978). 2. Don Terry, Riots in Los Angeles: The Overview: Calm Endures with Grief in Los Angeles, NY Times Al col 6 (May 4, 1992) (quoting Maxine Waters, D-California). LAW AND CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS [Vol.