scholarly journals A political ontology for Europe: Roberto Esposito’s instituent paradigm

Author(s):  
Rita Fulco

AbstractThe aim of my article is to relate Roberto Esposito’s reflections on Europe to his more recent proposal of instituent thought. I will try to do so by focusing on three theoretical cornerstones of Esposito’s thought: the first concerns the evidence of a link between Europe, philosophy and politics. The second is deconstructive: it highlights the inadequacy of the answers of the most important contemporary ontological-political paradigms to the European crisis, as well as the impossibility of interpreting this crisis through theoretical-political categories such as sovereignty. The third relates more directly to the proposal of a new political ontology, which Esposito defines as instituent thought. Esposito’s discussion of political theology is the central theoretical nucleus of this study. This discussion will focus, in particular, on the category of negation, from which any political ontology that is based on pure affirmativeness or absolute negation is criticized. In his opinion, philosophical theories developed on the basis of these assumptions have proved to be incomplete or ineffective in relation to the current European and global philosophical and political crisis. Esposito therefore perceives the urgent need to propose a line of thought that is neither negatively destituent (post-Heideggerian), nor affirmatively constituent (post-Deleuzian, post-Spinozian), but instituent (neo-Machiavellian), capable of thinking about order through conflict (the affirmative through the negative). Provided that we do not think of the institution statically–in a conservative sense–but dynamically, as constant instituting in which conflict can become an instrument of a politics increasingly inspired by justice.

2016 ◽  
Vol 98 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-89
Author(s):  
Luke Bretherton

The essay seeks to understand what is theologically at stake when challenging the power of money in shaping our common life. To do so it sets out four theses, with commentary, that are suggestive of how we might go about generating a critically constructive and theologically attuned vision of an earthly oikonomia within the contemporary context. The first thesis is that envisioning a contemporary economics of mutual and ecological flourishing necessitates teasing out how Christian doctrines of God and soteriology legitimate oppressive conceptions of debt, and, at the same time, can help dismantle capitalism as an all-encompassing social imaginary to which there is no alternative. The second thesis is that as part of reenvisioning contemporary soteriology we must reengage with scriptural, patristic, scholastic, and medieval rabbinic and Islamic conceptions of property, debt, and usury in order to generate robust theological frameworks through which to analyze finance capitalism and the forms of domination it produces. The third thesis is that a vision for a common life must move beyond notions of recognition and redistribution as the basis for a just public life. And the last thesis is that we need to recover a consociational vision of democratic citizenship and a commitment to economic democracy.


2012 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 589-599 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grace Davie

This article places the British material on religion and social policy in a comparative perspective. In order to do so, it introduces a recently completed project on welfare and religion in eight European societies, entitled ‘Welfare and Religion in a European Perspective’. Theoretically it draws on the work of two key thinkers: Gøsta Esping-Andersen and David Martin. The third section elaborates the argument: all West European societies are faced with the same dilemmas regarding the provision of welfare and all of them are considering alternatives to the state for the effective delivery of services. These alternatives include the churches.


Author(s):  
Paul Gillespie

Power, scale, and wealth have moulded relations between Ireland and Britain historically and will continue to do so in future. Political relations between them have been determined by these asymmetric factors, giving much greater strength to the larger and richer island. Nevertheless, both islands exist within a larger European and transatlantic setting, a geopolitical fact that can mitigate or counteract Britain’s ability to act exclusively in its own interests. The chapter first explores this history and structure of the Irish–British relationship and then examines current political relations between the two islands, as seen in the intense joint efforts to bring peace to Northern Ireland and to regularize their interstate relations. Brexit rudely interrupts that new more normal relationship, as the third section argues, opening up several scenarios for changing constitutional futures within and between the two islands explored in the final one.


1976 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 279-312 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. A. Burchell

Studies of the Massachusetts communities of Newburyport and Boston have revealed a high rate of geographical mobility for their populations, in excess of what had been previously thought. Because of the difficulty in tracing out-migrants these works have concentrated on persisters, though to do so is to give an incomplete picture of communal progress. Peter R. Knights in his study of Boston between 1830 and 1860 attempted to follow his out-migrants but was only able to trace some 27 per cent of them. The problem of out-migration is generally regarded as being too large for solution through human effort, but important enough now to engage the computer. What follows bears on the subject of out-migration, for it is an analysis of where part of the migrating populations of the east went in the third quarter of the nineteenth century, namely to San Francisco.


2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-137
Author(s):  
Christoph Schwarzweller

Summary This is the second part of a four-article series containing a Mizar [2], [1] formalization of Kronecker’s construction about roots of polynomials in field extensions, i.e. that for every field F and every polynomial p ∈ F [X]\F there exists a field extension E of F such that p has a root over E. The formalization follows Kronecker’s classical proof using F [X]/<p> as the desired field extension E [5], [3], [4]. In the first part we show that an irreducible polynomial p ∈ F [X]\F has a root over F [X]/<p>. Note, however, that this statement cannot be true in a rigid formal sense: We do not have F ⊆ [X]/ < p > as sets, so F is not a subfield of F [X]/<p>, and hence formally p is not even a polynomial over F [X]/ < p >. Consequently, we translate p along the canonical monomorphism ϕ : F → F [X]/<p> and show that the translated polynomial ϕ (p) has a root over F [X]/<p>. Because F is not a subfield of F [X]/<p> we construct in this second part the field (E \ ϕF )∪F for a given monomorphism ϕ : F → E and show that this field both is isomorphic to F and includes F as a subfield. In the literature this part of the proof usually consists of saying that “one can identify F with its image ϕF in F [X]/<p> and therefore consider F as a subfield of F [X]/<p>”. Interestingly, to do so we need to assume that F ∩ E = ∅, in particular Kronecker’s construction can be formalized for fields F with F ∩ F [X] = ∅. Surprisingly, as we show in the third part, this condition is not automatically true for arbitray fields F : With the exception of 𝕑2 we construct for every field F an isomorphic copy F′ of F with F′ ∩ F′ [X] ≠ ∅. We also prove that for Mizar’s representations of 𝕑n, 𝕈 and 𝕉 we have 𝕑n ∩ 𝕑n[X] = ∅, 𝕈 ∩ 𝕈 [X] = ∅ and 𝕉 ∩ 𝕉 [X] = ∅, respectively. In the fourth part we finally define field extensions: E is a field extension of F iff F is a subfield of E. Note, that in this case we have F ⊆ E as sets, and thus a polynomial p over F is also a polynomial over E. We then apply the construction of the second part to F [X]/<p> with the canonical monomorphism ϕ : F → F [X]/<p>. Together with the first part this gives - for fields F with F ∩ F [X] = ∅ - a field extension E of F in which p ∈ F [X]\F has a root.


1989 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 427-434 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. L. Cook ◽  
J. P. Chadwick ◽  
A. J. Kempster

ABSTRACTTo gain approval for use in the revised European Community (EC) Pig Grading Scheme to be introduced in 1989, methods of estimating carcass lean proportion must be shown to do so with a coefficient of determination greater than 0·64 and a residual s.d. of less than 25 g/kg. A trial was carried out to assess a number of methods for use in the EC Scheme as applied in Great Britain. Subcutaneous fat and m. longissimus depths at the head of the last rib and at the third/fourth from last rib were measured using the optical probe (OP), the Fat-O-Meater (FOM), the Hennessy Grading Probe II (HGP) and the Destron PG-100 Probe (DST) on a broad sample of 162 commercial carcasses representative of the ranges in fatness and weight found nationally. The left side of each carcass was separated into component tissues. Although the instruments all achieved similar levels of accuracy in predicting carcass lean proportion, some differences were found. The DST just failed to reach the required statistical criteria for approval in the EC Scheme. The results for the other three instruments were submitted to Brussels as evidence of suitability and they have been approved.Using the regression relationships found between carcass composition and fat thickness together with results from earlier studies, it was estimated that the carcass separable fat proportion of British slaughter pigs has fallen at the annual rate of 7 g/kg since 1975.


Author(s):  
Alison Giffen

Two years and five months following the country’s independence from Sudan, a political crisis in South Sudan quickly devolved into a civil war marked by violence that could amount to atrocities. At the time, a United Nations peacekeeping operation, UNMISS, was the principal multinational intervention in South Sudan. UNMISS was explicitly mandated to assist the government of South Sudan to fulfil its responsibility to protect and was also authorized to protect civilians when the government was unable or unwilling to do so. Despite this role, UNMISS’s Special Representative of the Secretary-General said that no one could have predicted the scale or speed at which the violence unfolded. This chapter explores whether the atrocities could have been predicted by UNMISS, why UNMISS was unprepared, and what other peacekeeping operations can learn from UNMISS’s experience.


Author(s):  
Matthew John Paul Tan

This chapter will explore the varieties of political thought informed by divine revelation as understood in the Christian tradition. It will do so with reference to the metaphysical assumptions of what happens when transcendence meets history, and accordingly divide the inquiry into three archetypes. The first are the monists, for whom transcendence collapses into the temporal. The second are the dialecticians, for whom the uncrossable distinction between heaven and earth results in a struggle between the two. The third are the participationists, for whom the transcendent and the historical can harmoniously cohere through a ‘mediating third’ plane. For each mode, a brief sketch will be given of the writings of exemplary thinkers, and of the promises and pitfalls. In highlighting this variety, the aim of charting this map is to nuance the discussion currently taking place concerning the motivations and modus operandi of religiously informed political actors.


Other Others ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Sergey Dolgopolski

The “Introduction” formulates the question of the political, and in particular of the emergence and erasure of the political from the horizon of currently predominant political thought in political theology and political ontology. The “Introduction” further attunes the readers to the dynamic key of “effacement” as both emergence and erasure, thereby defining the main register in which the book is proceeding -- as distinct from the keys of chronological periodisation, linear history, paradigm shifts, or other stabilizing approaches. The “Introduction” further draws a distinction between politics and the political, and advances the question of the political in relation to the Talmud as both a text and a discipline of thinking able to shed a new, contrasting, light on the paradox driven modern political notions of a singularizing and even singling out notion of a “Jew,” and a universalizing notion of the “human being.” The “Introduction” concludes by gesturing towards a much closer connection between the question of the political in the Talmud, the notions of the Jews and of the human beings in modernity, and the question of earth and territory as a part of political equation these concepts spell out.


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