scholarly journals The Concept of Feasibility: A Multivocal Account

Res Publica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Guillery
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
Common View ◽  
The World ◽  
Common Objection ◽  
The Common

AbstractA common objection to a proposal or theory in political philosophy is that it is not feasible to realise what it calls for. This is commonly taken to be sufficient to reject a proposal or theory: feasibility, on this common view, operates as a straightforward constraint on moral and political theory, whatever is not feasible is simply ruled out. This paper seeks to understand what we mean when we say that some proposal or outcome is or is not feasible. It will argue that no single binary definition can be given. Rather, there is a whole range of possible specifications of the term ‘feasible’, each of which selects a range of facts of the world to hold fixed. No single one of these possible specifications, though, is obviously privileged as giving the appropriate understanding of ‘feasibility’ tout court. The upshot of my account of feasibility, then, will be that the common view of feasibility as a straightforward constraint cannot be maintained: in order to reject a moral theory, it will not be sufficient simply to say that it is not feasible.

Montaigne in America: The Political Theory of Judith Shklar

1995 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 167-199
Author(s):  
Mark Hulliung
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Legal Philosophy ◽  
The Political ◽  
The World ◽  
Judith Shklar

For three decades Judith Shklar (1928-1992) was one of the dominant figures in the world of political theory. Not many minds can feel their way into romanticism and then coolly turn round to examine legal philosophy, its very opposite, but she did so with exceptional success. After diagnosing the decline of political philosophy, she surprised many onlookers by making herself a major force behind its revitalization. Writing on Montaigne, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Hegel, she both offered striking historical interpretations of their meaning and demonstrated how their outlooks could be lifted from their original contexts and pressed into service by the living.

Introduction

John Rawls ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 53-60
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Real World ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Political Practice ◽  
The World ◽  
Ideal Standards ◽  
Principles Of Justice ◽  
The Ideal

What is the relation between political theory and political practice? In what ways can political philosophy help people to address real injustices in the world? John Rawls argues that an important role of political philosophy is to identify the ideal standards of justice at which we should aim in political practice. Other philosophers challenge this approach, arguing that Rawls’s idealizations are not useful as a guide for action or, worse, that they are an impediment to addressing actual injustices in the world. They argue, instead, that political philosophy ought to be focused on theorizing about the elimination of existing injustice. Still others argue that principles of justice should be identified without any constraint concerning the possibility of implementation or regulation in the real world at all....

A Theory of Background Conditions

2018 ◽  
pp. 23-87
Author(s):  
Bradford Skow
Keyword(s):  
Alternative View ◽  
Background Condition ◽  
Common View ◽  
The World ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Difference

The common view about background conditions is that the difference between causes and background conditions is pragmatic, drawn in language not the world. This chapter defends an alternative view, on which the difference is metaphysical, drawn in the world not in language. This alternative says that something is a background condition to C’s causing E iff it is a state (rather than an event) that is a reason why C caused E. This theory is used to answer the question of what it is to manifest a disposition; briefly, something manifests a disposition to M in C if its having that disposition is a background condition to the Cing causing the Ming.

Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy Volume 6

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
Personal Space ◽  
Coarse Grained ◽  
Moral Theories ◽  
Special Relationships ◽  
The Right ◽  
The University ◽  
Past Injustices

This consists of eight papers in political philosophy that were presented at the Sixth Annual Workshop for Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy, at the University Pavia, Italy, in June 2018. In Part I: Rights and Wrongs, Kimberley Brownlee analyses how wrongs can create new rights. Zofia Stemplowska argues that it is possible to mitigate some past injustices done to those who are no longer alive. Japa Pallikkathayil develops an account of how our bodily rights constrain the right to free speech. In Part II: Immigration and Borders, Valeria Ottonelli defends the right to stay where one lives, on the basis of the right to control one’s body and one’s personal space. Nils Holtug argues that the equality required by justice has global scope and that open borders can be expected reduce global inequality. Johann Frick argues that special relationships among members of a group (e.g. one’s compatriots) cannot justify strong forms of partiality, unless the boundaries of this group can also be justified. In Part III: Other Matters, Christian List and Laura Valentini argue that the normative facts of political theory belong to a higher—more coarse-grained—level than those of moral theory and that, consequently, some questions that moral theories answer are indeterminate at the political level. Aart van Gils and Patrick Tomlin explore the issue whether weaker claims can be aggregated in order to collectively defeat stronger claims, and they focus on the limited aggregation view, according to which this is sometimes, but not always so.

scholarly journals The new millenarianism: on the end of the world and of capitalism as we know them

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 539
Author(s):  
Alessandro Pinzani
Keyword(s):  
Political Action ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Common View ◽  
Machine Age ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The World ◽  
The Common ◽  
End Of The World

In recent years the destruction of the environment and the repeated crises of capitalism have been discussed by a wide range of books. More specifically, great attention has been paid to the concepts of Anthropocene and of the second machine age. The link between these two strands consists not only in the common view that we are facing massive changes to our way of life for ecological and for economic reasons, but also in the idea that these two phenomena are interconnected. Accordingly, the destruction of the environment is a consequence of capitalism, and, at the same time, capitalism is nearing its material, natural limits. In this paper I shall briefly evaluate these diagnoses and some of the proposed remedies. Furthermore, I shall point out some philosophically relevant consequences of said debate, particularly concerning the concepts of freedom and political action. ***  O novo milenarismo Sobre o fim do mundo e do capitalismo como os conhecemos ***Nos últimos anos, a destruição do meio ambiente e as repetidas crises do capitalismo foram discutidas por uma ampla gama de livros. Mais especificamente, grande atenção tem sido dada aos conceitos de antropoceno e de segunda era da máquina. A ligação entre essas duas vertentes consiste não apenas na visão comum de que estamos enfrentando mudanças massivas em nosso modo de vida por razões ecológicas e econômicas, mas também na ideia de que esses dois fenômenos estão interconectados. Portanto, a destruição do meio ambiente é uma consequência do capitalismo e, ao mesmo tempo, o capitalismo está se aproximando de seus limites materiais e naturais. Neste artigo, vou avaliar brevemente esses diagnósticos e alguns dos remédios propostos. Além disso, apontarei algumas consequências filosoficamente relevantes do referido debate, particularmente em relação aos conceitos de liberdade e ação política.Palavras-chave: Destruição ambiental; Antropoceno; Capitalismo; Fim do trabalho; Segunda idade da máquina.

American Political Thought and the Study of Politics

1957 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert G. McCloskey
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Matthew Arnold ◽  
American Political Thought ◽  
Institutional Facts ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
The World ◽  
The Common ◽  
Theory Lead

The title of this essay poses not one vexing issue but two, and each of them sharply challenges the student of American political thought. The first might be called the common problem of political theory—the question of its relevance to the institutional facts of life. How, it is asked, can the analysis of political ideas help to illuminate our understanding of political action? Can theory lead us to a surer knowledge of why governments and electorates behave as they do? Can it help us to diagnose and prescribe? Or is the study of theory, on the contrary, justified simply on the ground that the words of Plato and Hobbes and Locke are part of what Matthew Arnold called culture: “the best that has been thought or known in the world”? This is, I take it, a problem universal among students of political thought, whether they choose America, Europe, or China as their realm; and it lends itself to no easy answers.

Love, or On the Best Life

2020 ◽  
pp. 198-237
Author(s):  
Ryan Patrick Hanley
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Political Practice ◽  
The World ◽  
The Common ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Heavenly City

Chapter 7 focuses on Fénelon’s concept of pure love and its relationship to his political philosophy. In so doing, it contests the common claim that Fénelon sought to realize pure love in political practice. In contrast, it argues that his political philosophy is in fact animated by a deep awareness of the gap that separates the world of human glory from the world of divine glory, the earthly city from the heavenly city. To this end it proceeds in three parts. The first part examines his definition of pure love, and the degree to which this definition comports with the categories of his political thought. The next section examines Fénelon’s understanding of the life of pure love, and how it compares to the lives led by political rulers and philosophers. The final section offers a brief consideration of Fénelon’s own life seen through the lens of pure love.

Justice and Punishment: The Rationale of Coercion. By Matt Matravers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. 286p. $70.00.

2002 ◽  
Vol 96 (1) ◽  
pp. 188-189
Author(s):  
Jean Bethke Elshtain
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Adequate Theory ◽  
Oxford University Press

Justice and Punishment begins promisingly. Matt Matravers notes that the question—“Why and by what right, do some people punish others?”—is “not a new question. The problem of punishment is one of the most enduring in political theory” (p. 1). But over the years, punishment theory has been separated from moral and political philosophy more generally. The upshot is that both punishment theory and moral and political philosophy have suffered. To put things right, Matravers avers, any adequate theory of punishment “must be rooted in a broader moral theory, and that broader moral theory will be … constructivist” (p. 1). It is the task of his book to explore why and how this is so.

The Individual, the State, and Ethnic Communities in Political Theory

1977 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 343-369 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vernon Van Dyke
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
The State ◽  
Moral Rights ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Ethnic Communities ◽  
Common View ◽  
Moral Claims ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Individual

Liberal political theory and contemporary expositions of human rights focus largely on the individual. Some liberal theorists even deny that ethnic communities and other groups, as collective entities, can have moral rights at all. The outlook is narrow and unfortunate. It reflects a preoccupation with domestic politics and a model of domestic politics that neglects the common fact of heterogeneity. It ignores widespread practices and urgent problems, for in many countries groups identified by race, language, or religion make moral claims, and their claims are sometimes conceded. It ignores the common view that nations or “peoples” have a (moral) right of self-determination, and it even leaves the state itself without justification. If theory is to give adequate guidance, its focus must be broadened. The question of group rights needs to be explored, and interrelationships between the rights of individuals, of groups, and of the state need to be clarified.

scholarly journals Host–pathogen coevolution in human tuberculosis

2012 ◽  
Vol 367 (1590) ◽  
pp. 850-859 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastien Gagneux
Keyword(s):  
Epidemiological Data ◽  
Population Increase ◽  
Animal Origin ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Common View ◽  
The World ◽  
Inflammatory Phenotype ◽  
The Common ◽  
Out Of Africa ◽  
Phylogenetic Lineages

Tuberculosis (TB) is a disease of antiquity. Yet TB today still causes more adult deaths than any other single infectious disease. Recent studies show that contrary to the common view postulating an animal origin for TB, Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTBC), the causative agent of TB, emerged as a human pathogen in Africa and colonized the world accompanying the Out-of-Africa migrations of modern humans. More recently, evolutionarily ‘modern’ lineages of MTBC expanded as a consequence of the global human population increase, and spread throughout the world following waves of exploration, trade and conquest. While epidemiological data suggest that the different phylogenetic lineages of MTBC might have adapted to different human populations, overall, the phylogenetically ‘modern’ MTBC lineages are more successful in terms of their geographical spread compared with the ‘ancient’ lineages. Interestingly, the global success of ‘modern’ MTBC correlates with a hypo-inflammatory phenotype in macrophages, possibly reflecting higher virulence, and a shorter latency in humans. Finally, various human genetic variants have been associated with different MTBC lineages, suggesting an interaction between human genetic diversity and MTBC variation. In summary, the biology and the epidemiology of human TB have been shaped by the long-standing association between MTBC and its human host.

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