scholarly journals Jeremy Waldron and the Circumstances of Politics

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Alexander Latham-Gambi
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Institutional Design ◽  
Civic Virtue ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Sphere ◽  
The Face

Abstract This article examines Jeremy Waldron's concept of the “circumstances of politics” (CoP), which he describes as the felt need for a common decision in the face of disagreement. Waldron uses the CoP to detach certain issues surrounding civic virtue and institutional design from questions about substantive principles such as justice and human rights. While emphasis is often placed on the fact of disagreement, I argue that the other aspect of the CoP, the need for collective action, is in fact the more fundamental. Waldron's arguments rely on an understanding that there is expressive value in citizens affirming commitment to the political community and on an awareness of how the nature of politics as public collective action is structured by the constitutional architecture. I argue that a lopsided focus on disagreement threatens to obscure the fact that the political sphere is itself a fragile achievement that is in need of continual support.

scholarly journals The Other, Shame, and Politics: Levinas, Justice, and Feeling Responsible

Religions ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (12) ◽  
pp. 381
Author(s):  
Steve Larocco
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Sphere ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Political Realm

Adi Ophir has suggested that the political realm is an order of evils, producing and managing regular forms of suffering and violence rather than eliminating them. Thus, the political is always to some extent a corrupted order of justice. Emmanuel Levinas’ work presents in its focus on the face-to-face relationship a means of rethinking how to make the political more open to compassionate justice. Though Levinas himself doesn’t sufficiently take on this question, I argue that his work facilitates a way of thinking about commiserative shame that provides a means to connect the face-to-face to its potential effects in the political sphere. If such shame isn’t ignored or bypassed, it produces an unsettling relation to the other that in its adversity motivates a kind of responsibility and care for the other that can alter the public sphere.

Óscar Romero and the Politics of Sainthood

2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 265-291
Author(s):  
Manuel A. Vasquez ◽  
Anna L. Peterson
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil War ◽  
El Salvador ◽  
The Other ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Holy See ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Face ◽  
Crisis Of Modernity ◽  
The One

In this article, we explore the debates surrounding the proposed canonization of Archbishop Oscar Romero, an outspoken defender of human rights and the poor during the civil war in El Salvador, who was assassinated in March 1980 by paramilitary death squads while saying Mass. More specifically, we examine the tension between, on the one hand, local and popular understandings of Romero’s life and legacy and, on the other hand, transnational and institutional interpretations. We argue that the reluctance of the Vatican to advance Romero’s canonization process has to do with the need to domesticate and “privatize” his image. This depoliticization of Romero’s work and teachings is a part of a larger agenda of neo-Romanization, an attempt by the Holy See to redeploy a post-colonial and transnational Catholic regime in the face of the crisis of modernity and the advent of postmodern relativism. This redeployment is based on the control of local religious expressions, particularly those that advocate for a more participatory church, which have proliferated with contemporary globalization

scholarly journals The Law Challenged and the Critique of Identity with Emmanuel Levinas

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Petrilli
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
Object Relation ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ethical Orientation ◽  
New Humanism ◽  
Present Essay ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Subject

AbstractIdentity as traditionally conceived in mainstream Western thought is focused on theory, representation, knowledge, subjectivity and is centrally important in the works of Emmanuel Levinas. His critique of Western culture and corresponding notion of identity at its foundations typically raises the question of the other. Alterity in Levinas indicates existence of something on its own account, in itself independently of the subject’s will or consciousness. The objectivity of alterity tells of the impossible evasion of signs from their destiny, which is the other. The implications involved in reading the signs of the other have contributed to reorienting semiotics in the direction of semioethics. In Levinas, the I-other relation is not reducible to abstract cognitive terms, to intellectual synthesis, to the subject-object relation, but rather tells of involvement among singularities whose distinctive feature is alterity, absolute alterity. Humanism of the other is a pivotal concept in Levinas overturning the sense of Western reason. It asserts human duties over human rights. Humanism of alterity privileges encounter with the other, responsibility for the other, over tendencies of the centripetal and egocentric orders that instead exclude the other. Responsibility allows for neither rest nor peace. The “properly human” is given in the capacity for absolute otherness, unlimited responsibility, dialogical intercorporeity among differences non-indifferent to each other, it tells of the condition of vulnerability before the other, exposition to the other. The State and its laws limit responsibility for the other. Levinas signals an essential contradiction between the primordial ethical orientation and the legal order. Justice involves comparing incomparables, comparison among singularities outside identity. Consequently, justice places limitations on responsibility, on unlimited responsibility which at the same time it presupposes as its very condition of possibility. The present essay is structured around the following themes: (1) Premiss; (2) Justice, uniqueness, and love; (3) Sign and language; (4) Dialogue and alterity; (5) Semiotic materiality; (6) Globalization and the trap of identity; (7) Human rights and rights of the other: for a new humanism; (8) Ethics; (9) The World; (10) Outside the subject; (11) Responsibility and Substitution; (12) The face; (13) Fear of the other; (14) Alterity and justice; (15) Justice and proximity; (16) Literary writing; (17) Unjust justice; (18) Caring for the other.

"The Presence of the Other is a Presence that Teaches": Levinas, Pragmatism, and Pedagogy

2006 ◽  
Vol 14 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 91-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claire Elise Katz
Keyword(s):  
Educational Philosophy ◽  
Jewish Education ◽  
Positive Response ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ethical Framework ◽  
The Political ◽  
Moral Cultivation ◽  
Ethical Response ◽  
Ethical Project

AbstractAlthough Levinas talks about ethics as a response to the other, most scholars assume that this "response" is not something tangible—it is not an actual giving of food or providing of shelter and clothing. But there is evidence in Levinas's own writings that indicate he does intend for a positive response to the Other. In any event, while he acknowledges that the other is the sole person I wish to kill, killing the other, within an ethical framework would be a violation of that response. The failure to respond to the other ethically requires us to ask if Levinas's project needs an educational philosophy or a model of moral cultivation to supplement it. This essay explores this question by putting into conversation Levinas's ethical project and his interest in Jewish education with John Dewey's philosophy of education and its relationship to the political community. This exploration will help us see what this field of research might offer in promoting the cultivation of ethical response as Levinas envisions it and what its limits are.

Indian and Russian Tolstoy: one among strangers and a stranger among one’s

2021 ◽  
pp. 27-35
Author(s):  
Svetlana M. Klimova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Sphere ◽  
Indian Thought ◽  
Russian State ◽  
Lev Tolstoy ◽  
The One ◽  
The Voice ◽  
The Church ◽  
Peculiar Phenomenon

The article examines the phenomenon of the late Lev Tolstoy in the context of his religious position. The author analyzes the reactions to his teaching in Russian state and official Orthodox circles, on the one hand, and Indian thought, on the other. Two sociocultural images of L.N. Tolstoy: us and them that arose in the context of understanding the position of the Russian Church and the authorities and Indian public and religious figures (including Mahatma Gandhi, who was under his influence). A peculiar phenomenon of intellectually usL.N. Tolstoy among culturally them (Indian) correspondents and intellectually them Tolstoy among culturally us (representatives of the official government and the Church of Russia) transpires. The originality of this situation is that these im­ages of Lev Tolstoy arise practically at the same period. The author compares these images, based on the method of defamiliarisation (V. Shklovsky), which allows to visually demonstrate the religious component of Tolstoy’s criticism of the political sphere of life and, at the same time, to understand the psychological reasons for its rejection in Russian official circles. With the methodological help of defamiliarisation the author tries to show that the opinion of Tolstoy (as the writer) becomes at the same time the voice of conscience for many of his con­temporaries. The method of defamiliarisation allowed the author to show how Leo Tolstoy’s inner law of nonviolence influenced the concept of non­violent resistance in the teachings of Gandhi.

Democratic Resilience

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Behavior ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Checks And Balances ◽  
The Face ◽  
Distinguished Group

Politics in the United States has become increasingly polarized in recent decades. Both political elites and everyday citizens are divided into rival and mutually antagonistic partisan camps, with each camp questioning the political legitimacy and democratic commitments of the other side. Does this polarization pose threats to democracy itself? What can make some democratic institutions resilient in the face of such challenges? Democratic Resilience brings together a distinguished group of specialists to examine how polarization affects the performance of institutional checks and balances as well as the political behavior of voters, civil society actors, and political elites. The volume bridges the conventional divide between institutional and behavioral approaches to the study of American politics and incorporates historical and comparative insights to explain the nature of contemporary challenges to democracy. It also breaks new ground to identify the institutional and societal sources of democratic resilience.

Pluralism and the Changing Nature of Politics

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Preminger
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Labor Force ◽  
Labor Law ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
Democratic Institutions ◽  
Political Decision ◽  
Labor Party ◽  
Political Sphere ◽  
Political Decision Making

Placing the developments previously discussed in a wider context, Chapter 12 explores the individualization of politics and the juridification of labor law, as well as the contingent and unstable link that new representative organizations have with political decision-making forums. The chapter reviews research into the transformation of politics, including the turn away from political (democratic) institutions in general and towards a reliance on “expert” institutions, and suggests that these connected processes – the NGO-ization of worker representation and the disintegration of the party-union link – reflect the breakdown of a core premise of neocorporatism: that being a worker was congruent with being a citizen. The union could once count on the labor party to fight its corner in the political sphere because the union’s members were also members of the political community, but now the political community is no longer congruent with the “worker community” – the labor force.

scholarly journals Sieyès and Republican liberty

2020 ◽  
pp. 147488512098059
Author(s):  
Adam Lindsay
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Constitutional Theory ◽  
Constituent Power ◽  
Commercial Society ◽  
Political Sphere ◽  
Normative Foundation ◽  
Philip Pettit ◽  
The Face ◽  
Political Freedoms ◽  
Republican Liberty

In On the People’s Terms, Philip Pettit incorporates the Sieyèsian notion of constituent power into his constitutional theory of non-domination. In this article, I argue that Emmanuel Sieyès’s understanding of liberty precludes such an appropriation. While a republican, his conceptualisation of liberty in the face of commercial society stood apart from theories of civic vigilance, preferring instead to disentangle individuals from politics and maximise what he understood to be their non-political freedoms. Sieyès saw that liberty was heightened through relations of representation and commercial dependency. This conception of liberty was pivotal to the identity of the nation, and so allowed Sieyès to assess forms of collective injustice committed by the French nobility. It also provided the normative foundation of his theory of constituent power. For Sieyès, constituent power guarded against legislative excess in a decidedly minimal sense, intending instead to separate citizens from the political sphere so they were not burdened with ongoing participation or public vigilance.

Radical democracy

2019 ◽  
pp. 115-130
Author(s):  
Paul Spicker
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Civic Virtue ◽  
Radical Democracy ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Active Citizenship ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Civic Republicanism ◽  
Good Citizenship ◽  
The Common

The model of civic republicanism is associated with a range of principles: a concept of the common good, citizenship, a presumption of civic virtue and freedom. The idea of radical democracy is strongly associated with a sense of active citizenship, engagement in a political community and collective action. At times, however, it tips into populism, which claims to pit a virtuous people against a corrupt elite, but risks bringing radical democracy into disrepute.

Is Democracy an Ethical Standard?

1990 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
James Turner Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Ethical Standard ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
The Political ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
The Family ◽  
American Heritage ◽  
Political Ethic

This article explores the Western cultural traditions of democracy and freedom which form a political ethic deeply rooted in the underlying philosophical and theological American heritage. Theories of Machiavelli, Montesqieu, and Niebuhr support the notion that the potential for virtue is found in all individuals, who, through their undeniable freedoms, responsibilities, and participation, have the capability to establish a political community based on democracy, justice, and respect for human rights. Virtue, justice, morality, ethics, freedom, and democracy are all necessary elements for establishing and maintaining the political community. Can history serve to uphold democracy as an ethical standard of governance? The author suggests that the basic and cross-temporal cornerstones of morality; the family and religion serve as “intermediate” social structures in attaining the central virtues of a moral democracy.

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