Sovereignty and freedom: Immanuel Kant's liberal internationalist ‘legacy’

2001 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANTONIO FRANCESCHET
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
State Sovereignty ◽  
The Relationship

This article explores a fundamental division among contemporary liberal internationalists regarding the relationship between state sovereignty and the goal of freedom. The article suggests that, in spite of his popular status among a wide variety of contemporary liberal international theorists, Immanuel Kant's political philosophy is an extraordinarily ambiguous ‘legacy’ because of the dualistic doctrine of state sovereignty to which he subscribed. Kant's thought is committed to state sovereignty while providing the grounds for a profound critique of its existence. The reason that sovereignty is ambiguous in Kant's political theory is that it is justified by his bifurcated understanding of human freedom.

Kant’s Political Philosophy as a Theory of Non-Ideal Normativity

Kant-Studien ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 107 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph Horn
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Categorical Imperative ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract:Kant’s political philosophy confronts its interpreters with a crucial difficulty: it is far from clear if (or how) Kant, in his political theory, makes use of the Categorical Imperative (CI). It is notoriously demanding to clarify the relationship that exists between his political thought on the one hand and the ethics of the

scholarly journals On the difference between the reasonable and the rational in normative political theory

2019 ◽  
Vol 62 (4) ◽  
pp. 135-146
Author(s):  
Ivan Mladenovic
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Main Concern ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Fair Principles ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Normative Political Theory

In this paper I will explore the importance of making the difference between the reasonable and the rational for normative political theory. The starting point of my analysis is Rawls?s distinction between the rational and the reasonable in his later political philosophy. For Rawls one of the main characteristics of reasonable persons is that they are able to offer the justifications for their actions, but also for fair principles of cooperation, in terms of reasons that all can accept. There are many criticisms of this view of reasonable persons and its role within normative political theory. My main concern, however, is whether the presupposition of reasonableness is necessary if one already assumes that all individuals are rational. I will argue that not only the reasonable, but the relationship between the reasonable and the rational is crucially important for normative political theory.

Introduction

Tact ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
David Russell
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
Literary Art ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

This introductory chapter outlines some basic claims about tact, the subjects it touches upon, and the way this book is framed. In broadest terms: tact privileges encounters over knowledge, and an aesthetic of handling over more abstract conceptualization or observation—whether of people or objects. Tact can be described as a close and haptic attention to the moment, preferring a present ambivalence to a future perfection. Tact lends itself to political uses just where—in its refusal of assertion—it seems most impertinent to practical ends. It is a literary art that draws upon the particular resources of the essay as form; and it provides the grounds for a claim about the relationship between art and human freedom—an “aesthetic liberalism”—not encompassed by traditional political philosophy. Tact has its origins in a particular time and place, the British nineteenth century, but it is also a more generalizable and available style.

Modern Political Philosophy and Prehistoric Anthropology: Some Preliminary Issues

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karl Widerquist ◽  
Grant S. McCall
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
The State ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
Theory Section ◽  
To Receive ◽  
The Relationship

Because this book involves two very different academic disciplines, political philosophy and anthropology, some background about the relevant topics in each one is helpful. In this chapter, Section 1 introduces the relevant political theory. Section 2 discusses some of the anthropological methods and conceptual issues involved in the examination of the evidence relevant to these philosophical arguments. Section 3 discusses how the state and the state of nature are defined in relation to each other. Section 4 addresses some responses this book is likely to receive. Section 5 discusses the relationship between this book and modern indigenous peoples.

1. Introduction

2001 ◽  
Author(s):  
Will Kymlicka
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Ronald Dworkin ◽  
Fundamental Idea ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
The Relationship

This edition provides an introduction to the major schools of thought that dominate contemporary debates in political philosophy. The focus is on theories which have attracted a certain allegiance, and which offer a more or less comprehensive vision of the ideals of politics. The text examines the notion, advanced by Ronald Dworkin, that every plausible political theory has the same ultimate value, which is equality. It considers another, more abstract and more fundamental, idea of equality in political theory — namely, the idea of treating people ‘as equals’. It also explores what it might mean for libertarianism to have freedom as its foundational value, or for utilitarianism to have utility as its foundational value. Finally, it analyses the relationship between moral and political philosophy and argues that the ultimate test of a theory of justice is that it should be concordant with, and help illuminate, our convictions of justice.

Heidegger’s Encounter with Schelling

2008 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
pp. 23-34
Author(s):  
Ryan Hellmers ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
German Idealism ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
The Self ◽  
Community Culture ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
History Of ◽  
Lecture Courses ◽  
The Relationship

I provide a close analysis of truth and freedom in Heidegger’s work of the Contributions to Philosophy (Beiträge zur Philosophie). The work of Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling is shown to play a decisive role in this key text of Heidegger’s, leading him to an understanding of the self in terms of freedom, community, culture, and history that carries important implications for political philosophy In attempting to uncover a thoughtful and elucidating interpretation of the Beiträge zur Philosophie, one of the most promising portions of Heidegger’s canon to which one can turn for assistance in developing a reading is to the lecture courses of the surrounding period as they provide strong indications of Heidegger’s textual sources of the time, and one of the most often overlooked sources for studying the Beiträge is Heidegger’s 1936 lecture, Schelling’s Treatise on the Essence of Human Freedom..2 William J. Richardson’s work has familiarly encouraged us to think of Heidegger’s thought in two markedly differing periods separated by a turn, a helpful and insightful approach to which Heidegger studies remains indebted, though this story will not entirely be my own preferred take on Heidegger’s work in the present project. These investigations are nonetheless indebted to Richardson in arguing that one can arrive at a better understanding of the relationship between the early and the late material such as to elucidate the Beiträge by drawing on his finding of a Kantian thematic in the early work, an interpretive move which is also well backed by Reiner Schürmann’s work.3 My proposal in this project is that bearing this in mind, the late Heideggerian corpus, particularly the Beiträge, can be understood through the lens of German Idealism and its relationship to a criticism of Kantian thought. By problematizing certain key elements of Heidegger’s late thought that are drawn from F. W. J. Schelling and establishing a hermeneutic between these concepts and Schelling’s writings, I will use a reading of Schelling to help us begin to understand the Beiträge as a somewhat fractured continuation and completion of the study of being that was earlier carried out primarily through an analytic of Dasein. Heidegger imports crucial concepts from Idealism and applies his method of destructive philosophical appropriation to develop his own notions of the history of being, the event of appropriation, and community, revolving around what I argue is a very original appropriation of Schellingian concepts of freedom, ground, and jointure in the Beiträge.

scholarly journals Scipio’s Rome and Critias’ Athens: Utopian Mythmaking in Cicero’s De Republica and Plato’s Timaeus

2021 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Evan Dutmer ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
De Legibus ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Relationship

Scholarly debate on the relationship between Cicero’s De republica (On the Republic) and De Legibus (On the Laws) and the thought of Plato tends to focus on the supposed congruities or incongruities of the De republica and De legibus with Plato’s own Republic and Laws. Still, Plato’s discussion of ideal constitutions is not constrained to the Republic and Laws. In this essay I propose that we look to another of Plato’s dialogues for fruitful comparison: the Timaeus-Critias duology. In this essay I bring these two texts into substantive dialogue to illuminate mysterious features of both. Sketched in these complementary passages, I think, is an outline for a particular kind of approach to political theory, one proposed as novel by Cicero’s Laelius, but, as this essay hopes to show, with an interesting forerunner in Plato. I’ve called this approach ‘retrospective ideal political philosophy’ (RIPP). I end my essay with a few prospective theoretical notes on how this approach binds these two texts together.

Political philosophy, Indian

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sohail Inayatullah
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
Material World ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Priestly Class ◽  
The Relationship

While Western political theory has been framed as the struggle between the state and the individual, Indian political philosophy has been more concerned with issues of self-liberation, morality and leadership. Until recently, with the advent of institutionalized or syndicated Hinduism, Indian society made a softer distinction between state and religion. Classical Indian political theory, as with Kauṭilya, centred on axioms on how to maintain and expand power. Kauṭilya argued that reason, the edicts of the king, and his own rules of governance, the Arthaśāstra, were as important for decision-making as the ancient religious treatises, which defined social structure and one’s duty to family, caste and God. With the exception of the Arthaśāstra, politics was expressed through the ability not so much to govern as to define social and moral responsibility, what one could or could not do and who could oversee these rules. Like all civilizations, India had periods of rule by accumulators of capital and traders, warriors and kings, and Brahmans and monks; there were also revolts by peasants. Still, philosophy was in the hands of the Brahmans, the priestly class. This philosophy was primarily not about artha (economic gain) or kāma (pleasure), but about dharma (virtue) and mokṣa (liberation from the material world). The attainment of salvation, of release from the bonds of karma, was far more important than the relationship between the individual and the sovereign, as was the case in Western political philosophy.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anik Waldow ◽  
Nigel DeSouza
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Philosophical Anthropology ◽  
Current Work ◽  
Language Games ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Culture ◽  
Scientific Terms ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Relationship

This interview explores Charles Taylor’s understanding of philosophical anthropology and its relationship to Herder. Taylor argues that human culture can be properly understood only in a genetic fashion, through hermeneutics and phenomenology, and names Herder as an important precursor here. Taylor illustrates this through the difference between a purely normative political theory and a contextual political philosophy. On the relationship between naturalism and philosophical anthropology, Taylor identifies what he calls a “good naturalism,” associated with Herder, that explains what kind of animal human beings are, and a “bad naturalism” that explains human beings in reductive, natural scientific terms. Finally, Taylor outlines his current work on language, in which a similar opposition arises, between language as necessarily emerging as a rich set of language games/practices and language as pure description. Theories of language that interpret it only in terms of the latter are thus fundamentally flawed and inaccurate.

On the Relationship between Political Philosophy and Empirical Sciences

2008 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Schramme
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Reflective Equilibrium ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Normative Beliefs ◽  
Strong Current ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractIn this paper, I will focus on the role that findings of the empirical sciences might play in justifying normative claims in political philosophy. In the first section, I will describe how political theory has become a discipline divorced from empirical sciences, against a strong current in post-war political philosophy. I then argue that Rawls’s idea of reflective equilibrium, rightly interpreted, leads to a perspective on the matter of justification that takes seriously empirical findings regarding currently held normative beliefs of people. I will finally outline some functions that empirical studies might have in political philosophy.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document