Defending the Rawlsian League of Peoples: A Critical Comment on Tan

2005 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 711-715 ◽  
Author(s):  
THOMAS MERTENS
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Face ◽  
Western Values ◽  
Universal Values ◽  
Age Of Enlightenment ◽  
The One ◽  
The Mind ◽  
First Time

In his well-written and well-argued paper ‘International Toleration: Rawlsian versus Cosmopolitan’, Kok-Chor Tan raises the important question as to where the limits of toleration are to be drawn. This is an important issue not only from the perspective of international law, but also for any domestic society. Toleration is never an automatic element or quality of any society, but has to be defended against the ever present danger of intolerance and repression. This is especially the case in the post-9/II era with regard to Islam, as it is not always easy to separate serious analysis of this religion from outright prejudices against its believers. With regard to Islamic minorities, the present attitude of some ‘Western’ majorities does not always reflect an attitude of respect, although this is not often admitted. It is not argued that Islamic minorities and other immigrants should adapt to the culture of the majorities because minorities have to give in to majorities on the basis of democracy; instead, it is claimed that Western majorities live in accordance with universal values. As Western societies have incorporated universal values formulated for the first time in the age of Enlightenment, they can rightly require from immigrants and minorities that they give up part of their values and identities without any real loss on their side. In forcing immigrants to adapt to Western values, majorities are merely liberating them from outdated particularistic codes and worldviews, thus enabling them to be free in accordance with truly universal values. This, obviously, is a peculiar way of understanding the Enlightenment, not with Kant as a perpetual challenge (‘we do not live in an enlightened age, but in an age of enlightenment’), but as something that is achieved and stably embodied in ‘our’ Western societies. Immigrants and minority members can reasonably be asked to identify with such societies. Although such a demand to assimilate might at first glance be seen as testifying to intolerance, in reality this is not the case. Why should we allow others to live in error? In the face of truth, toleration is a superfluous virtue. It goes almost without saying that this view, which is deemed by some as Enlightenment fundamentalism, contradicts the spirit with which Locke and Spinoza in the seventeenth century proclaimed the superior value of tolerance. They argued that all religions claim for themselves to be the one and only true religion and that the best attitude among the contenders of different beliefs would be one of tolerance: nobody can prove convincingly to the other side of the religious divide the truth of his own religion and the falseness of all other religions; and since ‘no man can conform his faith to the dictates of another (since) all the life and the power of true religion consists in the inward and full persuasion of the mind’ (Locke), the use of earthly powers is inappropriate and unjust.

scholarly journals Escisión, simbolización e integración de la identidad

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 379-399
Author(s):  
Carlos Rodríguez Sutil ◽  
Keyword(s):  
External World ◽  
The Self ◽  
Official Language ◽  
Identity And Agency ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Stability ◽  
The One ◽  
The Mind

The inner-outer dualism, with its associated conception that the mind is a reality isolated from the world, permeates our everyday thinking. This article begins by demonstrating from the philosophy of the twentieth century the unreality of this separation and the stability of internal constructions. Once we isolate the mind in our imagination, we feel authorized to dream of magical shortcuts to overcome the isolation, such as telepathy or, in the psychotic, transparency or the sounding of thoughts, the theft of ideas, the imposition of ideas from the external world. We are not minds, permanent or eternal, inserted in a world that we see passing around us; we are temporary beings. The self is a representation, an internalized metaphor that we turn into a stable but fragile metaphor in the face of a changing reality, which endows us with immortality and consoles us. The psychotic is the one who lives the split because he has not been able to handle the conventionality of that double language, and accept that reality is at the same time fixed and changing, for this reason they need to adhere to permanent objects, with the quality of stable things. The psychotic is the one who believes in the official language at face value, is sick of conventions. If everyone knows the patient's thoughts, in some way this means that the thoughts are not locked in the head, an idea contrary to cultural belief, which produces terror because it is experienced as unnatural, cancels the division of interior and exterior, which means the experience of loss of identity and agency, the lost of control. Delirium is developed as a way of clinging to reality in the face of extreme disavowal of one's perceptions or feelings.

scholarly journals Teoria crítica e direito internacional: uma visão pachukaniana de China Miéville

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 158-174
Author(s):  
Luiz Felipe Brandao Osorio
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Critical Legal Studies ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Legal Studies ◽  
Legal Relationship ◽  
The Face ◽  
The One

RESUMO:Dentro do emaranhado teórico cunhado como teoria crítica do direito, cabe aqui resgatar a sua vertente mais radical, aquela que vai à recôndita essência do fenômeno jurídico, e que consequente perpassa a face em que suas fraturas ficam mais expostas: a teoria materialista do direito internacional. O britânico China Miéville brinda-nos com uma reflexão original sobre a seara internacionalista, partindo e retomando as pistas legadas por Evguiéni Pachukanis, no início do século XX, para atingir o cume da crítica do direito, pela teoria da forma mercantil, ressaltando o caráter violento, de coerção, presente inerentemente na relação jurídica. É neste mundo, o do império do direito, é que reinam a miséria e o horror cotidianos e banalizados. ABSTRACT:Within the theoretical entanglement coined as critical legal studies, it is needed to address its most radical aspect, that goes inside the hidden essence of the legal phenomenon, and which consequently touches the face in which its fractures are most exposed: the materialist theory of international law. British China Miéville brings us an original reflection on the internationalist scenario, starting with and returning to the trails left by the early 20th century by Evguiéni Pachukanis to reach the summit of the critique of law, by the theory of commodity form, emphasizing the violent side, coercive, inherent in the legal relationship. It is in this world, the one of the rule of law, that daily and banal misery and horror reign

scholarly journals Internacionalización del currículo universitario virtual en el contexto de la globalización

Telos ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 754-775 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michel Valdés Montecinos
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Interdisciplinary Studies ◽  
Virtual Education ◽  
University Education ◽  
Virtual University ◽  
The Face ◽  
The One ◽  
Comprehensive Internationalization

Year after year the number of students in higher education increases worldwide, and particularly in the virtual mode. In the face of this reality, a series of phenomena combine that have driven university institutions to reinvent themselves. The objective of this work is to analyze the influence of globalization and internationalization on the curriculum of university education, with particular emphasis on Latin American virtual education. The methodology used is the review of both literature specialized in the subject and official documents of the agencies involved. The results reveal that: 1) multilateral agencies have been made efforts to establish two-way academic partnership and cooperation agreements, on the one hand, to promote the mobility of students and teachers, as well as the realization of joint projects; on the other hand, to promote the processes of quality control and internationalization of the curriculum. 2) Regarding virtual education in the region, the need to ensure and demonstrate the quality of its programs has been set, with the Latin American and Caribbean Institute of Quality in Distance Higher Education (CALED) being one of the main references regarding guidelines and instruments for evaluation and advice to universities on quality assessment and accreditation processes. It is concluded that the internationalization of the curriculum in virtual university education in Latin America faces the challenge of taking the step towards comprehensive internationalization, that is, the one that comprehensively impacts the curriculum from a conceptual and cultural structure including interdisciplinary studies and multiculturalism.

scholarly journals UN PRECEDENTE REMOTO DE LA JUDICIAL REVIEW: EL CONTROL JUDICIAL DE LA LEGISLACI�N DE LAS COLONIAS AMERICANAS

2016 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Francisco Fern�ndez Segado
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Judicial Review ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Privy Council ◽  
Practical Application ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Palabras Clave ◽  
Fundamental Law ◽  
Higher Law ◽  
First Time

Los primeros esbozos de la judicial review en Norteam�rica han de situarse en el per�odo colonial. En esa etapa el dictum de Coke en el Bonham�s case se iba a convertir en la fuente m�s importante de la revisi�n judicial de la legislaci�n. La introducci�n de la revisi�n judicial presupon�a la idea de la existencia de un Derecho fundamental, esto es, un Derecho superior que los estatutos de las asambleas legislativas coloniales hab�an de respetar. En el siglo XVIII los colonos iban a encontrar unos s�lidos puntos de apoyo para su idea acerca de la existencia de un Derecho fundamental en esas impresionantes construcciones doctrinales de la Ilustraci�n que son los tratados sistem�ticos sobre el Derecho natural e internacional. Las Cartas coloniales, otorgadas por el Rey, se consideraron por los tribunales vinculantes respecto a las Legislaturas coloniales, aplic�ndose como Derecho superior. En el caso Giddings v. Brown (1657) el dictum de Coke recibi� por primera vez aplicaci�n pr�ctica al otro lado del Atl�ntico. En la decisi�n de este caso el Juez Symonds escrib�a �que donde una ley es contraria a un Derecho fundamental, es nula�. Tambi�n el Privy Council, en el ejercicio de su jurisdicci�n de apelaci�n respecto de los tribunales coloniales, iba a llevar a cabo una revisi�n judicial de la legislaci�n colonial. Su anulaci�n judicial de los estatutos coloniales se ha equiparado a la revisi�n judicial de la legislaci�n. De hecho, en el caso Winthrop v. Lechmere (1727), el Privy Council declar� la nulidad de una ley de Connecticut de 1699, la Ley para la soluci�n de las propiedades intestadas, declar�ndola nula y sin valor a causa de que era �contraria a las leyes de Inglaterra en cuanto que convert�a tierras heredadas en distribuibles como propiedades personales y esto no estaba autorizado por la Carta de la Colonia�. En resumen, la etapa colonial, incluso bastante antes de James Otis y del Writs Assistance Case, nos ofrece algunos ejemplos de aplicaci�n de la doctrina de la revisi�n judicial de la legislaci�n y, sobre todo, nos revela que tal doctrina era muy bien conocida y admitida en amplio sectores del mundo jur�dico colonial. Palabras clave: Cartas coloniales, Constituci�n antigua; Derecho fundamental; Dictum de Coke; Judicial review; Legislaci�n colonial; Privy Council; Tribunales coloniales. ABSTRACT The first sketchs of the judicial review have to place in the colonial period. In this age, the Coke�s dictum in the Bonham�s case became the most important single source of the notion of judicial review. The introduction of the judicial review presupposed the idea of a fundamental law, that is, a superior law that the colonial laws had to respect. In the 18th century the colonists should find firm bases for his idea about the existence of a fundamental law in those impressive doctrinal constructions of the Enlightenment, the systematic treaties on natural and international law. The colonial Charters granted for the King were considered by courts binding for the legislatures and they were applied as a higher law. In the Giddings v. Brown case (1657), for the first time, the Coke�s dictum received practical application in the other side of the Atlantic. In the ruling of this case the Judge Symonds wrote �that where a law is repugnant to fundamental law, it is void�. Likewise, the Privy Council, in the practice of its appeal�s jurisdiction in relation to colonial courts, carried out a judicial review of the colonial legislation. Its judicial annulment of the statutes has been compared to the function of judicial review. In fact, in the Winthrop v. Lechmere case (1727), the Privy Council declared that an Act of Connecticut, the Act for the Settlement of Intestates Estates (1699) was null and void because it was �contrary to the laws of England, in regard it makes lands of inheritance distributables as personal estates, and it is not warranted by the Charter of that Colony�. In short, the colonial epoch, even long before of James Otis and the Writs of Assistance Case, offers us some examples of the application of the judicial review of legislation doctrine and, above all, it reveals us that a such doctrine was very well knew and acknowledged in considerable sectors of the legal colonial world. Key words: Ancient constitution; Coke�s dictum; Colonial courts; Colonial legislation; Charters; Fundamental law; Judicial review; Privy Council.

scholarly journals Humanism and nature – some reflections on a complex relationship

2006 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jörn Rüsen
Keyword(s):  
18Th Century ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
Nature And Culture ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Man And Nature ◽  
The One

The paper starts with a systematical analysis of the interrelationship of humanism and nature. It proceeds to a historical reconstruction of this relationship in the development of Western humanism from ancient Rome via Renaissance till the Enlightenment of the 18th century. In both respects the result of the analysis is the same: The Western tradition of humanism is characterised by a gap between an emphasis on the cultural quality of human life on the one hand and nature on the other one. Men are entitled to dominate and govern nature and use it for their purpose. This fits into an idea of a progressing destructive relationship between man and nature in the West. On the other the tradition of humanism has put the gap between man and nature into a harmonising cosmological or theological context. In this context a simple destructive relationship between man and nature is not possible. The humanism of today has to pick up the challenge of the ecological crisis and to refer to its tradition where man and nature are mediated into a meaningful and sense-bearing interrelationship. Instead of simply referring to the traditional cosmology a convincing idea of this mediation or even synthesis can only be made plausible by referring to the already pre-given synthesis between nature and culture, the human body.

scholarly journals The Idea of the Posthuman: A Comparative Analysis of Transhumanism and Posthumanism

2019 ◽  
Vol 62 (4) ◽  
pp. 132-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. I. Kriman
Keyword(s):  
Outer Space ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Influence ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Vitruvian Man ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
The One ◽  
The Mind

The article discusses the modern philosophical concepts of transhumanism and posthumanism. The central issue of these concepts is “What is the posthuman?” The 21st century is marked by a contradictory understanding of the role and status of the human. On the one hand, there comes the realization of human hegemony over the whole world around: in the 20th century mankind not only began to conquer outer space, invented nuclear weapons, made many amazing discoveries but also shifted its attention to itself or rather to the modification of itself. Transhumanist projects aim to strengthen human influence by transforming human beings into other, more powerful and viable forms of being. Such projects continues the project of human “deification.” On the other hand, acknowledging the onset of the new geological epoch of the Anthropocene, there comes the rejection of classical interpretations of the human. The categories of historicity, sociality and subjectivity are no longer so anthropocentric. In the opinion of the posthumanists, the project of the Vitruvian man has proven to be untenable in the present-day environment and is increasingly criticized. The reflection on the phenomenon of the human and his future refers to the concepts that explore not only human but also non-human. Very often we can find a synonymous understanding of transhumanism and posthumanism. Although these movements work with the same modern constructs and concepts but interpret them in a fundamentally different way. The discourse of transhumanism refers to the Cartesian opposition of the body and the mind. Despite the sacralization of technology and the desire to purify the posthuman from such seemingly permanent attributes of the living as aging and death, transhumanism in many ways continues the ideas of the Enlightenment. For posthumanists, the subject is nomadic and a kind of assembly of human, animal, digital, chimerical. Thus, in posthumanism the main maxim of humanism about the human as the highest value is rejected – the human ceases to be “the measure of all things.”

The Historic Origins of Liberalism

1954 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 267-282 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Dawson
Keyword(s):  
Religious Minority ◽  
Modern Culture ◽  
Religious Persecution ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Intellectual Revolution ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Historical Movement

The history of the secularization of modern culture has yet to be written, and the reasons for this are easy enough to understand. For on the one hand, the mind of the secularized majority has been so deeply affected by the process of secularization that it cannot view that process in an objective historical manner, while on the other, the religious minority has been forced into an attitude of negative opposition which is no less unfavorable to dispassionate study. Nevertheless, it is emphatically a problem which requires an historical approach. The process of secularization was a historical movement no less than the Reformation, a minority movement which was gradually transmitted to wider circles until it eventually won the key positions of social and intellectual influence through which it dominated European society. This movement, which was already known as the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century, and the accompanying ideology, which later acquired the name of Liberalism, have long been studied by historians chiefly in Germany and France, though in a somewhat piecemeal fashion; but their work has not hitherto been fully assimilated by educated opinion in England and America. Here the tendency has been to concentrate attention on political and economic change, and above all on the American and French revolutions. But we have not paid enough attention to the intellectual revolution that had already taken place before there was any question of a political one. Yet it is this intellectual revolution that is responsible for the secularization of Western culture. This intellectual movement, like most of the movements that have changed the world, was religious in origin, although it was anti-religious in its results. It owed its dynamism to the resistance of a religious minority and its diffusion to the illjudged and unjust, though sincere, action of religious orthodoxy. It is indeed, the supreme example in history of the way in which religious persecution and repression defeats its own object and serves the cause it is attempting to destroy.

Great projects and crude realities

2015 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 186-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miguel Ángel Giménez Martínez
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
The Right ◽  
Universal Schooling

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze the circumstances that have conditioned the development of education in Spain from the enlightenment to the present day. Design/methodology/approach – Multidisciplinary scientific approach that combines the interpretation of the legal texts with the revision of the doctrinal and theoretical contributions made on the issue. Findings – From the beginning of the nineteenth century, the history of education in Spain has been marked by constant fluctuations between the reactionary instincts, principally maintained by the Catholic Church and the conservative social classes, and the progressive experiments, driven by the enlightened and the liberals first, and the republicans and the socialists later. As a consequence of that, the fight for finishing with illiteracy and guaranteeing universal schooling underwent permanent advances and retreats, preventing from an effective modernization of the Spanish educative system. On the one hand, renewal projects promoted by teachers and pedagogues were inevitably criticized by the ecclesiastical hierarchy, obsessed with the idea of preserving the influence of religion on the schools. On the other hand, successive governments were weak in implementing an educational policy which could place Spain at the level of the other European and occidental nations. Originality/value – At the dawn of the twenty-first century, although the country has overcome a good part of its centuries-old backwardness, increasing economic difficulties and old ideological splits keep hampering the quality of teaching, gripped by neoliberal policies which undermine the right to education for all. The reading of this paper offers various historical clues to understand this process.

scholarly journals A Duty to Give Reasons in the Security Council

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-86
Author(s):  
Daniel Moeckli ◽  
Raffael N. Fasel
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Security Council ◽  
Structural Reforms ◽  
Legal Certainty ◽  
The Face ◽  
Rules Of Procedure

In recent years, the un Security Council has repeatedly come under criticism for its inaction in the face of serious violations of international law. As a means to prevent further deadlocks, this article advocates the introduction of a duty to explain votes cast in the Council. In certain situations, such a duty to give reasons already exists today, although it is not implemented. We propose to extend this duty to all votes in the Security Council and to codify it in its Provisional Rules of Procedure. A comprehensive duty to give reasons has three major virtues: it increases the quality of Council decisions, it enhances legal certainty, and it improves the accountability of the Council and of its members. As opposed to structural reforms, our proposal does not necessitate amending the un Charter and thus does not depend on the consent of the Council’s permanent members.

scholarly journals PUBLICNESS AS AN ARCHITECTURAL VALUE

2014 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 180-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Spector
Keyword(s):  
Public Good ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Face

That architecture should in some way serve the public good is an idea that mostly goes unquestioned. The corresponding idea that we know who the public is and what its good consists of largely falls apart in the face of even a little probing. This paper investigates the concept of the public inherited from the Enlightenment, its fate in recent times, and possibilities for its reinvention. The argument then goes on to suggest ways in which architecture can have relatively more or less of the quality of publicness.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document