Ritual and Ren in Confucius’s World

2021 ◽  
pp. 53-112
Author(s):  
Tao Jiang
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Classical Period ◽  
Moral Foundation ◽  
Core Concepts ◽  
Mandate Of Heaven ◽  
Political Project ◽  
The Way

At the very beginning of Chinese moral-political philosophy stood Confucius, who attempted to maintain a continuum between partialist humaneness and impartialist justice in his articulation of ideal personhood, family, and polity. This is reflected in the way two core concepts, i.e., ritual (li) and the virtue of ren, in his philosophy are formulated. In his effort to rescue the collapsing ritual order, Confucius formulated the virtue of ren, usually translated as the Good, humaneness, humanity, human-heartedness, authoritative or consummate conduct, or benevolence, and touted this newly formulated virtue as the new moral foundation for the ritual order that used to be grounded in the Zhou kings’ claim of the Mandate of Heaven. Confucius’s ren contains both a partialist element favoring one’s family and an impartialist element when dealing with others. Confucius’s effort set the parameters for the mainstream moral-political project during the classical period, but his vision would be seriously challenged and significantly reformulated.

Systematicity and Normative Justification

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Unique Form ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Normative Justification ◽  
The Way

This chapter examines systematicity as a form of normative justification. Thompson’s contention is that the Hegelian commitment to fundamental presuppositionlessness and hence to methodological immanence, from which his distinctive conception of systematicity flows, is at the core of the unique form of normative justification that he employs in his political philosophy and that this is the only form of such justification that can successfully meet the skeptic’s challenge. Central to Thompson’s account is the distinction between systematicity and representation and the way in which this frames Hegel’s relationship to the traditional forms of justification and the creation of his own distinctive kind of normative argumentation.

Feminism

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy J. Hirschmann
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Opening Up ◽  
The Way

The topic of feminism within the history of political philosophy and political theory might seem to be quite ambiguous. Feminists interested in the history of political philosophy did not urge the abandonment of the canon at all, but were instead protesting the way in which political philosophy was studied. They thus advocated “opening up” the canon, rather than its abolishment. There have been at least five ways in which this “opening” of the canon has been developed by feminists in the history of political philosophy. All of them do not only demonstrate that the history of political philosophy is important to feminism; they also demonstrate that feminism is important to the history of political philosophy. A two-tiered structure of freedom, with some conceptualizations of freedom designated for men and the wealthy, and other conceptualizations designated for laborers and women, shows that class and gender were important dimensions to be explored when examining the history of political philosophy. One way in which feminism has opened up the canon is its relevance to contemporary politics.

scholarly journals From 'Politics in Command' to 'Economics in Command': A Discourse Analysis of China's Transformation

2005 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 65-87
Author(s):  
Li Xing
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Driving Force ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Discourse Theory ◽  
Political Arena ◽  
Chinese Revolution ◽  
Political Project ◽  
The Way

This article proposes a framework for understanding the way the Chinese Revolution emerged, developed and achieved power (1921-49), then further consolidated in the period of socialist 'uninterrupted revolution' (1949-77) and was finally abandoned by the post-Mao regime (1977 to the present). This analysis is based on a perspective of discourse theories framed in historically new forms of political, social and ideological relations. In other words, it attempts to conceptualize the transformation of China and the Chinese Communist Party by analysing the role of ideological discourses (arguments and interpretations) and the cognitive elements (beliefs, goals, desires, expertise, knowledge) as the driving-force behind societal transformations. The discourse theory applied here – logocentrism and econocentrism – also serves both as a political arena of struggle to confer legitimacy on a specific socio-political project and as a distinctive cog ni tive and evaluative framework for understanding societal transformations. The conceptualization of the paper is informed by the work of David Apter and Tony Saich on discourse theory.

Rawls, Reciprocity and the Barely Reasonable

Utilitas ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRISTOPHER MCMAHON
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Systematic Investigation ◽  
Political Cooperation ◽  
The Way

The concept of the reasonable plays an important role in Rawls's political philosophy, but there has been little systematic investigation of this concept or of the way Rawls employs it. This article distinguishes several different forms of reasonableness and uses them to explore Rawls's political liberalism. The discussion focuses on the idea, found especially in the most recent versions of this theory, of a family of liberal conceptions of justice each of which is regarded by everyone in a polity as reasonable, even if only barely so. The idea of such a family is central to Rawls's notion of reciprocity and the view of political cooperation associated with it. This article questions whether the concept of the reasonable can play the role that Rawls intends.

Constructivism, Intuitionism, and Ecumenism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron James
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Special Interest ◽  
Reflective Equilibrium ◽  
Henry Sidgwick ◽  
The Way

Constructivism and intuitionism are often seen as opposed methods of justification in political philosophy. An “ecumenical” view sees them as different but unopposed: each style of reasoning can yield fundamental principles, for different questions of distributive justice, and we can rightly take up different questions, with different, equally valid, theoretical objectives, in hopes of cultivating a thousand blooming flowers. This chapter develops this position with special interest in Rawls’s constructivism, his treatment of reflective equilibrium, self-evidence, and “moral geometry,” and his evolving dialogue with the intuitionist Henry Sidgwick. Rawls’s main difference from Sidgwick lies in the way he frames the question of right or justice in the first instance. This brings out both the possibility and the attractions of the ecumenist conception in political philosophy.

Review: Claudio Celis Bueno, The Attention Economy: Labour, Time and Power in Cognitive Capitalism

2018 ◽  
Vol 35 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 331-337
Author(s):  
Ben Turner
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Economic Systems ◽  
Unanswered Question ◽  
Surplus Value ◽  
The Core ◽  
Attention Economy ◽  
Core Concepts ◽  
Immanent Critique ◽  
Political Project ◽  
Labour Time

How should we conceptualise the turn to attention as a means of producing surplus value? Claudio Celis Bueno answers this question through a consideration of the attention economy in the context of a rethinking of Marxist political economy. Bueno accounts for the development of the economisation of attention through the concepts of value, labour and time, but also investigates how the shift to attention requires us to rethink the basis of these terms. Using the attention economy as an example, he develops a method of immanent critique which rejects a-historical understandings of labour, in order to show how the core concepts of Marxist political economy transform across different economic systems. Despite the clarity of this argument, Bueno opens an interesting but unanswered question as to how one transitions from this insight to a positive political project that may not be compatible with immanent critique.

Liberdade e Direitos Humanos no Pensamento de Richard Price

2005 ◽  
Vol 13 (25) ◽  
pp. 119-145
Author(s):  
José Gomes André ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Expression ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Way

This paper is concerned with the political philosophy of Richard Price, analysing the way this author has developed the concept of liberty and the problem of human rights. The theme of liberty will be interpreted in a double perspective: a) in a private dimension, that sets liberty in the inner side of the individual; b) in a public dimension, that places it in the domain of a manifest action of the individual. We will try to show how this double outlook of liberty is conceived under the optics of a necessary complementarity, since liberty, which is primarily understood as a feature of the subject taken as an individual, acquires only a full meaning when she becomes efective in a comunitary field, as a social and political expression. The concept of human rights will appear located in this analysis, being defined simultaneously as condition and expression of the human dignity and happiness, at the same time natural attributes of an individual that should be cultivated and public effectiveness that contributes to the development of society.

Political representation: the view from France

2019 ◽  
pp. 89-103
Author(s):  
Raf Geenens
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Collective Decision ◽  
The Self ◽  
Collective Decision Making ◽  
Self Image ◽  
Claude Lefort ◽  
Mutual Relations ◽  
The Way

It is now widely accepted that political representation is not merely a passive, ‘mirroring’ process, but that the process of political representation plays a constitutive role in the construction of citizens’ ideas and preferences. This chapter argues that French political philosophy points to an even more fundamental role for power and representation in the construction (or the ‘constitution’) of society and the self-image of its members. It focuses on a key argument of political theorist, Claude Lefort, who maintained that the specificity of a society is determined by the way power is organized and symbolically represented in that society. On this account, the importance of political representation goes far beyond the formation of opinions and the process of collective decision making. The organization and representation of power is instead seen as a key determinant of society’s self-understanding and of the way citizens within that society understand themselves and their mutual relations.

The Scholastic and Conciliar Roots of Samuel Rutherford’s Political Philosophy

2020 ◽  
pp. 208-226
Author(s):  
Simon J. G. Burton
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Way

Samuel Rutherford’s Lex Rex remains a source of perennial fascination for historians of political thought. Written in 1644 in the heat of the Civil Wars it constitutes an intellectual and theological justification of the entire Covenanting movement and a landmark in the development of Protestant political theory. Rutherford’s argument in the Lex Rex was deeply indebted to scholastic and Conciliarist sources, and this chapter examines the way he deployed these, especially the political philosophy of John Mair and Jacques Almain, in order to construct a covenantal model of kingship undergirded by an interwoven framework of individual and communal rights. In doing so it shows the ongoing influence of the Conciliarist tradition on Scottish political discourse and also highlights unexpected connections between Rutherford’s Covenanting and his Augustinian and Scotistic theology of grace and freedom.

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