Robert Paul Wolff, In Defense of Anarchism

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Stilz
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Direct Democracy ◽  
Majority Rule ◽  
The State ◽  
Individual Autonomy ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Widespread Acceptance ◽  
State Authority ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Philosophical Anarchism

This chapter examines Robert Paul Wolff’s arguments in In Defense of Anarchism about state authority and individual autonomy, and how plausible they are for philosophical anarchism. According to Wolff, the authority of the modern state cannot be justified because it conflicts with the autonomy of the individual. The presumptive clash between state authority and individual autonomy that Wolff highlights remains central to the philosophical anarchist critique of the state, a position that has gained prominence—and widespread acceptance—in contemporary political philosophy. The rest of this chapter comments on Wolff’s views in more detail, including those concerning compliance with the state, a state’s right to rule, unanimous direct democracy, and majority rule. It also discusses Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s assertion that persons must remain free in obeying the state.

The Muslim Tradition of Political Philosophy

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shahrough Akhavi
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Epistemological Foundation ◽  
The Individual

The doctrine of salvation in Islam centers on the community of believers. Contemporary Muslim political philosophy (or, preferably, political theory) covers a broad expanse that brings under its rubric at least two diverse tendencies: an approach that stresses the integration of religion and politics, and an approach that insists on their separation. Advocates of the first approach seem united in their desire for the “Islamization of knowledge,” meaning that the epistemological foundation of understanding and explanation in all areas of life, including all areas of political life, must be “Islamic.” Thus, one needs to speak of an “Islamic anthropology,” an “Islamic sociology,” an “Islamic political science,” and so on. But there is also a distinction that one may make among advocates of this first approach. Moreover, one can say about many, perhaps most, advocates of the first approach that they feel an urgency to apply Islamic law throughout all arenas of society. This article focuses on the Muslim tradition of political philosophy and considers the following themes: the individual and society, the state, and democracy.

Anarchism

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marshall Shatz
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
The State ◽  
Individual Autonomy ◽  
William Godwin ◽  
Basic Principles ◽  
The Enlightenment

Anarchism rejects the state as an inherently despotic institution that must be abolished in order for human nature to flower. This does not mean the absence of social order, however, for anarchism also contains a positive vision of the kind of community it expects to arise when political authority is eliminated. Although it shares liberalism's commitment to individual autonomy and Marxism's commitment to social justice, anarchism claims that it can implement those principles more fully and effectively without utilizing the mechanism of the state. Anarchism as a secular political philosophy originated as a product of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, and anarchist thought was the cumulative product of a number of different individuals in different countries who elaborated its basic principles. This article examines the views of several thinkers on anarchism, including William Godwin, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Michael Bakunin, and Prince Peter Kropotkin. It also considers the link between anarchism and terrorism.

Autonomy, Education, and Societal Legitimacy

1998 ◽  
pp. 196-201
Author(s):  
Edward Sankowski
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Individual Autonomy ◽  
Legitimate Authority ◽  
Educational Model ◽  
Respect For Autonomy ◽  
Normative Function ◽  
Educational Concept ◽  
Institutional Model ◽  
The Individual

I argue that autonomy should be interpreted as an educational concept, dependent on many educative institutions, including but not limited to government. This interpretation will improve the understanding of autonomy in relation to questions about institutional and societal legitimate authority. I aim to make plausible three connected ideas. (1) Respecting individual autonomy, properly understood, is consistent with an interest in institutions in social and political philosophy. Such interest, however, does require a broadening of questions about institutional and societal legitimacy. (2) Individual autonomy can and should be re-conceived as a multi-institutional educational notion. We must appreciate the manifold institutional process. There are diverse questions about legitimacy as institutional and societal authority that generate normative demands binding on the individual. (3) There is some uncertainty about which institutions do or should educate for autonomy. The shift to an educational, multi-institutional model of autonomy renders more questionable and probably de-emphasizes the role of blame and punishment as paradigmatically institutionalized expressions of respect for autonomy in educating for autonomy. Nonetheless, such an educational model does not eliminate concern about autonomy, blame and punishment. Rather, it broadens questions about the legitimacy of the normative function of various institutions, and of society as a whole.

The Individual, The State, and The Common Good

1996 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Haldane
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Common Good ◽  
The State ◽  
Aesthetic Theory ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Common ◽  
Political Deliberation ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Civil Order

Let me begin with what should be a reassuring thought, and one that may serve as a corrective to presumptions that sometimes characterize political philosophy. The possibility, which Aquinas and Madison are both concerned with, of wise and virtuous political deliberation resulting in beneficial and stable civil order, no more depends upon possession of aphilosophical theory of the state and of the virtues proper to it, than does the possibility of making good paintings depend upon possession of an aesthetic theory of the nature and value of art.

Antigone's Example: A View of the Living Theatre's Production, Process, and Praxis

2000 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cindy Rosenthal
Keyword(s):  
Production Process ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Responsibility ◽  
Battle Of The Sexes ◽  
Living Theatre ◽  
State Authority ◽  
The Sixties ◽  
Pulsing Flow ◽  
The Individual

The Living Theatre is a metaphor for the sixties, its very name conjuring up the undulating movement, the pulsing flow, the argumentative spirit that characterized that time.At the center of the Living Theatre's production of Sophocles' Antigone, translator and director Judith Malina presented the verbal battle between the State/Authority/Patriarchal-figure, kreon (played by Living Theatre co-director Julian Beck), and the Individual/Disenfranchised/Woman, Antigone, (played by Malina herself). At performances of Antigone presented throughout Europe during the dynamic years of 1967 and 1968, spectators were meant to see with new eyes the incendiary struggles taking place outside the theatre. Following Antigone's example, they were meant to take on—individually—the political responsibility and the challenge, and to take part in revolutionary actions. Foregrounded onstage was the battle of the sexes, the battle of the generations, the fire in the belly of the cultural/sexual/political Zeitgeist.

Liberalism, Communitarianism, and Political Community

1996 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chandran Kukathas
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Primary Concern ◽  
Contemporary Debate ◽  
Political Association ◽  
The Individual

The primary concern of this essay is with the question “What is a political community?” This question is important in its own right. Arguably, the main purpose of political philosophy is to provide an account of the nature of political association and, in so doing, to describe the relations that hold between the individual and the state. The question is also important, however, because of its centrality in contemporary debate about liberalism and community.

The State as “a Consequence of the Curse of Humanity”: The Late Schelling’s Philosophy of Religion and of the State

2014 ◽  
Vol 21 (1-2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Danz
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
The State ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
The Individual

AbstractThis paper analyzes the hitherto neglected political philosophy (Staatsphilosophie) contained in Schelling’s Berlin lectures on the philosophy of mythology and of revelation in the context of the complex and politically charged debates of the German Vormärz period. It will be shown that, in his political philosophy, the Berlin Schelling rejects social contract models of the state and follows conservative theorists who conceive of the state as a collective order that supersedes the individual, while at the same time preserving the freedom of the individual and rejecting religious legitimizations of the state. Schelling’s theory of the state is characterized by its distinctive internal tensions and by its multidimensionality. This complexity of his theory of the state helps to account for the diverse range of receptions and assessments of his political philosophy, both among his contemporaries and by subsequent commentators

The sources of continuity and change of Ukraine’s incomplete state

2012 ◽  
Vol 45 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 417-428 ◽  
Author(s):  
Serhiy Kudelia
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
The State ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Effective Governance ◽  
Continuity And Change ◽  
Institutional Void ◽  
State Authority ◽  
State Actors ◽  
Dominant Actor ◽  
Institutional Foundations

This article examines the evolution of the state in Ukraine from an object of elite predation in early 1990s into a dominant actor in relations with non-state actors under Kuchma, an instrument of elite struggles for power and rents under Yushchenko and a return to a centralized state authority under Yanukovych. Despite its different transformations the state in Ukraine has been continuously characterized by the prevalence of informal levers of power and the absence of strong formal institutional foundations. As a result, after twenty years it still lacks the prerequisites of effective governance in a modern state – an impersonal bureaucracy, rule of law and mechanisms of accountability. This institutional void produces Ukraine’s vicious cycling between hybrid types of authoritarianism and democracy leaving the state dysfunctional and incomplete.

Liberalism and the State: Economic Growth and the Inequality

2020 ◽  
pp. 147-159
Author(s):  
Victor A. Volkonsky ◽  
Yuri N. Gavrilets ◽  
Alexander V. Kudrov
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Economic Development ◽  
Direct Democracy ◽  
Private Property ◽  
The State ◽  
Main Indicator ◽  
Socio Economic Development ◽  
Main Thing ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Main Barrier

The article provides a critical comparison of two opposing views on the socio-economic development of Russia: radical liberal and socio-state ideology. The reason for the comparison was the report of Professor V. V. Kossov at a meeting (December 6, 2019) of the International Organizational Sciences Academy (IOSN) (“Barriers to Russia’s Economic Growth”), which stated that the main barrier to economic growth in Russia was government interference in economic activity and insufficient respect for private property in the population. The article shows on statistical data that, firstly, GDP growth should not be considered the main indicator of a country’s success, and secondly, it is the weakness of the state that actually hinders socio-economic development. It is shown that such problems as the elimination of poverty and inequality cannot be solved without the active participation of the state. The main thing is not economic growth and direct democracy, but the satisfaction of the interests of all social groups and the achievement of social justice. This position is supported by an appeal to the research results of many Western economists. Criticizing the liberal position, the authors of the article remain supporters of the free development of the individual and the society of equal opportunities.

scholarly journals From corporatism to the “foundation of labour”: notes on political cultures across Fascist and Republican Italy

Tempo ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 239-255
Author(s):  
Laura Cerasi
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Political Cultures ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Institutional Architecture ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract: Until the mid-1930s, corporatism represented the main vehicle of self-representation that fascism gave to its own resolution of the crisis of the modern state; the investment in corporatism involved not only the attempt to build a new institutional architecture that regulated the relations between the State, the individual and society, but also the legal, economic and political debate. However, while the importance of corporatism decreased in the last years of the regime, the labour issue to which it was genetically linked found new impetus. After Liberation Day, the labour issue was not abandoned along with corporatism, but it was laid down in Article 1 of the Constitution. The aim of this paper is to acknowledge the political cultures that in interwar years faced the above-mentioned processes, with particular reference to the fascist “left”, the reformist socialists and, above all, Catholics of different orientations, in order to examine some features of the relationship between the labour issue and statehood across the 20th century.

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