Islamic Democracy and Popular Sovereignty: A Critical Essay on Andrew March’s The Caliphate of Man

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 303-312
Author(s):  
Raja Bahlul
Keyword(s):  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Political Practice ◽  
Central Concept ◽  
Critical Essay ◽  
Islamic Thought ◽  
Intellectual Revolution ◽  
Central Claim

Abstract In this review of Andrew March’s book, The Caliphate of Man, I shall focus on one central concept and one central claim to be found in the book: the concept of Islamic democracy, and the claim that al-Ghannūshī’s vision of popular sovereignty “reflects a genuine intellectual revolution in modern Islamic thought.” I suggest that the concept of Islamic democracy is logically possible only on the assumption of a purely procedural, value-neutral conception of democracy, and that the vision of the umma [the demos, populus] to be found in al-Ghannūshī is not such as to make the notion of popular sovereignty desirable by modern standards. I will suggest further that liberal Islamist thinkers stand to offer a superior view of Islamic democracy, one toward which al-Ghannūshī himself seems to be moving in his post-Revolutionary political practice.

Tracing the Rift: Heidegger, Hölderlin, and “The Origin of the Work of Art”

2019 ◽  
Vol 53 ◽  
pp. 295-307
Author(s):  
Will McNeill ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Central Concept ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
The Real ◽  
Philosophical Significance ◽  
To Come ◽  
Central Claim ◽  
Do So

Heidegger’s 1936 essay “The Origin of the Work of Art” is notoriously dense and difficult. In part this is because it appears to come almost from nowhere, given that Heidegger has relatively little to say about art in his earlier work. Yet the essay can only be adequately understood, I would argue, in concert with Heidegger’s essay on Hölderlin from the same year, “Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetizing.” Without the Hölderlin essay, for instance, the central claim of “The Origin of the Work of Art” to the effect that all art is in essence poetizing, Dichtung, can hardly be appreciated in its philosophical significance without the discussions of both essence and poetizing that appear in the Hölderlin essay. This is true of other concepts also. The central concept of the rift (Riß)—the fissure or tear—that appears in “The Origin of the Work of Art” might readily be assumed to be adopted from Albrecht Dürer, whose use of the term Heidegger cites at a key point in the 1936 essay. Here, however, I argue that the real source of the concept for Heidegger is Hölderlin, and that the Riß is, moreover—quite literally—an inscription of originary, ekstatic temporality; that is, of temporality as the “origin” of Being and as the poetic or poetizing essence of art. I do so, first, by briefly considering Heidegger’s references to Dürer in “The Origin of the Work of Art” and other texts from the period, as well as his understanding of the Riß and of the tearing of the Riß in that essay and in its two earlier versions. I then turn to Heidegger’s 1936 Rome lecture “Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetizing,” in order to show the Hölderlinian origins of this concept for Heidegger.

Islamic Constitutionalism Before Sovereignty: Two Defenses of the Tunisian Constitution of 1861

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 1-40
Author(s):  
Andrew March
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Present Moment ◽  
Political Judgment ◽  
Constituent Power ◽  
The Public ◽  
Islamic Thought ◽  
Constitutional Thought

This article focuses on the Tunisian constitutional moment of 1857-1861. Its goal is to explore an important moment in Islamic modernity for the purposes of drawing a contrast with twentieth-century, post-caliphal Islamist thought. The primary themes visible in nineteenth-century Islamic constitutional thought are a “descending” conception of sovereign constituent power with a strong emphasis on the pre-political existence of a divine law that is both binding and guiding but not necessarily the exclusive source of lawmaking. The debates of the 1860s and Ottoman constitutionalism more generally do not lead directly to a non-sovereigntist political vision. But they are representative of a pre-colonial (and thus, to a certain extent, pre-apologetic) Islamic thought that centralizes the public interest, the varieties of political judgment, and the compatibility of distinct kinds of expertise with a desacralized centralized authority. This period may hold relevance for our present moment when twentieth-century ideals of both divine and popular sovereignty seem to no longer dominate Islamic (and Islamist) approaches to political life.

Reforming Democracy: Constitutional Crisis and Rousseau's Advice to Geneva

2018 ◽  
Vol 80 (3) ◽  
pp. 415-438
Author(s):  
Dorina Verli
Keyword(s):  
Social Contract ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Political Practice ◽  
Democratic Government ◽  
The People ◽  
Historical Accident ◽  
Ordinary Citizens

AbstractPolitical theorists have relegated Rousseau's writings on Geneva to the category of historical accident, assuming that whatever he had to say about politics was said fully in works like the Social Contract. This has created a widespread impression that Rousseau had little to say about ordinary political practice. In this paper, I take up his dissection of the Genevan constitution in the Letters from the Mountain. A work which has attracted little attention even from historians, the Letters are in fact essential for understanding Rousseau's thoughts on the people's role in democratic government. His proposals for reform give clear content to the abstract arguments about popular sovereignty presented in the Social Contract. Against readings that emphasize Rousseau's distrust of the people, the Letters reveal that Rousseau expected popular sovereignty to take the form of active and routine participation in both legislation and government on the part of ordinary citizens.

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