Political implications of compassion in Mencius

Diogenes ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 039219212097038
Author(s):  
Sarinya Arunkhajornsak
Keyword(s):  
Young Child ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Moral Cultivation ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
Universal Love ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Moral Universe ◽  
Political Realm

This paper examines Mencius’ view on compassion in the political realm by proposing that Mencius defends compassionate governance by reconciling the two extremes of Yangist self-love and Mohist universal love. This paper proposes a reading of two famous stories, namely, the story of a young child on the verge of falling into a well, and the story of King Xuan of Qi sparing an ox as paradigmatic cases for understanding Mencius’ account of compassion in the political realm. This paper argues that Mencius succeeds in his defense of governance with compassion against the other two extremes of self-love and altruism. To provide an argument for compatibility with egoism or self-love, this paper offers an analysis of Mencius’ idea of the ruler sharing pleasure with his people instead of denying pleasure for himself. In this sense, a good ruler does not need to sacrifice his self-interest. To counter the demand of universal love of the Mohists, Mencius develops a position that the Confucian ideal ruler, while not sacrificing his self-interests, those interests need to be guided and directed by a proper process of moral cultivation of his compassionate heart so that he can readily share his pleasures with all the peoples in his kingdom. These readings indicate Mencius’ expanded argument for political implications of compassion in the moral universe of the Confucian school.

The Catholic Hierarchy in the Nicaraguan Revolution

1985 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 341-369 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip J. Williams
Keyword(s):  
Structural Transformation ◽  
Urban Poor ◽  
The Other ◽  
Viable Alternative ◽  
The Political ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
Nicaraguan Revolution ◽  
Clear Majority

The involvement of Christians in the Nicaraguan Revolution is a clear manifestation of the profound changes taking place within the Nicaraguan Church as a whole. While a clear majority of the clergy took a stand against the injustices of the Somoza regime, a smaller group of priests and religious demonstrated a more profound commitment to radical structural transformation of society. Although their efforts to organize andconcientizar1rural and urban poor had serious political implications – in fact, many joined the guerrilla as a result of the ‘radicalization of their faith’ – to these priests and religious the political solutions available to counter growing social injustices and government abuses were few: either fight or capitulate. The bishops, on the other hand, were cautious about the pace of change and rejected the violent option, choosing instead an intermediate path. Unfortunately, such an option proved futile in the case of Nicaragua, and finally the bishops justified armed revolution as a viable alternative to systematic repression.

"The Presence of the Other is a Presence that Teaches": Levinas, Pragmatism, and Pedagogy

2006 ◽  
Vol 14 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 91-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claire Elise Katz
Keyword(s):  
Educational Philosophy ◽  
Jewish Education ◽  
Positive Response ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ethical Framework ◽  
The Political ◽  
Moral Cultivation ◽  
Ethical Response ◽  
Ethical Project

AbstractAlthough Levinas talks about ethics as a response to the other, most scholars assume that this "response" is not something tangible—it is not an actual giving of food or providing of shelter and clothing. But there is evidence in Levinas's own writings that indicate he does intend for a positive response to the Other. In any event, while he acknowledges that the other is the sole person I wish to kill, killing the other, within an ethical framework would be a violation of that response. The failure to respond to the other ethically requires us to ask if Levinas's project needs an educational philosophy or a model of moral cultivation to supplement it. This essay explores this question by putting into conversation Levinas's ethical project and his interest in Jewish education with John Dewey's philosophy of education and its relationship to the political community. This exploration will help us see what this field of research might offer in promoting the cultivation of ethical response as Levinas envisions it and what its limits are.

To what question is the Badiouan notion of the subject an answer? On the dialectical elaboration of the concept in his early work

2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-120
Author(s):  
Jan-Jasper Persijn
Keyword(s):  
Direct Consequence ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Academic World ◽  
Systematic Account ◽  
Political Field ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One ◽  
Work Up

Alain Badiou’s elaboration of a subject faithful to an event is commonly known today in the academic world and beyond. However, his first systematic account of the subject ( Théorie du Sujet) was already published in 1982 and did not mention the ‘event’ at all. Therefore, this article aims at tracing back both the structural and the historical conditions that directed Badiou’s elaboration of the subject in the early work up until the publication of L’Être et l’Événément in 1988. On the one hand, it investigates to what extent the (early) Badiouan subject can be considered an exceptional product of the formalist project of the Cahiers pour l’Analyse as instigated by psychoanalytical discourse (Lacan) and a certain Marxist discourse (Althusser) insofar as both were centered upon a theory of the subject. On the other hand, this article examines the radical political implications of this subject insofar as Badiou has directed his philosophical aims towards the political field as a direct consequence of the events of May ’68.

The politics of the unities: tragedy and the Risorgimento in Byron and Manzoni

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arnold Anthony Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Political Change ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
The One ◽  
Original Approach

This chapter takes an original approach to Byron’s much-discussed engagement with the early Risorgimento by focusing not on biographical aspects, but rather on formal issues. It centres on The Two Foscari in the context of the highly politicised contemporary Italian critical debates about the dramatic unities. In this fashion, it teases out the political implications of Byron’s adherence to the unities by comparing his play to Alessandro Manzoni’s Il conte di Carmagnola, which programmatically violates them. Focusing specifically on the playwrights’ representations of the fifteenth-century mercenary leader, Francesco Bussone da Carmagnola, the chapter explores these writers’ use or abuse of the unity of time, in particular. In doing so, it throws light on, and contrasts, Manzoni’s Risorgimento agenda on the one hand and Byron’s generally sceptical attitude about leadership and uncertainty about social and political change on the other.

Hope, or On Theology

2020 ◽  
pp. 170-197
Author(s):  
Ryan Patrick Hanley
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
Universal Order ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Theological Virtue

Chapter 6 turns to Fénelon’s theology, focusing on his treatment of hope and its significance for his political philosophy. It argues that he regarded hope not just as a key theological virtue, but also as a key virtue of political rulers and political reformers. Its discussion of the political implications of Fénelon’s theology proceeds in three parts. It first examines the role of hope in Telemachus. It then turns to the treatment of hope in Fénelon’s theology, focusing on three particular discussions: the place of hope in love, the relationship of hope to self-interest, and the place of hope in prayer. The final section turns to two aspects of Fénelon’s theology beyond hope which also have significant implications for his political philosophy: his understanding of the relationship of human being to divine being, and his arguments for the existence of God and their implications for universal order.

The Political Economy of Trade Policy

1989 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 119-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert E Baldwin
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
International Trade ◽  
Trade Policy ◽  
Machine Tools ◽  
Political Influence ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Public Officials ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Social Concerns

International trade seems to be a subject where the advice of economists is routinely disregarded. Economists are nearly unanimous in their general opposition to protectionism, but the increase in U.S. protection in recent years in such sectors as automobiles, steel, textiles and apparel, machine tools, footwear and semiconductors demonstrates that economists lack political influence on trade policy. Two broad approaches have been developed to analyze the political economics of trade policy and the processes that generate protectionism. One approach emphasizes the economic self-interest of the political participants, while the other stresses the importance of the broad social concerns of voters and public officials. This paper outlines the nature of the two approaches, indicating how they can explain the above anomalies and other trade policy behavior, and concludes with observations about integrating the two frameworks, conducting further research, and making policy based on the analysis.

The Socialist Press in Turn-of-the-Century Argentina

1980 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Richard J. Walter
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Free Enterprise ◽  
Considerable Influence ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Minimal Impact ◽  
Juan Peron ◽  
Political Realm

Socialism, as expressed by political parties professing that ideology, has had only minimal impact on Argentina's twentieth-century political history. On the other hand socialist ideas, broadly defined, have had considerable influence, although often in an indirect manner. In the political realm, for example, popular presidents Hipólito Yrigoyen (1916-1922; 1928-1930) and Juan Perón (1946-1955; 1973-1974) sought to pre-empt and co-opt socialism's appeal to the working class by proposing and implementing socialist-inspired reforms wrapped in nationalist rhetoric. Conversely, after the fall of Perón in 1955 various military governments have based their intervention into national politics largely on the need to stem the flow of Marxist ideas, to prevent the growth of socialist organizations—especially those which would repeat the Cuban revolutionary experience on Argentine soil—and to protect the principles of free enterprise capitalism.

Epidemics in Antiquity

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel K. Cohn, Jr.
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Natural Phenomenon ◽  
The Political ◽  
Epidemic Disease ◽  
Political Sphere ◽  
Moral Universe ◽  
Polluted Rivers

This chapter refutes present claims that epidemics in antiquity led to blame of the ‘other’. By assembling contemporary descriptions, explanations, and consequences of ancient epidemics, this chapter overturns a second commonplace about ancient epidemics: that contemporaries understood them within a moral universe, in which plagues arose from the evil deeds of individuals usually within the political sphere, such as betrayals, unjust wars, violations of peace, and breaches of justice, and as a consequence, the gods punished communities with epidemic disease. Such explanations, however, clustered in undatable, mythological time. Instead, classical authors explained the majority of epidemics solely by natural phenomenon—climate, famine, bad food and unaccustomed diets, vapours from unburied corpses, polluted rivers, etc. These explanations did not cast blame on anyone, including the enemies of the afflicted, who may have created the preconditions that brought about these plagues.

Between ‘Anti-totalitarianism’ and Radical Democracy

Populism ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-119
Author(s):  
Irem Taşçıoğlu
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Theory ◽  
Radical Democracy ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
Emancipatory Politics ◽  
Intellectual Milieu

Abstract Laclau’s theory on populism which is inseparable from his strategic endeavour to formulate a novel form of left-wing emancipatory politics has set off a variety of critiques, most notably from scholars who associate themselves with different strands of democratic theory. This paper picks out and uses Lefortian theory on democracy, utilizing it in order to figure out the different ways in which Laclau’s account could be construed and criticized. It argues that there are two possible interpretations of Lefort’s democratic theory with two different political implications, one liberal and the other radical-democratic and that they provide us with two different ways to formulate a critique of Laclauian populism. It particularly addresses the historical conjuncture from which Lefort’s democratic theory emerges and investigates how his ambiguous encounters with the intellectual milieu in France in the 70s, namely the ‘antitotalitarian moment’ undergird these two possible interpretations. This article’s elaboration on these two interpretations for addressing Laclau’s populism finalizes with a comparison between the political implications of the two and with a new proposal to invigorate counter-populism along the lines of Etienne Balibar as a (Lefortian) radical-democratic alternative to Laclau’s populism.

scholarly journals The Other, Shame, and Politics: Levinas, Justice, and Feeling Responsible

Religions ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (12) ◽  
pp. 381
Author(s):  
Steve Larocco
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Sphere ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Political Realm

Adi Ophir has suggested that the political realm is an order of evils, producing and managing regular forms of suffering and violence rather than eliminating them. Thus, the political is always to some extent a corrupted order of justice. Emmanuel Levinas’ work presents in its focus on the face-to-face relationship a means of rethinking how to make the political more open to compassionate justice. Though Levinas himself doesn’t sufficiently take on this question, I argue that his work facilitates a way of thinking about commiserative shame that provides a means to connect the face-to-face to its potential effects in the political sphere. If such shame isn’t ignored or bypassed, it produces an unsettling relation to the other that in its adversity motivates a kind of responsibility and care for the other that can alter the public sphere.

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