Notions of justice

2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 79-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Delia Lin
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Cultural Differences ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Justice As Fairness ◽  
Political Conception ◽  
Liberal Culture

This paper compares the conception of justice grounded on the liberal political thought and the Chinese notion of justice deeply rooted in Confucian and Legalist theories from the standpoint of the political culture they each supports. It argues that whereas the former supports the liberal culture marked by the plurality of reasonable doctrines and by seeing persons as free and equal, the latter supports an authoritarian culture based on a dogmatic, comprehensive moral doctrine. Such cultural differences have made it difficult for the Chinese elite holding a Confucian view to negotiate and appreciate the political conception of justice as fairness. This paper suggests that it is important for a modern state to formulate philosophies that accommodate the plurality of diverse and often incompatible doctrines and also to think about justice in procedural terms. For China to achieve this requires a change of political culture.

Seneca the Elder, the Controuersia Figurata, and the Political Discourse of the Early Empire

2021 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 118-150
Author(s):  
Matthew Leigh
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Roman History ◽  
The Political ◽  
Turn On ◽  
Specific Event ◽  
Imperial Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
Seneca The Elder

This paper studies examples of how exponents of Roman declamation could insert into arguments on the trivial, even fantastic, cases known as controuersiae statements of striking relevance to the political culture of the triumviral and early imperial period. This is particularly apparent in the Controuersiae of Seneca the Elder but some traces remain in the Minor Declamations attributed to Quintilian. The boundaries separating Rome itself from the declamatory city referred to by modern scholars as Sophistopolis are significantly blurred even in those instances where the exercise does not turn on a specific event from Roman history, and there is much to be gained from how the declaimers deploy Roman historical examples. Some of the most sophisticated instances of mediated political comment exploit the employment of universalizing sententiae, which have considerable bite when they are related to contemporary Roman discourse and experience. The declamation schools are a forum for thinking through the implications of the transformation of the Roman state and deserve a place within any history of Roman political thought.

17. Political culture

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Welzel ◽  
Ronald Inglehart
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Cultural Differences ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
The Political ◽  
Democratic Citizen ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Political Economy Approach

This chapter examines the role that the concept of political culture plays in comparative politics. In particular, it considers how the political culture field increases our understanding of the social roots of democracy and how these roots are transforming through cultural change. In analysing the inspirational forces of democracy, key propositions of the political culture approach are compared with those of the political economy approach. The chapter first provides and overview of cultural differences around the world before tracing the historical roots of the political culture concept. It then tackles the question of citizens' democratic maturity and describes the allegiance model of the democratic citizen. It also explores party–voter dealignment, the assertive model of the democratic citizen, and political culture in non-democracies. It concludes with an assessment of how trust, confidence, and social capital increase a society's capacity for collective action.

A Buddhist Response to Ancient-style Learning: Qisong's Conception of Political Order

T oung Pao ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 97 (1-3) ◽  
pp. 1-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas Skonicki
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Song Dynasty ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
Political Order ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Song Dynasty ◽  
The Creation

AbstractThis article focuses on the political thought of the Song-dynasty Chan monk Qisong (1007-1072). In opposition to earlier studies, which have tended to view Qisong's political theorizing simply as an offshoot of his philosophical syncretism, it is contended here that his political arguments played an important role in his refutation of the Ancient-style Learning movement's attacks against Buddhism. As is well known, several Song-dynasty proponents of Ancient-style Learning impugned Buddhism for the negative impact it exerted on Chinese social and political culture. Qisong responded to their attacks by crafting a comprehensive political theory, which sought to demonstrate not only that Ancient-style Learning thinkers had misunderstood the dao and proper governance, but also that Buddhist institutions were indispensable to the creation of political order.

Rawls's Practical Conception of Justice: Opinion, Tradition and Objectivity in Political Liberalism

2006 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-43
Author(s):  
Alexander Kaufman
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Reflective Equilibrium ◽  
The Political ◽  
Justice As Fairness ◽  
Liberal Conception ◽  
The Stability

AbstractIn Political Liberalism, Rawls emphasizes the practical character and aims of his conception of justice. Justice as fairness is to provide the basis of a reasoned, informed and willing political agreement by locating grounds for consensus in the fundamental ideas and values of the political culture. Critics urge, however, that such a politically liberal conception of justice will be designed merely to ensure the stability of political institutions by appealing to the currently-held opinions of actual citizens. In order to evaluate this concern, I suggest, it is necessary to focus on the normative character of Rawls's analysis. Rawls argues that justice as fairness is the conception of justice that citizens of modern democratic cultures should choose in reflective equilibrium, after reflecting fully upon their considered judgments regarding justice. Since judgments in reflective equilibrium are grounded in considered judgment, rather than situated opinions, I argue that the criticism fails.

scholarly journals Political theology; revising the relation of theology and the political issue with the emphasis on the narratives of Karl Schmidt

2019 ◽  
pp. 123-146
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modern State ◽  
The West ◽  
Political Issue ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Secular Theology ◽  
History Of ◽  
Theological Concept

In this paper, three commonly used concepts of political theology in different periods of the history of Western thoughts are briefly reviewd. The golden age of political thought in the west called most of the politics functions for theology as political theology. The political issue is considered as an autonomous and independent subject, which reserves the ability for itself to change theology. With the advent of Christianity and its influence on the political and governance pillars, this equation was reversed for centuries, and politics,as the theology servant,was identified as an ancestral affair. It is only in the modern times that Weber, by stating that science should be away from value, created a bedrock for political theology, in which it was not necessary to be a theologist to reach theology. In this context, Schmidt serves the concept of political theology in a sociological sense to serving to depict that the modern state, alongside with its preceding times, is a theological concept that has survived by omitting secular theology.

What Is the Argument for the Fair Value of Political Liberty?

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 497-514
Author(s):  
William A. Edmundson ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Fair Value ◽  
Original Position ◽  
The Political ◽  
First Principle ◽  
Political Liberty ◽  
State Capitalism ◽  
Justice As Fairness ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
Political Conception

The equal political liberties are among the basic first-principle liberties in John Rawls’s theory of Justice as fairness. Rawls insists, further, that the “fair value” of the political liberties must be guaranteed. Disavowing an interest in fair value is what disqualifies welfare-state capitalism as a possible realizer of Justice as fairness. Yet Rawls never gives a perspicuous statement of the reasoning in the original position for the fair-value guarantee. This article gathers up two distinct strands of Rawls’s argument, and presents it in a straightforward sequence. Justice as fairness is contrasted to a competitor political conception of justice that is just like it but without the fair-value guarantee. A schema of the two-strand argument is presented in the Appendix.

FRENCH LIBERALISM’S “INDIAN DETOUR”: LOUIS DUMONT, THE INDIVIDUAL, AND LIBERAL POLITICAL THOUGHT IN POST-1968 FRANCE

2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 685-710
Author(s):  
JACOB COLLINS
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Intellectual Tradition ◽  
Economic Issues ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Revolution

Liberalism in France has typically been concerned with political, rather than economic, issues. Its classic texts—those of Constant, Guizot, and Tocqueville—were written in the aftermath of the Revolution, and reflected on the historical and political problems that grew out of it: the nature of the modern state, the rights and duties of the individual, and the nexus of institutions that mediated their relationship. These writings defined the contours of modern French liberalism, and became a key resource for thinkers in the late 1970s, notably Pierre Rosanvallon and Marcel Gauchet, who were looking for ways to revitalize the liberal-democratic project. In his 1985 study of Guizot, Rosanvallon could regret that “the question of liberalism in French political culture of the nineteenth century is ‘missing’ in contemporary thought.”1 If the task of political theory was to recover this intellectual tradition, what were the terms of the recovery? Which ideas were missing from the conceptual landscape of the 1970s to inspire it?

scholarly journals Ademia: Agamben and the Idea of the People

2019 ◽  
Vol 89 ◽  
pp. 95-110
Author(s):  
Gian Giacomo Fusco
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
Theoretical Development ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Political Space ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
The People ◽  
Ultimate Source

In the volume Stasis. Civil War as a Political Paradigm, the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben advances the thesis that ademia – the absence of a people (a-demos) – is a constitutive element of the modern state. When confronted with the fact that modern political and juridical thought elevated the people to the role of the sole chief constituent agent and the ultimate source of the legitimacy of constituted orders, this thesis turns out to be rather problematic. In this work, I will explore Agamben’s notion of ademia, retracing the main lines of its theoretical development and reconsidering it in relation to different interpretations of the idea of the people. Most notably, I will demonstrate how Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Carl Schmitt in challenging the conundrums that the idea of the people inevitably entails ended up in revealing the ultimate absence of the people in the political space of the constituted order of the state. In doing so, I will try to show how Agamben’s notion of ademia is helpful is grasping some of the main paradoxes and conundrums underpinning the meaning and the uses of the idea of the people in legal and political thought.

17. Political Culture

2020 ◽  
pp. 297-317
Author(s):  
Christian Welzel ◽  
Ronald Inglehart
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Cultural Differences ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
The Political ◽  
Democratic Citizen ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World

This chapter examines the role that the concept of political culture plays in comparative politics. In particular, it considers how the political culture field increases our understanding of the social roots of democracy and how these roots are transforming through cultural change. In analysing the inspirational forces of democracy, key propositions of the political culture approach are compared with those of the political economy approach. The chapter first provides an overview of cultural differences around the world, before tracing the historical roots of the political culture concept. It then tackles the question of citizens’ democratic maturity and describes the allegiance model of the democratic citizen. It also explores party–voter dealignment, the assertive model of the democratic citizen, and political culture in non-democracies. It concludes with an assessment of how trust, confidence, and social capital increase a society’s capacity for collective action.

Shakespeare and the Politics of Commoners

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Social History ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Crisis ◽  
Modern Politics ◽  
Original Contribution

This book is a highly original contribution to our understanding of Shakespeare’s plays in two ways. First, it breaks important new ground in introducing readers, lay and scholarly alike, to the existence and character of the political culture of the mass of ordinary commoners in Shakespeare’s England, as revealed by the recent findings of ‘the new social history’. Demonstrating the vibrant, critical, and philosophically dissident politics of plebeians in the Tudor period, the volume thereby helps challenge the traditional myths of a non-political commons and a culture of obedience. Second, it brings together leading Shakespeareans, digesting the recent social history, with eminent early modern social historians, turning their focus upon Shakespeare. The genuinely cross-disciplinary work resulting generates fresh readings of ten plays, locating the penetration of Shakespearean drama by popular political thought and pressure in this period of perceived social crisis. No other volume on Shakespeare has engaged and digested the dramatic importance of the discoveries of the new social history, resituating and revaluing Shakespeare within the remarkable social depth of early modern politics.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document