scholarly journals The two faces of personhood: Hobbes, corporate agency and the personality of the state

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean Fleming

There is an important but underappreciated ambiguity in Hobbes’ concept of personhood. In one sense, persons are representatives or actors. In the other sense, persons are representees or characters. An estate agent is a person in the first sense; her client is a person in the second. This ambiguity is crucial for understanding Hobbes’ claim that the state is a person. Most scholars follow the first sense of ‘person’, which suggests that the state is a kind of actor – in modern terms, a ‘corporate agent’. I argue that Hobbes’ state is a person only in the second sense: a character rather than an actor. If there are any primitive corporate agents in Hobbes’ political thought, they are representative assemblies, not states or corporations. Contemporary political theorists and philosophers tend to miss what is unique and valuable about Hobbes’ idea of state personality because they project the idea of corporate agency onto it.

Author(s):  
Tomas Borovinsky

In the present paper we intend to rethink the “Jewish question”, in the context of religion’s secularization and the modern nation-state crisis, in Hannah Arendt’s political thought. She writes, on the other hand, in and over the decline of modern nation-states that expel and denationalize both foreign citizens and their own depending on the case. She also thinks as a Jew from birth who suffers persecutions and particularly theorizes on her Jew condition and the future of Judaism before and after the creation of the State of Israel. As we will see during this paper we can identify these three issues all together, particularly in the Zionist experience: modern secularization, decline of the nation-state and the “Jewish question”. And it is from these intertwined elements that we can draw a critical thinking for a politics of pluralism.


2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (6) ◽  
pp. 2013-2055
Author(s):  
JOSHUA EHRLICH

AbstractThis article reveals the Charter Act of 1833 as a turning point in the history of British-Indian political thought, which foreclosed, for a generation, liberal efforts to reform Britain's avowedly despotic regime in India. Anticipating a victory in their transmarine campaign to make the state accountable to an Indian ‘public’, reformers were disillusioned to find instead that the new Act was founded on enlightened despotism. Attempting to gather popular support for the authoritarian vision of reform espoused by Thomas Babington Macaulay and the other framers of the Act, Governor-General William Bentinck organized a grand fireworks display in Calcutta. The failure of this event, however, compounded the initial backlash against the Act, widening the rift between state and ‘public’, and precipitating the latter's decline as an effective political formation.


Author(s):  
Javier Ruipérez Alamilo

The preoccupation about the conciliation between Freedom and Democracy has always been present in the political thought along History. Is for this reason why this antinomy is been tried to be solved from several approaches from classical Greece to our days. It was the rise of the liberal Constitutional State which made real both premises but from an approach in which both concepts act like characteristic of two very different frames: the one of the civil society and the one of the State, so that Freedom that acts in the first one, conditions absolutely to the second. But certainly Freedom and Democracy are, in essence, complementary and inseparable terms, because none of them can be understood without the other, and their independent fulfilment would be impossible at all.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 191-210
Author(s):  
Ewelina Podgajna

The peasant movement presented various positions towards the national minorities living in Poland in the interwar period. The attitude towards the Slavic minorities was different, the attitude towards the Jewish minority and the other national groups. In the 1920s, a favorable position towards Slavic minorities was represented by PSL Wyzwolenie, SCh and PSL Lewica, while PSL Piast remained unfavorable. In the 1930s, after the reunification in the SL, politicians and leaders of the party proclaimed the need to make far-reaching changes and reforms in the Eastern Borderlands. The agrarians emphasized that the care for favorable relations with the Slavic minorities was primarily due to the concern for the interests of the Polish state, so that minorities would not be the cause of unrest and internal disputes. According to the peasantry, it was necessary to cooperate in the field of peasant interests, to change social awareness and to strive to create the union of Slavic states. In the harmonious coexistence of all citizens of the Polish state, regardless of their nationality, they saw the source of integration and the strength of the state.


2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (188) ◽  
pp. 487-494
Author(s):  
Daniel Mullis

In recent years, political and social conditions have changed dramatically. Many analyses help to capture these dynamics. However, they produce political pessimism: on the one hand there is the image of regression and on the other, a direct link is made between socio-economic decline and the rise of the far-right. To counter these aspects, this article argues that current political events are to be understood less as ‘regression’ but rather as a moment of movement and the return of deep political struggles. Referring to Jacques Ranciere’s political thought, the current conditions can be captured as the ‘end of post-democracy’. This approach changes the perspective on current social dynamics in a productive way. It allows for an emphasis on movement and the recognition of the windows of opportunity for emancipatory struggles.


2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 118-135
Author(s):  
Lucia Della Torre

Not very long ago, scholars saw it fit to name a new and quite widespread phenomenon they had observed developing over the years as the “judicialization” of politics, meaning by it the expanding control of the judiciary at the expenses of the other powers of the State. Things seem yet to have begun to change, especially in Migration Law. Generally quite a marginal branch of the State's corpus iuris, this latter has already lent itself to different forms of experimentations which then, spilling over into other legislative disciplines, end up by becoming the new general rule. The new interaction between the judiciary and the executive in this specific field as it is unfolding in such countries as the UK and Switzerland may prove to be yet another example of these dynamics.


2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sipho Stephen Nkosi

The note is about the appeal lodged by the late Mrs Winnie Madikizela-Mandela to the SCA against the decision of the Eastern Cape High Court, Mthatha, dismissing her application for review in 2014. In that application, she sought to have reviewed the decision of the Minister of Land Affairs, to transfer the now extended and renovated Qunu property to Mr Mandela and to register it in his name. Because her application was out of time, she also applied for condonation of her delay in making the application. The court a quo dismissed both applications with costs, holding that there had been an undue delay on her part. Mrs Mandela then approached the Supreme Court of Appeal, for special leave to appeal the decision of the court a quo. Two questions fell for decision by the SCA: whether there was an unreasonable and undue delay on Mrs Mandela’s part in instituting review proceedings; and whether the order for costs was appropriate in the circumstances of the case. The SCA held that there was indeed an unreasonable delay (of seventeen years). Shongwe AP (with Swain, Mathopo JJA, Mokgothloa and Rodgers AJJA concurring) held that the fact that there had been an undue delay does not necessarily mean that an order for costs should, of necessity, particularly where, as in this case, the other litigant is the state. It is the writer’s view that two other ancillary points needed to be raised by counsel and pronounced on by the Court: (a) the lawfulness and regularity of the transfer of the Qunu property to Mr Mandela; and (b) Mrs Mandela’s status as a customary-law widow—in relation to Mr Mandela.


2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 90
Author(s):  
Dian Septiandani ◽  
Abd. Shomad

Zakat is one of principal worship requiring every individual (<em>mukallaf</em>) with considerable property to spend some of the wealth for zakat under several conditions applied within. On the other hand, tax is an obligation assigned to taxpayers and should be deposited into the state based on policies applied, with no direct return as reward, for financing the national general expense. In their development, both zakat and tax had quite attention from Islamic economic thought. Nevertheless, we, at first, wanted to identify the principles of zakat and tax at the time of Rasulullah SAW. Therefore, this study referred to normative research. The primary data was collected through library/document research and the secondary one was collected through literature review by inventorying and collecting textbooks and other documents related to the studied issue.


Author(s):  
Anatolii Petrovich Mykolaiets

It is noted that from the standpoint of sociology, “management — a function of organized systems of various nature — (technical, biological, social), which ensures the preservation of their structure, maintaining a certain state or transfer to another state, in accordance with the objective laws of the existence of this system, which implemented by a program or deliberately set aside”. Management is carried out through the influence of one subsystem-controlling, on the other-controlled, on the processes taking place in it with the help of information signals or administrative actions. It is proved that self-government allows all members of society or a separate association to fully express their will and interests, overcome alienation, effectively combat bureaucracy, and promote public self-realization of the individual. At the same time, wide direct participation in the management of insufficiently competent participants who are not responsible for their decisions, contradicts the social division of labor, reduces the effectiveness of management, complicates the rationalization of production. This can lead to the dominance of short-term interests over promising interests. Therefore, it is always important for society to find the optimal measure of a combination of self-management and professional management. It is determined that social representation acts, on the one hand, as the most important intermediary between the state and the population, the protection of social interests in a politically heterogeneous environment. On the other hand, it ensures the operation of a mechanism for correcting the political system, which makes it possible to correct previously adopted decisions in a legitimate way, without resorting to violence. It is proved that the system of social representation influences the most important political relations, promotes social integration, that is, the inclusion of various social groups and public associations in the political system. It is proposed to use the term “self-government” in relation to several levels of people’s association: the whole community — public self-government or self-government of the people, to individual regions or communities — local, to production management — production self-government. Traditionally, self-government is seen as an alternative to public administration. Ideology and practice of selfgovernment originate from the primitive, communal-tribal democracy. It is established that, in practice, centralization has become a “natural form of government”. In its pure form, centralization does not recognize the autonomy of places and even local life. It is characteristic of authoritarian regimes, but it is also widely used by democratic regimes, where they believe that political freedoms should be fixed only at the national level. It is determined that since the state has achieved certain sizes, it is impossible to abandon the admission of the existence of local authorities. Thus, deconcentration appears as one of the forms of centralization and as a cure for the excesses of the latter. Deconcentration assumes the presence of local bodies, which depend on the government functionally and in the order of subordination of their officials. The dependency of officials means that the leadership of local authorities is appointed by the central government and may be displaced.


2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
D.G. Shah ◽  
D.N. Mehta ◽  
R.V. Gujar

Bryophytes are the second largest group of land plants and are also known as the amphibians of the plant kingdom. 67 species of bryophytes have been reported from select locations across the state of Gujrat. The status of family fissidentaceae which is a large moss family is being presented in this paper. Globally the family consists of 10 genera but only one genus, Fissidens Hedw. has been collected from Gujarat. Fissidens is characterized by a unique leaf structure and shows the presence of three distinct lamina, the dorsal, the ventral and the vaginant lamina. A total of 8 species of Fissidens have been reported from the state based on vegetative characters as no sporophyte stages were collected earlier. Species reported from the neighboring states also showed the absence of sporophytes. The identification of different species was difficult due to substantial overlap in vegetative characters. Hence a detailed study on the diversity of members of Fissidentaceae in Gujarat was carried out between November 2013 and February 2015. In present study 8 distinct species of Fissidens have been collected from different parts of the state. Three species Fissidens splachnobryoides Broth., Fissidens zollingerii Mont. and Fissidens curvato-involutus Dixon. have been identified while the other five are still to be identified. Fissidens zollingerii Mont. and Fissidens xiphoides M. Fleisch., which have been reported as distinct species are actually synonyms according to TROPICOS database. The presence of sexual reproductive structures and sporophytes for several Fissidens species are also being reported for the first time from the state.


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