scholarly journals Principles, practices and disciplinary power struggles in political theory

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 270-280
Author(s):  
Janosch Prinz
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Ideal Theory ◽  
Good Source ◽  
Power Struggles ◽  
Disciplinary Power ◽  
The Future

The Practical Turn in Political Theory sounds like the monograph political theorists have been waiting for – a monograph that identifies ‘practices’ as a uniting theme that runs through several recently influential debates on non-ideal theory, practice dependence, realism and pragmatist theories of legitimacy and democracy, and then discusses the promise and limits of this uniting theme for the future of political theory. However, The Practical Turn is driven by selective portrayals, omissions and misrepresentation, and hence is not a good source to turn to for understanding the debates it surveys or whether they manifest a ‘practical turn in political theory’ or not; rather, it serves as a warning of how struggles over power can influence and even structure seemingly the most purely intentioned of practices.

The Origins of Temporal Legitimacy

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andre Santos Campos
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
The Past ◽  
Fundamental Distinction ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Structures ◽  
Normative Political Theory

Historical analyses of the relations between political theory and time often hinge on two claims. The first is that political theorists have until recently put less emphasis on the future than the past when debating political legitimacy and obligation. The second is that the history of political theory draws a fundamental distinction between theories that invoke time to legitimate political structures and theories that reject temporal considerations in favor of timeless principles. This chapter disputes these two claims by maintaining that competing languages of legitimacy harbor different and interrelated conceptions of temporality. A survey of time conceptions in the history of political philosophy shows that normative political theory is inherently multitemporal, involving double regard for the past and the future. And, since even tenseless principles of legitimacy often depend on temporally related forms of formulation and application, considerations about time seem inescapable in normative political theory.

scholarly journals JUSTICE, FEASIBILITY, AND IDEAL THEORY: A PLURALIST APPROACH

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 32-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Mason
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Ideal Theory ◽  
Political Values ◽  
Privileged Position ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Pluralist Approach

Abstract:A qualified pluralism is defended that recognizes value in a variety of forms of political theory and resists arguments that purport to show that one particular approach should occupy a privileged position. Against realists, it is argued that abstract analyses of political values that bracket a wide range of facts about people and their circumstances can be both coherent and important, whereas against those who think “ideal theory” or the identification of ultimate principles should come first, it is argued that the case for always giving priority to either one of these is weak.

Rationalist Empiricism

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Brown
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Digital Photography ◽  
Transcendental Philosophy ◽  
First Century ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
The Core ◽  
Science And Art ◽  
The Future ◽  
Twenty First Century

Twenty-first century philosophy has been drawn into a false opposition between speculation and critique. In this important intervention, Nathan Brown argues that the key to overcoming this antinomy is rethinking the relation between rationalism and empiricism. If Kant’s transcendental philosophy attempted to displace the opposing claims of those competing schools, any speculative critique of Kant will have to reopen and consider anew the conflict and complementarity of reason and experience. Rationalist Empiricism shows that the capacity of reason and experience to both extend and delimit one another has always been at the core of philosophy and science, and that coordinating their discrepant powers is what enables speculation to move forward in concert with critique. Sweeping across ancient, modern, and contemporary philosophy, as well as political theory, science, and art, Brown engages with such major thinkers as Plato, Descartes, Hume, Hegel, Marx, Heidegger, Bachelard, Althusser, Badiou, and Meillassoux, while showing how the concepts he develops illuminate recent projects in the science of measurement and experimental digital photography. With conceptual originality and argumentative precision, Rationalist Empiricism is a book that reconfigures the history and the future of philosophy, politics, and aesthetics.

Does Queer Political Theory Have a Future?

Shame ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bogdan Popa
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thinking ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
The Future ◽  
Eve Sedgwick ◽  
Lauren Berlant

In this final chapter I reflect upon the possibilities unleashed by recent scholarship in queer political theory. First, I discuss the future of queer political thinking by insisting that the act of interpretation has to draw on how one becomes both irritated by and surprised by scholarly arguments. As an affective practice, irritation offers the incentive to challenge what is already known while the surprise opens up a new territory for investigation. Second, to enact my interpretative method, I critically engage with the work of Eve Sedgwick, Leo Bersani, José Esteban Muñoz, and Lauren Berlant to argue that queer practices can articulate an equality-oriented vision of politics.

Bridging Ideal and Non-Ideal Theory

2017 ◽  
Vol 66 (4) ◽  
pp. 887-902 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandru Volacu
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Ideal Theory ◽  
Two Dimensional ◽  
Current State ◽  
The World ◽  
Normative Models ◽  
The Ideal

Many of the recent methodological debates within political theory have focused on the ideal/non-ideal theory distinction. While ideal theorists recognise the need to develop an account of the transition between the two levels of theorising, no general proposal has been advanced thus far. In this article, I aim to bridge this conceptual gap. Towards this end, I first reconstruct the ideal/non-ideal theory distinction within a simplified two-dimensional framework, which captures the primary meanings usually attributed to it. Subsequently, I use this framework to provide an algorithm for the bidirectional transition between ideal and non-ideal theory, based on the incremental derivation of normative models. The approach outlined illuminates the various ways in which principles derived under highly idealised assumptions might be distorted by the circumstances of our current world and illustrates the various paths which we can pursue in moving from our current state of the world to an ideal one.

Idealization and Abstraction in Models of Injustice

Hypatia ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 329-346
Author(s):  
Leif Hancox‐Li
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Ideal Theory ◽  
Formal Models ◽  
Nonideal Theory ◽  
Political Theories ◽  
Gender Based ◽  
And Gender

Charles Mills has argued against ideal theory in political philosophy on the basis that it contains idealizations. He calls for political philosophers to do more nonideal theory, namely political theory that pays more attention to the most visible oppressions in society, such as those based on race, gender, and class. Mills's argument relies on a distinction between idealization and abstraction. Idealizations involve adding false assumptions to one's model, which is unacceptable, whereas abstractions merely leave out details without undermining descriptive power. By studying formal models of injustice, I argue that the idealization/abstraction distinction is unhelpful. Either the distinction exists only relative to one's modeling purposes, or all models in political theory contain idealizations. Either way, the distinction does not help Mills's cause. Furthermore, there are arguments from philosophy of science for the epistemic benefits of idealizations. However, Mills's call for greater emphasis on the most visible mechanisms of oppression can be supported without relying on an idealization/abstraction distinction. I provide three alternative reasons for why we should prefer political theories that place more emphasis on race‐, class‐, and gender‐based oppression.

Construction of Question Chain Data Center Systems Supported of Data Mining

2012 ◽  
Vol 532-533 ◽  
pp. 1324-1328
Author(s):  
Li Liang
Keyword(s):  
Data Mining ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Data Center ◽  
Colleges And Universities ◽  
Future Perspective ◽  
Teaching Reform ◽  
The Future

Data mining is a kind of technology to analyze and treat information. From the current, as well as the future perspective of teaching reform in colleges and universities, the construction of question chain data center systems under the support of data mining technical by the means of question logic will enhance the effectiveness of the teaching of Ideological and political theory courses.

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