The new nomos of the earth and the channelling of violence

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 162-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ignas Kalpokas
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Theoretical Explanation ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
The Political ◽  
Exact Nature ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Political Sovereignty ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
Direct Violence

This article develops a theoretical explanation of the patterns of violence and distribution of conflict in contemporary world. It combines the international political thought of Carl Schmitt with an exploration of the conflicts in Ukraine and Syria and tensions over the South China Sea in order to envisage a new spatialisation of the world (‘nomos’ in Schmittian parlance) based around Großräume – ‘large spaces’, that is, powerful agglomerations of states – and peripheral lands in-between. It is thereby stipulated that while direct violence between Großräume is limited (or nonexistent), inter- Großraum competition is channelled towards the periphery, and the three cases presented in this article demonstrate how the exact nature and means of conflict depend on a particular inter- Großraum alignment. This reconceptualisation of the international order is presented in the wider context of Schmitt’s political thought, particularly his notions of the political, sovereignty and the exception in order to elucidate the latent processes behind the formation of state groupings and their willingness to engage in conflict beyond their borders.

Baroque and the Political Language of Formalism (1845–1945): Burckhardt, Wölfflin, Gurlitt, Brinckmann, Sedlmayr

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evonne Levy
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Art History ◽  
Architectural History ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nazi Party ◽  
Political Views ◽  
The World ◽  
Art Historians ◽  
Central Argument

<P>This study in intellectual history places the art historical concept of the Baroque amidst world events, political thought, and the political views of art historians themselves. Exploring the political biographies and writings on the Baroque (primarily its architecture) of five prominent Germanophone figures, Levy gives a face to art history, showing its concepts arising in the world. From Jacob Burckhardt’s still debated "Jesuit style" to Hans Sedlmayr’s <I>Reichsstil</I>, the Baroque concepts of these German, Swiss and Austrian art historians, all politically conservative, and two of whom joined the Nazi party, were all took shape in reaction to immediate social and political circumstances. </P> <P>A central argument of the book is that basic terms of architectural history drew from a long established language of political thought. This vocabulary, applied in the formalisms of Wölfflin and Gurlitt, has endured as art history’s unacknowledged political substrate for generations. Classic works, like Wölfflin’s <I>Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe</I> are interpreted anew here, supported by new documents from the papers of each figure.</P>

History, Politics, Law

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cross Section ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
International Institutions ◽  
The Political ◽  
Global Order ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Many

Historians of political thought and international lawyers have both expanded their interest in the formation of the present global order. History, Politics, Law is the first express encounter between the two disciplines, juxtaposing their perspectives on questions of method and substance. The essays throw light on their approaches to the role of politics and the political in the history of the world beyond the single polity. They discuss the contrast between practice and theory as well as the role of conceptual and contextual analyses in both fields. Specific themes raised for both disciplines include statehood, empires and the role of international institutions, as well as the roles of economics, innovation and gender. The result is a vibrant cross-section of contrasts and parallels between the methods and practices of the two disciplines, demonstrating the many ways in which both can learn from each other.

Nothing Absolute

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Theology ◽  
German Idealism ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
Theological Perspective ◽  
Traditional Approaches ◽  
First Time ◽  
Point Of Reference

Staging for the first time in extant scholarship a rigorous encounter between German thought from Kant to Marx and new forms of political theology, this ground-breaking volume puts forward a distinct and powerful framework for understanding the continuing relevance of political theology today as well as the conceptual and genealogical importance of German Idealism for its present and future. Against traditional approaches that view German Idealism as essentially a secularizing movement, this volume approaches it as the first speculative articulation of the political-theological problematic in the aftermath of the Enlightenment and the advent of secularity. Via a set of innovative readings and critiques, the volume investigates anew such concepts as immanence, utopia, sovereignty, mediation, indifference, the earth, the absolute, or the world, bringing German Idealism and Romanticism into dialogue with contemporary investigations of the (Christian-)modern forms of transcendence, domination, exclusion, and world-justification. Over the course of the volume, post-Kantian German thought emerges as a crucial phase in the genealogy of political theology and an important point of reference for the ongoing reassessment of modernity and secularity. As a result, this volume not only rethinks the philosophical trajectory of German Idealism and its aftermath from a political-theological perspective, but also demonstrates what can be done with (or against) German Idealism using the conceptual resources of political theology today.

John Adams's Machiavellian Moment

1995 ◽  
Vol 57 (3) ◽  
pp. 389-417 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Bradley Thompson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
John Adams ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
The World ◽  
Political Epistemology

John Adams was unique among the Founding Fathers in that he actually read and took seriously Machiavelli's ideas. In his Defence of the Constitutions of the United States, Adams quoted extensively from Machiavelli and he openly acknowledged an intellectual debt to the Florentine statesman. Adams praised Machiavelli for having been “the first” to have “revived the ancient politics” and he insisted that the “world” was much indebted to Machiavelli for “the revival of reason in matters of government.” What could Adams have meant by these extraordinary statements? The following article examines the Machiavellian ideas and principles Adams incorporated into his political thought as well as those that he rejected. Drawing upon evidence found in an unpublished fragment, Part one argues that the political epistemology that Adams employed in the Defence can be traced to Machiavelli's new modes and orders. Part two presents Adams's critique of Machiavelli's constitutionalism.

Prophet of a Partitioned World: Ferdinand Fried, “Great Spaces,” and the Dialectics of Deglobalization, 1929–1950

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Joshua Derman
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
World Economy ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
The Political ◽  
Economic Nationalism ◽  
Central Concept ◽  
Historical Scholarship ◽  
Political Outcomes ◽  
The World

Historical scholarship on “great spaces,” a central concept in the political thought of Nazi Germany, has previously focused on legal debates while neglecting important economic contexts. The journalist Ferdinand Fried deserves to be considered one of the major economic theorists of “great spaces” in the Weimar, Nazi, and early postwar eras. Fried argued that the world economy was inexorably passing from globalization through economic nationalism to a reconstituted “world economy of great spaces.” Deglobalization, as he depicted it, was a global experience that produced similar economic and political outcomes around the world. His writings anticipated and inspired Nazi propaganda aimed at legitimizing German hegemony in Europe. His ideas, and their reception, illustrate how dialectical and global visions of history have resonated with conservative intellectuals during crises of the world economy.

The Question of the Political: Back to Where You Once Belonged?

Other Others ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 19-35
Author(s):  
Sergey Dolgopolski
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
The Other ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Ontology ◽  
Jacques Ranciere ◽  
Positive Law ◽  
Jacques Rancière

The chapter analyses how the question of the political in two currently predominant and competing schools of political thought, political theology, exemplified by Carl Schmitt, and political ontology, exemplified by Jacques Rancière. The notion of the other others comes front and centre in this analysis. In political ontology, the concept of the political is predicated on an ability of a politician, a lawyer, or an artist to employ the philosophical, and in modern terms, “ontological” distinction between what is the case in each case and what seems to be the case in each case. In political theology, it is no longer “being” as opposed to “seeming”, but rather an ability to represent as radically distinct from any particular content conveyed. The chapter further traces foundations of both political theology and political ontology in Kant’s transcendentalism -- in particular in the necessity by which transcendentalism denies “positive law,” which Christianity traditionally ascribed to the Jews. The balance of the chapter shows how, however mutually exclusive, both political theology and political ontology remain intersubjective in their scope and thereby both efface and help notice what, in the following chapters will emerge on the pages of the Talmud as interpersonal rather than intersubjective dimension of the political.

Environmental scientists: advocates as well?

1999 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 163-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
NORMAN MYERS
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Political ◽  
Valuable Resource ◽  
National Academy Of Sciences ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
Professional Credibility ◽  
Academy Of Sciences ◽  
Policy Arena

What should be the response of environmental scientists when the world and the Earth appear to be heading toward exceptional crisis? Some scientists have signed up to public assertions that there indeed could be environmental Armageddon ahead (e.g. Union of Concerned Scientists 1992; US National Academy of Sciences and Royal Society of London 1992). Other scientists proclaim that our most valuable resource is not environmental well-being but professional credibility; the 'cry wolf' risk is the key determinant. Others appear to prefer to be scientists pure and simple, eschewing the policy arena, let alone the political scrum. Still others seem to think that warning of prospective crisis, even warning amongst themselves, is out of protocol's court.

scholarly journals ‘To Believe In This World, As It Is’: Immanence and the Quest for Political Activism

2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (supplement) ◽  
pp. 28-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathrin Thiele
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
The Political ◽  
Constructive Approach ◽  
Deleuze And Guattari ◽  
The World

In What is Philosophy?, Deleuze and Guattari make the claim that ‘[i]t may be that believing in this world, in this life, becomes our most difficult task, or the task of a mode of existence still to be discovered on our plane of immanence today. This is the empiricist conversion.’ What are we to make of such a calling? The paper explicates why and in what sense this statement is of exemplary significance both for an appropriate understanding of Deleuze's political thought and for a most timely conceptualisation of politics in a world so clearly defined by immanence, and nothing but immanence. I argue that Deleuze's rigorously constructive approach to the world is not beyond politics, as some recent readings have declared (e.g. those of Badiou and Hallward). Rather, we have to appreciate that in Deleuze and Guattari's demand for a ‘belief in this world’ the political intersects with the dimension of the ethical in such a way that our understanding of both is transformed. Only after this ‘empiricist conversion’ can we truly think of a Deleuzian politics that does justice to a plane of immanence ‘immanent only to itself’.

scholarly journals At Home in the World: Wandering Earth, Environmentalism, and Reimagined Homelands

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Rojas
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
World Order ◽  
Chinese Film ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
International Audience ◽  
Original Novella ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract Based on a 2000 novella by Cixin Liu with the same title, Frant Gwo’s 2019 film Wandering Earth has been celebrated as China’s first big-budget science fiction film. As a Chinese film with a global theme that simultaneously targets both a domestic and an international audience, accordingly, the work invites a reflection on the relationship between the local and the global—on how we understand the concept of home, and what it might mean to be home in the world. This essay, accordingly, examines three intersecting ways in which Wandering Earth (both the film and the original novella) explores the relationship between home and the world, including the status of the Earth as an ecological system, the planet’s status as a lived environment, as well as a set of contemporary geopolitical discourses about China’s shifting position within the contemporary world order, and particularly its relationship to the Global South.

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