Discussion

1918 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-214
Author(s):  
Robert T. Crane

In his admirable analysis of the juristic theory of the state, Dr. Willoughby has said that “analytical political philosophy” views the state “simply as an instrumentality for the creation and enforcement of law.” The point of view from which this philosophy proceeds is thus fixed. It is professedly the legal point of view.It is, however, precisely by peculiar and distinctive points of view from which phenomena are observed, that sciences or philosophies are differentiated one from another. Two philosophies cannot occupy the same standpoint. If there is to be discussion of a philosophy of politics which asserts its viewpoint to be that of a philosophy of law, then it is necessary to define very clearly the relationship between politics and law.As these concepts have been defined by the analytical school, it is obvious that they are intimately connected. By the opponents of this school it may be objected that, when correctly conceived, politics and law are perfectly distinct. It may perhaps be held that what is known as law in modern society is not essentially political at all; but that it has merely happened as an accident of modern political development that a part of the law has received the additional and nonessential sanction of political authority.

Author(s):  
Jean-Jacques Rousseau

In his Discourses (1755), Rousseau argues that inequalities of rank, wealth, and power are the inevitable result of the civilizing process. If inequality is intolerable - and Rousseau shows with unparalledled eloquence how it robs us not only of our material but also of our psychological independence - then how can we recover the peaceful self-sufficiency of life in the state of nature? We cannot return to a simpler time, but measuring the costs of progress may help us to imagine alternatives to the corruption and oppressive conformity of modern society. Rousseau's sweeping account of humanity's social and political development epitomizes the innovative boldness of the Englightment, and it is one of the most provocative and influential works of the eighteenth century. This new translation includes all Rousseau's own notes, and Patrick Coleman's introduction builds on recent key scholarship, considering particularly the relationship between political and aesthetic thought.


2021 ◽  
pp. 136843102098541
Author(s):  
Krzysztof Kędziora

The debate between Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls concerns the question of how to do political philosophy under conditions of cultural pluralism, if the aim of political philosophy is to uncover the normative foundation of a modern liberal democracy. Rawls’s political liberalism tries to bypass the problem of pluralism, using the intellectual device of the veil of ignorance, and yet paradoxically at the same time it treats it as something given and as an arbiter of justification within the political conception of justice. Habermas argues that Rawls not only incorrectly operationalizes the moral point of view from which we discern what is just but also fails to capture the specificity of democracy which is given by internal relations between politics and law. This deprives Rawls’s political philosophy of the conceptual tools needed to articulate the normative foundation of democracy.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2019 (4) ◽  
pp. 277-294
Author(s):  
Yong Huang

AbstractIt has been widely observed that virtue ethics, regarded as an ethics of the ancient, in contrast to deontology and consequentialism, seen as an ethics of the modern (Larmore 1996: 19–23), is experiencing an impressive revival and is becoming a strong rival to utilitarianism and deontology in the English-speaking world in the last a few decades. Despite this, it has been perceived as having an obvious weakness in comparison with its two major rivals. While both utilitarianism and deontology can at the same time serve as an ethical theory, providing guidance for individual persons and a political philosophy, offering ways to structure social institutions, virtue ethics, as it is concerned with character traits of individual persons, seems to be ill-equipped to be politically useful. In recent years, some attempts have been made to develop the so-called virtue politics, but most of them, including my own (see Huang 2014: Chapter 5), are limited to arguing for the perfectionist view that the state has the obligation to do things to help its members develop their virtues, and so the focus is still on the character traits of individual persons. However important those attempts are, such a notion of virtue politics is clearly too narrow, unless one thinks that the only job the state is supposed to do is to cultivate its people’s virtues. Yet obviously the government has many other jobs to do such as making laws and social policies, many if not most of which are not for the purpose of making people virtuous. The question is then in what sense such laws and social policies are moral in general and just in particular. Utilitarianism and deontology have their ready answers in the light of utility or moral principles respectively. Can virtue ethics provide its own answer? This paper attempts to argue for an affirmative answer to this question from the Confucian point of view, as represented by Mencius. It does so with a focus on the virtue of justice, as it is a central concept in both virtue ethics and political philosophy.


Author(s):  
Alessandra Silveira ◽  
José Gomes André ◽  

This paper includes the exam of a Ph.D thesis about James Madison’s political philosophy, as well as the answers presented by the candidate to several criticai observations. Various themes are considered, though always surrounding Madison’s work: the peculiar characteristics of his federalism, the relationship between the idea of human nature and the elaboration of political models, the political and constitutional controversies that Madison entangled with several figures from its time (namely Alexander Hamilton), the problem of “judicial review” and the place of “constitutionality control” taken from a reflexive and institutional point of view, and other similar themes.


2020 ◽  
pp. 116-121
Author(s):  
Kseniia Ivanova

Problem setting. One of the subsystems of the National Innovative System is the field of technology transfer. Considering the NIS from the point of view of the interests pursued by its participants (subjects), the mechanism introduced by the legislator, providing legal regulation of certain social relations, directly depends on what interests they pursue. Analysis of recent researches and publications. The following scientists drew attention to the problems of regulation of relations in the field of technology transfer: O. M. Davydiuk, Yu. M. Kapitsa, D. S. Makhnovsky, V. S. Milash, O. P. Orlyuk, B. M. Paduchak, O. E. Simson. However, further study of these relations remains relevant especially in view of the constant updating of current legislation. Target of research is to analyze the mechanisms for satisfying the interests of participants (subjects) of technology transfer, which are introduced in the current legislation and are proposed for the future. Article’s main body. Considering the national innovative system from the point of view of the interests pursued by its participants (subjects), we can distinguish the interests of the author of the technology, recipient, technology donor and the state, whose interests determine the overall vector of the transfer process. The primary subject in technology transfer is the author of the technology – an individual who can act as a direct participant (subject) of technology transfer and be its donor, who independently decides the legal fate of the technology and / or its components. However, the author of the technology may not be a donor when it comes to the relationship between him and his employer as a performer of scientific research and development work for the budget. In this case, although the technology is created by the direct work of the author-employee, property rights to the technology are assigned to the enterprise, research institution, organization or institution of higher education as the executor of these works (organization-developer), and the author is entitled to royalties. Thus, a compromise is reached between the parties and provides the necessary balance of interests of the employer and the author. In the transfer of technology, which occurs through the conclusion of the contract, the interests of the parties to the contract are mutually conditioned. These entities, realizing their property interests, act in contractual relations on the principle of dispositiveness, ie equality of the parties, and the state does not interfere in these relations. And only when the sphere of interests of the subjects of transfer affects the interests of the state, the relationship is complicated by the establishment of additional requirements and / or procedures (in particular, the export of technologies created or purchased from the budget). The interest of the state in this case is due to the purpose of preserving national and technological security, control over the misuse of budget funds during the financing of R & D, solving other strategic tasks. The protective mechanism of legal support of the state’s interests introduced in the Law is implemented through the establishment of requirements for the use of technology and / or their components, created or purchased for budget funds, mainly on the territory of Ukraine; conducting state expertise for technologies and / or their components, which are purchased for budget funds (including through their import). Meanwhile, the world practice is aware of other means aimed at protecting the interests of the state, such as control over the re-export of technology in order to eliminate the possibility of further transfer of technology from its donor to others. Conclusions and prospects for the development. The field of technology transfer is characterized by a combination of imperative and dispositive methods of legal regulation. When concluding a technology transfer agreement, the parties agree on its terms, based on their own interests and the requirements for certain types of agreements. However, lawyers note: the wider the range of interests (individual, group), which are directly or indirectly affected by the contract, the more important should be the degree of legal regulation. Therefore, when it comes to the interests of the state, the legislator should not neglect the ability to imperatively determine the requirements to be met by the parties in technology transfer and which provide for the implementation of additional incentives for the introduction of domestic technologies into circulation, their practical application in production.


2021 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-124
Author(s):  
Francesca Negro

The cherry orchard marks the end of Anton Chekhov’s life, consecrating him as the author who defined the threshold of the new epoch. In this article, I construe the garden as the motif linking Chekhov’s sensitivity to the general spirit of his era, revealing his poetics to the global stage as the distinctive mark of a historical and socioeconomic shift. On this path, I will clarify how the subtle difference between sour cherries and sweet cherries becomes a symbol of Chekhov’s dramatic construction, and how his poetics are built on nuances and subtle shifts in meanings, representing the irrevocable fading of a culture. A philological reflection combined with an attentive reading of Chekhov’s letters, Stanislavsky’s memoirs and scenic sketches reveal the author’s interest in the relationship between man and nature as well as the need to read his work from a more spatial-oriented standpoint. Chekhov clearly anticipates the so-called ‘spatial turn’, approaching space not through the description of a specific landscape or dramaturgical setting, but from a phenomenological point of view, leading him to profound reflections on the relationship between physical planning and socio-political development, as later conceptualised by key social thinkers such as Henry Lefebvre and Edward Soja. Chekhov’s dramaturgical construction and symbology are the result of this awareness and endless passion for nature in all its forms.


2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 39-57
Author(s):  
Karen Green ◽  

Can Catharine Macaulay’s enlightenment democratic republicanism be justified from the point of view of contemporary naturalism? Naturalist accounts of political authority tend to be realist and pessimistic, foreclosing the possibility of enlightenment. Macaulay’s utopian political philosophy relies on belief in a good God, whose existence underpins the possibility of moral and political progress. This paper attempts a restoration of her optimistic utopianism in a reconciliation, grounded in a revision of natural law, of naturalist and utopian attitudes to political theory. It is proposed that the coevolution of language, moral law, and conscience (the disposition to judge one’s own actions in the light of moral principles) can be explained as solutions to the kinds of tragedy of the commons situations facing our ancestors. Moral dispositions evolved, but, in the light of its function, law is subject to rational critique. Liberal democracy plausibly offers the best prospect for developing rationally justifiable law.


Author(s):  
Martin Partington

This chapter focuses on administrative justice. It reflects on the nature of administrative law and the role it plays in modern society, overseeing the relationship between the citizen and the state. Again adopting the holisitic approach, the chapter discusses not only the role of the courts, but also the tribunals, ombudsmen, and other bodies and processes that together make up the institutional framework of administrative justice. It notes some of the key changes being introduced as a result of the current transformation programme. It also considers the particular responsibilities of Members of Parliament in holding government to account. In addition, it asks who has general oversight of the system and whether current oversight arrangements are adequate.


2007 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 110-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suzanne Mettler ◽  
Andrew Milstein

Although scholars of American political development (APD) have helped transform many aspects of the study of U.S. politics over the last quarter-century, they have barely begun to use the powerful analytical tools of this approach to elucidate the relationship between government and citizens. APD research has probed deeply into the processes of state-building and the creation and implementation of specific policies, yet has given little attention to how such development affects the lives of individuals and the ways in which they relate to government. Studies routinely illuminate how policies influence the political roles of elites and organized groups, but barely touch on how the state shapes the experiences and responses of ordinary individuals. As a result, we know little about how governance has influenced citizenship over time or how those changes have, in turn, affected politics.


1996 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 235-260
Author(s):  
Geneviève Nootens

Asserting the relationship between liberalism and nationalism is no easy matter. Liberal philosophers have been very suspicious of the phenomenon of nationalism, partly for historical reasons (e.g., national socialism) and partly for philosophical ones (amongst which a belief that liberal principles would override people's need for identification with ethnocultural communities). But even if some still consider the expression ‘liberal nationalism’ to be an oxymoron, most of current Anglo-American liberal work on the subject leans toward a more nuanced approach, trying to specify how hospitable liberalism should be to nationalistic claims. The challenge, from this point of view, is to explain why and how political philosophy can incorporate national attachments to amoralargument on people's identity and distributive justice. In fact, it seems that nationalist rhetoric has found in identity politics a rather safe (even if narrow) way of entering liberal discourse.


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