From Crusades to Colonization: Violence in Secular and Religious Political Theory

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Xavier Scott
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Modern Philosophy ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
International Law ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
State Power ◽  
Charles Taylor ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Beliefs And Values

This paper examines the transition in political philosophy between the medieval and early-modern periods by focusing on the emergence of sovereignty doctrine. Scholars such as Charles Taylor and John Rawls have focused on the ability of modern-states to overcome conflicts between different religious confessionals. In contrast, this paper seeks to examine some of the peace-promoting features of Latin-Christendom and some of the conflict-promoting features of modern-secular states. The Christian universalism of the medieval period is contrasted with the colonial ventures promoted by the Peace of Westphalia. This paper’s goal is not to argue that secularism is in fact more violent than religion. Rather, it seeks to demonstrate the major role that religion played in early modern philosophy and the development of sovereignty doctrine. It argues against the view that the modern, secular state is capable of neutrality vis-à-vis religion, and also combats the view that the secular nature of modern international law means that it is neutral to the different beliefs and values of the world’s peoples. These observations emphasize the ways in which state power and legitimacy are at the heart of the secular turn in political philosophy. 

scholarly journals From Crusades to Colonization: Violence in Secular and Religious Political Theory

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Xavier Scott
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Modern Philosophy ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
International Law ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
State Power ◽  
Charles Taylor ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Beliefs And Values

This paper examines the transition in political philosophy between the medieval and early-modern periods by focusing on the emergence of sovereignty doctrine. Scholars such as Charles Taylor and John Rawls have focused on the ability of modern-states to overcome conflicts between different religious confessionals. In contrast, this paper seeks to examine some of the peace-promoting features of Latin-Christendom and some of the conflict-promoting features of modern-secular states. The Christian universalism of the medieval period is contrasted with the colonial ventures promoted by the Peace of Westphalia. This paper’s goal is not to argue that secularism is in fact more violent than religion. Rather, it seeks to demonstrate the major role that religion played in early modern philosophy and the development of sovereignty doctrine. It argues against the view that the modern, secular state is capable of neutrality vis-à-vis religion, and also combats the view that the secular nature of modern international law means that it is neutral to the different beliefs and values of the world’s peoples. These observations emphasize the ways in which state power and legitimacy are at the heart of the secular turn in political philosophy. 

Introduction

John Rawls ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 53-60
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Real World ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Political Practice ◽  
The World ◽  
Ideal Standards ◽  
Principles Of Justice ◽  
The Ideal

What is the relation between political theory and political practice? In what ways can political philosophy help people to address real injustices in the world? John Rawls argues that an important role of political philosophy is to identify the ideal standards of justice at which we should aim in political practice. Other philosophers challenge this approach, arguing that Rawls’s idealizations are not useful as a guide for action or, worse, that they are an impediment to addressing actual injustices in the world. They argue, instead, that political philosophy ought to be focused on theorizing about the elimination of existing injustice. Still others argue that principles of justice should be identified without any constraint concerning the possibility of implementation or regulation in the real world at all....

scholarly journals A Theory of Argumentation: The Case of Ethical, Political, and Utopian Thinking

2021 ◽  
pp. 54-68
Author(s):  
Łukasz Perlikowski
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Utopian Thinking ◽  
Political Argumentation ◽  
Ways Of Thinking ◽  
Stephen Toulmin

A relevant problem in political philosophy and political theory is the distinction between political and utopian arguments. The boundary between these two types of argumentation may be blurred, which leads us to the point when we often deal with contaminations of both ways of thinking in individual positions. This involves, for example, presenting a utopian argument as a political argument and vice versa. The main purpose of the article is to organize these issues by applying the argumentation model developed by Stephen Toulmin to the analysis of both theoretical approaches. The three main problems of this work are: 1) the distinction between political and ethical arguments; 2) identifying the proper structure of political argumentation; 3) evaluation of the coherence of the idea of a realistic utopia (proposed by John Rawls).

UN reform, biopolitics, and global governmentality

2010 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans-Martin Jaeger
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
United Nations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
State Power ◽  
Fundamental Principle ◽  
Institutional Authority ◽  
Un Reform ◽  
Global Population

Commentary on the United Nations (UN) reform efforts of 2004–05 has broadly followed two different trajectories. International lawyers and political theorists have focused on the implications of reform for sovereignty as a fundamental principle of international law and international relations. International Relations (IR) scholars have discussed reform focusing on state power and the UN’s institutional authority. Against the background of these debates and drawing on Foucault’s political theory and related IR scholarship, this article argues that UN reform discourse indicates a biopolitical ‘reprogramming’ of contemporary sovereignty and global governance. The analysis ‘displaces’ the concerns with sovereignty, state power, and institutional authority by demonstrating that UN reform (also) constitutes the UN as a project of managing and regulating the global population through a variety of securitizing, economizing, and normalizing rationalities and techniques. The article illustrates this by pointing to the biopolitical rationales of reform conceptions of human security and collective security, and to (neo)liberal governmentalities of risk and responsibility, contractualism, benchmarking, and networks. It thereby challenges the conceptual and normative priority accorded to juridical sovereignty in international law, and to state- and institution-centric accounts in IR theorizations of UN-relayed global governance.

Reflections on Rawls

2008 ◽  
Vol 70 (2) ◽  
pp. 260-271
Author(s):  
Shaun P. Young
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Substantial Part ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Political Philosopher ◽  
English Speaking World ◽  
Number Of Individuals

Arguably, there have been few contemporary political theorists who have had as great an impact as John Rawls. During his lifetime his work was referred to as “epoch-making” and “cataclysmic in its effect” on the field of political theory. On numerous occasions he was proclaimed “the most important political philosopher of the twentieth century,” and other titles equally celebratory. A number of individuals have gone so far as to credit Rawls with reviving political philosophy, breathing new life into what was (according to Peter Laslett's now famous 1956 declaration) a dead discipline, once again making it a valid and valuable enterprise. While the accuracy of such a claim has been questioned, one fact seems indisputable: Rawls redefined late twentieth-century political theory, altering its “premises and principles.” Indeed, “political philosophy since the early 1970s has been—at least in the English-speaking world—in very substantial part a commentary on Rawls's work.”

scholarly journals Charles Taylor’s Critique of the Idea of Distributive Justice in Contemporary Political Philosophy

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-136
Author(s):  
Iqbal Hasanuddin
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Distributive Justice ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Charles Taylor ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
Basic Assumptions ◽  
Human Good ◽  
Do So

Charles Taylor is a Canadian Philosopher who is very critical to the idea of distributive justice from the liberal thinkers. One of them is John Rawls, especially his thought in A Theory of Justice. Then, this paper will examine Taylor’s view on that idea. To do so, I analyze Taylor’s Philosophy and the Human Sciences. Following Aristotelian way of thinking on the importance of society to achieve the human good, Taylor criticizes some basic assumptions which support the liberal idea of justice. For him, the emergence of the idea of distributive justice is caused by the failure of the modern thinkers to understand the essence of human being and its relation to society.

Discourse Delivered at the Consecration of the Elector of Cologne[Pl. 2:945–971]

Fénelon ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 120-140
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Modern Philosophy ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Central Theme ◽  
Early Modern Philosophy

The Discourse Delivered at the Consecration of the Elector of Cologne is a transcript of Fénelon’s sermon on the occasion of the 1707 consecration of Joseph-Clément of Bavaria, Elector and ultimately Archbishop of Cologne. Fénelon used this occasion to present his core lessons on what was at once a central theme of his political philosophy and a principal theme of early modern philosophy, one that indeed received particular attention in the seventeenth century in the wake of the writings of Hobbes and Spinoza: the proper relation of church and state, and the ways in which civil authorities ought to be disposed to ecclesiastical authorities.

The Perfectionist Turn

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas Den Uyl ◽  
Douglas Rasmussen
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Ethical Framework ◽  
Martha Nussbaum ◽  
Amartya Sen ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Ethical Thinking ◽  
Stephen Darwall ◽  
Do So

Contemporary political philosophy—especially the works of Martha Nussbaum, John Rawls, and Amartya Sen—has assumed it can in various ways separate itself from more comprehensive philosophical positions and frameworks, and much of contemporary ethics—especially the works of Gerald Gaus and Stephen Darwall—has assumed that ethics can be based on a legislative or juridical model. Den Uyl and Rasmussen challenge both these trends. They do so by amplifying an account of human flourishing, which they call “individualistic perfectionism,” that they presented in their earlier work, Norms of Liberty. They continue to challenge the assumption that a neo-Aristotelian ethical framework cannot support a liberal, non-perfectionist political theory by describing in greater detail the nature of the perfectionist ethical approach they utilized in their previous political theorizing. They show that individualistic perfectionism represents a major and powerful alternative to much contemporary ethical thinking.

Contemporary Political Philosophy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Will Kymlicka
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Charles Taylor ◽  
Robert Nozick ◽  
Ronald Dworkin ◽  
Liberal Egalitarianism ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The Many ◽  
Michael Sandel

Contemporary Political Philosophy has been revised to include many of the most significant developments in Anglo-American political philosophy in the last eleven years, particularly the new debates on political liberalism, deliberative democracy, civic republicanism, nationalism, and cultural pluralism. The text now includes two new chapters on citizenship theory and multiculturalism, in addition to updated chapters on utilitarianism, liberal egalitarianism, libertarianism, socialism, communitarianism, and feminism. The many thinkers discussed include G. A. Cohen, Ronald Dworkin, William Galston, Carol Gilligan, R. M. Hare, Catherine Mackinnon, David Miller, Philippe Van Parijs, Susan Okin, Robert Nozick, John Rawls, John Roemer, Michael Sandel, Charles Taylor, Michael Walzer, and Iris Young.

The Rawlsian Theory of International Law

1995 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 79-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fernando R. Tesón
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Recent Article ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
New Era ◽  
Considered Moral Judgments ◽  
The Right

Tesón critiques a recent article by John Rawls in which Rawls extends his acclaimed political theory to include international relations. Tesón first summarizes Rawls' theory and then presents a critique. With this essay, Rawls joins an already vigorous scholarly reaction against traditional state-centered models of international law and relations. When measured against such models, Rawls' theory of international law moves in the right direction in assigning a role, albeit a modest one, to human rights and political legitimacy. However, to the extent that Rawls' effort purports to be a rational reconstruction of international law for our new era (as he certainly intends it to be), it fails to capture central moral features of the international order. His proposal is still too forgiving of serious forms of oppression in the name of liberal tolerance. The theory thus falls short of matching the considered moral judgments prevailing in today's international community. Moreover, it fails Rawls' own test of epistemic adequacy.

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