Modernity and the classical Theory of Democracy

2007 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-38
Author(s):  
Raymond Boudon
Keyword(s):  
Classical Theory ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Good Sense ◽  
General Will ◽  
Impartial Spectator ◽  
Political Consensus ◽  
Theory Of Democracy

The classical theory of democracy starts from a model where good sense and common sense play a major role, as the notions of the “impartial spectator" (Adam Smith) or the “general will” (Jean-Jacques Rousseau) show, among others. These notions are indispensable to explain many social and political phenomend of our time: phenomena of political consensus on given issues or of short, mid and long-term moral, political, institutional and social evoltion.

Temporary “liquid” Implant for Congenital Glaucoma (long-term results)

2020 ◽  
pp. 49-65
Author(s):  
N Bobrova ◽  
N Trofimova
Keyword(s):  
Surgical Treatment ◽  
Postoperative Complications ◽  
Hypotensive Effect ◽  
Congenital Glaucoma ◽  
Long Term Results ◽  
General Will ◽  
Visual Functions ◽  
Advanced Stages ◽  
Intraocular Fluid

The aim of the work was to analyze the long-term results of using a temporary “liquid” implant in the surgery of congenital glaucoma in children. The basis of the developed method of filtrative antiglaucomatous surgery (Patent of Ukraine No. 45099 of 2009) – viscosinusotrabeculotomy – has been set the task of reducing the risk of developing intra- and postoperative complications, reducing the scarring rate and maintaining the newly created ways of the intraocular fluid outflow, which in general will increase the effectiveness of surgical treatment of congenital glaucoma in children. 54 children (91 eyes) with simple congenital glaucoma at the age of 1 to 36 months were operated on average (8.7 ± 8.2) months. The persistent and long-lasting hypotensive effect achieved due to viscosinusotrabeculotomy in children with developed and far-advanced stages of congenital glaucoma stops the processes of stretching of the membranes of the eye and stabilizes their size, which in general allows preserving and visual functions improving, in infancy – creating conditions for their formation.

The Many Faces of Socioeconomic Change

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Toye
Keyword(s):  
Socioeconomic Development ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
First Century ◽  
Social Progress ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Face ◽  
Scientific Expertise ◽  
The Many ◽  
Century Development

This book provides a survey of different ways in which economic sociocultural and political aspects of human progress have been studied since the time of Adam Smith. Inevitably, over such a long time span, it has been necessary to concentrate on highlighting the most significant contributions, rather than attempting an exhaustive treatment. The aim has been to bring into focus an outline of the main long-term changes in the way that socioeconomic development has been envisaged. The argument presented is that the idea of socioeconomic development emerged with the creation of grand evolutionary sequences of social progress that were the products of Enlightenment and mid-Victorian thinkers. By the middle of the twentieth century, when interest in the accelerating development gave the topic a new impetus, its scope narrowed to a set of economically based strategies. After 1960, however, faith in such strategies began to wane, in the face of indifferent results and general faltering of confidence in economists’ boasts of scientific expertise. In the twenty-first century, development research is being pursued using a research method that generates disconnected results. As a result, it seems unlikely that any grand narrative will be created in the future and that neo-liberalism will be the last of this particular kind of socioeconomic theory.

Our Obligation to Future Generations

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amartya Sen
Keyword(s):  
Adam Smith ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Intergenerational Justice ◽  
Impartial Spectator ◽  
Effective Power ◽  
Basic Plane

Our reasoned sense of obligations to others can arise from at least three possible sources: cooperation, having caused harm, and effective power to improve suffering. The last source, this chapter argues, is particularly important in considering our obligations to future generations. It draws on a line of reasoning that takes us well beyond contractarian motivations to the idea of the “impartial spectator” as developed by Adam Smith. The interests of future generations come into the story because they are important in our attempt to be impartial spectators. The obligation of power contrasts with the mutual obligations for cooperation at the basic plane of motivational justification. In the context of climate concerns and intergenerational justice, this asymmetry-embracing approach seems to allow an easier entry for understanding our obligations.

Subject of Economic Science

2015 ◽  
pp. 115-120
Author(s):  
D. Egorov
Keyword(s):  
Human Behavior ◽  
Classical Theory ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Economic Science ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Consciousness ◽  
Wealth Of Nations ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Relationship

Adam Smith defined economics as “the science of the nature and causes of the wealth of nations” (implicitly appealing – in reference to the “wealth” – to the “value”). Neo-classical theory views it as a science “which studies human behavior in terms of the relationship between the objectives and the limited funds that may have a different use of”. The main reason that turns the neo-classical theory (that serves as the now prevailing economic mainstream) into a tool for manipulation of the public consciousness is the lack of measure (elimination of the “value”). Even though the neo-classical definition of the subject of economics does not contain an explicit rejection of objective measures the reference to “human behavior” inevitably implies methodological subjectivism. This makes it necessary to adopt a principle of equilibrium: if you can not objectively (using a solid measurement) compare different states of the system, we can only postulate the existence of an equilibrium point to which the system tends. Neo-classical postulate of equilibrium can not explain the situation non-equilibrium. As a result, the neo-classical theory fails in matching microeconomics to macroeconomics. Moreover, a denial of the category “value” serves as a theoretical basis and an ideological prerequisite of now flourishing manipulative financial technologies. The author believes in the following two principal definitions: (1) economics is a science that studies the economic system, i.e. a system that creates and recombines value; (2) value is a measure of cost of the object. In our opinion, the value is the information cost measure. It should be added that a disclosure of the nature of this category is not an obligatory prerequisite of its introduction: methodologically, it is quite correct to postulate it a priori. The author concludes that the proposed definitions open the way not only to solve the problem of the measurement in economics, but also to address the issue of harmonizing macro- and microeconomics.

Beyond equality of opportunity: from 'common sense' to 'good sense'

Soundings ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 79 (79) ◽  
pp. 78-93
Author(s):  
Tony Jefferson
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Equality Of Opportunity ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
Good Sense ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
The Social ◽  
Ready Availability ◽  
The Relationship

This article addresses the Labour Party's apparent inability to capitalise on the ready availability of good, progressive ideas. It suggests the key is to be found in the idea that the Labour Party no longer represents working-class people, a disjunction that can be best understood using Gramsci's distinction between 'common sense' and 'good sense'. Good sense is a more coherent development of everyday, commonsense thinking, based on its 'healthy nucleus'. However, it must never lose contact with common sense and become abstract and disconnected from life. Using this distinction, a critique of the common-sense notion of meritocracy follows, since the educational disconnect between Labour politicians and their working-class supporters is one of its malign results. This critique builds from the evidence of working-class rejection of meritocracy - the healthy nucleus that recognises the inadequacy of its justifying principle of equality of opportunity. To this is counterposed a good-sense notion of equality - one that embraces equal access to the means for achieving a flourishing life. This notion of equality is then used to explore a number of currently circulating political ideas concerned with equality, both their relationship to common sense and their potential to meet good sense criteria. These ideas include universal basic income, the Conservatives' proposed 'levelling up' agenda, and the demands of Black Lives Matter for racial justice, including the demand to 'defund the police'. A second thread is focused on the relationship between these discourses of common or good sense and the social forces with which they can be connected.

Utopie und Lebenszeit in der Aufklärung

Daphnis ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 655-681
Author(s):  
Oliver Bach
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Common Interest ◽  
Main Task ◽  
General Will ◽  
Utopian Literature ◽  
Substantial Problem ◽  
The Common ◽  
Existential Dimension

Abstract The aim of this article is to outline how Hans Blumenberg’s conception of lifetime and world time (Lebenszeit und Weltzeit, 1986) can help to elucidate a substantial problem of utopian literature and its development from the 16th to the 18th century: utopias always try to illustrate the ways by which the single members of a political community harmonise with the community as a whole. The congruence of private good and common good, private interest and common interest, private will and general will is a main task of 17th and 18th century political philosophy. Blumenberg’s book, however, allows us to focus on the existential dimension of this harmonisation: under which circumstances may the single members become so wise and virtuous within their lifetimes that they always know about and comply with the common good? 18th century utopias seem to find answers to this question in theories of moral sense, common sense and aesthetic education.

DeepaMehta

2011 ◽  
pp. 154-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jörg Richter ◽  
Jurij Poelchau
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Birthday Party ◽  
Underlying Principle ◽  
New Findings ◽  
New Knowledge ◽  
The World ◽  
And Linguistics ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Common Sense Knowledge

A crucial experience during my time at university— computer science (with focus on AI) and linguistics—was the documentary “Maschinenträume” (1988) by Peter Krieg. It features the long-term AI project “Cyc,” in which Doug Lenat and his team try to represent common sense knowledge in a computer. When Cyc started, in 1984, it was already known that many AI projects failed due to the machine’s lack of common sense knowledge. Common sense knowledge includes, for example, that two things cannot be in the same place at the same time, or that people die, or what happens at a children’s birthday party. During the night, while the researchers are sleeping, Cyc tries to create new knowledge from its programmed facts and rules. One morning the researchers were surprised by one of Cyc’s new findings: “Most people are famous.” Well, this was simply a result of the researchers having entered, besides themselves, only celebrities like, for example, Einstein, Gandhi, and the U.S. presidents. The machine-dreaming researchers, however, were in no way despondent about this obviously wrong finding, because they figured they would only have to enter the rest of the population, too. The underlying principle behind this thought is that it is possible to model the whole world in the form of ontologies. The meaning of the world can be captured in its entirety in the computer. From that moment the computer can know everything that humans know and can produce unlimited new insights. At the end of the film Peter Krieg nevertheless asks: “If one day the knowledge of the whole world is represented in a machine, what can humans do with it, the machine having never seen the world.”

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