Kelsen’s Style of Political Thinking

2021 ◽  
pp. 123-145
Author(s):  
Robert Schuett

What is political realism other than a form of political analysis and speaking truth to power? What is the national interest other than an ideological fiction of political idealism? The concluding chapter ties two intellectual halves together: there is Kelsen the gentle liberal and champion of open society ideals, and there is Kelsen the no-nonsense realist of political and international life. The synthesised progressive realist doesn’t believe in magic bullets or easy formulas: when it comes to the question of progress, there is the real You and the real Me, and in between, in some intimate place, is the twilight zone where the real political battle rages. What real realists do is take this struggle for power and peace to the international arena and work unceasingly towards global reform.

1999 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miroslav Nincic

This article discusses possible interpretations of the concept of national interest, with a view to providing a conception more analytically useful than those that have dominated the literature. It argues against the two most prevalent approaches. The first, most obviously represented by political realism, relies on a single overarching assumption that both encompasses the national interest and provides a standard for assessing how successfully it is pursued. The second, identifies a finite set of national objectives which, by possessing a large measure of the formal attributes by which the national interest is defined, are considered its proper subsets. While both approaches have their virtues, each is flawed as a method for establishing correspondence between policy and interest. The approach proposed here relies on a different principle altogether—the nature of the political procedure via which judgments about the link between foreign policy and national interest are made. The article argues that our ability to judge whether a policy does serve the national interest is intimately connected to how democratic the decision behind the policy is.


2021 ◽  
pp. 324-324
Author(s):  
Martin Wight

Wight described this book as a ‘primer or introduction’ to American realism concerning international politics, with attention to the views of Halle, Kennan, Lippmann, Morgenthau, Niebuhr, Nitze, and Spykman, among others. Thompson highlights continuities with traditional diplomatic theory, illustrated notably by Churchill’s statesmanship and political philosophy. In Wight’s view the book presents ‘original thinking of a high order’. Moreover, Thompson ‘brings out more clearly than some realists the limitations of the “national interest” principle’. Wight concludes that Thompson stands out as ‘a realist of the centre, likely neither to be accused of disparaging morality, nor to be so emotionally disturbed by the consequences of clear vision that he emigrates for Utopia.’


1985 ◽  
pp. 49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Tonelson
Keyword(s):  

2000 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 33-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ilan Pappe

Mainstream Zionism (now comprising both Labor and Likud) is increasingly being challenged by the Right and Left. Post-Zionism has exposed the intellectual fallacies underlying traditional Zionism's attempt to combine ethnic segregation with an open society, but it is the moral and ideological substitute offered by neo-Zionism, opting for ethnic segregation as an ultimate goal, that is mounting the real political challenge. This article argues that while mainstream Zionists will delineate the space of a future Israel (by drawing the borders in a settlement with the Palestinians), the neo-Zionists will cast the ideological content into this space (by defining the identity and orientation of Israeli society).


2015 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 283-303 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Hall

In recent years, a number of realist thinkers have charged much contemporary political theory with being idealistic and moralistic. While the basic features of the realist counter-movement are reasonably well understood, realism is still considered a critical, primarily negative creed which fails to offer a positive, alternative way of thinking normatively about politics. Aiming to counteract this general perception, in this article I draw on Bernard Williams’s claims about how to construct a politically coherent conception of liberty from the non-political value of freedom. I do this because Williams’s argument provides an illuminating example of the distinctive nature of realist political thinking and its attractions. I argue that Williams’s account of realist political thinking challenges the orthodox moralist claim that normative political arguments must be guided by an ideal ethical theory. I then spell out the repercussions Williams’s claims about the significance of political opposition and non-moralised accounts of motivation have for our understanding of the role and purpose of political theory. I conclude by defending the realist claim that action-guiding political theory should accordingly take certain features of our politics as given, most centrally the reality of political opposition and the passions and experiences that motivate them. On this reading political realism offers a viable way of thinking about political values which cannot be understood in terms of the categories of intellectual separation – ideal/nonideal or fact-insensitive/fact-sensitive – that have marked political theory in recent years.


2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 100-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Beardsworth

This article considers convergence between classical realism and critical theory in relation to pressing political problems. It argues that the spirit of both traditions can help develop critical reflection on the state as an agent of change. I suggest that too much recent critical theorization has avoided the state in its attention to social movements, but that a critical concept of state leadership is now required to address global threats and challenges. The article rehearses this critical concept in three stages. It considers, first, how the concept of national interest drives statecraft in the authorship of Hans Morgenthau and how complex this concept is both in its own terms and with regard to the political effects of the nuclear revolution. It develops, second, a multi-layered concept of responsibility as the guiding concept of statecraft in a world of increasingly incompatible demands. It argues, third, that these concepts of national interest and responsibility need to be aligned with global imperatives so that a greater marriage between the global and the national is possible. I conclude that it is the task of contemporary critical thought to address this present through a reimagined political realism.


Author(s):  
A. Ursul ◽  
D. Kalyuzhnaya

The article points out that the progressive deterioration of the social and environmental situation on the planet and the emergence of the real threat of anthropo-ecological catastrophe necessitate the abandoning of the current model of civilizational development and the formation (first in theory and then in practice) of an ultimately new one. This innovative strategy, which means taking account of the main socio-natural contradiction, is called a sustainable development strategy. This new form of civilizational development must become rationally governed on a planetary scale, thus providing the survival and temporal continuation of the existence of humans and biosphere. The authors regard sustainable development as a vitally important (later on - dominating) orientation of international, political and global processes. This vision makes it crucially important to embed this conception into the proper scientific disciplines and research fields. The authors make use of the A.D. Bogaturov's conceptualization approach for the scientific discipline of world politics and consider the latter as an evolutionary form of global political development. The real global integrity of the world political system serves as a global attractor of this evolutionary transformation, and this aspect represents the specific pattern of all global processes. It is supposed that these processes will unfold through transition to sustainable development. The development of the global system of political actorship is considered a fundamental process within the growth of overall complexity of the global political structure. In the evolutionary sustainable development perspective it should result in the formation of an integral subject of global politics and global activity. The article shows that the dominating state-centric approach reproduces the political model of unsustainable development, which is characterized by archaic prerequisites of political realism, spontaneous formation of system, and growing threats to global security.


The work of Kaufman "the Myth of Hegel and the technology of its creation" was first published in 1959 in the United States. Despite the historical significance of Hegel's philosophy, some of his critics do not bother to study the primary sources and fundamentally important research literature. This opens up the possibility not only to misunderstandings, but deliberate speculation and distorted, including politically biased, interpretations, substitute the real views of Hegel myth-making dealing with them a thinker. The work of Kaufman discloses a technique of creation a mythological conception of Hegel's philosophy on the material provided by well-known and influential ideologist of the liberal doctrine of the "open society" of Karl Popper.


Author(s):  
Дієго Феліпе Арбелаез-Кампіллo ◽  
Магда Джулісса Рохас-Багамон ◽  
Олег Геннадійович Данильян

Problem setting. Although modern humanity has proclaimed the universality of human dignity and desperately upholds this value, which is fully in harmony with freedom, equality and fraternity, the truth is that in reality it has not yet been able to go beyond the status of a citizen of the nation state in its legal and political conventions. . In this sense, a very important issue is the representation of the real situation around the categories of "universal citizenship", "human rights" and "globalization" in the midst of the geopolitical conflict in Latin America caused by the persecution of 21st century socialism.             Paper objective. This critical essay aims to discuss the real significance of such political and legal categories as "universal citizenship", "human rights" and "globalization" in the midst of the geopolitical conflict that led to the persecution of 21st century socialism in Latin America. Methodology. The methodological field of the research uses documentary observation and dialectical hermeneutics, which help to compare and reconcile categories with different semantic contexts to reconstruct their true meaning. The technique of writing this research was the methodological procedure of the hermeneutic circle, which is a sequential analysis of numerous written documentary sources, combined in a kind of dialogic context with hidden messages that can be read between the lines, as well as interpretive theories and critical thinking. Paper main body. There is much in common between the contemporary political and philosophical programs of the Western cultural space, of which Latin Americans are a part, and the ideas of universal citizenship, globalization, and human rights in a spirit of deep militant universalism that function fully today not only as abstract theories at the disposal of peoples and nations who continue to work to improve their living conditions and strengthen their freedom to exist and act in a better world. As for the tradition of human rights as a modern expression of natural law, it dates back to ancient times and even dates back to the great religions, which in their own way developed and substantiated the idea of human dignity. The history of the Institute of Human Rights has a pronounced anthropocentric character and deserves to be expanded in accordance with the geopolitical realities of the modern world, in order to protect the indisputable value of all life forms affected by such phenomena as global warming and the associated greenhouse effect. economic growth that requires technological and industrial modernization. For its part, "globalization with a human face" means the ability to interconnect and enrich not only material and financial resources, due to the insatiability of international markets, but also the cycle of knowledge and people required by modern world democracies to strengthen their social and human capital. . In this context, the idea of global or universal citizenship, while seeming utopian, is of paramount importance as it broadens the political phenomenon of citizenship, which is vital to modern democracies or polyarchies, forgetting the tradition of history ruled by supreme forces and structures. Although, according to K. Popper, already the historicist concept assigned a fundamental role in building a reality conducive to the exercise of freedom, the citizen, conscious and active. Thus, if globalization is reduced purely to the internationalization of capital and selective human and technological resources solely in the interests of corporate elites and does not turn into a globalization of social welfare and dignity - a process in which universal citizenship would be a logical consequence, then partial globalization, which can do little to promote an open society in the 21st century. Conclusions of the research. The study concludes that if globalization is reduced to the internationalization of capital and individual human and technological resources for the benefit of the corporate elite and does not extend to the globalization of social welfare and dignity, where universal citizenship would be a logical consequence, such globalization is unlikely to contribute building an open society of the XXI century.


2021 ◽  
Vol IV (IV) ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Ahsan Riaz ◽  
Muqarrab Akbar ◽  
Rafidah Nawaz

Since the Second World War realism paradigm has been most prominent and successful in the discipline of international relations. Realist theory interprets the role of the state in world politics in which the state's national interest is the primary variable. To attain the state's national interest power (in military and economic terms) is a very essential tool. The element of power has shaped the anarchic political system. HBO's Season' Game of Throne' is most compatible with the approaches of the international political system, especially to understand the realist paradigm. In this season different power centers were playing the game of power politics. Iron Throne had a hegemonic status and was considered as a supreme power in the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, which created the anarchy. Competing for the power, losing the power, and attaining the power was creating the an archical situation in the whole season in which different actors and kingdoms made their strategies and joined uneven alliances. So Game of Throne is providing a better way to comprehend the international anarchy and political realism.


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