scholarly journals Sur la soumission au pouvoir. Convergences et differences entre le Discours de la servitude volontaire d’Etienne de La Boétie et la pensée politique de Paul Ricœur

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 122-139
Author(s):  
Pierre-Olivier Monteil
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Paul Ricoeur ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Central Concept ◽  
The People ◽  
Paul Ricœur ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Way

This study undertakes a reading of Etienne de La Boétie’s Discours de la servitude volontaire, endeavoring to bring to light the way it convergences with and diverges from the political thought of Paul Ricœur, around the central concept of the will. On the basis of the twin notions of “denaturation” and of “pathology,” a course unfolds which aims at helping establish the people, in comparison with the institution of the State, through a political process revitalised by friendship. But the two thinkers differ when it comes to the resources of the will. This is reflected in the notion of freedom, conceived as absolute in La Boetie, while Ricœur emphasizes its contingency, which leads him to thematize it in terms of capabilities.

scholarly journals Social imagination, abused memory, and the political place of history in Memory, History, Forgetting

2014 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 35-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Esteban Lythgoe
Keyword(s):  
Paul Ricoeur ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Imagination ◽  
Cognitive Dimension ◽  
Paul Ricœur ◽  
Artificial Memory ◽  
The Way

AbstractIn this paper we intend to show that in Memory, History, Forgetting, Paul Ricœur articulates memory and history through imagination. This philosopher distinguishes two main functions of imagination: a poetical one, associated with interpretation and discourse, and a practical and projective one that clarifies and guides our actions. In Memory, History, Forgetting, both functions of imagination are present, but are associated with different aspects of memory. The first one is present especially in the phenomenology of the cognitive dimension of memory; the second one is developed in the analysis of the abuses of artificial memory, while their convergence is described in the section on the abuses of natural memory. Besides the similarities in the way these functions of imagination operate in Oneself as Another and in Memory, History, Forgetting, we will show some important differences between these two works and we will propose reasons for these differences.Keywords: Poetical Imagination, Practical Imagination, Abused Memory, Ideology, Utopy.RésuméDans cet article nous souhaiterions montrer que, dans La mémoire, l’histoire, l’oubli, l’imagination productrice est ce qui permet d’articuler la mémoire et l´histoire. Ricœur distingue deux principales fonctions de l’imagination: l’une, poétique, associée à l’interprétation et au discours ; l’autre pratique et projective, qui éclaire et oriente nos actions. Dans La mémoire, l’histoire, l’oubli, ces deux fonctions de l’imagination sont présentes mais elles sont associées à des aspects différents de la mémoire. La première est surtout présente dans la phénoménologie de la dimension cognitive de la mémoire, la seconde apparaît dans l’analyse des abus de la mémoire artificielle, et l’articulation entre ces deux fonctions se trouve enfin décrite dans la section concernant l’abus de la mémoire naturelle. Outre les similitudes dans la façon dont ces fonctions de l’imagination opèrent dans Soi-même comme un autre et dans La mémoire, l’histoire, l’oubli, nous essaierons de montrer qu’il existe cependant certaines différences importantes entre ces deux œuvres en tentant d’en expliciter les raisons.Mots-clés: Imagination poétique, imagination pratique, mémoire abusée, idéologie, utopie.

The Institutions of Deliberative Democracy

2000 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 181-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Nelson
Keyword(s):  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The Political ◽  
Democratic Process ◽  
Current Interest ◽  
Democratic Institutions ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
The People ◽  
The Will ◽  
Over Time

A theory of democratic institutions should provide us with a coherent combination of definition and justification. It should explain how it defines democratic institutions and also how they will or should function; but it also should explain why democracy, so understood, is desirable. We are all familiar with stories about the fiscal excesses to which democracies are prone, stories about the ignorance of voters, and stories about the venality of legislators. Some of us may also be suspicious of concepts such as “consent” or “the will of the people” associated with traditional arguments for democracy. Against this background, the current interest in deliberative democracy seems promising. This conception of democracy does not rely, for example, on the idea of rational and knowledgeable voters satisfying preferences they have independent of the political process. Nor does it rely on any notion of an independent popular will. Instead, it offers a picture of the democratic process as one in which men and women engage in constructive discussion, seeking a principled resolution of their differences and developing, over time, a conception of the terms on which they will live with one another.

scholarly journals Political Culture and Tourism Development: A Case Study of Tamil Nadu State

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-116
Author(s):  
S. Fazal Daoud Firdausi
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Tamil Nadu ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Tourism Development ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
The Political ◽  
The People ◽  
Tamil Nadu State ◽  
The Impact

Tourism development in any region is influenced by political culture and processes. It is inherently linked to the policies, agenda, decisions, outcomes and the type of government responsible for shaping policies related to tourism. The paper tries to find out the impact of political culture on tourism development. It also aims to assess the role of political culture in influencing tourist motivation through the data collected from urban tourist centres of the Southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Mixed method, consisting qualitative interpretation as well as descriptive and inferential statistics has been used to draw conclusions. It has come out from the study that the political culture of Tamil Nadu state may be characterized as a mix of subject and participant culture, where latter dominates the former. It can be concluded that the people of the state have always participated in political process through voting and changing the regime from time to time. The study also indicates that most of the people of the state are aware of their political obligations and actively participate in social campaigns and civic life. It can be concluded that the existing political culture in the state has compelled the political elite to think and work for the development of the state, including tourism development.

scholarly journals The Aporetics of Temporality and the Poetics of the Will

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 12-27
Author(s):  
Roger W. H. Savage
Keyword(s):  
Philosophical Anthropology ◽  
Paul Ricoeur ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Past ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Paul Ricœur ◽  
The Future ◽  
Intended Object ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Way

The aporias of time that Paul Ricœur identifies in the conclusion to his three-volume Time and Narrative offer a fecund starting-point from which to consider how the poetics of narrativity figures in a philosophy of the will. By setting the poetics of narrativity against the aporetics of temporality, Ricoeur highlights the narrative art’s operative power in drawing together incidents and events in answer to time’s dispersion across the present, the past, and the future. In turn, the confession of the limits of narrative opens the way to a broader consideration of the idea of the unity of history in the absence of a meta-historical plot. This idea calls for a reflection on the ethical and political imperative of making freedom a reality for all. By taking the theory of freedom’s actualization as a touchstone, I argue that the vision of a reconciled humanity that for Ricœur is the intended object of the poetics of the will acquires the force of a directive idea. The capacity to refashion the real from within thus proves to be decisive for drawing out the connection between the aporetics of temporality, the poetics of narrativity, and Ricœur’s philosophical anthropology.

Actorship, parrhesia, and Representation: Remarks on Theatricality and Politics in Hobbes, Rousseau, and Diderot

2018 ◽  
Vol 136 (1) ◽  
pp. 171-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dieter Thomä
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
The People ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
Distorted Form ◽  
The Way

AbstractThis paper addresses the strained relationship between parrhesia and actorship and analyzes its political implications. These two terms seem to be antipodes: parrhesia emphasizes the presence of a speaker or author whereas actorship deploys representation. As their relation can be explained by means of the concept of representation it is worthwhile considering the two settings in which representation matters: theater and politics. These settings will be explored in case studies on Hobbes’s, Rousseau’s, and Diderot’s accounts of parrhesia and actorship. Hobbes dismisses parrhesiastic freedom, minimalizes political authorship and favors a model of representation featuring a peculiar, powerful actor: the State. Rousseau criticizes actorship and representation, and seeks to re-install the people as sovereign author. This author is equipped with a strangely distorted form of parrhesia. Diderot takes neither Hobbes’s nor Rousseau’s side. He hints at the political potential of the author-actor relationship and paves the way to a revised notion of parrhesia.

scholarly journals Increasing the Popularity of Antisystem (Non-Traditional) Parties in the Czech Republic

2021 ◽  
pp. 50-63
Author(s):  
Tetiana Fedorchak
Keyword(s):  
Czech Republic ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
The Czech Republic ◽  
Parliamentary Elections ◽  
The People ◽  
Lower House ◽  
The Will

The article examines the course of the elections to the lower house of the Parliament of the Czech Republic, their role and place in the political process of the country. The author argues that pluralism of opinion and multiparty system in the Czech Republic practically confirm their real strength, as evidenced by the participation of many parties in parliamentary elections and the fact, that that nine of them managed to overcome the 5% barrier and to obtain a certain number of deputy mandates. The programs of parliamentary parties are analyzed, their main election slogans and the results they achieved in the elections. Much attention in the article is paid to the winner of this election – the centrist political force – movement "Action of dissatisfied citizens", whose leader was appointed Prime Minister of the Czech Republic. Emphasis is placed on new trends in the political process, which were confirmed during the will of the people. Among them, the author highlights the growing popularity of anti-system (non-traditional) parties. In their election statements, these parties set out to protest the change in the political system of society. Along with this process, the crisis of traditional parties deepened, who were previously members of the governing bodies of the state, but they failed to demonstrate their compliance with voter inquiries, who sought solutions to pressing issues. This is confirmed by the results of traditional Czech parties – Communist Party of the Czech Republic and Moravia, which managed to get only 7.76% of the vote of the voters and the leader of the previous elections – the Czech Social Democratic Party, which won the support of only 7.27% of voters, having lost almost 13% of the vote in four years.

scholarly journals How Banyumas people “describe" G30S/PKI in the novel Ronggeng Dhukuh Paruk

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 96
Author(s):  
Khristianto Khristianto ◽  
Widya Nirmawalati
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
New Order ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Innocent People ◽  
The People ◽  
The Government ◽  
Political Turmoil ◽  
The Way ◽  
The Hamlet

The novel RDP came out in 1982, when the new order regime was still firmly established. One of the important criticisms in the work was the "incorrect" handling of communism by the government at that time following the eruption of the G30S/PKI history. The author of the novel tries to bring a different view of the issue. This paper tries to present how the original Banyumas personified the political turmoil-how the laypeople interpreted the events that had consumed them as victims, or the sacrificed. Based on the recurrent reading of the Indonesian-language RDP novel and Javanese language Banyumasan, the authors firmly state that the people of Dukuh Paruk are merely victims of the outside world. People of the hamlet have no idea what they are doing, other than that they want to perpetuate the tradition they are proud of, ronggeng. Nor do they blame or think that there are people outside of those who have committed crimes against them. The disaster that befall them is none other due to their mistakes do not run the rituals that must be done before performances ronggeng. Their elders also realized that the pageblug had been signaled by the appearance of the latitude of the cubes (comets), and they had ignored the cue. Thus, pageblug should be accepted. Against the innocence of clean thought, the author asserts that something is wrong with them, systematically practiced by the regime at that time. He agreed that the coup was false; but the way in which the state deals with such problems is also unjustifiable. The state has clearly punished many Indonesians without trial, and killed thousands of innocent people.

scholarly journals The Obligations on Government and Society in our Constitutional State to Respect and Support Independent Constitutional Structures

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
LWH Ackermann
Keyword(s):  
Separation Of Powers ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Constitutional Democracy ◽  
Checks And Balances ◽  
Independent State ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
The Will

Constitutional democracy recognises the ancient democratic principle that government of a country is based on and legitimated by the will and consent of the governed, which is determined by regular multi-party elections based on universal adult franchise. Constitutional democracy limits this principle by subjecting the democratically elected government and the will of the majority subject to a written constitution and the norms embodied in it. Such constitution is enshrined as the supreme law of the country in question. An almost universal feature of modern constitutionalism is a Bill of Rights that forms part of the Constitution and which is designed to protect and enforce individual rights principally, although not exclusively, against the state. Constitutionalism also embodies the principle of the separation of powers. A competent and independent judiciary, with the power to review all legislative and executive conduct that is inconsistent with the Constitution, is regarded, almost universally, as the prime and most effective check on the legislative and executive branches of government. Recently it has come to be realised that for the truly effective and meaningful operation of constitutionalism, other independent state institutions are necessary. The collective objective of these institutions is to ensure that the Constitution in fact produces what it proclaims: that constitutionalism becomes a way of life in all institutional structures. The South African Constitution has clearly designated the judiciary as the prime upholder and enforcer of the Constitution. The Constitution has, however, gone further and makes provision for a variety of independent state institutions whose purpose is to "strengthen constitutional democracy in the Republic". Apart from these state institutions the Constitution also makes provision for other independent bodies designed to play an important checking and balancing role. The regular effective functioning of these institutions is vitally important for creating and sustaining an ethos of constitutionalism among the inhabitants of the Republic.The Constitution makes explicit provision for the protection of the judiciary and the other independent state institutions and thereby indirectly for the development of habits of constitutionalism. The constitutional protection and support given to the independent state institutions are very similar to that given to the courts. One important distinction is to be noted. In the case of the courts, the Constitution provides that they "are subject only to the Constitution and the law" and no provision is made for them to be accountable to any other organ of state or any other institution or person, for that matter. By contrast, the independent institutions envisaged in section 181 of the Constitution are expressly made accountable to the National Assembly and are obliged to report on their activities and the performance of their functions to the Assembly at least once a year. While the formal independence of state institutions may at all times be scrupulously recognised by the legislature and the executive, their substantive independence can easily be undermined by fiscal starvation and their ability to function properly impeded by bureaucratic administrative obstruction or obfuscation or even, quite innocently, by a lack of appreciation of what the Constitution demands from public administration in support of these institutions. Adequate financial and administrative resources are required to achieve aspects of judicial independence. All South Africans must still be vigilant to ensure, from the outset, that all state organs develop habits and practices of constitutionalism and that they do not, whether by omission, error, or otherwise endanger the independence of our independent state institutions by neglecting their constitutional obligations.For the Constitutional Court to fulfil its role as the ultimate guardian of the Constitution, it must be independent. Its members cannot be elected, because that would imply that the Court owed allegiance or were accountable to the political majority or other elector in question. On the other hand, it is seen as undemocratic for a body that is not elected to be in a position to overrule the expressed will of the political representatives of the majority. This paradox exists in respect of all our courts and makes the method of appointing judicial officers particularly important in order to ensure at the same time, and as far as this is practically possible, both their independence and their legitimacy. The judiciary is however not an arm of the state that has been exempted from all checks and balances. The checks and balances on the judiciary are not the same as in the case of the legislature and the executive. In the case of the latter the checks and balances are principally through the Constitution, as enforced by the courts, and through the political process. In the case of the courts these checks and balances cannot be through the political process, for this would undermine the independence of the judiciary. One of the reciprocal obligations that a constitutional democracy imposes on all its subjects, is to support the independent constitutional institutions, as constitutional institutions, not only vocally at the level of intellectual abstraction, but by actively working to establish the habits of consitutionalism in all societal structures and societal interaction.

“I'd make thee eat the mischief thou hast vented”: Discourse of Law in Ben Jonson's Catiline His Conspiracy

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-45
Author(s):  
Akihiko Shimizu
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Legal Discourse ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
State Of Emergency ◽  
Gunpowder Plot ◽  
Effective Use ◽  
Legal Procedures ◽  
The Way

This essay explores the discourse of law that constitutes the controversial apprehension of Cicero's issuing of the ultimate decree of the Senate (senatus consultum ultimum) in Catiline. The play juxtaposes the struggle of Cicero, whose moral character and legitimacy are at stake in regards to the extra-legal uses of espionage, with the supposedly mischievous Catilinarians who appear to observe legal procedures more carefully throughout their plot. To mitigate this ambivalence, the play defends Cicero's actions by depicting the way in which Cicero establishes the rhetoric of public counsel to convince the citizens of his legitimacy in his unprecedented dealing with Catiline. To understand the contemporaneousness of Catiline, I will explore the way the play integrates the early modern discourses of counsel and the legal maxim of ‘better to suffer an inconvenience than mischief,’ suggesting Jonson's subtle sensibility towards King James's legal reformation which aimed to establish and deploy monarchical authority in the state of emergency (such as the Gunpowder Plot of 1605). The play's climactic trial scene highlights the display of the collected evidence, such as hand-written letters and the testimonies obtained through Cicero's spies, the Allbroges, as proof of Catiline's mischievous character. I argue that the tactical negotiating skills of the virtuous and vicious characters rely heavily on the effective use of rhetoric exemplified by both the political discourse of classical Rome and the legal discourse of Tudor and Jacobean England.

On the Will of the People: Notes on the Political “Theory” of Populism

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Claus Offe
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Conflicts Of Interest ◽  
Political Rhetoric ◽  
The Political ◽  
The People ◽  
National People ◽  
The Will

The “will of the (national) people” is the ubiquitously invoked reference unit of populist politics. The essay tries to demystify the notion that such will can be conceived of as a unique and unified substance deriving from collective ethnic identity. Arguably, all political theory is concerned with arguing for ways by which citizens can make e pluribus unum—for example, by coming to agree on procedures and institutions by which conflicts of interest and ideas can be settled according to standards of fairness. It is argued that populists in their political rhetoric and practice typically try to circumvent the burden of such argument and proof. Instead, they appeal to the notion of some preexisting existential unity of the people’s will, which they can redeem only through practices of repression and exclusion.

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