Principled Toleration and Respectful Indifference in the Liberal Polity

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-14
Author(s):  
Phillip Cole ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
The Public ◽  
Moral Principles ◽  
Or Practice ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Liberal Individualism ◽  
Liberal Political Theory

This paper examines toleration at two levels. At the first level, liberal individualism is concerned that the individual must be as free as possible to pursue their own goals and lifestyles. At the second level, liberal political theory is concerned with the value of liberal political culture and institutions and how to maintain and protect them. I argue that we can learn a great deal about the exercise of toleration and respect at the level of the liberal polity by examining them at the level of the liberal individual. Both tolerance and intolerance at the level of the polity must be principled. Principled tolerance and intolerance have the following features. First, the judgment whether to tolerate a particular belief or practice must be based on the value of toleration itself, not pragmatic political requirements. Second, it should be an issue of setting aside moral principles and convictions rather than dislikes, prejudices or fears. Third, it should respect the distinction between the public and the private, and should only recognise an issue as one of toleration if there is a public impact at stake.

On Macpherson's Developmental Liberalism

1982 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 145-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian H. Angus
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Institutional Support ◽  
Liberal Theory ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Rigorous Analysis ◽  
Liberal Tradition ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Liberal Individualism ◽  
Conceptual Foundations ◽  
Liberal Political Theory

The work of C. B. Macpherson is extremely significant for those seeking to understand the cul-de-sac which liberal political theory and institutions have entered. Considering the experience of socialist societies in this century, the necessity for a nonmarket political theory to retain a positive connection to Western liberal values should be beyond dispute. Any postmarket society requires, not pious reassurances, but institutional support for individual rights that are the most vehemently defended in the liberal tradition. But of course this is not enough. Contemporary society is already undermining liberal individualism through massive organizations and manipulated consumption. The inability of liberal theory to analyze effectively and propose alternatives to the contemporary decline of the individual suggests that the cul-de-sac is rooted in the conceptual foundations of liberalism itself. Macpherson's rigorous analysis of the market assumptions of liberal theory pinpoints this conceptual inadequacy and attempts to maintain a commitment to liberal values in a postmarket society.

scholarly journals Políticas de aparición/desaparición (The Politics of Appearance/Disappearance)

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-168
Author(s):  
Ignacio Irazuzta ◽  
Jaume Peris ◽  
Silvia Rodríguez Maeso
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Political Regimes ◽  
The Public ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
Individual Citizen ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Analytical Approaches ◽  
Liberal Political Theory

Los asuntos concernientes a las políticas de la des/aparición son amplios, variados y complejos. Atendiendo a los procesos históricos y a las categorizaciones de la (des)aparición que de ellos se derivan, en este trabajo identificamos dos entradas analíticas que consideramos principales. En primer lugar, abordamos el significado de la aparición y la desaparición desde la perspectiva de la teoría política liberal. En concreto, analizamos cómo regímenes políticos distintos se relacionan con el individuo-ciudadano y el espacio púbico. En segundo lugar, respondiendo a una asentada tradición teórica que calibra la desaparición en relación a las políticas de la vida, evaluamos sus aportes y sus déficits explicativos para entender la cuestión en sus diversas manifestaciones históricas. Finalmente, luego de ensayar una tipología de la desaparición, el texto cierra con reflexiones sobre cómo abordar la historicidad de la desaparición y preguntas de investigación en relación a los dispositivos de desaparición y aparición contemporáneos. The politics of dis/appearance concern a wide variety of complex issues. Engaging with historical processes and the different categorizations of (dis)appearance that they have engendered, we identify two key analytical approaches: First, we consider the meaning of appearance and disappearance within the liberal political theory, and how different political regimes have related to the individual-citizen and the public space. Second, we reflect on the inputs and shortcomings of the studies in biopolitics, their understanding of disappearance as part of the politics of life and their historical manifestations. Third, we consider a possible approach to understanding what we have termed as “social disappearance”. After drafting a typology of disappearance, the article ends with some reflections on how we can approach the historicity of disappearance and with several research questions concerning contemporary devices (dispoisitif) or apparatus of disappearance and appearance.

Desperately Seeking Democracy: Unreflexive Liberalism and the ‘Privacy Bias’ in Journalism Ethics

2005 ◽  
Vol 114 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Wilkinson
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Liberal Theory ◽  
Right To Know ◽  
Privacy Rights ◽  
Public Accountability ◽  
Journalism Ethics ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Traditions ◽  
Weak Notion ◽  
Liberal Political Theory

Because journalism ethics draw deeply, and perhaps unreflexively, on liberal political traditions, there is a lot of confusion about what public accountability entails. When interpreted from the standpoint of liberal theory, the perception of the need for public accountability is generally framed by a simplistic opposition between the public's right to know and the individual's right to privacy. Central to the liberal framing of the accountability is a weak notion of ‘publicity’ anchored in notions of representation and revelation. Furthermore, there is also a strong tradition within liberal theory to treat ethics as a matter of private concern, rather than something that can be publicly resolved. For these reasons, the balance of democratic consideration always seems to sit more comfortably with privacy rights than it does with considerations of accountability to the public. This paper explores some of these dilemmas surrounding journalism ethics and public accountability by examining their theoretical underpinnings in liberal political theory and comparing them with a model of public accountability grounded in publicity construed as public participation.

scholarly journals Political theology and religious pluralism: Rethinking liberalism in times of post-secular emancipation

2020 ◽  
pp. 136843102096867
Author(s):  
Saul Newman
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Religious Pluralism ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
The Public ◽  
To Come ◽  
Liberal Political Theory

Recent debates in liberal political theory have sought to come to terms with the post-secular condition, characterised by deep religious pluralism, the resurgence of right-wing populism, as well as new social movements for economic, ecological and racial justice. These forces represent competing claims on the public space and create challenges for the liberal model of state neutrality. To better grasp this problem, I argue for a more comprehensive engagement between liberalism and political theology, by which I understand a mode of theorising that reveals the theological basis of modern secular political concepts. In considering two contrasting approaches to political or public theology – Carl Schmitt’s and Jürgen Moltmann’s – I argue that liberal political theory can and should open itself to a diversity of social movements and ecological struggles that pluralise the political space in ways that unsettle the boundary between the secular and religious.

Freiheit von Religion?

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johannes Fioole
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Majority Rule ◽  
The Other ◽  
Public Justification ◽  
The Public ◽  
Institutional Ethics ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One ◽  
The Individual

How much freedom from religion can a secular individual claim in a liberal democracy? How much freedom from religion is justified when considering religious individuals' liberties? By means of new realistic methods (Geuss), this study of political theory tries to give practical answers to these questions. In this book, we find that previous solutions generated by the public justification paradigm (Rawls, Audi, Habermas, Gaus, Cooke et al.) systematically result in a democratic trilemma. Instead, the individual sphere is proposed. This interplay between freedom, autonomy and privacy has an obligation to liberal institutional ethics. On the one hand, the theory of the individual sphere allows an individual to act according to his or her religious or secular ideas of what is good; on the other hand, it identifies contexts in which majority rule is justified.

The Prehistory of Possessive Individualism

PMLA ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 127 (4) ◽  
pp. 918-924 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Rae Greeson
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Citizenship Rights ◽  
Possessive Individualism ◽  
Short Essay ◽  
Liberal Individualism ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Liberal Political Theory ◽  
Labor Potential

One of the central tenets of liberal individualism holds that property rights and citizenship rights are based in self-possession, which is often defined as an original ownership of one's own labor potential. In this short essay I propose that the concept of self-possession rests on a prior assumption that selves are possessable objects—an assumption that was generated, before and alongside liberal political theory, in the practice of Atlantic slave capitalism. I will first consider how John Locke formulates the theory of possessive individualism in one of the most-cited passages of his Second Treatise of Government (1690). To shed light on that theory's implications, I will turn to A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of venture, a Native of Africa (1798), which recounts how Venture Smith, an eighteenth-century man enslaved as a child, came to possess himself, quite literally, by purchasing himself. Smith's account illuminates the tacit precondition of Locke's self-possessing individual: to be owned, the self must first be alienated, entered into the market, “thingified.” Juxtaposing Locke and Smith provides a snapshot of a larger project, in which I argue that Enlightenment thought was founded on—not merely proximal to—the Atlantic imperial context out of which it arose.

Empiricism’s Secret History: Fleetwood and Rousseau

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zoe Beenstock
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Political Justice ◽  
Sentimental Fiction ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Secret History

Criticism often organizes Godwin’s career by genre, suggesting that Godwin progressed from political theory to sentimental fiction. Instead this chapter argues that Godwin follows Rousseau in writing literature to ‘judge’ his own philosophy. In Enquiry Concerning Political Justice Godwin posits society as prior to the individual. He regards the general good as mandatory rather than voluntary. Godwin’s novels examine the struggles of individuals in conforming to his model of compulsory sociability. In Fleetwood and Mandeville Godwin explores the shortcomings of Rousseau’s theory of individualist education. He fictionalizes Rousseau, Hume, Wollstonecraft, and the First Earl of Shaftesbury, exploring the shortcomings of their theories. In Fleetwood Godwin uses elements of the genre of the secret history to explore political theory’s failure to validate women within the public sphere. Deloraine extends Godwin’s criticism of the social contract tradition for being inherently patriarchal. In Godwin’s writings Rousseau eclipses Aristotle as the founding theorist of sociability.

The Natural Basis of Political Obligation

2001 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-114
Author(s):  
George Klosko
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Obligation ◽  
Natural Basis ◽  
Political Ties ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Liberal Political Theory

Though questions of political obligation have long been central to liberal political theory, discussion has generally focused on voluntaristic aspects of the individual's relationship to the state, as opposed to other factors through which the state is able to ground compliance with its laws. The individual has been conceptualized as naturally without political ties, whether or not formally in a state of nature, and questions of political obligation have centered on accounting for political bonds.

Moral Education and the “Tie that Binds” in Liberal Political Theory

1991 ◽  
Vol 85 (3) ◽  
pp. 875-901 ◽  
Author(s):  
David C. Paris
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Moral Education ◽  
Core Values ◽  
Shared Values ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Intellectual Virtues ◽  
The Public ◽  
Implicit And Explicit ◽  
Liberal Political Theory

I examine the search for a “tie that binds, “ or “core” values, in liberal political theory, specifically Rawls's recent arguments, and in proposals concerning moral education in the public schools. Both Rawls and the proponents of moral education appeal to consensus or shared values, but the search for core values in both theory and practice is only partly successful. Specifically, this search is misguided insofar as it does not reflect how values are embedded in specific institutions and practices. The various forms of moral education in the public schools, both implicit and explicit, illustrate a consensus about a range of moral and intellectual virtues that is broader and more complex than arguments for core values allow. Comparing arguments concerning core values in political theory and moral education suggests how liberal political theory might deal with questions of consensus, justification, and the task of political theory generally.

FRENCH LIBERALISM’S “INDIAN DETOUR”: LOUIS DUMONT, THE INDIVIDUAL, AND LIBERAL POLITICAL THOUGHT IN POST-1968 FRANCE

2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 685-710
Author(s):  
JACOB COLLINS
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Intellectual Tradition ◽  
Economic Issues ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Revolution

Liberalism in France has typically been concerned with political, rather than economic, issues. Its classic texts—those of Constant, Guizot, and Tocqueville—were written in the aftermath of the Revolution, and reflected on the historical and political problems that grew out of it: the nature of the modern state, the rights and duties of the individual, and the nexus of institutions that mediated their relationship. These writings defined the contours of modern French liberalism, and became a key resource for thinkers in the late 1970s, notably Pierre Rosanvallon and Marcel Gauchet, who were looking for ways to revitalize the liberal-democratic project. In his 1985 study of Guizot, Rosanvallon could regret that “the question of liberalism in French political culture of the nineteenth century is ‘missing’ in contemporary thought.”1 If the task of political theory was to recover this intellectual tradition, what were the terms of the recovery? Which ideas were missing from the conceptual landscape of the 1970s to inspire it?

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