Heidegger’s First-Personal Forgetfulness and the Foundations of Community

2018 ◽  
Vol 52 ◽  
pp. 23-33
Author(s):  
Clayton Shoppa ◽  
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Being And Time ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ontological Difference ◽  
Category Mistake ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Political Ontology ◽  
Previous Decade ◽  
Eric Voegelin

Heidegger’s National Socialist political sympathies are plainer and more troubling to contemporary readers than ever before. This paper examines the relation of leader to society Heidegger uses to ground his account of the state. Heidegger draws on Aristotle and Kant to make his case in the 1930s. But breakthroughs in the previous decade, in Being and Time in particular, make the political ontology he endorses less than compelling. The power of the leader over the society he or she leads cannot repeat the relation of Being over entities. The ontological difference is different from, and incompatible with, all possible statements of political community. Ontologically speaking, totalitarianism is a category mistake. Confusing the transcendental domain for its ontic content, Heidegger refuses to learn his own lesson in ways Eric Voegelin helps us detect.

War without Citizens

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-38
Author(s):  
Stephen J. Rosow
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Consumer Culture ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Democratic Citizenship ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Public ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Advanced Technologies

Contestation over war memorialization can help democratic theory respond to the current attenuation of citizenship in war in liberal democratic states, especially the United States. As war involves more advanced technologies and fewer soldiers, the relation of citizenship to war changes. In this context war memorialization plays a particular role in refiguring the relation. Current practices of remembering and memorializing war in contemporary neoliberal states respond to a dilemma: the state needs to justify and garner support for continual wars while distancing citizenship from participation. The result is a consumer culture of memorialization that seeks to effect a unity of the political community while it fights wars with few citizens and devalues the public. Neoliberal wars fought with few soldiers and an economic logic reveals the vulnerability to otherness that leads to more active and critical democratic citizenship.

Concluding Remarks to Part 3

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Preminger
Keyword(s):  
Government Policy ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Individual Responsibility ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Third ◽  
Third Sphere ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

Chapter 15 summarizes the chapters which addressed the third sphere, the relationship of labor to the political community. It reiterates that since Israel was established, the labor market’s borders have become ever more porous, while the borders of the national (Jewish) political community have remained firm: the Jewish nationalism which guides government policy is as strong as ever. NGOs, drawing on a discourse of human rights, are able to assist some non-citizens but this discourse also resonates with the idea of individual responsibility: the State is no longer willing to support “non-productive” populations, who are now being shoehorned into a labor market which offers few opportunities for meaningful employment, and is saturated by cheaper labor intentionally imported by the State in response to powerful employer lobbies. These trends suggest a partial reorientation of organized labor’s “battlefront”, from a face-off with capital to an appeal to the public and state.

Continuity with Deficiencies: The New Basic Law of Hungary

2013 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 102-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
András Jakab ◽  
Pál Sonnevend
Keyword(s):  
Constitutional Law ◽  
The State ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
Basic Law ◽  
The Government ◽  
Democratic Constitution ◽  
Legal Procedures

Hungarian constitutional law – New Basic Law – Continuity with the previous democratic Constitution – Vision of the political community embedded in the new Basic Law – The level of protection of fundamental rights – Continuity and lack of foreseeability in the organisation of the state – European legal procedures against or about Hungary – The life prospects of the new Basic Law – Danger of constitutional crisis whenever the government does not hold a constitution-amending majority

Reading Hobbes’s Sovereign into a Burmese Narrative of Police Torture

2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-211
Author(s):  
Nick Cheesman
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
Public Order ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

Throughout February 2012, a court sitting at Myanmar’s central prison recorded a defendant’s narrative of torture by policemen to have him confess to a bombing two years prior. How was this record made possible? What does the narrative reveal about the relationship of police torturers to the political community giving them authority to act? Working from Agamben’s intuition that in the moment of violence the policeman occupies an area symmetrical to the sovereign, inasmuch as his use of violence is justified in the name of public order, I suggest the account of police torture in this case can be explained in terms of Hobbes’s theory of attributed action. Like Hobbes’s sovereign, the Burmese policemen had the prerogative to decide when and how to use violence against the detained subject on behalf of the state. That the defendant could later recount to a judge the torture done to him was only because he lacked standing to lay claims against sovereign police, who he himself, as a member of the political community, had authorised. Ironically, the record of his narrative was possible precisely because his claims were without efficacy.

Representation and the Person of the State

2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippe Crignon
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Change ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Political

According to Hobbes, a commonwealth can only occur when the natural multitude of men are made one thanks to a covenantal device. The artificial unity of the political community can be seen as strengthened by the use of concepts that reflect some natural unity, such as “body” or “person”. Both notions can indeed be found in Hobbes’s political treatises, but the degree of importance attached to them varies greatly. The key to this evolution is to be found in De cive, where Hobbes explicitly dismisses the notion of a body politic and substitutes the concept of person for it. This paper examines the significance of this conceptual change by following its trajectory from Elements of Law to Leviathan and discussing its implications for Hobbes’s understanding of civil unity.

scholarly journals No One is Illegal Between City and Nation

2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Nyers
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Movements ◽  
Community Belonging ◽  
The City

By challenging the state's prerogative to distinguish between insiders and outsiders, citizens and non-citizens, political movements by and in support of migrants and refugees are forcing questions about what criteria, if any, can and should be used to determine who can claim membership in the political community. To illustrate the complexity of this politics this article analyzes the major demand that underscores every campaign undertaken by non-status refugees and migrants in Canada: a program that would allow them to "regularize" their status. Notably, these campaigns are being directed at both the state and city levels of governance. Together, these are two sites in which claims and counter-claims about community, belonging, and citizenship are being made by, for, and against non-status immigrants. In each case, migrant political agency is asserted in places meant to deny, limit, or repress it. The article argues that the significance of these sites is that they allow for non-status refugees and migrants themselves to act as mediators or translators between the city and nation, between polis and cosmopolis.

Making and authenticating the citizen: Naturalisation and passport application in Canada

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Frost
Keyword(s):  
Policy Analysis ◽  
Full Text ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
Canadian Context ◽  
Fact Checking ◽  
Forms Of Knowledge

How do ‘we’ know our fellow citizens? This paper considers two processes where recognition occurs in the Canadian context: passports and naturalisation. Using document and policy analysis we argue there are two major forms of knowledge called upon to sort insiders from outsiders. Mechanical knowledge involves tests and evaluations driven by document-matching, biometrics and fact-checking exercises. Moral knowledge concerns the kind of lives we live among our peers and our intentions towards the political community. We note that in the Canadian case tensions exist between expectation and reality around citizen recognition. The state increasingly aspires to know the citizen through procedural checks or material observation yet encounters limitations that require some form of interpersonal knowledge rooted in human-to-human relationships. Drawing on these processes, in conclusion we suggest that how knowledge about citizenship is framed serves to sort outsiders from insiders, endorses specific behaviours over others, and empowers the state to redefine the meaning of citizenship.  Full text available at: https://doi.org/10.22215/rera.v11i1.257

The Politics of Global Constitutionalism

ICL Journal ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ekaterina Yahyaoui Krivenko
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
The Political ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Political Dimension ◽  
Current State ◽  
Global Constitutionalism ◽  
Open Discussion ◽  
State Form

AbstractThe article argues that no understanding of global constitutionalism will be complete without a thorough discussion of its political dimension. The current state of scholarship on global constitutionalism is dominated by discussions of legal elements. However, any theory of global constitutionalism has an underlying vision of the political. Without discussing this underlying vision of the political global constitutionalism will remain incomplete. In particular the article demonstrates that the contemporary debates on global constitutionalism are plagued by a contradiction between its aims and its underlying vision of the political. Thus, global constitutionalism postulates individuals as central units of its concern. However, by maintaining states as central actors although in a changed form and with fewer powers global constitutionalism unwittingly subscribes to a vision of the political anchored in the state form and based on the exclusion/inclusion dynamic. This vision of the political is most clearly articulated by Carl Schmitt. The discussion of his view of the political demonstrates that the political based on the state form makes the project of global constitutionalism impossible. The only way forward is an open discussion of different visions of the political and a search for a more adequate vision of the political able to further the aims of global constitutionalism and its focus on individuals. The article discusses one of these alternative visions of the political, namely the concept of the coming politics and coming community as articulated by Giorgio Agamben. It demonstrates how with this vision of the political the project of global constitutionalism can conceive of a political community fully dedicated to the singularities of each individual human being without creating divisions. The article concludes that in order for global constitutionalism to continue as a viable project, an open and explicit discussion of the political is called for.

scholarly journals Secular Republic and the Old Order – Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and Turkish identity

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 177-189
Author(s):  
Mariusz Sulkowski
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
Muslim Country ◽  
European Origin ◽  
Old Order ◽  
Politics And Religion ◽  
Kemal Ataturk ◽  
Theoretical Foundations

AbstractMustafa Kemal Atatürk continues to stand firm as a major symbol of the Turkish republicanism, though there is little doubt that Turkey today undergoes deep transformation in the sphere of the relations between politics and religion. As Bernard Lewis explains, the Ottoman Turks identified with Islam so profoundly that they in fact submerged their identity in Islam. It is, therefore, only right and proper to inquire and pursue the theoretical foundations and origins of the Turkish laicism. Although Turkey constitutes a rare example of a Muslim country where laicism was instituted by its own authorities and not imposed on the country by the Western colonial powers, still, it is beyond doubt that the very idea of laicism is of the European origin and that it drew its inspirations from the range of ideas of the French Enlightment. It is the perspective that enables to understand fully the scope and depth of the reforms implemented in Turkey; it also elucidates the contemporary attempts to overcome the secularism and enforce the political re-Islamization of the state. The contemporary question on the place of religion in the political community is at the same time a question on the identity of Turkey.

Prerogative and the Rule of Law in John Locke and the Lincoln Presidency

2005 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean Mattie
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
John Locke ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Fundamental Importance ◽  
Executive Power ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
State Of Nature

Locke's Second Treatise of Government argues for the rule of law as just and rightful politics, not only in the fundamental legislation that is the constitution but also in regular governance by the legislature. Locke also argues for executive prerogative, the power of doing good without or even against law during contingency and necessity. Rule by legislation and rule by prerogative each preserve the political community and reflect its foundation out of the state of nature. But they do not easily coexist in the constitution, which provides no means to judge the rightful use of prerogative. President Lincoln's strong, discretionary actions during the crisis of the Civil War illustrate Locke's argument about prerogative's fundamental importance and its problematic relation to ordinary lawfulness. However, as Lincoln recognized, both the Constitution and Congress formally provided for an executive power that was remarkably compatible with the rule of law—and that thereby responded to the Lockean problem.

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