Indledende note om demokrati-begrebet

2015 ◽  
pp. 89-92
Author(s):  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Nicolai Von Eggers
Keyword(s):  
Public Law ◽  
Political Order ◽  
The Other ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Administrative Practice ◽  
Political Theories ◽  
The One ◽  
Present Conception

In this text, Giorgio Agamben argues that the concept of democracy attests to a political, ontological amphibology: on the one side, democracy describes a constitution of a political order (and in this sense it belongs to public law); on the other side, democracy is a certain form of administration (in which case it belongs to administrative practice). It is argued that this amphibology can be located in the political theories of Aristotle and Jean-Jacques Rousseau who have been instrumental in forming our present conception of politics. Consequently, we misunderstand the fundamental nature of politics, and any hopes of genuine political life must therefore break with this tradition of Western political philosophy.

Introduction

2015 ◽  
Vol 80 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-12
Author(s):  
Govert Buijs ◽  
Simon Polinder
Keyword(s):  
Political Order ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Global Order ◽  
Short Overview ◽  
Open Dialogue ◽  
The One

This introduction proposes that the re-emergence and rediscovery of religion should be seen against the background of globalization on the one hand and localization on the other. These processes require an open dialogue on the architecture and guiding morality of the global order, in which religion is not only a factor to be taken seriously, but also a participant itself. A Christian contribution to this dialogue can draw on an age-old tradition of Jewish and Christian engagement with the political order, manifesting itself in three genres: judgment, expectation, and exhortation. The introduction also explains the aim of the Kuyper seminars and provides a short overview of the articles in this issue.

The generalised bio-political border? Re-conceptualising the limits of sovereign power

2009 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 729-749 ◽  
Author(s):  
NICK VAUGHAN-WILLIAMS
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The Other ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Sovereign Power ◽  
Bare Life ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Relative Simplicity ◽  
Political Border ◽  
The One

AbstractThis article is a response to calls from a number of theorists in International Relations and related disciplines for the need to develop alternative ways of thinking ‘the border’ in contemporary political life. These calls stem from an apparent tension between the increasing complexity of the nature and location of bordering practices on the one hand and yet the relative simplicity with which borders often continue to be treated on the other. One of the intellectual challenges, however, is that many of the resources in political thought to which we might turn for new border vocabularies already rely on unproblematised conceptions of what and where borders are. It is argued that some promise can be found in the work of Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, whose diagnosis of the operation of sovereign power in terms of the production of bare life offers significant, yet largely untapped, implications for analysing borders and the politics of space across a global bio-political terrain.

involve either the rejection of sexual love or its abuse. love chastely but want sexual satisfaction now, for Although Guyon is the servant of the ‘heauenly example Timias at v 48. The lowest stair is occupied Mayd’ (II i 28.7), he never sees the one and only by those who pervert love, either through jealousy spies on the other before binding her and ravaging in loving a woman as an object (as Malbecco at ix 5) her bower. From the opening episode of Book III, it or in using force to satisfy their desire (as Busirane becomes evident that Guyon’s binding of Acrasia has at xi 11). Book III is aptly named ‘the book of sex’ initiated an action that requires the rest of the poem by M. Evans 1970:152, for Spenser’s anatomy of to resolve, namely, how to release women from male love extends outward to the natural order and the tyranny, and therefore release men from their desire cosmos, and to the political order in which the ‘Most to tyrannize women. Chastity is fulfilled when its famous fruites of matrimoniall bowre’ (iii 3.7) are patron, Britomart, frees Amoret from Busirane’s the progeny of English kings. tyranny; friendship is fulfilled when Florimell’s chaste To fashion the virtues of the first two books, love for Marinell leads to her being freed from Spenser uses the motif of the single quest: a knight is Proteus’s tyranny; and Artegall is able to fulfil the guided to his goal, one by Una and the other by the virtue of justice when his lover, Britomart, frees him Palmer, and on his way engages in chivalric action from Radigund’s tyranny to which he has submitted. usually in the open field. To fashion chastity, he uses By destroying Acrasia’s sterile bower of perpetual the romance device of entrelacement, the interweav-summer, Guyon frees Verdant, whose name invokes ing of separate love stories into a pattern of relation-spring with its cycle of regeneration. The temperate ships. (As the stories of the four squires in Books III body, seen in the Castle of Alma, ‘had not yet felt and IV form an interlaced narrative, see Dasenbrock Cupides wanton rage’ (II ix 18.2), but with the cycle 1991:52–69.) The variety of love’s pageants requires of the seasons, love enters the world: ‘all liuing multiple quests, and the action shifts to the forest, wights, soone as they see | The spring breake forth the seashore, and the sea (see ‘Places, allegorical’ and out of his lusty bowres, | They all doe learne to play ‘Sea’ in the SEnc). Thus Britomart, guided by ‘blind the Paramours’ (IV x 45). Once the temperate body loue’ (IV v 29.5), wanders not knowing where to has felt ‘Cupides wanton rage’ in Book III, knights find her lover. As she is a virgin, her love for Artegall lie wounded or helpless and their ladies are either in is treated in the Belphœbe–Timias story; as she seeks flight or imprisoned – all except Britomart, who, to fulfil her love in marriage, her relationship to though as sorely wounded by love as any, is armed Artegall is treated in the Scudamour–Amoret story; with chastity, which controls her desire as she follows and as her marriage has the apocalyptic import ‘the guydaunce of her blinded guest’ (III iv 6.8), prophesied by Merlin at III iii 22–23, its significance that is, her love for Artegall. in relation to nature is treated in the Marinell– Book III presents an anatomy of love, its motto Florimell story. Like Florimell, Britomart loves a being ‘Wonder it is to see, in diuerse mindes, | How knight faithfully; but, like Marinell (see iv 26.6), diuersly loue doth his pageaunts play, | And shewes Artegall scorns love (see IV vi 28.9), neither know-his powre in variable kindes’ (v 1). While there is ing that he is loved. Yet Florimell knows whom she only one Cupid, his pageants vary, then, according to loves while Britomart does not, having seen only his diverse human states. If only because the poem is image. In contrast to both, Amoret loves faithfully, dedicated to the Virgin Queen, virginity is accorded and is loved faithfully in return; and in contrast to all, ‘the highest stayre | Of th’honorable stage of Belphœbe does not know that she is loved by Timias womanhead’ (v 54.7–8), being represented in Book and does not love him. (To complete this scheme: at III by Belphœbe. She was ‘vpbrought in perfect III vii 54, Columbell knows that she is loved by the Maydenhed’ by Diana, while her twin (yet later Squire of Dames but withholds love for him.) The born) sister, Amoret, was ‘vpbrought in goodly pattern formed by these stories fashions the virtue of womanhed’ (vi 28.4, 7) by Venus. Accordingly, chastity of which Britomart is the patron. Amoret occupies the central stair of chaste love, for Since interlaced narratives take the place of the lin-she loves Scudamour faithfully and is rescued by ear quest, Spenser structures Book III by balancing Britomart, the virgin who loves Artegall faithfully. the opening and concluding cantos against the mid-Since both are chaste, their goal is marriage in which dle canto. Canto vi is the book’s centre as it treats

2014 ◽  
pp. 33-33
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Satisfaction ◽  
Political Order ◽  
The Other ◽  
Natural Order ◽  
The Political ◽  
Virgin Queen ◽  
Love Stories ◽  
The World ◽  
At Iii ◽  
The One

Roman Triumphs and Etruscan Kings: The Changing Face of the Triumph

1970 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larissa Bonfante Warren
Keyword(s):  
Early Period ◽  
Roman History ◽  
The Other ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Religious Festivals ◽  
The One

The triumph, to a Roman of the later Republic and Empire, seemed sacred and all of a piece. Its venerable antiquity was more important than its origin or development. So on the one hand Roman antiquarians agreed the triumph was as ancient as Romulus himself; and on the other its antiquity was felt to be confirmed rather than impaired by the connection of many details with the Etruscans—though the ancients never claimed, as modern scholars have done, that the institution itself was borrowed from the Etruscans. It was simply neither important nor desirable to pin down precisely the dates or phases of such a hallowed celebration.Of course it is not true that there were no changes. Yet the Roman attitude may have also affected modern historians, who until rather recently have been satisfied with a kind of ‘unitarian’ view of the triumph as something permanent and immutable, untouched by history; discussions of particular problems, such as the alleged divinization of thetriumphatoror the location of theporta triumphalis, have taken very little account of changes in the triumph itself. Many Roman rituals did, indeed, continue practically unchanged, and it is a peculiarity of Roman history that our most reliable documents for the early period are religious festivals celebrated year after year, rather than written records or histories. But the triumph was, more than other religious festivals, a part of the political life at Rome.

Getting Over Athens

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas Wiater
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
New Model ◽  
Dionysius Of Halicarnassus ◽  
The One

This chapter examines the ambivalent image of Classical Athens in Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ Roman Antiquities. This image reflects a deep-seated ambiguity of Dionysius’ Classicist ideology: on the one hand, there is no question for Dionysius that Athenocentric Hellenicity failed, and that the Roman empire has superseded Athens’ role once and for all as the political and cultural centre of the oikoumene. On the other, Dionysius accepted Rome’s supremacy as legitimate partly because he believed (and wanted his readers to believe) her to be the legitimate heir of Classical Athens and Classical Athenian civic ideology. As a result, Dionysius develops a new model of Hellenicity for Roman Greeks loyal to the new political and cultural centre of Rome. This new model of Greek identity incorporates and builds on Classical Athenian ideals, institutions, and culture, but also supersedes them.

‘There shall be no musical servitude’: Towards a Multitudinous Shostakovich in the West

2020 ◽  
Vol 145 (2) ◽  
pp. 495-505
Author(s):  
EIRINI DIAMANTOULI
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
The West ◽  
Political Views ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
The One ◽  
The Cold War

Ideologically motivated attempts to elucidate Shostakovich’s political views and to determine whether and how they may be coded into his compositions have come to characterize the Western reception of the composer’s works since his death in 1975. Fuelled by the political oppositions of the cold war, Shostakovich’s posthumous reputation in the West has been largely shaped by two conflicting perspectives. These have positioned him on the one hand as a secret dissident, bent and broken under the unbearable strain of totalitarianism, made heroic through his veiled musical resistance to Communism; and on the other hand as a composer compromised by his capitulation to the regime – represented in an anachronistic musical style. Both perspectives surrender Shostakovich and his music to a crude oversimplification driven by vested political interests. Western listeners thus conditioned are primed to hear either the coded dissidence of a tragic victim of Communist brutality or the sinister submission of a ‘loyal son of the Communist Party’.1 For those prepared to accept Shostakovich as a ‘tragic victim’, the publication of his purported memoirs in 1979, ‘as related to and edited by’ the author Solomon Volkov, presents a tantalizing conclusion: bitterly yet discreetly scornful of the Stalinist regime, Shostakovich was indeed a secret dissident and this dissidence was made tangible in his music.

Studying Political Leadership: The Case of François Mitterrand

1994 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 453-468 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alistair Cole
Keyword(s):  
General Framework ◽  
Political Leadership ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Environmental Constraints ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
The One

The study of political leadership, in France and elsewhere, must be appreciated in terms of the interaction between leadership resources (personal and positional) on the one hand, and environmental constraints and opportunities on the other. This article proposes a general framework for appraising comparative liberal democratic political leaderships. It illustrates the possibilities of the framework by evaluating the political leadership of the French President François Mitterrand.

Scatter 2

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Bennington
Keyword(s):  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
The Other ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
Early Church ◽  
The Political ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Jean Bodin ◽  
Marsilius Of Padua ◽  
The One ◽  
Nuremberg Trials

Scatter 2 identifies politics as an object of perennial difficulty for philosophy—as recalcitrant to philosophical mastery as is philosophy’s traditional adversary, poetry. That difficulty makes it an attractive area of attention for any deconstructive approach to the tradition from which we inevitably inherit our language and our concepts. Scatter 2 pursues that deconstruction, often starting, and sometimes departing, from the work of Jacques Derrida, by attending to the concepts of sovereignty on the one hand, and democracy on the other. Part I follows the fate of a line from Book II of Homer’s Iliad, where Odysseus asserts that “the rule of many is no good thing, let there be one ruler, one king,” as it is quoted and misquoted, and progressively Christianized, by authors including Aristotle, Philo Judaeus, Suetonius, the early Church Fathers, Aquinas, Dante, Ockham, Marsilius of Padua, Jean Bodin, Etienne de la Boétie, up to Carl Schmitt and Erik Peterson, and even one of the defendants at the Nuremberg Trials, before being discussed by Derrida himself. Part II begins again, as it were, with Plato and Aristotle, and tracks the concept of democracy as it regularly impacts and tends to undermine that sovereignist tradition, and, more especially in detailed readings of Hobbes and Rousseau, develops a notion of “proto-democracy” as a possible name for the scatter that underlies and drives the political as such, and that will always prevent politics from achieving its aim of bringing itself to an end.

Indian and Russian Tolstoy: one among strangers and a stranger among one’s

2021 ◽  
pp. 27-35
Author(s):  
Svetlana M. Klimova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Sphere ◽  
Indian Thought ◽  
Russian State ◽  
Lev Tolstoy ◽  
The One ◽  
The Voice ◽  
The Church ◽  
Peculiar Phenomenon

The article examines the phenomenon of the late Lev Tolstoy in the context of his religious position. The author analyzes the reactions to his teaching in Russian state and official Orthodox circles, on the one hand, and Indian thought, on the other. Two sociocultural images of L.N. Tolstoy: us and them that arose in the context of understanding the position of the Russian Church and the authorities and Indian public and religious figures (including Mahatma Gandhi, who was under his influence). A peculiar phenomenon of intellectually usL.N. Tolstoy among culturally them (Indian) correspondents and intellectually them Tolstoy among culturally us (representatives of the official government and the Church of Russia) transpires. The originality of this situation is that these im­ages of Lev Tolstoy arise practically at the same period. The author compares these images, based on the method of defamiliarisation (V. Shklovsky), which allows to visually demonstrate the religious component of Tolstoy’s criticism of the political sphere of life and, at the same time, to understand the psychological reasons for its rejection in Russian official circles. With the methodological help of defamiliarisation the author tries to show that the opinion of Tolstoy (as the writer) becomes at the same time the voice of conscience for many of his con­temporaries. The method of defamiliarisation allowed the author to show how Leo Tolstoy’s inner law of nonviolence influenced the concept of non­violent resistance in the teachings of Gandhi.

Towards the Socratic Mission: Imitatio Socratis

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 193-222
Author(s):  
Mathias G. Parding
Keyword(s):  
Psychological Climate ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Movements ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Political Associations ◽  
The One ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
The Church

Abstract It is known that Kierkegaard’s relation to politics was problematic and marked by a somewhat reactionary stance. The nature of this problematic relation, however, will be shown to lie in the tension between his double skepticism of the order of establishment [det Bestående] on the one hand, and the political associations of his age on the other. In this tension he is immersed, trembling between Scylla and Charybdis. On the one hand Kierkegaard is hesitant to support the progressive political movements of the time due to his skepticism about the principle of association in the socio-psychological climate of leveling and envy. On the other hand, his dubious support of the order of the establishment, in particular the Church and Bishop Mynster, becomes increasingly problematic. The importance of 1848 is crucial in this regard since this year marks the decisive turn in Kierkegaard’s authorship. Using the letters to Kolderup-Rosenvinge in the wake of the cataclysmic events of 1848 as my point of departure, I wish to elucidate the pathway towards what Kierkegaard himself understands as his Socratic mission.

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