political thinking
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2022 ◽  
pp. 1470594X2110650
Author(s):  
Michael Hannon

It is widely believed that democracies require knowledgeable citizens to function well. But the most politically knowledgeable individuals tend to be the most partisan and the strength of partisan identity tends to corrupt political thinking. This creates a conundrum. On the one hand, an informed citizenry is allegedly necessary for a democracy to flourish. On the other hand, the most knowledgeable and passionate voters are also the most likely to think in corrupted, biased ways. What to do? This paper examines this tension and draws out several lessons. First, it is not obvious that more knowledgeable voters will make better political decisions. Second, attempts to remedy voter ignorance are problematic because partisans tend to become more polarized when they acquire more information. Third, solutions to citizen incompetence must focus on the intellectual virtue of objectivity. Fourth, some forms of epistocracy are troubling, in part, because they would increase the political power of the most dogmatic and biased individuals. Fifth, a highly restrictive form of epistocracy may escape the problem of political dogmatism, but epistocrats may face a steeper tradeoff between inclusivity and epistemic virtue than they would like.


2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vlasta Jalušič

Reinhard Koselleck has long been regarded as a particularly eminent theorist of socio-political concepts, while Hannah Arendt had not been in focus as a conceptual author until recent times. This article explores the common thinking space between Arendt and Koselleck through their thesis about the gap, rupture, crisis, or break in the tradition of political thinking and historical periods and how this is linked to their notion of conceptuality, i.e. Begreifen (understanding). Despite the impression that each of them focused on the one main break between the past and the future, Arendt and Koselleck both studied multiple breaks and crises in the Western political tradition. The article attempts to show how their distinctive thinking and rethinking of political concepts (Begreifen) are related to these breaks through several direct and indirect encounters and how these are both close and apart at the same time. While they have different concepts of politics and the political, their understanding of the breaks in time and crises can be read as complementary, especially considering their concern with returning the responsibility for actions and concepts to the human sphere.


2021 ◽  
pp. 64-103
Author(s):  
Alexandra Kertz-Welzel

This chapter develops a notion of utopia and utopian thinking which is useful for reconsidering music education and social change. The first section analyzes what utopia is. It shows the ambivalence of this concept, as both literary genre and method. It emphasizes its relatedness to various fields of research such as sociology and thus opens possible links for music education. The second section is concerned with utopia and political thinking, critically discussing the significance of utopia for political theory and philosophy. Their connection is much deeper than thought, but also needs a differentiated and critical perspective. The third section approaches utopia and the arts, elaborating their significance for artists of various times and genres.


Author(s):  
Frank Möller ◽  
Rasmus Bellmer ◽  
Rune Saugmann

Abstract This article introduces visual appropriation as a method in critical international political thinking and acting, contributing to the evolving repertoire of multiple, pluralist methods for visual analysis of international relations operating in a digital visual environment. We define appropriation as reuse of existing visual material—either in its entirety or in part—without substantially altering the immanent characteristics of the appropriated material. As appropriators, scholars are producers of images who capitalize on and actively participate in digital visuality (seeing–changing–sharing). Appropriators are both image-analysts and image-actors but distinct from both, contributing not only to the visual analysis, but also to the visual construction of international relations. Approaching the international through appropriation grants researchers increased agency and responsibility vis-à-vis existing visual materials “out-there.” Rather than exploring a digital space of visual images produced and appropriated by others, researchers consciously and deliberately partake in the production and dissemination of images. As a result, we highlight how we—as scholars and as citizens—are facing research-ethical problematiques linked to ways of showing and seeing inevitably emanating from appropriation.


2021 ◽  
pp. 003802292110510
Author(s):  
M. H. Ilias

There is a major assumption regarding the politics of the neo-Salafis in South India (especially in Kerala) widely shared in the political, media and academic circles; their everyday life and religiosity do not provide a conscious address to things such as state and politics and they are confined to the social and religious sphere rather than the political one . The recurring question in this study is, therefore, how to make sense of the political expressions of a group, which apparently shows no direct inclination towards the ‘mainstream’ politics. This study also tries to address the ambiguity about the role of Salafi ideology in everyday conduct of politics among the neo-Salafis. What is the position of Salafism in the scheme of political thinking and how it relates to the political imagination of neo-Salafis, are examined taking cues from the experience of some of the neo- Salafist groups, which keep a strong open disbelief in the secular polity.


Soundings ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 79 (79) ◽  
pp. 51-77
Author(s):  
Gregor McLennan ◽  
Bruce Robbins ◽  
Angela McRobbie ◽  
Brett St Louis ◽  
Catherine Hall

The authors discuss Stuart Hall's lifelong critical engagement with Marxism - though his was a complex, subtle, agonistic, Marxism, where nothing is taken for granted. This engagement continued even as postcoloniality, ethnicity, race and identity steadily came to the centre of Hall's attention, constituting ways of thinking that in some ways represented a departure. Hall can be seen as a mediator, both within Marxism - for example structuralism versus culturalism - and between Marxism and other discourses, finding areas in common as well as difference, respecting aspects of a position without endorsing whole positions; and in so doing transforming the problem under consideration. He is also discussed as an organic intellectual, who - though with no assumption of a shared class or shared party - sought to create a collective self-consciousness, a coalition, that could offer an effective challenge to the state. The concept of conjuncture is an important part of these ideas. These aspects of Hall's work are discussed further in relation to racialisation and racism, where Hall is seen as committed to both analytic and practical observation, and to humanism as well as Marxism: the people at the centre of the analysis are agents not categories. Hall was not aiming to bring things to a rounded, validity-seeking coherence, but to always leave some strands open: his thinking is constitutively open. At the same time his underlying, very simple, message is that, in some way or another, the many issues we face are all connected, and we should never give up the integrative pluralism of political thinking. The great danger is fragmented pluralism, where the politics of difference, wherever the differences are, leads to political de-alignment rather than coalitional unity.


2021 ◽  
pp. 009059172110465
Author(s):  
Robyn Marasco

This essay interprets Machiavelli’s famous letter to Francesco Vettori in terms of a play-element that runs across his works. The letter to Vettori is a masterpiece of epistolary form, but beyond its most memorable passage, where Machiavelli recounts his evening in study, it has not received much scholarly attention. Reading the letter in its entirety is to discover Machiavelli’s account of an eclectic political education and the pleasures of playing with others. Machiavelli’s letter speaks to a basic ludicity in his political thinking, in which play is not opposed to the serious, and diverse play forms can be thought together. Hans-George Gadamer’s Truth and Method, Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens, and Roger Caillois’s Man, Play, and Games provide resources for reconstructing this play-element in Machiavelli’s thought.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 155
Author(s):  
Stanislav Myšička

He holds a PhD and is Assistant Professor at the Department of Politics, Philosophical Faculty, University of Hradec Králové, Czech Republic. He specialises in Chinese modern history, Chinese foreign politics, international relations in Asia, and the history of Asian political thinking. He is the author of the book John Rawls a Teorie Mezinárodních Vztahů [John Rawls and the Theory of International Relations]. E-mail: [email protected]


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