The Eurocentrism of neo-Roman republicanism and the neglect of republican empire

Republicanism is an approach within political theory that seeks to secure the values of political liberty and non-domination. Yet, in historical practice, early modern republics developed empires and secured their liberty through policies that dominated others. This contradiction presents challenges for how neo-Roman theorists understand ideals of liberty and political freedom. This article argues that the historical practices of slavery and empire developed concurrently with the normative ideals of republican liberty. Republican liberty does not arise in the absence of power but is inherently connected to the exercise of power.

Robespierre y el humanismo cívico.

La distinción entre el lenguaje del humanismo cívico y el republicanismo resulta una aclaración conceptual adecuada para comprender las acciones de Robespierre ante la apertura de una nueva concepción de la política. En el humanismo cívico es posible encontrar elementos que responden a los presupuestos del comunitarismo, en tanto problemas que se circunscriben a una región limitada, y el republicanismo responde a exigencias que son susceptibles de universalidad. Ahora bien, esta distinción no es clara, ya que, durante la Revolución francesa, en especial en el caso de Robespierre, encontramos una mezcla entre la exigencia de la virtud cívica clásica con la búsqueda de un fundamento de legitimidad política con un enfoque social. Así, la anomalía ideológica de Robespierre solo puede esclarecerse a través de la comprensión de las peculiaridades del lenguaje de la virtud y el universalismo moral Palabras clave Republicanismo, comunitarismo, lenguaje político, mentalidades. Referencias Baron, H. (1966). The crisis of the early Italian Renaissance. Civic humanism and republican liberty in an age of classicism and tyranny. Princeton, Estados Unidos: Princeton University Press.Benjamin, W. (2013). Über den Begriff der Geschichte. En R. Tiedemann (Ed.).Walter Benjamin. Sprache und Geschichte. Philosophische Essays (pp. 141-154). Stuttgart, Alemania: Reclam.Bergeron, L., Furet, F. y Koselleck, R. (2012). La época de las revoluciones europeas, 1780-1848. Ciudad de México, México: Siglo xxi.Bernal, R. (2016). Fraternidad y democracia en el origen de nuestra modernidad política. En G. Ambriz Arévalo y R. Bernal Lugo (Coords.). El derecho contra el capital. Reflexiones desde la izquierda contemporánea (pp. 36-71). Chilpancingo, México: Contraste.Castro Gómez, S. (2019). Republicanismo transmoderno. En El tonto y los canallas. Notas para un republicanismo transmoderno (pp. 161-220). Bogotá, Colombia: Editorial Pontificia Universidad Javeriana.Dubiel, H., Frankenberg, G. y Rödel, U. (1997). El dispositivo simbólico de la democracia. En La cuestión democrática (pp. 137-192). Madrid, España: Huerga y Fierro Editores.Gauthier, F. (2005, 23 de julio). Robespierre: por una república democrática social. Sin Permiso. Recuperado de http://www.sinpermiso.info/textos/robespierre- por-una-repblica-democrtica-y-social.Gaytán, F. (2016). Hacia los nuevos testamentos jacobinos: los decálogos normativos para la laicidad. En Manual de redentores: laicidad y derechos, entre populismo y neojacobinismo (pp. 57-101). Ciudad de México, México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México-Instituto de Investigaciones Jurídicas.Gilroy, P. (2014). El Atlántico negro. Modernidad y doble conciencia. Madrid, España: Akal.James, C. L. R. (2003). Los jacobinos negros. Toussaint L’Overture y la Revolución de Haití. Ciudad de México, México: Turner-Fondo de Cultura Económica.Kant, I. (1900 s.). Kant’s Gesammelte Schriften (Editado por la Real Academia Prusiana de las Ciencias). Berlín, Alemania: Reimer [hoy De Gruyter]. Koselleck, R. (2017). Erfahrungsraum und Erwartungshorizont zwei historischen Kategorien. En Vergangene Zukunft. Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten (pp. 349-375). Fráncfort, Alemania: Suhrkamp Verlag.Mandeville, B. (1983). La fábula de las abejas. Ciudad de México, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica.Maquiavelo, N. (2015). Discursos sobre la primera década de Tito Livio. Madrid, España: Alianza.McPherson, C.B. (1962). The political theory of possessive individualism: Hobbes to Locke. Nueva York, Estados Unidos: Oxford University Press.

Criminal Law and Republican Liberty: Philip Pettit’s Account

Philip Pettit has made central to modern republican theory a distinctive account of freedom—republican freedom. On this account, I am not free solely because I can make choices without interference. I am truly free, only if that non-interference does not itself depend on another’s forbearance (what Pettit calls ‘formal’ freedom). Pettit believes that the principal justification for the traditional focus of the criminal law is that it constitutes a bulwark against domination. I will, in part, be considering the merits of this claim. Is the importance of the orthodox realm of the criminal law solely or mainly explained by the wish to protect people from domination? In short, the answer is that it is not. Across the board, the criminal law rightly protects us equally from threats to what Pettit calls ‘effective,’ as opposed to formal, republican freedom. I will develop my critique of Pettit’s account of criminal law, in part to raise questions about the role of ‘domination’ in political theory, and about whether it poses a significant challenge to liberal accounts of criminal law.

Sen’s Conception of Freedom, and a Conjecture on Embodiment

This article explores Amartya Sen’s understanding of freedom, and performs two central functions, one classificatory and the other substantive in nature. First, I situate his reflections within canonical understandings of liberty, finding an irreducible pluralism incorporating positive liberty in ‘capability’ alongside negative and republican liberty in ‘process’, which is subsequently unified in the notion of ‘comprehensive outcomes’. Secondly, I attempt to find a normative referent for the intrinsic value of choice, and thereby indirectly that of freedom, in his account. In contrast to the liberal subjectivity one might – I believe, mistakenly – attribute to Sen’s deployment of neoclassical economic frameworks, I instead argue for a re-interpretation of his account, inspired by the sociological literature on embodiment. Here, an ‘encumbered’ subject must inherit and transcend a normative totality to become an agent in the fullest sense.

Sieyès and Republican liberty

In On the People’s Terms, Philip Pettit incorporates the Sieyèsian notion of constituent power into his constitutional theory of non-domination. In this article, I argue that Emmanuel Sieyès’s understanding of liberty precludes such an appropriation. While a republican, his conceptualisation of liberty in the face of commercial society stood apart from theories of civic vigilance, preferring instead to disentangle individuals from politics and maximise what he understood to be their non-political freedoms. Sieyès saw that liberty was heightened through relations of representation and commercial dependency. This conception of liberty was pivotal to the identity of the nation, and so allowed Sieyès to assess forms of collective injustice committed by the French nobility. It also provided the normative foundation of his theory of constituent power. For Sieyès, constituent power guarded against legislative excess in a decidedly minimal sense, intending instead to separate citizens from the political sphere so they were not burdened with ongoing participation or public vigilance.

Sanctuary Cities and Republican Liberty

What are sanctuary cities? What are the political stakes? The literature provides inadequate answers. Liberal migration theorists offer few insights into sanctuary city politics. Critical migration scholars primarily address the relationship between sanctuary cities and political activism, a small part of the phenomenon. The historical literature examines continuities between 1970s sanctuary church activism and contemporary sanctuary cities, confusing what is essential to sanctuary churches and what is only sometimes associated with sanctuary cities. Together these approaches obscure more than they reveal. This article suggests a republican account of sanctuary cities. Reconstructing American migration politics from the colonial era onward shows that sanctuary cities have roots in both the colonial republican revolt and the republican principle of freedom as nondomination. That reconstruction reveals much about both sanctuary cities and the federal government’s long-running assault on them. The resulting robust analytical framework clarifies what is at stake in the politics of sanctuary cities: federal sovereignty in migration politics specifically and republican liberty in migration politics generally.