Realms Without Totality

This essay posits tensions in art, education, and politics by using philosophical discourse to suggest that the way to create transformative events for social change is to understand Lyotard's diagnosis of the current age and Rancière's call to critical art practice. By proposing new strategies and tactics such as 'post-art' and 'strange tools', the author tries to demonstrate in the text the indirect approaches advocated by Lyotard and Rancière in tackling the current post-political world.

Big Business and Cadre Management in China

Leading cadres in China are subject to rotation. An interesting form of rotation takes place between big business and the political world. That means one fifth of China’s governors and vice governors have a business background as heads of one of China’s large State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs). How this takes place and which qualifications the involved business leaders possess are shrouded in mystery. Based on prosopographical studies of Chinese business leaders who have participated in the Chinese Executive Leadership Program (CELP), this article attempts to open the black box. The study examines the career pathways of CELP participants in Party, government and business positions. The study shows that 84 of the 261 CELP SOE participants (2005-2018) were subsequently promoted, and 20 of these promotions were from SOEs to leading Party and government positions. In some cases, former business leaders became Party secretaries in important provinces or ministers in key ministries. The article also argues that Chinese business leaders have managed to keep their administrative ranking in the Chinese nomenklatura system. In fact, Chinese business leaders are quasi officials (zhun guan) and form an important recruitment base for leadership renewal. As such, the article suggests that the rotation of cadres within the ‘Iron Triangle’ of Party–government–business constitutes the main unifying and stabilising factor in the Chinese political system.

Dreaming of Death and the Dead in the Stuart Political World Imaginary

William Laud played a critical role in the politics and religion in the reign of James I and especially that of his son, Charles I. There was great antagonism toward him by Puritans, and Laud’s close friendship with George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, made Laud even more controversial, as did his fight with the king’s jester, Archy Armstrong. Dreams were seen as having great significance at time of Laud, and Laud recorded his dreams in his journal. Dreams also played a role in the early Stuart political world. This essay examines how Laud’s enemies used his own dreams against him in the work of William Prynne, once Laud was arrested during the English Civil war. It also looks at how Laud was compared to also despised Thomas, Cardinal Wolsey in a number of political pamphlets that used dreams, such as Archy’s Dream and Canterburie’s Dream. Laud also appeared as a character in a dream of Charles I’s attendant Thomas Herbert the night before the king’s execution, where Laud came to comfort Charles.

The relevance of dietetics in Gandhian philosophy: Mapping the trajectories of his experiments

This article argues for analytics of dietary habits of Mahatma Gandhi through an argument around his practices and manner of articulation on discourses on food; his experimentation around dietetics and its relation to political goals in the light of colonial governmentality. Gandhi's dietetics practice intervened with the construction of Oriental as the 'others', showing that the subject (Indian) domain constituted the hegemonic order of colonial reign by presenting the superiority inherent in the colonial culture. In this regard, this article describes the emergence of Gandhi's alternative dietary habits, with analyses of discourses on scientific treatment of food as a part of daily livelihood, while understanding and arguing for the importance of dietetics as an integral part of the political world of modernity. It concludes that the broader contours of Gandhian philosophy and its introduction in Indian society through nationalist politics are uniformly appended with the formulation of his experimentation, not only with his philosophical and political goals but also with his daily practices dietetics constitute an essential part. Throughout, there is an attempt to present the symbolic and discursive construction of dietetics and experimentations to negotiate the individual's character.

Celsus in his World

Celsus penned the earliest known detailed attack upon Christianity. While his identity is disputed and his anti-Christian treatise, entitled the True Word, has been exclusively transmitted through the hands of the great Christian scholar Origen, he remains an intriguing figure. In this interdisciplinary volume, which brings together ancient philosophers, specialists in Greek literature, and historians of early Christianity and of ancient Judaism, Celsus is situated within the cultural, philosophical, religious and political world from which he emerged. While his work is ostensibly an attack upon Christianity, it is also the defence of a world in which Celsus passionately believed. It is the unique contribution of this volume to give voice to the many dimensions of that world in a way that will engage a variety of scholars interested in late antiquity and the histories of Christianity, Judaism and Greek thought.

Truth and Post-Truth in Public Policy

The phenomenon of post-truth poses a problem for the public policy-oriented sciences, including policy analysis. Along with “fake news,” the post-truth denial of facts constitutes a major concern for numerous policy fields. Whereas a standard response is to call for more and better factual information, this Element shows that the effort to understand this phenomenon has to go beyond the emphasis on facts to include an understanding of the social meanings that get attached to facts in the political world of public policy. The challenge is thus seen to be as much about a politics of meaning as it is about epistemology. The analysis here supplements the examination of facts with an interpretive policy-analytic approach to gain a fuller understanding of post-truth. The importance of the interpretive perspective is illustrated by examining the policy arguments that have shaped policy controversies related to climate change and coronavirus denial.

Political Conversations in Late Republican Rome

We are familiar with the notion that the Roman political world of the Late Republic included lofty speeches and sessions of the Senate, but also need to remember that another important aspect of Late Republican politics revolved around senators talking among themselves, chatting in the corner. The present book intends to analyse senatorial political conversations and illuminate the oral aspects of Roman politics. It argues that Roman senators and their entourages met in person to have conversations in which they discussed politics, circulated political information, and negotiated strategies; this extra-institutional sphere had a relevant impact both on politics and institutions, as well as determining how the Roman Republic functioned. The main point of this book is to offer a new perspective on Roman politics through the proxy of conversations and meetings. Orality has represented an important component in analysis of Roman institutions: oratory before the people in assemblies and contiones, addresses and discussions in the Senate, speeches in the law courts. Orality was also crucial in rumours and public opinion. The present research posits that, in Rome, oral was the default mode of communication in politics, especially outside institutions. Only when they could not reach each other in person did Roman senators and their peers resort to letters. The book suggests that the study of politics should not be restricted to the senatorial group, but that other persons should be considered as important actors with their own agency (albeit in different degrees), such as freedmen and elite women.

Something Funny Happened on the Way to the Twenty-First Century

This essay first traces change in, roughly, the epistemology of the humanities from the 1950s to the 21st century. The second section looks at how the meaning and options in moral philosophy altered in more or less the same period. The last and easily most speculative section examines how these changes permeated American culture, and how professional philosophers responded to the challenges of the new political world they inhabited.

The Learning of the Mind as an Ideological Movement: Probing the Historical Origins of the School of Wang Yangming

As an influential scholar, the Ming 明 Neo-Confucian master Wang Yangming 王陽明 (1472–1529) was also active in the political world. While showing philosophical ingenuity, Wang launched an ideological movement which reached beyond Neo-Confucian discourse and into the social and political spheres. By promoting his xinxue 心學 teachings, Wang aimed to change Ming political life through fostering a moral retrenchment among future officials. To achieve his goals, Wang Yangming implemented several strategies, such as turning to humble local literati for a following, teaching them as a sitting official, and supporting nonofficial academies with his political power. These strategies succeeded to some extent, in part because the Ming court had relaxed the ideological intolerance of the early Ming. The real-world background of Wang Yangming's success can be further explored by comparing Wang with his two predecessors, Xue Xuan 薛瑄 (1389–1464) and Wu Yubi 吳與弼 (1391–1469).