The Rise of Germany in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries and Sustaining Democracy

This article examines the rise of Germany from the nineteenth century to explain that it is open access in the economic sphere, as well as institutional building related to the protection of property rights, contract enforcement, financial markets, rule of law, and human resource accumulation that determine economic and human development. The case of Germany is not very consistent with the logic of the open access orders of North et al. or the theory of extractive political institutions of Acemoglu and Robinson along the line of contestation and inclusiveness. The case of Germany is, however, able to support the research of Przeworski and Limongi that economic development is more likely to sustain democracy. Germany is certainly not the only case in explaining that stable democracy is not the cause but rather the consequence or outcome of lengthy economic development. The historical evidence from South Korea and Taiwan similarly supports the position that democracy is the outcome of economic and political development. This article, however, does not examine whether western values of human equality and human freedom are essential in economic and human development. They are very likely to be so as human equality is the precondition of open access in the economic sphere and human freedom is closely integrated with the interconnected institutions examined in this article. Future research may investigate the roles of these values in different political systems regardless of whether a political system is under the rule of one party, by a dominant party, or through the utilization of a multiparty system.

Kierkegaard at the Intersections: The Single Individual and Identity Politics

Kierkegaard’s authorship is frequently charged with being so radically individualistic that his work is of little use to social theory. However, in this essay, I argue that Kierkegaard’s notion of “the single individual” actually offers important critical resources for some aspects of contemporary identity politics. Through a focused consideration of the two notes that form the little essay, “The Individual” (published with Point of View), I suggest that Kierkegaard does not ignore embodied historical existence, as is sometimes claimed, but instead simply rejects the idea that one’s moral dignity is determined by, or reducible to, such embodied differentiation. Instead, what we find in Kierkegaard is a rejection of the quantitative judgment of “the crowd” in favor of the qualitative neighbor-love of community. In light of Kierkegaard’s claim that it is the specifically religious category of the single individual that makes possible true human equality, I contend that we can develop a Kierkegaardian identity theory consistent with some aspects of the standpoint and intersectionality theory of Patricia Hill Collins and Kimberlé Crenshaw. Although Collins and Crenshaw operate at a structural level and Kierkegaard works at a theological level, they all offer important reminders to each other about the stakes of lives of meaning in light of the embodied task of social justice.

The Objectification of Miranda in The Collector

The objectification of women is the crime impossible to obliterate committed by the patriarchal society. It is essentially the denial of human equality. The Collector of John Fowles presents a tragedy of human nature, in which the interweavement of explicit and implicit objectifications reduces women to an inhuman condition and deprives them of life and freedom. This novel implies strong awareness of social criticism and bears realistic significance.

Democracy, science and the state: Reflections on the disaster(s) of our times

The global Covid-19 pandemic has changed many aspects of our social and political lives, such as the balance between work and family, the shrinking role of the public sphere and the growth of government by executive or emergency powers. Among the most surprising consequences of this situation has been the rise of scepticism and hostility towards science and scientific authorities. This essay examines the interdependence of modern science and the modern state via a brief detour to Hobbes’s philosophy. The economic growth and affluence made possible by the yoking of scientific technology to a modern market economy served to legitimize public power for several centuries. We have reached the end of this cycle and we need a science in the service of reversing the damages inflicted by the Anthropocene on the earth; we need economic production in the service of human equality and dignity, and we need a state in which the alliance between big pharma, big capital and big data is harnessed for a new green deal rather than serving corporate greed.

“To Regain Some Kind of Human Equality”

This chapter provides the book’s theoretical framework and elaborates its focus on the political productivity of the notion of universal crime that accentuates the figures, relationships, and forms of authority and agency entailed by the concept, in contradistinction to individual rights. The chapter argues that the concept of an offense against mankind casts humanity as a normatively unified, yet minimally inclusive and hierarchically ordered, subject of world politics. The notion of universal crime grants normative recognition to the offender against mankind, because the criminal is a figure well recognized within the symbolic order of the law. Nonetheless, this normative inclusion is minimal in the sense that the universal criminal is humanity’s least desired member. Furthermore, universal crime projects humanity as a hierarchically ordered political subject, because those abiding by humanity’s universal law hold the authority to enforce it over those contravening it.

“All Human Beings are of Equal Status Since Birth”: Caste, Inequality and B.R. Ambedkar’s Universal Claim for Human Equality

Focusing on caste-based oppression, B.R. Ambedkar made a universal claim for human equality and dignity which appeared long before the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Taking the case of the Mahad movement, we argue that Ambedkar developed a significant egalitarian approach by pointing out how the caste system perpetuated existing inequalities. This article, specifically, aims to explore two central questions: first, what was the central focus of Ambedkar’s concerns at Mahad? Second, how can these concerns then provide a better understanding of his approach, with inequality and articulation of human equality and dignity? This article concludes that Ambedkar offered a distinct anti-caste philosophy and charted out a new path of civic and social liberation. His actions had moral philosophical implications for the question, what it fundamentally means to be a human, and what are the social processes that lead to the coming of an egalitarian society. From this philosophical standpoint, Ambedkar formulated the ethics of everyday social life.

Lyons and Tygers and Wolves, Oh My! Human Equality and the “Dominion Covenant” in Locke’s Two Treatises

This essay reads John Locke’s Two Treatises through its nonhuman animal presences, especially the emblematic figures of cattle and “noxious creatures” like “lyons,” “tygers,” and wolves. It argues that the real ground of Lockean human equality is an ongoing practice of subjugating nonhuman animals, and not any attribute of the human species as such. More specifically, the Lockean social compact founded on this equality relies on a “dominion covenant,” an existential “agreement” in which God lends the power of dominion to man and any threats to this order require punishment. This dynamic enables violence toward humans, in the name of their humanity, if they do not properly exert their power of dominion. Critics have connected Locke’s theory of property to indigenous dispossession and his theory of punishment to carceral systems; both processes, I argue, intimately rely on the dominion covenant. Lockean racism is the fulfillment of, and not a deviation from, his account of human equality.