A Discourse on the American Neoconservatives' Approach in the Context of Postmodernism

Multiple concepts are compatible between the Neocons and postmodernists. i.e., The concept presented by Leo Strauss of "Noble Lie," if we further dissect this concept, shows how compatible and similar with the reality-free world of the postmodern philosophers. According to postmodernism, we have no objective reality exists in this world as it is relative, and everyone sees it according to his understanding. This thesis becomes apparent when studying Nietzsche's critique against Juan Stuart Mill. Nietzsche has denounced Mill's concept of a universal and objective Moral system. As Nietzsche says, I abhor this man's vulgarity when he says, "what is right for one man is right for another man." It shows that all postmodern philosophers and Nietzsche were of the same view.

A New Interpretation of the Noble Lie

“Could we contrive one noble lie?” implies there is one noble lie (Republic 414b). The Autochthony Claim (asserting the Best City’s citizens are equally brothers) and the Hierarchical Claim (asserting brother justifiably rules over brother) follow. The article argues the former is the “one” noble lie. It argues the claims are both normative and descriptive propositions; both descriptively true about worldly polities in Plato’s day and historically. While the Hierarchical Claim is normatively true of the Best City, the Autochthony Claim is normatively false. The article offers a tentative explanation why jointly they comprise a foundational myth of political life.

Paradox as Decolonization: Ali Shariati’s Islamic Lawgiver

This article reevaluates the Iranian polymath Ali Shariati’s most controversial lectures. Scholarly consensus reads 1969’s Ummat va Imāmat as derivative, comprising an imitation of Sukarno’s guided democracy and hence an apology for postcolonial authoritarian rule. Shariati’s rhetorical performance suggests otherwise. The lectures address a postcolonial iteration of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s paradox of founding—a call for self-determination alongside the external intervention needed to prepare for it in the wake of moral dispositions accrued during colonization. Shariati proposes to resolve the problem of enduring colonial domination by citing a fabricated French professor, a foreigner, as an authoritative source. He practices a noble lie, believable because it draws from colonized sensibilities but laden with hints encouraging audiences to see past it. If audiences develop the requisite ability to decipher the lie, Shariati wagers, they at once develop the autonomy implied by self-determination. On these grounds, Shariati theorizes the paradox of politics as decolonization.

Inside and Outside Perspectives on Institutions: An Economic Theory of the Noble Lie

If there exist no incentive or selective mechanisms that make cooperation in large groups incentive-compatible under realistic circumstances, functional social institutions will require subjective preferences to diverge from objective payoffs – a “noble lie.” This implies the existence of irreducible and irreconcilable “inside” and “outside” perspectives on social institutions; that is, between foundationalist and functionalist approaches, both of which have a long pedigree in political economy. The conflict between the two, and the inability in practice to dispense with either, has a number of surprising implications for human organizations, including the impossibility of algorithmic governance, the necessity of discretionary rule enforcement in the breach, and the difficulty of an ethical economics of institutions. Leeson and Suarez argue that “some superstitions, and perhaps many, support self-governing arrangements. The relationship between such scientifically false beliefs and private institutions is symbiotic and socially productive” (2015, 48). This paper stakes out a stronger claim: that something like superstition is essential for any governance arrangement, self- or otherwise. Specifically, we argue that human social structure both requires and maintains a systematic divergence between subjective preferences and objective payoffs, in a way that usually (though in principle does not necessarily) entails “scientifically false beliefs” for at least a subset of agents. We will refer to the basis of such preferences from the perspective of those holding them as an “inside perspective,” as opposed to a functionalist-evolutionary explanation of their existence, which we will call an “outside perspective.” Drawing on the theory of cooperation, we then show that the two perspectives are in principle irreconcilable, discussing some implications of that fact for political economy and the prospects of social organization.

In Praise of Jus Cogens' Conceptual Incoherence

The most compelling account of jus cogens is that it flows from natural law and constitutes the “ethically minimum” content of international law. Although natural law was once considered an acceptable and obvious approach to jurisprudence, its significance has waned at the expense of legal positivism. However, the hierarchical quality of jus cogens is best explained by some element of natural law—and its explicit invocation of moral content—rather than anything one might find in legal positivism.Of course, international lawyers have persistently refused to recognize the latent naturalism within jus cogens. While rueful from the point of view of legal theory, the obfuscation was nonetheless essential for jus cogens to succeed. In an alternate world where jus cogens was correctly viewed as a vestige of natural law, modern international lawyers would never have accepted it.One might lament the failure to recognize the natural law origins of jus cogens because it hampered the development of standards for identifying which legal norms counted as jus cogens. However, no account of jus cogens offers compelling, unambiguous criteria, and second, the lack of clarity on its criteria was a good price to pay in exchange for the legal category’s widespread adoption. In the end, the notion that jus cogens is consistent with international law’s legal positivism was a useful fiction, a “noble lie” that gave us modern human rights law.