Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Paperback: "A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy"

A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy
2nd Edition

Ed. by Robert E. Goodin, Philip Pettit, & Thomas W. Pogge

(Wiley-Blackwell, 2007 -
paperback January 2012)


912 pages

Description

Political philosophy has become an increasingly active area of research over the past four decades. In response to the growing interest in the field, this new edition of A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy has been extended significantly to include fifty–five chapters across two volumes written by some of today’s most distinguished scholars.
Straddling analytic and continental philosophy, the first part of the Companion considers the contributions of economics, history, law, political science, international relations and sociology to normative political thought. The collection then provides analyses of eight live political ideologies, including new chapters on Cosmopolitanism and Fundamentalism, and detailed discussions of key concepts, with much expanded coverage of international politics and global justice. New contributors include some of today’s most distinguished scholars, among them Thomas Pogge, Charles Beitz, and Michael Doyle.

From the Preface to the Second Edition (2007)

The second edition of the Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy, prepared over a dozen years after the first, has been thoroughly revamped in order to take account of recent developments in the subject. Most of the entries from the first edition have been rewritten by the original hands, with a few being supplemented by other authors where the original was no longer available; a few have been penned afresh by new hands; and a range of extra entries have been added. Where there were just over forty chapters in the original work, there are nearly sixty in this.

Content [pdf] [Preview]

Part I: Disciplinary Contributions

1. Analytical Philosophy [pdf] - Philip Pettit
2. Continental Philosophy - David West
3. History - Richard Tuck
4. Sociology - Kieran Healy
5. Economics - Geoffrey Brennan
6. International Political Economy - Richard Higgott
7. Political Science - Robert E. Goodin
8. International Relations - Helen V. Milner
9. Legal Studies - Tom Campbell

Part II: Major Ideologies

10. Anarchism - Richard Sylvan & Robert Sparrow
11. Conservatism - Anthony Quinton & Annie Norton
12. Cosmopolitanism - Thomas Pogge
13. Feminism - Jane Mansbridge & Susan Moller Okin
14. Liberalism - Alan Ryan
15. Marxism - Barry Hindess
16. Fundamentalisms - R. Scott Appleby
17. Socialism - Peter Self & Michael Freeden

Part III: Special Topics

18. Autonomy - Gerald Dworkin
19. Civil Society - Rainer Forst
20. Community and Multiculturalism - Will Kymlicka
21. Contract and Consent - Jean Hampton
22. Constitutionalism and the Rule of Law - C. L. Ten
23. Corporatism and Syndicalism - Bob Jessop
24. Criminal Justice - Nicola Lacey
25. Democracy - Amy Gutmann
26. Dirty Hands - C. A. J. Coady
27. Discourse - Ernesto Laclau
28. Distributive Justice [pdf] - Peter Vallentyne
29. Efficiency - Russell Hardin
30. Environmentalism - John Passmore & Stephen Gardiner
31. Equality - Richard J. Arneson
32. Federalism - William H. Riker & Andreas Føllesdal
33. Historical Justice - Martha Minow
34. Human Rights - Charles R. Beitz
35. International Distributive Justice [pdf] - Philippe Van Parijs
36. Intellectual Property - Seana Valentine Shiffrin
37. Just War - Jeff McMahan
38. Legitimacy - Richard E. Flathman
39. Liberty - Chandran Kukathas
40. Personhood - Timothy Mulgan
41. Power - Frank Lovett
42. Property - Andrew Reeve
43. Republicanism - Knud Haakonssen
44. Responsibility: Personal, Collective, Corporate - Christopher Heath Wellman
45. Rights - Jeremy Waldron
46. Secession and Nationalism - Allen Buchanan
47. Sociobiology - Allan Gibbard
48. Sovereignty and Humanitarian Military Intervention [pdf] - Michael Doyle
49. The State - Patrick Dunleavy
50. States of Emergency - David Dyzenhaus
51. Toleration - Stephen Macedo
52. Totalitarianism - Eugene Kamenka
53. Trust and Social Capital - Bo Rothstein
54. Virtue - William A. Galston
55. Welfare - Alan Hamlin

Sunday, January 29, 2012

Book on "Kant and Cosmopolitanism"


Kant and Cosmopolitanism
The Philosophical Ideal of World Citizenship

by Pauline Kleingeld

(Cambridge University Press, December 2011)

232 pages


Description


This is the first comprehensive account of Kant's cosmopolitanism, highlighting its moral, political, legal, economic, cultural and psychological aspects. Contrasting Kant's views with those of his German contemporaries and relating them to current debates, Pauline Kleingeld sheds new light on texts that have been hitherto neglected or underestimated. In clear and carefully argued discussions, she shows that Kant's philosophical cosmopolitanism underwent a radical transformation in the mid 1790s and that the resulting theory is philosophically stronger than is usually thought. Using the work of figures such as Fichte, Cloots, Forster, Hegewisch, Wieland and Novalis, Kleingeld analyses Kant's arguments regarding the relationship between cosmopolitanism and patriotism, the importance of states, the ideal of an international federation, cultural pluralism, race, global economic justice and the psychological feasibility of the cosmopolitan ideal. In doing so, she reveals a broad spectrum of positions in cosmopolitan theory that are relevant to current discussions of cosmopolitanism.

Content [preview]

Introduction
1. World citizens in their own country: Wieland and Kant on moral cosmopolitanism and patriotism
2. Universal republic of world citizens or international federation?: Cloots and Kant on global peace
3. Global hospitality: Kant's concept of cosmopolitan right
4. Hierarchy or diversity?: Forster and Kant on race, culture, and cosmopolitanism
5. International trade and justice: Hegewisch and Kant on cosmopolitanism and globalization
6. Cosmopolitanism and feeling: Novalis and Kant on the development of a universal human community
7. Kant's cosmopolitanism and current philosophical debates.

Pauline Kleingeld is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands. She is the editor of "Immanuel Kant, ‘Toward Perpetual Peace’ and Other Writings on Politics, Peace, and History" (Yale University Press, 2006) and co-author (with Eric Brown) of the entry on "Cosmopolitanism" (2006) in "Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy".

See also her papers on
- "Kant's Cosmopolitan Law" (pdf, 1998)
- "Kant's Cosmopolitan Patriotism" (pdf, 2003).

Friday, January 27, 2012

Conference on "Habermas und der Historische Materialismus"

Conference on "Habermas und der Historische Materialismus" at the University of Wuppertal, Germany, March 23 - 25, 2012.

Jürgen Habermas will attend the conference and take part in the discussions.


Program [pdf]

Friday, March 23, 2012

William Outhwaite (Newcastle):
Kontinuitäten und Diskontinuitäten in Habermas’ Auseinandersetzung mit dem Historischen Materialismus

Manfred Baum (Wuppertal):
Historischer Materialismus und Kommunikationstheorie – eine Mésalliance?

Michael Quante (Münster):
Die Rückkehr des gegenständlichen Gattungswesens

Karl-Otto Apel:
Transzendentalpragmatik als Paradigma der Ersten Philosophie

Saturday, March 24, 2012

Ingo Elbe (Oldenburg):
Habermas’ Kritik des Produktionsparadigmas

Smail Rapic (Wuppertal):
Legitimationsprobleme im Spätkapitalismus – Zur Aktualität eines Habermas’schen Textes aus dem Jahre 1973

Stefan Müller-Doohm (Oldenburg):
Die Zivilisierung des globalen Kapitalismus und die Zukunft Europas

Claudia Bogedan (Düsseldorf):
Forschungsprojekte der Hans-Böckler-Stiftung zu aktuellen Legitimationsfragen der kapitalistischen Ökonomie

Klaus Günther (Frankfurt):
Recht und Evolution

Hans-Christoph Schmidt am Busch (Frankfurt/Münster):
Die Rationalität des modernen Rechts. Zur Rekonstruktion und Revision des Historischen Materialismus im Werk von Jürgen Habermas

Regina Kreide (Gießen):
Soziale Evolution und Lernblockaden

Sunday, March 25, 2012

Georg Lohmann (Magdeburg):
Ernüchterte Geschichtsphilosophie. Zur Rolle der Geschichtsphilosophie in Habermas’ kritischer Gesellschaftstheorie

Klaus Erich Kaehler (Köln):
Hegel, Marx und das moderne Subjekt. Anmerkungen zu Habermas’ Der philosophische Diskurs der Moderne

Hauke Brunkhorst (Flensburg):
Wiederkehr der Krise? – Revisionen des Marxistischen Theorieprogramms

Agnes Heller (Budapest/New York):
Meine Habermas-Rezeption vor 35 Jahren

Discussion with Axel Honneth at Humboldt University

On February 2, 2012, Axel Honneth takes part in a discussion at the Humboldt University in Berlin:

Die Gegenwart der Freiheit
Zeitdiagnose und Gesellschaftskritik in Axel Honneths "Das Recht der Freiheit"

The panel:
Axel Honneth (New York/Frankfurt), Ute Frevert (Berlin), Heiner Ganßmann (Berlin) & Christoph Möllers (Berlin).

"In seiner jüngsten Monographie „Das Recht der Freiheit“ unternimmt Axel Honneth den ehrgeizigen Versuch, die Rekonstruktion der Kriterien sozialer Gerechtigkeit auf Grundlage der für die zentralen Institutionen westlich-liberaler Gesellschaften konstitutiven normativen Ansprüche mit einer umfassenden kritischen Zeitdiagnose zu verbinden. In dieser Veranstaltung wird es vor allem darum gehen, letzteren Anspruch auf den Prüfstand zu stellen: Was hat es mit Honneths grundlegender These auf sich, dass das „Wir“ persönlicher Beziehungen, das „Wir“ marktwirtschaftlichen Handelns und das „Wir“ demokratischer Willensbildung als Formen der „Wirklichkeit der Freiheit“ begriffen werden können? Zu diesem Zweck wurden Forscher_innen aus den Bereichen der Sozial- und Geschlechtergeschichte, der Wirtschafts-/Sozialwissenschaften sowie der Rechts- und Demokratietheorie zu einer Podiumsveranstaltung mit Axel Honneth eingeladen, um seine Zeitdiagnose einer kritischen Diskussion zu unterziehen."

See my post on Honneth's latest book here - and links to reviews here.


Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Four papers by Allen Wood on Kant, Hegel, and Parfit

At his website at Stanford University, Professor Allen Wood has posted four papers:

1. Kant on Practical Reason
(Forthcoming in "Kant and Practical Justification", Oxford University Press).
Here I attempt to explicate the account of practical reason presented by Kant in the Groundwork, and to relate it critically to some contemporary conceptions of practical reason.

2. Kant and Agent-Oriented Ethics
(Published in "Perfecting Virtue", Cambridge University Press, 2011).
A critical discussion of virtue ethics and the relation of Kant's moral philosophy to it.

3. Hegel's Political Philosophy
(Published in "A Companion to Hegel", Routledge 2011).
A succinct account of Hegel's theory of the modern state, together with background information about its history and political context.

4. Humanity as End In Itself: Comments on Derek Parfit, On What Matters, Volume 1
(Published in Derek Parfit's "On What Matters", Oxford University Press, 2011).
Includes a critique of the use of 'trolley problems' in moral philosophy.

Allen Wood is Professor of Philosophy at Indiana University. He is the author of "Hegel’s Ethical Thought" (Cambridge University Press, 1990), "Kant’s Ethical Thought" (Cambridge University Press, 1999), and "Kantian Ethics" (Cambridge University Press, 2007). Allen Wood is also Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Professor Emeritus at Stanford University.

Monday, January 23, 2012

Book reviews of Amartya Sen & Charles Beitz

From German Law Journal 2012 no. 1:

1. Review Essay – Amartya Sen’s The Idea of Justice (2009) [pdf]
by Michael Da Silva (Toronto)

See my post on Sen's book here.

2. Book Review – Charles R. Beitz’s The Idea of Human Rights (2009) [pdf]
by Angelina Ling (Toronto)

See my post on Beitz's book here.

Sunday, January 22, 2012

Panel discussion in Frankfurt: "What World are We Living in?"

On January 27, 2012, the "Frankfurter Kunstverein" in Frankfurt am Main hosts a panel discussion titled " What World are We Living in? Diagnostic Perspectives on the Society of the Present".

The panel consists of Axel Honneth (New York/Frankfurt), Juliane Rebentisch (Frankfurt) and Joseph Vogl (Berlin).
Presentation: Rainer Forst (Frankfurt).

"The opening panel will bring together various perspectives on current situations of upheaval: The global consequences of the financial crisis have already long been raising questions as to our conception of democracy and the extent to which society’s normative orders are of our own making. How can we describe the current transformations? What future will emerge from the present upheavals? And how can they be influenced politically, if at all?

The panel discussion is arranged by the Frankfurter Kunstverein and the Frankfurt University Cluster of Excellence "The Formation of Normative Orders".

Alan Thomas reviews Charles Taylor

At "Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews", Alan Thomas reviews "Dilemmas and Connections: Selected Essays" (Harvard University Press, 2011) by Charles Taylor:

Review: "Dilemmas and Connections: Selected Essays"

Excerpt:
"Taylor (....) shows how there are tensions internal to our modern conception of political legitimacy that make contestation of any given political identity inevitable. Since legitimate authority is an expression of "we, the people", there is an inherent pressure to democratic inclusion. However, various functional requirements threaten to make this inclusion a homogenizing process in a way that threatens particular identifications. Unable to accommodate hierarchies of different groups, owing to its constitutive egalitarianism of status, the modern democratic state works essentially by a forced inclusion. This leads, at its limit, to ethnic cleansing in cases where, as Michael Mann puts it, "demos" is identified with "ethnos". Drawing on the work of Anderson, Calhoun, Gellner and Liah Greenfeld, Taylor argues convincingly that no explanation of nationalism can be wholly state focused: a deeper account needs to examine the underlying changes in our collective social imaginaries that make it possible for a society to conceive of itself as a society of equals, acting freely in secular time, where each citizen stands in a direct and unmediated relationship to the state. If the modern conception of political legitimacy requires collective deliberation on the part of all, then any denial of expression to a minority group is bound to generate a nationalistic counter-pressure."

See my previous post on Charles Taylor's book here (with links to some of his essays).

Alan Thomas is Professor of Philosophy at Tilburg University. He is the author of "Thomas Nagel" (Acumen Press, 2009).

Saturday, January 21, 2012

Hayek Against (and For) Rawls

Andrew Lister (Queens University) has posted a new paper on:

The Mirage of Social Justice: Hayek Against (and For) Rawls” [pdf]
(Forthcoming in Critical Review, Fall 2012).

Excerpts:
... one is naturally surprised to read Hayek saying that the differences between himself and John Rawls are "more verbal than substantial", and that Rawls and Hayek agree on "the essential point," which is that principles of justice apply to the rules of institutions and social practices, but not to distributions of particular things across specific persons. [....] Hayek claimed that people had misread Rawls, ignoring his point that if a distribution results from just institutions it is just no matter what it is. Yet it clearly seems that for Rawls, justice in institutions was itself defined at least partly in distributive terms. If one thinks of the familiar contrast between old, or classical liberalism and new, or social justice liberalism, Rawls is clearly a social justice liberal. So how could Hayek have claimed to be in agreement with Rawls? This is the historical and interpretive puzzle I want to address in my lecture tonight.

[....] at the level of normative principle, Hayek is in many ways a Rawlsian. I will outline four main areas of convergence: the importance of 'pure procedural justice', the irrelevance of merit, the use of a veil of ignorance, and the principle the inequalities should benefit everyone."

Andrew Lister is Associate Professor at the Department of Political Studies, Queens University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada. See his blog here.

Interview with Honneth in Swiss TV

On Sunday January 22, Barbara Bleisch interviews Professor Axel Honneth in "Schweizer Fernsehen" (SF)

"Axel Honneth: Der Kampf um Anerkennung"
11 - 12 a.m.

Update:
See the interview here (podcast: video + audio) - or here.


Axel Honneth is Jack C. Weinstein Professor of the Humanities, Department of Philosophy, Columbia University.