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We have already stated that Rawls situates his political liberalism within the liberal tradition. The practical meaning of so doing now becomes clear. Rawls presents his theory as a resource for public reflection and self clarification of that tradition. He hopes thereby to bring the process of reflection, which has occupied the liberal tradition for a considerable time, to some conclusion. One might also speak here of a hermeneutic turn in Rawls’ thought. His political philosophy does not withdraw from the (...) world, nor does it claim to discover the truth by its own methods of reason, “apart from any tradition of political thought and practice.”. Rawls recognises that philosophical argumentation on its own is probably not in a position to lead to agreement.For this reason he considers it more fruitful to seek out “bases of agreement” which are implicit in the public culture of democratic societies and, more particularly, in their underlying conceptions of the person and of social cooperation. It is perhaps true that such “bases of agreement” are obscure and can be understood in a variety of ways. Rawls endeavours to show, however, precisely how such concepts can be understood, and how the notion of the original position can be used to connect them to certain principles of justice which themselves belong to the tradition of moral philosophy.Rawls is not seeking to give foundation to our moral insight; instead he sees the task of philosophy as consisting in showing the “coherence” of these insights with other ideas, thereby bringing order to our convictions, from the most general to the most particular. The original position plays a central role in this reflection. It must contribute to our attainment of an unimpeded vision of the demands of justice, if society is conceived as a scheme of fair cooperation between free and equal, reasonable and rational persons. Carried by the fundamental ideas of the liberal tradition, Rawls’ political philosophy must bring this tradition to unity and consensus. (shrink)

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This study examines Will Kymlicka's liberal defense of minority rights. The startingpoint of his argument is provided by a particular conception of individual freedom, which stresses the need for a context of choice in which it can be exercised. This contextof choice is conceived of as a societal culture, i.e. as „an intergenerational community, more or less institutionally complete, occupying a given territory or homeland, sharing a distinct language and history”. As far as societal-cultural membership is constitutive for the freedom (...) and identity of the individuals, it can be considered as a Rawlsian primary good. Confronted with the fact of multinational and poly-ethnic States, thisconsideration involves the need for an equal distribution and protection of this good for all composing national or ethnic minorities. Group-differentiated measures thus are required by the liberal care for individual freedom and equality; but simultaneously they are limited by these very same principles. This point reveals the main difference with a communitarian approach to cultural politics. For the communitarian self being constituted by particular cultural characteristics, a politicsof the common good aims at securing the character of a culture rather than its existence as a societal culture. Therefore it is regulated by considerations of cultural preservation as such, not as required by the liberal principles of individual equality and freedom. (shrink)

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In this paper the author exposes the implications and consequences of the modern disembeddedness of the economic system. Modernity is characterized by the fact that economic activity is no longer embedded in a wider culture which constrains its expansion. Onthe contrary, economic life has become the centre of societal life. The author analysesthen the characteristics of this autonomous system together with the strains it places on modern communities. From this he concludes that in so far and so long as modern (...) societies understand themselves as labouring societies, employment should be considered as a primary social good. Indeed, due to this self-understanding of modern societies, unemployment can only be experienced as exclusion from society and thus as a loss of citizenship. Unemployment pay is not sufficient to compensate for this loss and to integrate unemployed people again in society. (shrink)

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In this study, an attempt is made to understand why Burke at the same time refers to the natural law and to the principle of inheritance as moral standards for the human will. Indeed, the latter principle implies reverence to a particular tradition, whereas natural law is a universal standard, binding all people. First, the meaning of the principle of inheritance in Burke's critique of the French Revolution is explained, and next the conception of the natural law he implicitly adopts. (...) In the latter, the close link between the doctrine of the natural law and the doctrine of prudence deserves our particular attention. It is the task of prudence to give concrete form to the natural law in a way of life and a constitution, by adapting it to the concrete circumstances of a particular society. For Burke, however, this adaptation is the work of the practical reason of many generations and many individuals. Man's individual reason is too limited to invent a good social order. The latter is rather the unintended consequence of a process of bargaining and accommodation. It is thus wise and natural for Burke that people bend their eyes to the tradition as to an instantiation of the natural law. In normal circumstances, individuals do not need to appeal immediately to the principles of natural law. In the next section then, it is shown that it is Burke's conception of Providence which enables him to believe that the tradition represents here and now the natural law. Moreover, the practical substitution of the natural law by the principle of inheritance affects Burke's understanding of prudence. Prudence no longer receives its moral direction in the first place from the natural affections but from the prejudices. The habituation to a way of life and culture provides people with a practical knowledge of what is good here and now. They learn to act in a habitual manner without needing an abstract and universal theory. According to Burke, only 'narrative discourses', interpreting and articulating the 'spirit' of the constitution can have some meaning for the practical direction of our lives. The study ends in an interrogation of this last point. Doesn't a community ever need a universal and abstract theory in order to go on living as a moral community ? And what can it expect from such a moral, c.q. political theory? (shrink)

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The articles in the present issue are the result of a study day on William Desmond’s recent book, Ethics and the Between, held at the K.U.Leuven's Institute of Philosophy. This important book certainly deserves a thorough discussion and for many reasons. It is the manifestation of an ambition that reminds us of past periods in the history of philosophy. These days not so many philosophers venture to set up a body of work — three volumes — in the tradition of (...) the great philosophical systems that once tried to cover and understand the whole of reality. When reading Ethics and the Between, Hegel’s system comes to mind not only because we know that William Desmond is a Hegel scholar but also because of its ambition to give everything a place within an encompassing system.Of course Desmond takes care to explain where the difference lies between his metaxological approach and an insufficiently open and pluralist dialectics. His is an attempt to rethink the notion of system so that it is more hospitable to otherness as other, to the rich inexhaustibility of being. He wants to be true to the equivocities of our being and not to give in to the seduction of mediated univocity, as some forms of dialectics do. What is at stake in his work is not forgetting the surplus, the excess, the otherness of the good which suggests a transcendence of each dialectical completion in terms of self-determination.Desmond’s oeuvre is not only unusual today because of its systematic ambition. A second characteristic marks off more specifically his book on ethics: the attempt to write an ethics dominated by the idea of the good, raising the question of the relation between metaphysics and ethics, between being and being good. Desmond seems to tell us that something has been forgotten: the good which continues to be there incognito, present even in philosophies that forget it. This seems to be Desmond’s way of situating himself in an age characterized by the subtle ethos of valuelessness, the perplexity about the inherent value of being, of being as good; an age oscillating between foundationalist unity and postmodern plurality.If it were my task to give an introduction to Desmond’s thought I would have to pay attention to the richness of the concept of metaxu, the between, the way it seems to encompass the whole and keep it together, while at the same time being excessive. I would have to speak about the fourfold meaning of being and the way it shapes different ways of being ethical that dwell more and more intensively with what is at play in the ethos, that is to say in the metaxu.But it is not my task to do this; others have made the attempt more extensively in the papers reproduced here. I doubt whether they will be sufficient to bring to light all the rich dimensions of this book that is written at the same tempo as William speaks when discussing and, I suppose, when he goes running in the morning. (shrink)

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No one will deny that the history of the last two centuries is incomprehensible without some insight into the meaning of nationalism. In the modern world, references to ‘nation’ and ‘national feelings’ are political forces of the first order that have played a much greater role than have references to other ideas that had raised expectations among political thinkers. Nevertheless, it is not a simple matter to define nation and nationalism; the terms have a weak analytical and explanatory power. We (...) lack a definition that would allow us to determine unequivocally and objectively whether or not we have to do with a nation. Many objective criteria for identification are proffered individually or in combination. None, however, has been consistently satisfactory.A first superficial examination shows that nationalism has a chameleon-like character. It is presented, and we experience it, as a liberating force freeing individuals and peoples from social and political serfdom. Linked to this liberal ‘Risorgimento-nationalism’, which coincided with the political emancipation of the bourgeoisie, was the hope for a better future, for economic prosperity and for the reification of such universal values as human rights, equality, justice and the constitutional democratic rule of law. Yet nationalism has also appeared to include an imperialistic tendency towards domination, belligerent aggression and expansion, racism and exclusion, authoritarianism and rightist radicalism, a blind and infatuated cult of ones’ own. International conflicts were fought and legitimized in the name of nations’ ‘natural’ borders, in terms of return to the homeland, of irredentism.Seen thus, there seems to be two nationalisms: one liberal, liberating nationalism of peoples and another official or state nationalism that proceeds from the nation state and serves its needs. The question is whether this superficial distinction gains any insight. Often, once national liberation has been accomplished and the nation state established, nationalism of peoples is mobilized by and for state nationalism. Nor should we forget that the nationalism of peoples has from the start the establishment of its own nation state as its goal. From this it is evident that our understanding of nationalism is hindered by its seldom being observable in a pure state. It is nearly always linked to other political, social, and religious ideas and values which in turn strengthens its grasp on hearts and minds. (shrink)

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In this study an attempt has been made to understand nationalism, notably as the particular political conviction by which the realm of public and civic concern is required to coincide with a culturally and ethnically specified nationality. While exploring the idea of a nation state in its varying developments during the past few centuries, two interpretations are discovered, the revolutionary and the romantic understanding of a nation. This leads, through analysis, to contrast the specific modes of nationalistic logic to which (...) both of them gave rise. The investigation of Jacobin nationalism leads the author to assume the existence of a secret link between the Rousseauian conception of absolute democracy and popular sovereignty, on the one hand, and the rise of nationalism, on the other hand. In conclusion, the author argues for the necessity of a different, pluralistic conception of democracy in order to prevent national feelings from degenerating into crude nationalism. (shrink)

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The debate following Berlin's famous lecture Two Concepts of Liberty circled around the opposition between negative and positive liberty. Berlin delivered his lecture during the period of the Cold War. Therefore it not only provoked a very technical debate within analytic philosophy on the concept of liberty but also contained an important butdebatable political message: those who endorse positive liberty should be conscious of the fact that the logic of positive liberty leads, if not necessarily at least easily to despotism, (...) paternalism and even totalitarianism. It is no unimportant question then to ask whether no conception of political society can be developed which, without denying pluralism and negative liberty, would show that virtue and law are part of freedom, that freedom entails the exercise of certain actions without this leading up to the imposition of one conception of the good. In this article there is shown in what sense the republican or neo-roman vision of civil liberty can fulfil this requirement. The analysis of the different components of the republican conception of freedom shows that republicanism distinguishes itself from liberalism not so much by the defence of different institutions but by a different legitimation of them which ultimately has its origin in taking serious the proper finality of political society, in taking serious, as the Ancients did, the political and not only social nature of man. (shrink)

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The first thing that struck me in your lecture is that according to the description you gave, the development of Chinese philosophy in the last decades has been determined by social and political developments. This is true for the three hot topics you have distinguished. The reflection on practice found its starting point in a statement of Deng Xiaoping that forced Chinese Marxist philosophers to answer the question of how this statement might be incorporated in Marxism, and thus to reflect (...) on the role and status of practice in Marxist philosophy. The same seems to be true for the debate on humanism, and for the later development towards the study of man. As you have presented it, the debate on humanism was prompted by a reflection on the tragedies of the Cultural Revolution and led, basically, to an interrogation of the link between humanism and Marxism; whereas the reasons for the booming of the Study of Man were the need for reforms, needs caused by recent social developments, and the needs of human development. Research in the study of man is, as you say, the conscious reaction to the historical trends of recent years. (shrink)

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The background of the present study is Constant’s interpretation of modern freedom compared with the freedom-participation of the Ancients. In order to understand Tocqueville’s conception of political freedom one has first to explain what he meant by ‘égalité des conditions’ or ‘democracy’. What characterises the democratic era is the disappearance of distinctions of class and cast in and through a process of equalisation, which has long been at work and to which Tocqueville envisages no end. For Tocqueville, a passion for (...) equality animates modern Western societies. Hence his focus on mental mechanisms when he tries to answer the question that disturbs him: where might this passion lead us and more specifically what are the dangers to which freedom is exposed in democracy. The reason behind Tocqueville’s anxiety is his conviction that a subtle cooperation exists between individualism and administrative centralisation that leads to a new kind of despotism. This does not make him into a fatalist. He believes that it is possible to control this passion in such a manner that it becomes compatible with freedom. What we need is a resolve to safeguard freedom and a new political science that not only discovers the dangers that threaten freedom but at the same time exposes the means and remedies that democracy itself produces to control these tendencies. America is here the example.Political freedom existed there prior to the rise of equality, whereas in France freedom was first lost to absolutism, which in turn created a situation of equality that prepared the ground for despotism. Among the remedies that can safeguard freedom, the most important for Tocqueville is ‘l’esprit d’association’. In the closing part of the study, the discussion of the mediating role of this modern kind of ‘corps intermédiaires’ facilitates a comparison of Tocqueville’s conception of political freedom with that of Constant and Rousseau. (shrink)

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