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Placed in the first chapter of the Zhuangzi, the dialogue between Huizi and Zhuangzi about a giant gourd is a celebrated anecdote that, both for its structure and for the ideas it seems to mobilize, has aroused the interest of readers and, consequently, has also generated a wide variety of interpretations. While some scholars argue that the message is part of a framework of epistemological discussion, others point to perspectivism as the hermeneutical key to the passage, while others refer to the idea of anti-anthropocentrism. Based on an analysis of the biographical elements that can be extracted from the story, the way in which the metaphor of useless gourds is used in the philosophical literature of the time and the central role played in it by the figure of the thinker-counsellor, this article reconsiders the story from an alternative angle that privileges a political perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communitarian thought could be a noteworthy alternative to the prevailing moral-political realities established by liberal assumptions and presuppositions, as its interpretations on issues it broaches in the realms of being, knowledge, and value indicate. However, it is not entirely accurate to say that communitarianism is examined as an alternative to liberal thought in the literature. The role assigned to it is more so to serve as a corrective that moderates the extremes of liberal thought. This article aims to reinterpret communitarianism not as a corrective of liberalism, but as an alternative thought system to it. The main contention of the article is that, just like liberalism, communitarianism can indeed be read as a standalone political philosophy. This claim is sought to be grounded in the article by the existence of a unique philosophical foundation from which the criticisms of communitarian thinkers toward liberalism also emerge and are nourished - in other words, the fundamental premises and assumptions that make the communitarian critique “communitarian”. In this context, rather than focusing on the critiques of communitarians against liberalism, the article offers an examination that reveals the ontological, epistemological, and axiological foundations of communitarian thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent swell of public interest in AI image generating software, such as Midjourney, DALL-E 2, and Stable Diffusion, has led to a great deal of consternation among conventional visual artists. Understanding that the process through which these machines generate images depends ultimately on a machine learning process that involves the use of copyrighted artworks, has led many artists to allege that AI art is theft. There has already been a substantive debate in the literature concerning whether this use of copyrighted material by AI image generating software constitutes copyright infringement in the United States. However, the artists’ complaint appears to be a moral claim, rather than a legal one. In this paper, I will argue that these artists are essentially mistaken. Their copyrights should not protect them from this use of their art by AI image generating software. While I am sympathetic to the claims that this technology will harm visual artists, and that there should be some kind of protection afforded to artists against that harm, that harm is not caused by anything analogous to theft. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay briefly discusses accounts of violence in India before reviewing three recent books that examine the place of violence in Indian political thought. All three books provide insights into the minds of some of the thinkers who have shaped modern India. While two of the authors focus on Mahatma Gandhi and V. D. Savarkar, respectively, the third is more wide-ranging in focus. All three books are important contributions to the study of violence in India, but also a reminder that India's founding figures remain the objects of contestation and appropriation by political parties and movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay argues for the inclusion of seventeenth-century political thought, and particularly the writings of English republican thinkers, in the growing body of scholarship on the early modern biopolitics of race. Taking the republican Henry Neville's fictitious travel narrative, The Isle of Pines , as a case study, this essay considers Neville's political satires in conjunction with two republican texts written by Neville's contemporaries: James Harrington's The Commonwealth of Oceana and John Streater's Observations Historical, Political, and Philosophical, upon Aristotles First Book of Political Government. While Harrington's Oceana and Streater's Observations each propose policies for shaping the political and racial future of the nation, Neville's work illustrates the political threat of what is perceived to be sexual mismanagement—the failure to regulate interracial sexual reproduction. Perhaps best read as a republican cautionary tale, The Isle of Pines situates reproduction at the center of government, proposing that the regulation of sex and marriage are necessary biopolitical techniques for the management of a population's race and the preservation of political stability. [M.W.] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In my essay, I offer an interpretation of Giorgio Agamben's political thought as a case of philosophical perversion. According to Lacan, perverse practice is based on a structural non-personal enjoyment, in which a pervert assumes the role of an executioner, meticulously executing his task. My analysis will focus on Agamben's perverse use of the messianic discourse, the aim of which is to explode it from within: while applying all elements of the messianic idiom, Agamben assumes a mission the goal of which is to deactivate all mission and revoke all vocations. As he states in reference to Bartleby the Scrivener as the possible figure of the Messiah, to fulfill the Torah, i.e. the religious law, is to "destroy it from top to bottom." I will thus claim that Agamben's strategy of deactivation – a vocation to end all vocation – can be interpreted as a deliberate methodical use of perversion, that is, a position which simultaneously obeys and destroys the law. Although critical of Agamben's method, I will not use the Lacanian frame of perversion in a value-charged manner. I want to present it as one of the late-modern philosophical modes of thinking, which became so widely seductive precisely of its powerful perverse component. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article surveys the scholarship surrounding the history of African political thought, which is a growing interdisciplinary area of study. The study of the history of political thought has a long tradition but has tended to be Eurocentric, with limited reference to the Global South. Recent decades have seen moves to correct this, with more research being given over to African political thought, both ancient and modern. This article explores the plethora of discussions, which are happening in the field, including how the subject is defined, the impact of theories of decolonisation and the relationship between African thought and ideas from elsewhere in the world. In doing this it, also notes where there is scope for further research to be done. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political philosophers have recently debated what role social practices should play in normative theorising. Should our theories be practice-independent or practice-dependent? That is, can we formulate normative institutional principles independently of real-world practices or are such principles only ever relative to the practices they are meant to govern? Any first-order theory in political philosophy must contend with the methodological challenges coming out of this debate. In this article, I argue that consequentialism has a plausible account of how social practices should factor in normative political philosophy. I outline a version of consequentialism, Practice Consequentialism, that provides a plausible blueprint for integrating social practices in normative theorising. Second, I argue that Practice Consequentialism accounts well for the central arguments on both sides of the practice-dependence debate. Capturing arguments for practice-dependence, consequentialism brings out why real-world practices are central in formulating institutional principles. Conversely, capturing arguments for practice-independence, consequentialism offers a clear external normative perspective from which to evaluate practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the role of ideal theory in non-ideal circumstances and its importance in guiding long-term institutional reform and evaluating deviations from perfect justice. While some critics argue that ideal theory is irrelevant in non-ideal conditions, the author contends that it serves a third role in a fairness model that limits choices between feasible institutional arrangements. Ideal theory is crucial in preventing excessive demands on individuals and ensuring that basic rights, liberties, and opportunities are not denied. The article also addresses objections to the fairness role of ideal theory and examines its significance in comparative and urgent assessments. The text emphasizes the concept of the ideal-theory constraint in political philosophy, particularly in relation to justice and fairness. This constraint states that just institutions can only restrict someone's basic liberties or opportunities if that person uses those goods to deny others their rights or liberties. The text further explores the application of the ideal-theory constraint to specific areas, such as freedom of expression and affirmative action. It argues that ideal theory is necessary for comparing different societal arrangements in terms of justice and fairness. However, critics argue that the fairness requirement may be too lenient or too demanding in non-ideal conditions. The article concludes that ideal theory still has a significant role to play in non-ideal theorizing and should not be disregarded. The author suggests that ideal theory can be adapted to suit the specific society it is applied to, allowing for adequate compliance. [Extracted from the article]

This article theorises the contemporary convergence of neoliberal and fascist principles by examining the thought of political actors in the 1930s and 1940s who were active in both neoliberal and fascist organisations. I suggest that a sympathy for fascism formed a minor but significant strand of early neoliberal thought, and that unpacking the logics that led particular thinkers and political actors to believe that fascism was compatible with neoliberalism can shed light on the contemporary political moment. Based on my reading of early 'neoliberal fascists', I theorise three points of convergence. The first was a belief that socialism had to be opposed by all possible means, including violence and the repression of popular democracy. The second was a racialized understanding of the underpinnings of the market economy, leading to an acceptance of the necessity of racial exclusion. Thirdly, both fascist and neoliberal thinkers believed that patriarchy was a necessary feature for the reproduction of capitalism, and hence that traditional gender roles had to be preserved against pressures for social change. In theorising this convergence, I also gesture to how the overlap of neoliberalism and fascism can be witnessed in the contemporary milieu, with a focus on the libertarian Mises Institute. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the development of artificial intelligence, computer intelligent grouping, as a research hotspot of political ideology examination paper proposition, can greatly shorten the time of generating examination papers, reduce the human cost, reduce the human factor, and improve the quality of political ideology teaching evaluation. Aiming at the problem that the current political ideology examination paper-grouping strategy method easily falls into the local optimum, a kind of intelligent paper-grouping method for political ideology examination based on the improved stock market trading optimisation algorithm is proposed. Firstly, by analyzing the traditional steps of political test paper generation, according to the index genus of the grouping problem and the condition constraints, we construct the grouping model of political thought test questions; then, combining the segmented real number coding method and the fitness function, we use the securities market trading optimization algorithm based on the Circle chaotic mapping initialization strategy and adaptive tdistribution variability strategy to solve the grouping problem of the political thought test. The experimental results show that the method can effectively find the optimal strategy of political thought exam grouping, and the test questions have higher knowledge point coverage, moderate difficulty, and more stable performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historians of political thought have done important and insightful work on women’s history of political thought. This scholarship has proliferated since the mid to late twentieth century and has focused largely on the feminist aspects of their thought. Although this was at first a necessary and crucial correction of prior neglect, I argue that by now this has turned into an overcorrection. By turning to the early reception and rediscovery of two eighteenth-century English female political thinkers, Mary Astell (1666–1731) and Catharine Macaulay (1731–1791), I show that this feminist focus can stand in the way of inclusion by obscuring other important aspects of women’s political thought. I also contend that the feminist focus implies an unfair double standard where women – as opposed to canonical men – are thought of as worthy of inclusion only if they espoused or anticipated ideas that would seem agreeable from a present perspective. This leads to the paradoxical conclusion that, if we want to do justice to the feminist aim of comprehensive inclusion of past female thinkers, we must learn to look beyond women’s feminist thought in history and to embrace their afeminist and even anti-feminist thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper elaborates on the role played in (political) judgment by ingenium – the human faculty operating connections between different world-objects through analogy and imagination. Using Arendt and Vico, the paper argues that the concept of ingenium offers important clues as to how we should understand the judgment of the singular, a key aspect of political thought. Between rational-discursive approaches – reducing singularity to its subsumption into general categories – and radically contextualist accounts, the notion of ingenium allows to conceptualize a political judgment both able to account for singular objects and events, and capable of operating context-transcending reflection. The argument proceeds in three steps. First, I show with Arendt how singular judgment relies on sensus communis, capturing singularity beyond rational categories. Second, I discuss the difficulty of accommodating sensus communis in post-Kantian terms, where it becomes tied solely to affective reactions, making judgment of the singular exclusively evaluative, while its identification is restricted to categorial cognition. Lastly, through Vico, I discuss how ingenium reframes the sensus communis. By operating through analogy and exemplarity ingenium enables a sensus communis that establishes not only evaluative connections, but also contributes to the constructive identification and description of worldly objects and events in their singularity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the debate between ideal and non-ideal theory in political philosophy, with a focus on consequentialism as a powerful position that addresses objections raised against both approaches. It argues that consequentialism, which considers the consequences of actions, offers a comparative structure and takes into account real-world concerns. The author discusses how consequentialism can make comparative judgments without relying on a privileged model and provides a theoretical justification for evaluating institutional options in an unjust society. The article concludes that consequentialism offers a transparent and unified structure for addressing normative questions. Additionally, the given text provides a list of references and citations for further research on political philosophy, ethics, and long-termism. [Extracted from the article]

This article explores the literary art of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, particularly his book "The Gulag Archipelago," which exposes the violence and lies of totalitarianism and defends human dignity and freedom. Solzhenitsyn believes that literature, committed to truth and the struggle between good and evil, can restore humanity. He also emphasizes the importance of cultural experiences and advocates for cultural pluralism and the preservation of distinct nations and peoples. Richard Tempest's book, "Overwriting Chaos: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Fictive Worlds," provides a comprehensive analysis of Solzhenitsyn's literary techniques and their impact on his portrayal of Soviet society, offering valuable insights for researchers interested in understanding his contribution to Russian literature and exploration of the human condition. [Extracted from the article]

Genealogies are an increasingly important part of contemporary political philosophy. However, even recent genealogies differ a great deal in terms of their ends and methods. Strikingly, this has received virtually no discussion in the literature. This article begins to fill that gap. It does so by comparing and contrasting the genealogies of Bernard Williams, Quentin Skinner, and Raymond Geuss, exploring their different goals, methods, and value for political philosophy. This helps us better understand these different kinds of genealogy in their own right; shows the distinct value of each of these different kinds of genealogy to political philosophy; and enables political philosophers to better be able to select the kind of genealogical investigation most relevant to their interests and to employ the correct kind of genealogy better as a result. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I argue that the vindicatory/unmasking distinction has so far prevented scholars from grasping a third dimension of genealogical inquiry, one I call possibilising. This dimension has passed unnoticed even though it constitutes a crucial aspect of Foucault's genealogical project starting from 1978 on. By focusing attention on it, I hope to provide a definitive rebuttal of one of the main criticisms that has been raised against (unmasking) genealogy in general, and Foucauldian genealogy in particular, namely the idea that Foucault's genealogical project lacks normative grounding and is therefore ultimately incapable of telling us why we should resist and fight against the mechanisms of power it nevertheless reveals in an empirically insightful way. This conclusion, I argue, is mistaken because it conceives of Foucauldian genealogy exclusively as an unmasking or problematising method, whereas I claim that Foucault's genealogical project possesses a possibilising dimension that provides his work with sui generis normative force. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the experience of beauty and eco-sorrow with the aim of depicting some painful truths, as well as existential responses to eco-sorrow. The article begins by portraying the attributes of the experience of beauty, relying on an emended version of Christopher Bollas's notion of transformational objects and Buber's I–Thou experience. This lays the foundation for explicating the attendant experience of eco-sorrow, which entails the painful recognition of (1) the degradation of the Earth and a loss of beauty, (2) the extinction of other species, (3) human-caused climate disaster, and (4) existential insignificance and impermanence. The latter is further understood in terms of Giorgio Agamben's notion of the ontological rift, which is produced and maintained by the Abrahamic religious traditions and Western political philosophies. Recognition of the ontological rift, which is a defense against existential insignificance and impermanence, is a key part of the experience of eco-sorrow. The last section explores responses to beauty and eco-sorrow, such as despair, nihilism, forced hope/optimism, flights of fantasy, and, ideally, a categorical demand for inoperative care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To what extent did Francis Drake’s circumnavigation of the globe influence empire formation in the late sixteenth century? In analyzing diplomatic letters of correspondence from the State Papers, this investigation reveals that Drake’s piratical activities, claims of English sovereignty, and the ensuing diplomatic controversy with the Spanish ambassador, Bernardino de Mendoza, forced the English Crown to use legal arguments rooted in the ius gentium (law of nations) and natural law to justify expansion into the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. During the dispute, both Mendoza and the English Crown variously invoked natural law and the law of nations to argue for justice and friendship. In testing these legal arguments, the Crown demonstrated that it had the capacity to counter Spanish claims for empire, which subsequently influenced imperial propagandists like Richard Hakluyt to promote English expansionism in natural law and ius gentium terms. In turn, the English Crown’s newfound confidence from the dispute manifested in its turn to reason of state and self-preservationist thinking in its international relations in the early 1580s, shortly before the outbreak of the Anglo-Spanish War (1585–1604). The dispute thus facilitated an ideology for empire rooted in natural law and the law of nations in the sixteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates reasons to participate in non-deterministic elections, where the outcomes incorporate elements of chance beyond mere tie-breaking. The background context situates this inquiry within democratic theory, specifically non-deterministic voting systems, which promise to re-evaluate fairness and power distribution among voting blocs. This study aims to explore the normative implications of such electoral systems and their impact on our moral duty to vote. We analyze instrumental reasons for voting, including prudential and act-consequentialist arguments, alongside non-instrumental reasons, assessing their validity in the context of non-deterministic systems. The results indicate that non-deterministic elections could strengthen the case for voting based on prudential and act-consequentialist grounds due to their proportional nature and the increased influence of each vote. We conclude that, while non-deterministic elections strengthen our duty to vote overall, they do not strengthen it for all the arguments in the literature. This paper contributes to the discourse on electoral systems by critically evaluating the moral obligation to vote in non-deterministic elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyses the role that Mexico's independence played in Spanish political thought. The text focuses on the quarter of a century that followed the signing of the Treaty of Cordoba in 1821. We argue that the images of the former viceroyalty were of primary importance in the public debates of the period. Anti-liberal absolutists, progressive liberals, moderate liberals and republicans made subjective readings of the processes that shaped Mexican republican construction. All these tendencies instrumentalised Mexican history to reinforce their ideological agendas. The rhetorical disputes to which the interpretation of Mexican modernity gave rise were vital in shaping the Spanish political lexicon, specifically for some essential concepts: republic, democracy, federalism and race. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internationalism has always been a major strand of anarchist political thought where it works on several levels. It has described their commitment to dynamic cosmopolitanism but also dictated revolutionary strategy and structured their social alternatives. In the post-war years, however, many anarchist thinkers, confronting the implications of the atomic bomb for state power and global governance, acknowledged the need for strategic revision. Retreating from the idea of revolution as a series of national armed uprisings, they shifted, instead, towards endorsing an 'act local, think global' approach to policy. But what did it mean to think global? This article focuses on British post-war anarchists and explores their spectrum of approaches to this strategy shift. While it recognises a common move towards more permeable notions of the local-global dynamic, it also argues for a richer differentiation among their responses than is usually acknowledged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how the Jesuit missionary Alfonso Vagnone selected, interpreted, and presented historical examples in The Western Learning of Governance (Zhiping xixue 治平西学) to support their political theories and viewpoints. It analyzes how this cross-cultural knowledge exchange aimed at facilitating the interaction and integration of Chinese and Western political thought. When choosing historical examples, Vagnone reduced the religious elements and highlighted the secular dimension and the Western political principles which align with the political practices of the Ming dynasty. This process demonstrates cultural adaptation and adjustment. By comparing Western and Eastern interpretations of the same historical examples, this paper illustrates how missionaries used these examples to bridge Western and Eastern political thought, promoting their interaction and integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the present article is to examine the processual character of Abraham Lincoln's politically liberal thought. This examination will attempt to build on the magisterial study of Lincoln by John Burt and on Burt's use of the thought of John Rawls and H. L. A. Hart. Lincoln will also be compared and contrasted with process thinkers like Charles Hartshorne and Alfred North Whitehead, especially in terms of Lincoln's capacity for growth in his ethical and political thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of social assistive robots for supporting healthcare provision faces a lack of an ethical approach that adequately addresses the normatively relevant challenges regarding its deployment. Current ethical reflection is primarily informed by an individual-centered perspective focused on robots' implications for their end-users and thereby limited to the dyadic human–robot interaction sphere. Considering that this is tightly correlated to the restricted understanding of core ethical concepts upon which reflection stands, this paper delves into the concept of freedom from a philosophical perspective to unfold its full normative breadth for a critical assessment of technological development. By bringing to the fore the political-structural dimension of freedom and, in turn, elaborating the political dimension of technology, the undertaken philosophical approach discloses freedom as a transversal ethical concept for a normative reflection on technology. Thereby, it broadens the scope of ethical attention beyond the sphere of human–robot interaction and turns attention to the so far overlooked structural dimension of human–robot relations. Drawing on conceptions of freedom as non-domination, among others, the paper approaches social assistive robotics and reexamines the terrain of relevant issues for its development. Since freedom is one major issue upon which current concerns revolve, the undertaken analysis substantially enriches the ongoing ethical discussion on social assistive robotics' implications for human freedom. In this way, this work contributes to going beyond the current individual-centered ethical perspective by laying conceptual grounds for a comprehensive ethical approach to social assistive robotics' development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Western law in Chinese translation emerged in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, when Chinese and Western legal traditions shared little in common in terms of jurisdiction and political philosophy. The present study attempts to reconstruct that historical experience by looking at both textual difficulties and political forces that put an end to this first intellectual engagement between China and the West. In particular, it examines the fragmentary translations of and introductions to Western law by the Jesuits and their Chinese converts, and the politics played out between the progressive and the conservative, and between Catholicism and the imperial power, with an aim to build a historical lesson in translation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite their similarity in style, language, and performance, symmetry, repetition, and the game of arbitrariness are represented by parallel intentional paths. After years of amorphous searching through the compilation of ruins and rubble, we could, with this study, carry out the situational need for the signifier and the signified by establishing a short theoretical framework that helps illuminate the striking appearance of pragmatic phenomena. For underlying concrete acts of interpretation, to understand the meaning to the required extent, alternatively constructed enactment must manage moral thinking and political practice to rationalise the symbolism on the map at the core of the theoretical construction. Since reports, as Mehan and Wood (1975) scholarly warrant, are decoded on behalf of the facts, not of social beings, certain pragmatics of a linguistic complex, according to Saussure (1959), show that word order alone expresses the thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political philosophy has long treated the nation-state as the starting point for normative inquiry, while paying little attention to the ongoing legacies of colonialism and imperialism. But given how most modern states emerged, normative discussions about migration, for example, need to engage with the colonial and imperial history of state immigration controls, citizenship practices, and the nation-state more generally. This article critically reviews three historical studies by Adom Getachew, Radhika Mongia, and Nandita Sharma that engage in depth with this history. The studies historicize concepts that are central to discussions in political philosophy: the categories of citizen and migrant, the concept of 'nationality,' and the principle of self-determination. I argue that this historicized form of conceptual analysis helps us challenge the default authority of concepts that are deeply embedded in the political structures that we inhabit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the history and significance of walking for women, particularly focusing on Anglo female critics who incorporate their own walking experiences into their scholarly texts. It discusses influential works such as Rebecca Solnit's "Wanderlust: A History of Walking" and explores how these women transform their private walks into public acts. The article also addresses the concept of autotheory, where personal narrative and theoretical discourse intersect to investigate the self and larger systems of knowledge. It highlights the challenges faced by women who choose to walk alone, including the threats of male intimidation and violence. The text argues that controlling women's walking is a part of patriarchy and denies them personal freedom. It also emphasizes the importance of reclaiming solitary walking as a form of introspective freedom for women. The article discusses the trend of women embedding their walking experiences in scholarly work, showcasing authors from various countries who view walking as a form of storytelling and reclaiming public spaces for women. [Extracted from the article]

This paper is divided into two main parts. In the first half, I identify a tension within Bernard Williams’ political realist conception of political legitimacy. On the one hand, he was committed to a peculiar universalist criterion of political legitimacy – what is politically unacceptable is summed up in the old Catholic saying quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus creditum est. On the other, he supported the idea that what counts as political legitimacy depends on what we, in the here and now, deem to be politically legitimate – thus suggesting some kind of relativist criterion for political legitimacy. In order to eliminate this tension, I propose a two-step reconstruction of Williams’ works on political philosophy. The second half of the article assesses three criticisms to Willliams’ conception of political legitimacy levied by contemporary political realists. I use my two-step reconstruction of Williams to reject two of these three objections. In addressing the third, I sketch a reading of Williams’ notion of political legitimacy in the context of his ethical project as a whole and, in so doing, overcome the difficulty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to the scholarship on Giuseppe Mazzini’s impact on British radicalism, through an analysis of British idealist engagements with his life and writings between 1858 and 1929. Section one introduces the topic. Section two sketches a background for the analysis, highlighting Mazzini’s place within the milieu of European exiles living in Britain from the 1840s to the 1870s, ultimately focusing on Mazzini’s engagements at Oxford. Section three explores the ways in which, despite areas of agreement, ultimately the Weltanschauung of the foundational figure in British idealist social and political thought and practice, Thomas Hill Green, differed fundamentally from that of Mazzini. Section four argues that despite these fundamental philosophical differences, Green’s practical political theory drew directly on Mazzini’s writings, although differing over the crucial issue of the proper role of the state in the republic. From this basis, section five analyses the engagements with Mazzini’s writings by the next generation of British idealists, especially John MacCunn. The analysis concludes that although in 1881 Toynbee had reasonable grounds for characterising Mazzini as ‘the true teacher of our age,’ this claim became increasingly unsustainable from the late 1880s onwards, as evolutionary theory came to ground British idealist political thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A strong regulatory framework for cross-border data transfer is crucial to balance the relationships between national security, economic interests, and individual privacy. However, China's approach, utilizing security assessment and standard contract clauses, prioritizes national security above all else. The recent Regulation on Standardizing and Promoting Data Cross-border Transfer strengthens this approach, suggesting a continued focus on national security for the foreseeable future. This emphasis on national security is not accidental, but rather a core principle of China's long-held ‘national security comes first’ doctrine and its unique political philosophy, which places public interests above private ones. Accordingly, China has implemented a type of soft data localization, significantly affecting foreign companies operating in its borders and affecting the landscape of consumer privacy protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the issue of historical injustices and the challenges they pose in terms of responsibility for reparations. It discusses different accounts of historical injustice and argues for a new approach based on inherited agency through social learning. The text emphasizes the importance of addressing the root causes of historical injustices and proposes that collective responsibility can be grounded in the responsibilities of a national community. It also discusses the concept of inherited agency and its normative implications, as well as the role of collective agency and self-perception in large-scale groups. The article concludes by highlighting the importance of social learning and the transmission of cultural identities in intergenerational communities. Additionally, it mentions a research monograph that explores the categorization of people based on historical groups and its potential benefits. [Extracted from the article]

This article explores the ideas of Bernard Mandeville, a social and political philosopher who is often overlooked. It focuses on his theory of sociability, which suggests that our pride drives us to associate with others and seek recognition. The article delves into the concepts of recognition and hypocrisy in Mandeville's theory, discussing their role in human sociability. It concludes by acknowledging the value of Mandeville's writings in understanding pride and honor in society, while also recognizing the potential limitations of his ideas. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses U.S. president Grover Cleveland's legacy of bringing together populism and classical liberalism. Topics discussed include Cleveland's ranking in the Presidential Greatness Project surveys, author Troy Senik's goal of reviving interest in Cleveland through his book "A Man of Iron," and Cleveland's challenges during his two presidential terms including economic depression and labor unrest.

This article seeks to engage with the particular historical moment when, despite the cold war dichotomy of communism and capitalism, the short-lived (Southern) Republic of Vietnam under its first president, the Catholic, Ngô Đình Diệm (1901–1963) attempted to tread a third way. Diệm sought to introduce a Vietnamised form of French Catholic Emmanuel Mounier's (1905–1950) political philosophy, Personalism, into the ideological framework of the new Republic, building upon an earlier exchange between Vietnamese and French Catholics. Ultimately this was unsuccessful and Personalism was unable to unify South Vietnam's diverse society in opposition to the communist North, culminating in the ousting and assassination of Diệm in 1963. This moment offers a glimpse of a different path, suggesting that global capitalist liberal order might not be the only future. This article brings together various sources on Personalism and Vietnam to depict this historical moment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the resurgence of interest in Alexis de Tocqueville's "Democracy in America" within contemporary intellectual circles, particularly among conservative scholars exploring the challenges of twentieth-century American democracy. It mentions this interest stemmed partly from Tocqueville's analysis of democracy's potential pitfalls, aligning with the concerns of postwar conservative movements.

Drawing on sociology, anthropology, constitutional law, and political philosophy, this issue explores how the concept of ethnicity functions as a salient category for understanding the experiences of minorities in Europe today. It considers ethnicity as a powerful means of self-identification and the assertion of differences between as well as within ethnic groups. This issue engages the tension between group-based stigmatization on the one hand, and the reality of increasingly fragmented forms of identification under the influences of de-institutionalization and individualization. It also hones in on the ethnicization and racialization of nationhood under the influence of right-wing identity politics, and the exploitation of ethnic differences for political and electoral purposes. In its engagement with socio-legal studies, this issue considers a number of strategies for alleviating the pressure on ethnic minorities, for example through the use of private sector duties as well as potential innovations of anti-discrimination infrastructures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are societies required to pursue continual economic growth as a matter of justice? In "The Value of Economic Growth", Julie Rose considers three arguments in favor of the need for continual economic growth, each of which revolves around the instrumental value of economic growth for promoting an important good that is needed for a just society. In each case, Rose argues that there are mechanisms other than economic growth that could allow a society to deliver the relevant goods, and thus meet the demands of justice with respect to those goods. I raise a set of issues for Rose's argument that put pressure on the normative significance of her discussion. At the heart of these issues are ones about which possibilities Rose considers and which idealizations she makes. These issues tie into more general questions about the aims and methodology of normative work in social/political philosophy. Thus, in addition to being a contribution to the debate over the politics of economic growth, this paper can be understood partly as a case study in how reflection on these kinds of issues – ones about modality, idealization, and methodology – can matter to how we evaluate specific arguments in social/political philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the use of nudges by governmental agencies becomes more common, the need for normative guidelines regarding the processes by which decisions about the implementation of specific nudges are taken becomes more acute. In order to find a justified set of such guidelines one must meet several theoretical challenges to Libertarian Paternalism that arise at the foundational level. In this paper, I identify three central challenges to Libertarian Paternalism, and suggest that Susan Hurley's political philosophy as presented in her Natural Reasons (1989) can be viewed as offering powerful responses to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article seeks to cast doubt on the prevailing notion that regards the Allied occupation of (Southern) Italy as a harbinger of democracy by examining it from a local, decidedly bottom-up analytical perspective. I argue that the Allies disfavored the formation of political parties and the expression of political thought, even though 'you can't have a democracy without political parties', as the Italian-American Charles Poletti, one of the principal American civil affairs officers (CAO) organizing the occupation on-site, phrased it. This was particularly true during the first phase of the occupation, when military priorities reigned supreme. However, even at a later point, after the CAOs had theoretically assumed the role of an external supervising authority, a deep distrust of the country's political parties informed much of the Allies' attitudes. Rather than serving as a foundational layer for democracy, the Allies perceived the country's political parties as a threat to democratization insofar as these were believed to obstruct the former's political and economic agendas. Such antagonisms between occupier and occupied, of course, especially applied to Italy's largest and most well-organized party during the period of the Allied occupation – the Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article highlights the potential that African and Black Philosophy can contribute towards the debates on human dignity. It facilitates a three-way philosophical conversation among the Western, African, and Black conceptions of human dignity. It is motivated by the skepticism in the African and Black approaches to ethics that reject the view that some ontological capacity can ground intrinsic value, or human dignity. The article distinguishes the merit-based (the African and Black Philosophy) from the capacity-based approaches (the Western philosophy) to human dignity. In light of the comparisons among the three theories of human dignity, the article identifies three important lessons for moral-political philosophy. First, the Western conception of human dignity needs to explain and justify grounding of value on a descriptive feature. Secondly, the Black conception of dignity is a version of virtue-based account of it, which places a prime on resistance and struggle against domination. Finally, the capacity-based approach seems to have moral-theoretic advantages in dealing with issues in bioethics, environmental ethics, and political philosophy, which the African and Black conceptions of human dignity seems not to have. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there has long been philosophical thinking on the African continent, it was not until the middle of the 20th century that professional philosophy emerged on the continent. Though traditional African cultures have rich oral histories that some contemporary philosophers explicitly draw upon, it was not until universities emerged that there was philosophy conducted by professional philosophers who published their findings in academic venues. To date, much of this work has been conducted in English. The emphasis this tradition places on the community and social harmony will probably stand out immediately to any reader steeped in the Western philosophical tradition. The articles in this issue represent different styles of conducting African philosophy, such as employing analytic methods in order to develop moral theories, questioning the use of Western epistemic standards, and mining ideas from the history of Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some normative theories are self‐defeating. They tell us to respond to our situations in ways that bring about outcomes that are bad, given the aims of the theories, and which could have been avoided. Across a wide range of debates in ethics, decision theory, political philosophy, and formal epistemology, many philosophers treat the fact that a normative theory is self‐defeating as sufficient grounds for rejecting it. I argue that this widespread and consequential assumption is false. In particular, I argue that a theory can be self‐defeating and still internally consistent, action‐guiding, and suitable as a standard for criticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bernard Williams articulated his later political philosophy notably in response to Ronald Dworkin, who, striving for coherence or integrity among our political concepts, sought to immunize the concepts of liberty and equality against conflict. Williams, doubtful that we either could or should eliminate the conflict, resisted the pursuit of conceptual integrity. Here, I reconstruct this Dworkin–Williams debate with an eye to drawing out ideas of ongoing philosophical and political importance. The debate not only exemplifies Williams's political realism and its connection to his critique of the morality system. It also illustrates the virtues and hazards of contemporary efforts to ameliorate or engineer our concepts; it indicates what political philosophy might look to in appraising political concepts; it adverts to the different needs these concepts have to meet if they are to sustain a politics of pluralism, deal with polarization, and secure the consent of those who end up on the losing side of political decisions; and it presents us with two starkly contrasting conceptions of politics itself, of the place of political values within it, and of our prospects of reducing the uncomfortably conflictual character of those values through philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Peter DeGabriele's book, "Drone Enlightenment: The Colonial Roots of Modern Warfare," argues that the use of drones by the Obama administration is consistent with Enlightenment thought. DeGabriele explores major Enlightenment texts on sovereignty, colonization, and human geography to show that drone strikes are a legacy of Enlightenment ideas. He challenges the notion that drone warfare contradicts liberal democratic principles, instead framing it as a necessary feature of Enlightenment thought. DeGabriele's interdisciplinary and transhistorical study provides a new perspective on the Enlightenment and its influence on contemporary politics. [Extracted from the article]

This document is an index for Volume 57 of the journal "Eighteenth-Century Studies." It includes a roundtable discussion on "Cities of the Dead" and a roundtable on Christopher Smart. The document also contains various articles on topics such as French Revolutionary drama, Rousseau's Rome, Benjamin Franklin, and the public use of reason. Additionally, there are multiple title and single title reviews of books related to the eighteenth century. This document is a list of books and articles that have been received by a library. The list includes a variety of topics, such as art, literature, history, and cultural studies. The books and articles cover a range of time periods and regions, including Mexico, South Asia, Ukraine, and Britain. The document provides a valuable resource for library patrons conducting research on these specific topics. [Extracted from the article]

By far the majority of people in our world live in economically precarious communities in which daily experiences of material indignity are reinforced by disrespectful treatment from public authorities. Although these communities experience the collective trauma of material indignity and social nonrecognition, they tend to engage frequently in collective activism to demand dignified lives. Sometimes the collective action is very public, e.g. street protests against the lack of sanitation. At other times the collective action is less public and under the radar, embedded in everyday livelihood activities. These forms of activism not intended as political; they emerge out of necessity. In this paper I explore a number of inter-related questions: what kind of political activation emerges from experiences of being treated less than human in material and recognition terms? What kind of psychological frame does political activation offer for the emergence of identity and subjectivity? How do people move between experiences of painful non- recognition toward political thoughts (and collective action) about being rightful citizens? What does it mean for unformulated experience to become represented through political activation as a mode of building a sense of self with one another? The paper seeks to contribute to a fruitful dialogue on activism between psychoanalysis and the social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]