The Paradox of the Political: Carl Schmitt's Autonomous Account of Politics

Carl Schmitt's Concept of the Political advances an understanding of the political in which the political is assessed in terms of the autonomy of the friend-and-enemy distinction. This article questions the autonomous foundations of Schmitt's concept of the political. Ultimately, Schmitt's desire to establish the autonomous nature of the political, allowing the specifically political antithesis to achieve mastery over all other forms of discourse, is replete with paradox. Whilst Schmitt endeavours to establish the autonomy of the political—where the political is free from interference from other domains—it is argued that his account of the political is highly dependent on the state. More critically, Schmitt's depiction of the political as autonomous is a strategic manoeuvre to establish the autonomy of the domain of the political vis-à-vis other conceptual domains.     

Socialist Geography in England: J. F. Horrabin and a Workers' Economic and Political Geography

This paper examines the life and geographical writings of the English socialist J.F.("Frank") Horrabin (1884–1962) and his attempts to construct a socialist geography. Horrabin was an active socialist in the Labour Party, Fabian Society, and other leftwing groups and very involved in working-class education through the Plebs League and National Council of Labour Colleges. He was also a journalist, cartoonist, and gifted cartographer. His 1923 text An Outline of Economic Geography , which sold in large numbers and was translated into nine other languages, attempted to provide workers with an account of economic (and political and historical) geography that used bourgeois "pure geography" but put it within a socialist and historical–materialist framework. Unlike Germany and some other countries, England did not have a strong Marxist theoretical tradition, and Horrabin's approach does not develop theory (though it did attract the admiration of the German Marxist Karl Wittfogel). Rather, it sets out to be engaged in practical political education. Horrabin's work was developed within a particular context, but his geographical writings (and pioneering political cartography) exemplify one way of linking geography with political practice, and this paper examines these relationships. Many of Horrabin's concerns find echoes in current radical geography, and his work deserves belated recognition and a place in the history of geography.     

Religion and Constitutionalism: Oscillations Along a Continuum

This review article analyses three books published between 2010 and 2013 and explores the ways in which a nation, secular or otherwise, can deal with religion within its borders, both legally and socially. For many nations, this means employing a foundational document or text, usually a constitution, to exclude religion from, neutrally to structure its participation in, or actively to promote a particular type of it in the public arena. The article develops two primary themes. First, using Ran Hirschl's work, it reveals a continuum of approaches to the constitutional treatment of religion; yet, in plotting those points along the continuum, what one finds is far from precision placement; rather, there is oscillation around several points. Second, in considering specific constitutions, it becomes apparent that the more difficult or ambiguous it is to modify or amend a formal text, the greater the importance assumed by judicially developed interpretative techniques.     

Friendship as a Political Challenge

Abstract

Blitz argues for the necessity and possibility of political philosophy by uncovering its origins in the thought of Plato. By tracing its emergence from the political and moral, Blitz explains the nature of philosophy.     

Idols and Grace: Re-envisioning Political Liberalism as Political Limitism

Abstract

An Augustinian analysis of the current version of political liberalism which is increasingly dominating Western politics recognizes it as idolatrous. Nonetheless, because of the parasitic nature of evil, idolatrous human politics may be sustained by God's grace as God gives people time to respond to God and to re-order their disordered loves in relation to Godself, the supreme good. The express recognition of this function of politics enables the advocacy of political limitism, a re-thinking of political liberalism in the light of eternity, which recognizes that politics has only a limited role to play in securing human goods and that the earthly polis is not the most important society.