The relation of right to morality in Fichte's Jena theory of the state and society

I argue that despite the various ways in which Fichte separates right from morality in his 1796/97 Foundations of Natural Right, he nevertheless suggests in the writings from the period of his professorship at the University of Jena that there is a reciprocal relation between them. This requires, however, reading the Foundations of Natural Right in the light of The System of Ethics, which was published in 1798, especially the account of the ethical duties deriving from a person's membership of a profession that Fichte gives in this work. Although this approach allows us to attribute to Fichte a different conception of the state to the amoral one found in the Foundations of Natural Right, I argue that the separation of right from morality developed in this work remains valid and amounts to one of Fichte's main achievements, namely, his identification of the different dispositions that may characterize an individual's relation to the society in which he or she lives. This point is developed by comparing Fichte's amoral conception of the state to Hegel's account of civil society as the ‘state of necessity’. This does not involve an attempt to turn Fichte into Hegel but to show how the insights contained in Fichte's distinction between right and morality can be illuminated with reference to Hegel's theory of civil society and can be retained in the face of a powerful criticism that Hegel makes of the kind of contract theory of the state offered by Fichte.     

Civil society,political society and politics of disorder in Cambodia

This paper questions under what conditions the social foundation necessary for the construction and sustenance of civil society are present in post-colonial social formations, and the extent to which there has been a need to develop concessionary politics to maintain a project of rule. It utilizes Partha Chatterjee's usage of Gramsci's political society to understand how Cambodia's ILO-led garment factory monitoring regime secures legitimacy not by the participation of worker citizens in the matters of the state, but by claiming to provide for their well being. I argue that the hegemonic project is fraught by virtue of the fact that consent-seeking forms of regulation, which aim to prevent strikes through trade union membership and tripartitism, have reached their limit and spilled over and into a disaggregated, messier terrain of struggles akin to political society. To develop the argument that workers' politics cannot be expressed in state-civil society relations, I present case studies of two forms of protest. The first form is distinguished by mass faintings, which I characterize as ‘visceral protest’ against the terms of workers' insertion into industrial capitalism. The second is large-scale, worker-led strikes that signal a ‘politics of social disorder’ is emerging, characterized by extra-legal, disruptive, and sometimes violent protest. The paper calls for a re-politicization of labor, and research attuned to workers' ambitions that cannot be reduced to a stable location or sphere within state-civil society relations.     

“国家与社会”的中国研究面相

“国家与社会”理论作为研究社会运行机制的一种宏观分析框架,于20世纪90年代初传入中国。由于研究者对“国家与社会”理论框架中“社会”一端的不同理解,使得“国家与社会”理论的中国研究呈现不同的特征。本文依据社会转型期前后中国“国家”与“社会”的职能及其关系变革,梳理了在当代中国研究中“国家与社会”理论所呈现的不同面相。     

Fichte and the German Idiom: the Metaphysics of the Addresses to the German Nation

This article argues against the dominant Anglophone and Francophone interpretation of Fichte, which reads him as advancing either a form of ethnic or cultural nationalism. It claims that what is missing from the current reception of Fichte is the essentially philosophical and cosmopolitan character of his nationalism – the fact that the Addresses to the German Nation uses non‐empirical and cosmopolitical concepts to develop and articulate its nationalistic viewpoint. It therefore claims that the notion of a national philosophical idiom that the Addresses present, far from being a screen for its nationalism, is its driving engine. It does this by considering the problems of translating the German locution ist unsers Geschlechts. Consequently, it is claimed that the cosmo‐nationalism of Fichte is not reducible to a set of claims regarding ethnicity or even the empirical world, even if a discourse on the organismic, on what counts as life, irreducibly haunts the Addresses.     

The ambivalent relations behind civil society’s engagement in the “grey zones” of migration and integration governance: Case studies from Belgium

Based on qualitative data collected in two different Belgian cities (Brussels and Liège), this article focuses on the emergence of civil society initiatives to address the grey zones of migration and integration governance in the country. We define the concept of grey zones as situations that appear in specific time-spaces where problematic issues arise and the state fails to intervene. This triggers the intervention of civil society to deal with specific governance issues. In Belgium, the state – through an indifference-as-policy approach – delegates the responsibilities of reception and integration policies to multiple actors and leaves space for a variety of citizens’ initiatives to emerge. The grey zones of government policies become spaces for possible citizen-organised actions aimed at both providing initial reception and legal support to migrants, and denouncing the absence of state intervention. These citizen actions operate in particular on the issue of housing and reception of forced migrants with different legal status and migration aspirations. We also highlight the ambivalent relations emerging between civil society actors and the state. Through the analysis of two situated case studies, this article aims to provide evidence on how these civil society initiatives develop and how their humanitarian approach becomes political.     

The rise of the ethical state in Italy. Neapolitan Hegelians and Risorgimento political thought (1848–1871)

ABSTRACT

The article examines the idea of the Ethical State in Italy within the context of the Risorgimento and of Neapolitan Hegelianism. The article first analyses the Neapolitan Hegelians’ idea of nationality and its relationship to the concept of “national character”. Then it focuses on the differences between Hegel’s and Spaventa’s concepts of the State. Finally, it places Silvio and Bertrando Spaventa’s liberalism within Risorgimento debates after 1848, pointing to differences with moderate liberals such as Cesare Balbo or Vincenzo Gioberti. By delineating the context of ideas such as nationality, national character, ethics, and the state, the article sheds new light on the relationship between liberalism and nationalism in nineteenth-century European political thought.     

Philosophy as a cultural resource and medium of reflection for Hermann Weyl

In a talk given at Zurich in the late 1940s, Hermann Weyl discussed Ferdinand Gonseth's dialectical epistemology and considered it as being restricted too strictly to aspects of historical change. His experiences with post-Kantian dialectical philosophy, in particular Johann Gottlieb Fichte's derivation of the concept of space and matter, had been a stronger dialectical background for his own 1918 studies in purely infinitesimal geometry and the early geometrically unified field theory of matter (extending the Mie-Hilbert program). Although now Weyl distantiated himself from the speculative features of his youthful philosophizing and in particular from his earlier enthusiasm for Fichte, he again had deep doubts as to the cultural foundations of modern mathematical sciences and its role in material culture of high modernity. For Weyl, philosophical «reflection» was a cultural necessity he now turned towards Karl Jaspers' and Martin Heidegger's existentialism to find deeper grounds, similar to his turn towards Fichte's philosophy after World War I. The discussion in the late 1940s can be read as a kind of post-World-War-II «Nachtrag» to Weyl's more widely known philosophical comments on mathematics and the natural sciences published in the middle of the 1920s.     

Naturalising the Highlands: geographies of mountain fieldwork in late-Victorian Scotland

Through a detailed examination of two late-Victorian field clubs dedicated to the exploration of alpine botany in the Scottish Highlands, this paper contributes to work on the historical geographies of civic science. By focusing on the scientific and social character of mountain fieldwork it analyses the reciprocal relations between the spaces, practices and science of Highland botanising and wider concerns with sociability, character and civic virtue. In so doing it investigates the transposition of a variety of discursive resources from evolutionism to tourism into the language and practices of botanical science. This focus enables the paper to complicate more general accounts of natural history in the Victorian period and to consider a number of methodological issues relevant to reconstructing the historical geographies of science.     

Tourism consumption and the imagination of money

This paper supplements exisiting research on tourism consumption through a focus on money. It draws upon recent work in the geography of money and economic sociology, arguing that the understandings of money used by consumers are of importance to the social formation of tourism. Using a theoretical framework that links consumption studies and reconceptualizations of money, the paper develops a qualitative case study of British long-haul travellers. It concludes that consumers' understandings of money are integral to the ways in which tourists seek to engage with destinations, and points out some implications for the politics of tourism.     

International development aid and young people's participation in societal development of the global south

ABSTRACT

International development aid has in recent years sought to strengthen youths’ societal participation by cooperation between international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) and local youth associations. In this paper, we address and conceptualise some of the underlying causes that may enable and/or limit such efforts to support youth participation in the global south. We seek to contribute to the growing literature exploring the multiple scales of young people's political agency. A core argument proposed is that notions of generational relationality, as seen in the case of international development aid targeting youth, must include conceptions of power as a topological relation across space.     

The role of imagination in modern medicine

In Renaissance and early modern times, the concept of imagination (Latin imaginatio) was essential for the (natural) philosophical explanation of magic processes, especially in the anthropology of Paracelsus. He assumed that imagination was a natural vital power including cosmic, mental, phychical, and physical dimensions. The Paracelsians criticized traditional humor pathology ignoring their theory of' 'natural magic'. On the other hand, they were criticized by their adversaries as charlatans practicing 'black magic'. About 1800, in between enlightenment and romanticism, the healing concept of, animal magnetism' (Mesmerism) evoked an analogous debate, whether, magnetic' phenomena originated from a real (physical) power (so-called, fluidum') or were just due to fantasy or imagination (German Einbildungskraft). At the end of the 19th century, the French internist Hippolyte Bernheim created-against the background of medical hypnosis (hypnotism') as a consequence of Mesmerism - his theory of suggestion and autosuggestion: a new paradigm of psychological respectively psychosomatic medicine, which became the basis for the concept of, placebo' in modern biomedicine. From now on, all the effects of, alternative medicine' could easily be explained by the, placebo-effect', more or less founded - at least unconsciously - on fraud.     

女权：无可奈何花落去——《诗经》婚恋悲剧的社会原因

《诗经》的婚恋悲剧,多是追求自由与专一的悲剧,这其中固然有礼制的原因,但并非是最根本的。西周以来的嫡长子继承制,使女性失去了拥有基本权利的经济基础,从而导致男权凌驾于女权之上,进而演化成整个社会的男权集体无意识。女子的婚恋悲剧就是由于女权被男权剥夺而导致的。     

Antonio Genovesi's Diceosina: Source of the Neapolitan enlightenment

Antonio Genovesi (1713–1769) is known as the thinker who raised a whole generation of Southern Italian intellectuals, among them Francesco Pagano and Gaetano Filangieri. One of the most influential of his works was the notoriously difficult Diceosina, o sia della filosofia del giusto e dell’onesto (1766), a textbook destined for use in the universities. The Diceosina was a powerful, if controversial, attempt to mediate between the history of moral philosophy on the one hand, and the specific problems encountered by eighteenth-century commercial society on the other. In fact, it contained the greater part of Genovesi's political, philosophical, and economic thought; a synthetic guidebook for Neapolitan economic and social development. This essay explores the work's context, rich intellectual origins, and ultimate significance through its long and complicated reception. The cultural and political connotations of Genovesi's Diceosina become particularly evident through an engagement with the works of Ermenegildo Personè, one of the book's most arduous critics.     

西汉六安国史实钩沉

西汉六安国的出现,同汉初皖西境内淮南国、衡山国屡出变故直接相关。六安国首位国王刘庆,出身于一个显赫而又富有传奇色彩的家族。六安国因刘寄、刘庆家族显要,同武帝关系亲近,以及为着解决刘寄家族的矛盾而建立。研究西汉六安国之政区版籍的变化,必须采用逆推法等考证方法。六安国始封时至少应有七县之地。武帝以后的推恩分封、颁行左官律和附益法等,使得包括六安国在内的西汉诸侯王国逐步走向了衰微。     

Intense Paradoxes of Memory: Researching Moral Questions About Remembering the Socialist Past

In 2007 two researchers embarked upon a project on the “social construction of the socialist past in eastern Germany”. The project sought to explore how the socialist past is remembered today, and the moral ambiguities condensed in memories. This is particularly relevant in eastern Germany, where debates about how to interpret the socialist past continue to strive. However, it soon became apparent that doing such an ethnographic project is no easy task. Both researchers became sucked into the debates they sought to explore, including the question of who people had been during GDR (German Democratic Republic, former East Germany) times and whether this mattered. Using the ethnographic self as a resource, this article explores the ethics of complicity or detachment in fieldwork situations where the researcher was invited to make judgements. It argues that ethnographers need to address the question of value‐judgements openly in their fieldwork, since they form an intrinsic part of all our humanity.