THE EVOLUTION AND DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURE

In his thought‐provoking book, Alex Mesoudi argues for an evolutionary, unifying framework for the social sciences, which is based on the principles of Darwinian theory. Mesoudi maintains that cultural change can be illuminated by using the genotype‐phenotype distinction, and that it is sufficiently similar to biological change to warrant a theory of culture‐change based on evolutionary models. He describes examples of cultural microevolution, within‐population changes, and the biologically inspired population genetics models used to study them. He also shows that some aspects of large‐scale (macro‐evolutionary) cultural transformation can be studied by using ecological models and phylogenetic comparative techniques. We argue that although Mesoudi's evolution‐based perspective offers many useful insights, his ambition—the unification of the social sciences within a Darwinian framework through the use of the methods and models he describes—suffers from a major theoretical limitation. His reductive approach leads to overlooking culture as a system with emergent processes and features. Mesoudi therefore does not engage with any of the central past and present theories in sociology and anthropology for which the systems view of culture is central, and he does not analyze the emergent, high‐level properties of human cultural‐social systems. We suggest that a systems perspective, using some analogies and metaphors from developmental biology, can complement the evolutionary approach and is more in tune with a systems view of society. Such an approach, which stresses feedback and self‐sustaining interactions within social networks, and engages with the insights of sociological and anthropological theories, can contribute to the understanding of cultural systems by highlighting the evolution of processes of social cohesion, and by making use of the mathematical approaches of complexity theory.     

H.G. Wells and the New Liberalism

This article offers a new interpretation of H.G. Wells's politicalthought in the Edwardian period and beyond. Scholars have emphasisedhis socialism at the expense of his commitment to liberalism,and have misread his novel The New Machiavelli as an anti-Liberaltract. Wells spent much effort in the pre-1914 period in thequest for a ‘new Liberalism’, and did not believethat socialists should compete directly with the Liberal Partyfor votes. It was this latter conviction that lay behind hismuch misunderstood dispute with the Fabian Society. His politicalsupport for Churchill was one sign of his belief in the compatibilityof liberalism and socialism, in which he was far from uniqueat the time. He also engaged, somewhat idiosyncratically, withthe ‘servile state’ concept of Hilaire Belloc. Althoughhe did not articulate his Liberal identity with complete consistency,he did so with increasing intensity as the First World War approached.This helps explain why key New Liberal politicians includingChurchill, Lloyd George and Masterman responded to his ideassympathetically. The extent of engagement between Wells andthe ‘New Liberalism’ was such that he deserves tobe considered alongside Green, Ritchie, Hobson and Hobhouseas one of its prophets.     

Reasonableness,Rationality and Government: The Liberal Political Thought of Mehdi Ha'eri Yazdi

Rawls formulates liberalism according to two conceptions of reasonable and rational, which, tied to two particular notions of society and person, define the basis of liberalism in Rawlsian thought. This article argues that Mehdi Haeri Yazdi's important work, Hekmat va Hokumaat, should be considered as a work of liberal theory, and shows how it endorses liberal conceptions of the reasonable and the rational. The main elements of Ha'eri's liberalism are his thesis that philosophy has priority over jurisprudence, his doctrine of contract based upon concepts of agency contract (aqd-e vekalat) and joint private ownership (malekiyat-e shakhsi-ye musha), and his defense of individualism against the alleged collectivism of Rousseau.     

Oliver O'Donovan's Critique of Autonomy

Abstract

More than any other contemporary theologian, Oliver O'Donovan has revived political theology as a field of enquiry. Yet O'Donovan has been consistent in his critique of the modern idea of autonomy, judging it to be at odds with the more communitarian idea of covenanted community found in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. He contrasts this modern idea, and its political implications, with the older biblical idea, also adding some basic points from Aristotle's idea of the polis. But unlike many contemporary communitarians, O'Donovan is also able to incorporate the idea of human rights into his political theology. He sees this supposedly modern idea having fuller precedence in the biblical idea of mishpat ("justice"), which he takes to be God's primordial claim on His covenanted community, a claim that sufficiently grounds both individual rights and communal rights and which enables them to function together. However, O'Donovan draws the line when it comes to the modern social contract theory, arguing that it is at odds with biblical teaching that the primary responsibility of rulers is to divine law. While agreeing with O'Donovan's rejection of autonomy and his acceptance of human rights, this paper argues against O'Donovan's theological rejection of social contract theory. Instead, it argues that a social contract is consistent with the doctrine of the covenant; indeed that the very possibility of the social contract is best explained by the doctrine of the covenant, and that this acceptance of the social contract serves the best political interests of covenanted communities (like the Jewish People and the Christian Church) in an otherwise secular world.     

‘Germany’s salvation’: Carl Schmitt’s teleological history of the Second Reich

Although Schmitt’s enthusiastic conversion to National Socialism is well known, his short history of the German Kaiserreich, published in 1934, remains neglected in Anglophone scholarship. This article contextualizes Schmitt’s narrative through the National Socialist conception of history and its accompanying teleology leading to the formation of the Third Reich. By placing Schmitt’s historical text in conversation with his earlier Staat, Bewegung, Volk, this article argues that Schmitt appropriated the history of the Kaiserreich to construct liberalism as a social pathology which could only be cured through the ‘concrete state theory’ he outlined in Staat, Bewegung, Volk. Furthermore, this article argues that Schmitt’s history relied heavily on propagandistic clichés of the Third Reich and thereby functioned as a rhetorical legitimation of Hitler’s rise to power.     

Social structure,psychoanalysis, and collective aggression

This article considers Kierkegaard's contribution to our understanding of the political. Building on previous scholarship exploring the social dimensions of Kierkegaard's thought, I argue that for Kierkegaard the modern understanding and practice of politics should be understood as ‘despair’. Thus, whilst Kierkegaard's criticisms of politics might have been produced in an ad hoc fashion, this article argues that there is an underlying principle which guides these criticisms: that politics is subordinate to, and must be grounded in, spiritual or religious selfhood. In this way the modern phenomena of democracy, liberalism, the press, and the crowd can all be seen as representative of a form of community which falls far short of the potential that human beings can and should achieve. Such a community would see individuals recognising themselves and each other as spiritual beings, and taking responsibility for themselves and others. That modern politics fails to understand the human being as an essentially spiritual entity related to others through God can only lead us to conclude that, from Kierkegaard's point of view, modern politics suffers from the sickness of despair. Whilst Kierkegaard might be criticised for failing to provide us with a more detailed picture of a polity shaped by the religious contours he promotes, he clearly offers an intriguing and suggestive contribution to our understanding not only of the limitations of politics, but also the relationship between a normative human and political ontology, with the former providing the basis for the latter.     

Social and Cosmopolitan Liberalism

A central divide in philosophical thought about international distributive justice separates 'social' from 'cosmopolitan' liberalism. These views differ about the nature of the problem of international justice: social liberals are primarily concerned about fairness to states or societies, whereas cosmopolitan liberals are concerned about fairness to individuals. This article explores three reasons why philosophers interested in international distributive justice often regard social liberalism as the more plausible view. These reasons have to do with alleged differences between domestic and international society: empirical beliefs about the sources of backwardness; and moral preconceptions about the fairest allocation of the costs of irresponsible economic and population policies. The article argues that none of these reasons is persuasive, and that the deep ethical distinction between the domestic and the international realms, on which social liberalism depends, is more difficult to defend that many philosophers have thought.     

John Stuart Mill’s Political Pessimism

John Stuart Mill devoted much of his life to developing a ‘science of morality’ to enhance the social, moral and intellectual character of individuals and society as a whole. His liberal aspirations included the reform of legal and political institutions according to utilitarian principles and consistent with personal liberty, and the development of a diverse and creative culture. Paradoxically, Mill, the liberal optimist, was also a pessimist about achieving these goals. This article argues that Mill’s pessimism reveals an intellectual depth and forthright political realism about England’s parliamentary democracy and the political and cultural consequences of growing affluence and social equality. Mill’s critiques of liberalism and socialism in their original emergence point the way to explaining why his ideas remain provocative and profoundly illuminating in contemporary debates concerning multiculturalism and human rights.     

Aristocratic Liberalism and Risorgimento: Cesare Balbo and Piedmontese Political Thought after 1848

The paper discusses the political thought of Cesare Balbo (1789–1853), a leading Risorgimento moderate liberal and politician, in the context of the efforts by the Piedmontese political elite to support and legitimise the constitutional regime introduced by King Charles Albert in 1848. Revising current interpretations of Risorgimento moderate liberalism as backward and provincial, it seeks to locate the political thought of Balbo and his colleagues at the heart of contemporary European, and particularly French, debates regarding liberty and aristocracy. In particular, it argues that the views of Balbo and more broadly Piedmontese moderate liberals on centralisation, the importance of a social elite to defend freedom, and equalisation, were conversant with the ideas of Guizot, Chateaubriand, Burke and Tocqueville. Their harsh condemnation of republican virtue, on the other hand, rendered their liberalism peculiar in the Italian context, where Tuscan moderate liberals continued to resort to the language of civic humanism after 1848 to defend their political and social model.     

Rewriting Australian Liberalism: The High Court's Jurisprudence of Rights

The High Court's recent rights jurisprudence has been unusually controversial. This paper argues that it is possible to evaluate the important developments in the Court's jurisprudence by examining the philosophical foundations of its understanding of rights. Relying on the distinction between utilitarian rights and natural and human rights, the paper discerns in the Court's traditional legalism as well as its more recent jurisprudence of implied rights a consistent commitment to a utilitarian conception of rights. In contrast, the paper argues that the Court's human rights jurisprudence represents a fundamental shift in its view of rights and judicial review, with far-reaching consequences for Australian constitutionalism and liberalism.     

Alfred Marshall's economic nationalism

ABSTRACT. Alfred Marshall has been seen as an economic liberal and one of the founders of the neo‐classical school. However, this article challenges such conventional wisdom and argues that Marshall is best understood as an economic nationalist. Economic nationalism has been falsely associated with mercantilism, the zero‐sum view of international economies, and so on. However, a new approach for studying economic nationalism has recently been proposed to redefine its conception. The present article shows that Marshall's economic thought is compatible with this new conception of economic nationalism. Marshall emphasised the role of nationality in the economic process. The characteristics of his economic thought, such as the evolutionary view of economy, conform more closely to Friedrich List's economic nationalism than to economic liberalism. By portraying Marshall's theory as that of economic nationalism, the author concludes that economic nationalism can have a systematic theory.     

Found in Translation: Habermas and Anthropotechnics

Abstract

In his recent work on postsecular societies Jürgen Habermas has stressed the need for a dialogue between religious and nonreligious citizens aimed at strengthening social integration and rejuvenating the moral bases of modern political and juridical institutions. This dialogue should focus on the translation of religious traditions into rational, secular forms. In his more recent work on the social function of rituals, however, he rejected the Durkheimian view of public secular rituals as mechanisms for fostering social integration. In this article I discuss Habermas’s early reflections on postsecularism and assess his interpretation of public religious rituals as sources of social integration. I then propose an alternative to his translation proviso whereby religious symbolic content would be translated into behavior-regulating technologies aimed at developing the dispositional resources needed for a continuous postsecular dialogue between religious and nonreligious citizens.     

Jacob Talmon between Zionism and Cold War Liberalism

The paper focuses on the problematic relationship between Talmon's liberalism and Zionism. My argument is that Talmon's nationalism (Zionism included)—historicist, romantic, visionary—lived in permanent tension with his liberalism—empiricist, pluralist, pragmatic. His critique of totalitarian democracy, reflecting his British experience, emerged independently from his Zionism, grounded in Central European nationalism. The two represented different worlds. Talmon lived in both, serving as an ambassador in-between them, without ever bringing them together.

The essay's first section describes the political education of the young Jacob Talmon (née Flajszer) and the making of The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy. It demonstrates the independence of Talmon's Cold War liberal project from his Zionism. The second section places Talmon in the context of Cold War liberal discourse, showing how integral his critique of revolutionary politics was to contemporary liberalism. The third illustrates the tensions between Talmon's view of Jewish history and his liberalism, between his Zionism and his critique of revolutionary politics. Focusing on Talmon's analyses of nationalism, it highlights the ambiguity of his Zionism.     

Champagne socialism: Luxury in Fourier's utopia

Fourier's vision of material gratification in works such as Le Nouveau Monde amoureux comprehensively overturns a suspicion of the destabilising effects of luxury inherent to classical European political theory. This article explores the basis upon which Fourier was able to achieve this revolution. It focuses on his theories of human psychology, his insistence on the positive effects of material inequality in a harmoniously regulated society, and his abolition of the social division between mental and physical labour on which earlier critiques of luxury had been based. Set against an investigation of attitudes towards luxury in early modern and Enlightenment political thought, it argues that Fourier's utopia is ultimately framed by the all-encompassing gaze of a thinker who eliminates potential tensions between individual gratification and social harmony through blunt assertion rather than theoretical engagement with his antecedents.     

The Realization of Harmony in a Broken World: Reconsidering the Role of Ethics in Milbank's Ontology of Peace

Milbank's Christian ontology of peace indicates a way out of the contemporary crisis of Western democracies. Milbank argues that politics should have a positive and communitarian goal, and that contemporary liberalism fails insofar as it is preoccupied with the limitation of evil, and insofar as it presupposes a fundamentally egoistic anthropology. Milbank's alternative harmonizing vision of reality and humankind has been criticized for preempting all too quickly a harmony which has not yet been realized, and for thereby undermining the crucial role of reactive ethical laws and human work for the realization of true harmony in a world marred by a tragic dimension. Contrary to this criticism, this article advances the claim that Milbank pays too little attention to the ways in which real harmony is already being realized in the world, which is why he presents his ontology as an ideal toward which an entire society should work, under the guidance of ethical laws. A reading of Schillebeeckx's more positive reception of liberalism will serve to illustrate the political consequences of a position that focuses more on the already realized harmony in this world than on an ideal harmony.     

近代中国自由主义者视域中的苏俄——以胡适为中心的考察

近代中国自由主义的代表人物胡适,对苏俄的看法经历了从热望到失望的变化过程.五四时期,胡适对苏俄保持了一种实验主义的审慎观察态度.20世纪二三十年代,虽然胡适表现出对苏俄的赞赏,但是仍未脱离其自由主义的根本立场.40年代,胡适激烈批评苏俄的专制,甚至在晚年对他一直追寻的社会主义梦想也一并放弃了.     

Anglophobia and anti-Semitism: The case of Alphonse Toussenel (1803-1885)

Alphonse Toussenel (1803-1885) was a utopian socialist who criticised the economic liberalism of the July Monarchy. He was a follower of Charles Fourier who denounced the ills of civilisation: individualism, egoism and class conflict. However, he was also the founder of modern French anti-Semitism. His writings inspired Edouard Drumont. The present article explores the links between Toussenel's brand of anti-Semitism, rooted in a revolutionary-nationalist reading of French history, and his almost equally aggressive Anglophobia. He described 'Londres-Juda' as an insatiable vampire sucking the lifeblood of France. In Toussenel's hands zoology became a vehicle for social criticism and his natural history books, as much as his political writings, were infused with anti-English sentiments. The English and the Jews represented external and internal threats to French national identity. An examination of Toussenel's writings helps to understand the joint presence of Anglophobia and anti-Semitism within social romanticism.     

塞缪尔·亨廷顿“文明冲突论”的文化保守主义倾向

如果从现代化的角度解读亨廷顿的"文明冲突论",就不难发现这一理论本身所隐含的社会发展观及其文化保守主义倾向。"文明冲突论"在相对主义文化决定论的框架下,提出多元现代性和多元现代化的观点。这种观点否认存在具有普遍意义的现代性和现代化,宣称每一种文明都有其独特的现代性内涵和现代化模式。这种社会发展观看似开放,其本质却是文化保守主义的,其矛盾折射出西方文明在当前世界格局下文化策略的调整。它旨在将人类共同享有的先进文明成果特殊化、西方化,以非西方中心论的名义将现代性相对化,最终取消非西方社会实现现代化的可能性。非西方社会对此应保持理性的判断。     

‘Red on White’: Kim Il Sung,Park Chung Hee,and the Failure of Korea’s Reunification, 1971–1973

The articles argues that in 1971–1973 North Korea’s leader Kim Il Sung used the Sino-American rapprochement and the Soviet-American détente to pursue Korean reunification on his terms; his aim was to ‘democratize’ and then ‘revolutionize’ South Korea and so achieve through dialogue what he failed to achieve through militancy. Kim’s game was based on a misreading of the political dynamics in South Korea and on misplaced confidence in North Korea’s attractiveness. He also misjudged his ability to obtain China’s and the USSR’s backing for his schemes.     

Crisis in consciousness: The thought of Ernst Troeltsch

This article examines the ‘revolutionary liberal’ outlook expounded by the young Italian journalist and intellectual, Piero Gobetti, immediately following the First World War. It considers the historical evolution of his ‘agonistic’ liberalism according to which conflict rather than consensus serves as the basis of social and political renewal. The article traces the formation of Gobetti's thought from his idealist response to the crisis of the liberal state through to his endorsement of the communist revolutionaries in Turin and his denunciation of fascism as the continuation of Italy's failed tradition of compromise. Whilst Gobetti's views presently resonate with a growing interest in the agonistic dimension of politics, it is argued that his elitism and his understanding of liberalism as a ‘civic religion’ reveal challenging tensions in his thought.