Spinoza’s Democratic Imagination

Spinoza is the great philosopher of the imagination and the first great philosopher of democracy. Rather than seeing democracy as a form of government that has overcome the need for imagination and symbols, he shows in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus that an enlightened state depends on three myths: the myth of the sovereignty of the people so as to reconcile democracy as rule by the people with each individual living as he or she wants to live; the myth that we are a people, emotionally and morally tied to some people more than to others; and, finally, the myth that the people comprises individuals who are responsible for their own destinies. The democratic imagination differs from earlier forms of politics in that the people construct the social imaginary for themselves and are guided by it without deception. It is the social imaginary thus created, or these three myths, that make room for freedom of thought and therefore for democracy.     

Understanding Federalism

Abstract

Communitarians have expressed deep suspicion over the burgeoning project of human biological enhancement. This is hardly surprising because the best defenses of enhancement have largely treaded on libertarian-consequentialist grounds; they have ignored sentiments that communitarians prize most: features like love, care, belongingness, and solidarity. But defenses of enhancement need not necessarily rely on the liberal image of moral agents; it is possible to defend even evasive biological alterations in ways congenial to communitarian sympathies. The sentiments are elusive things, and they invariably motivate human action in often surprising and unobvious ways. Looking to the history of political thought, a close read of Adam Smith reveals that he defended technological artifice as a means to protect the human propensities toward love and belongingness.     

‘6 to 8 Slices Of Bread’

Swedish health information, conducted by the National Board of Health and Welfare in collaboration with private participants, expanded rapidly in the 1970s. This study examines a controversial bread campaign, which declared that the National Board, in collaboration with the private Bread Institute, wanted citizens to eat six to eight slices of bread every day. Why and how could such a seemingly unholy alliance come about? Contextualizing the collaborations with the industry, with a network governance approach, this article seeks the answers by investigating the organizational conditions behind the various campaigns. Different conflicting dilemmas influenced the campaigns and their outcomes. For example, the desire to maximize the disseminationof information, and at the same time controlling it, as well as the imbedded power dynamics between private and public sector. The result points to a shift from strong to weak interdependence between the government agency and collaborating parties, basically due to the agency’s diminishing campaign resources, which opened up for a stronger commercialization of the bread campaign.