Theoretical reflections

The article starts with a discussion about the frequent statement that culture is a marginal area in politics. It proceeds with an analysis of the phenomenon and concept of “the cultural turn” and its possible consequences for cultural democracy. Then there follows a reflection on the potential power of religion and culture in political developments. After these introductory sections I present and discuss what I call five “democracy dimensions” of cultural policy: norms and ideologies; distribution of economic resources; institutional structures and decision‐making procedures; agents and interests in the policy‐making process; and access to and participation in cultural life. The conclusion is that under certain circumstances culture may mobilise huge masses of people in political actions but this is unlikely to happen in Western European democracies where culture in a long historical process has been privatised and isolated from big politics by the establishment of a specific sphere with its own structures, norms, logics and discourses. It is questionable if cultural policies will be more democratic under the reign of global capitalism and new liberalism. “The cultural turn” is an ambivalent phenomenon which cannot by itself bring about more cultural democracy. The future of cultural democracy cannot be decided for by cultural life or the cultural policy system themselves, it is dependent on what will happen to democracy as a total political system, of which cultural policy is only a small part.     

Secular Islam

ABSTRACT

While he appears to have been a relentless critic of secularism as a liberal ideal, the celebrated Indian poet and philosopher Mohammad Iqbal might also be considered among its more important non-European theorists. Globally one of the most influential Muslim thinkers of the twentieth century, Iqbal started publishing in its first decade, reaching the height of his power and popularity during the inter-war period until he died in Lahore in 1938. He studied philosophy as well as Arabic and Persian thought in Lahore, Cambridge, and Munich, and drew extensively upon European as much as Asian thinkers. I will argue here that Iqbal followed an important tradition of pre-modern philosophy by thinking about the relationship between politics and theology in esoteric terms.     

Negative Freedom,Catholic Social Doctrine,and the Conciliar Challenge of the Free Society

The idea of “negative freedom” has been at the heart of modern democratic politics; it has also been an idea regarded warily by Catholic social doctrine. To be sure, Catholic social doctrine now embraces the classic negative political freedoms like freedom of religion and freedom of speech. But the hierarchical magisterium of the Church was slow to arrive at such an embrace. And in the last decades the hierarchical magisterium has renewed its skepticism of the idea, seeing it as both important and often misused. This article considers current criticisms of negative freedom by Catholic social doctrine and seeks to respond to such criticisms by appealing to personalist conceptions of freedom in the philosophy of Charles Taylor and in the theology of Walter Kasper. Overall, the aim of the article is to establish a more sure conceptual basis for negative freedom as an essential component of the commitment by the Catholic Church at the Second Vatican Council to the free society.     

The Gospel of Freedom,or Another Gospel? Augustinian Reflections on Empire and American Foreign Policy

Abstract

American foreign policy is often extolled in terms of exporting "freedom" to the rest of the world— extending God's gift to humanity (according to President Bush's Second Inaugural). But just what notion of "freedom" undergirds this project? According to the National Security Strategy, the freedom being globalized is a negative, non-teleological notion of freedom that primarily underwrites the expansion of free markets. But such a liberal, non-teleological notion of freedom is just the notion of freedom that is rejected by the orthodox (Augustinian) theological tradition. So the theological invocations that cloak this foreign policy can only be, technically, heretical. This paper takes Augustine's theology as a mode of cultural criticism, offering a contemporary rendition of Augustine's critique of empire in The City of God by interrogating the discourse of freedom associated with the Bush Doctrine as well as a critique of Hardt and Negri's alternative as it is laid out in Empire and Multitude.     

The Political Style of Hubert H. Humphrey

Abstract

Political philosophy has a “curious” place in intellectual affairs. It wants to know whether philosophy has a place in the city. It also is aware that once political things have accomplished their purpose, the major issues of what-it-is-to-be-a-human-being remain. Aristotle warned that politics was not the highest science as such, but an understanding of politics that saw no place for anything but the political would end in a tyrannical exclusion of the human good from public life. Politics would claim that its definition of the good was the only definition. This exclusion meant that there was no natural or transcendent order to which man was open. The discipline of political philosophy, at its best, is open both to human and, indirectly, to divine things, as Artistotle intimated.     

Religion,toleration, and religious liberty in republican empire

ABSTRACT

The essay considers the nature and extent of toleration extended by Roman authorities to the religious pluralism of the empire. Roman legal instruments and works of law and political theory identify religion not as a concern of individuals but communities, and above all of juridically-constituted communities. As a related matter, classical and Christian Latin employs the language of political belonging, most notably that of republican citizenship, as its dominant apparatus for discussing religious affiliation. These related conceptual apparatus placed considerable limits on Romans’ ability to afford liberty in matters of religion to individuals.     

James Fitzjames Stephen,John Stuart Mill,and the Victorian Theory of Toleration

Due to his famous conflict with John Stuart Mill, James Fitzjames Stephen is often assumed to have been an opponent of toleration and intellectual freedom and a defender of authoritarian or reactionary principles. These assumptions are misleading. Stephen was, and was known in his time to have been, a champion of toleration. This essay provides a comprehensive overview of his writing on these themes, drawing from a wider array of texts than is usually considered in the study of the Stephen-Mill controversy. Contrary to popular belief, Stephen had a deep and multi-faceted argument in favor of toleration. As a critic of contending theories of toleration and freedom of discussion (especially Mill’s), Stephen was concerned to defeat what he saw as the resurgence of a priori principles in Victorian political philosophy and to combat the expansion of a proper notion of toleration to include a cluster of beliefs and attitudes of which he disapproved. In his approach to these issues Stephen was, arguably, as representative of Victorian thinking as the author of On Liberty.     

Debating Natural Law in the Banda Islands: A Case Study in Anglo–Dutch Imperial Competition in the East Indies, 1609–1621

This article examines Anglo–Dutch rivalry in the Banda Islands in the period from 1609 to 1621, with a particular focus on the process of claiming initiated by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and English East India Company (EIC). Historians have paid little attention to the precise legal justifications employed by these organisations, and how they affected the outcome of events. For both companies, treaties with Asian rulers and peoples were essential in staking out claims to trade and territory. Because so many different parties were involved, individual documents had to serve multiple purposes, both on the ground in the East Indies and at the negotiating tables back in Europe. Whenever a VOC or EIC official presented a treaty to a Bandanese leader, he had to recognise local power structures in the Spice Islands, but also needed to consider his European competitors in the area, his superiors in Batavia or Bantam, and the company directors back in Amsterdam or London. Consequently, the safest and most reliable course of action was to make as many arguments as possible, piling them on top of one another. The result was an inherently messy process of claiming, yet one that was also clearly intelligible to most parties involved, including Asian rulers and peoples. A constantly changing legal suite extended to freedom of trade and navigation, contracts and alliances with native peoples, just war, conquest, actual possession, and the (perceived) surrender of native sovereignty to European authorities.     

(Un)Doing Constitutionalism: The Cases of Liu Xiaobo and Xu Zhiyong

Based on the cases of Liu Xiaobo and Xu Zhiyong, this article reviews the Court judgments and discussions about the criminal charges of “inciting subversion of state power” and “disrupting public order” used against Liu Xiaobo and Xu Zhiyong respectively. Through a review of the discourses of Chinese legal scholars surrounding the two cases, we focus on the conflicting arguments regarding the Chinese Constitution and the Constitutional right to freedom of expression. This article concludes with an analysis of the political meaning of the two cases by revisiting the debate about the implementation of a Constitutional review and by reflecting upon the political contention between the government’s recent re-ideologisation of the Constitution and the growing calls of Chinese citizens who advocate Constitutionalism as a proxy for political reform.