Path dependence,policy learning and Australian manufacturing since the 1970s

The impending demise of passenger motor vehicle manufacturing in Australia provides a good opportunity to view the trajectory of industry policy since the Whitlam government commenced the process of tariff cuts in 1973. It is argued that industry policy over this period demonstrates the effects of path dependence and a lack of policy learning. In the industry policy context, the path dependence perspective suggests three key factors in explaining policy effects: the importance of initial conditions; the role of cumulative causation in the interaction between policy settings, actors and firms; and the shaping role of networks. While political or electoral factors could, on occasion, generate support for threatened industries, overall, neo-liberal policy ideas guided decision-making. An examination of Australian defence industry, and a comparison of the Australian and New Zealand dairy and milk processing industries reinforces the importance of institutionally shaped path dependency.     

Rethinking the metaphor of light: María Zambrano in dialogue with Jacques Derrida and Hans Blumenberg

ABSTRACT

The notion of metaphor has been broadly discussed during the twentieth century as an essential and necessary part of language and history. This article examines the theoretical dialogue that links the centrality of the metaphor of light in the work of María Zambrano with reflections on this topic by Jacques Derrida and Hans Blumenberg. Through various formulations of this metaphor across different works, Zambrano presents the metaphor linked to poetic reason as not reducible to a mere rhetorical ornament or to a concept. By articulating alternative metaphors to the imperative of clarity as the blinding light of Occidental reason, Zambrano introduces a solid critique to rationalism and introduces the metaphor of the Dawn as a new form of knowledge. This new intonation of the metaphor of light opens up an unexplored direction in Spanish thought not only by thinking the metaphor of light through poetic reason and its critique to the philosophical tradition, but also by assuming the political implications of this metaphor and criticizing its heliopolitical configuration. Indeed, Zambrano states the significance of the metaphor of the sun linked to the sacrificial structure of history, particularly of Spain, and its necessary overcoming as the possibility of a radical democracy.     

Saussure and his intellectual environment

SUMMARY

The present study paints the intellectual environment in which Ferdinand de Saussure developed his ideas about language and linguistics during the fin de siècle. It sketches his dissatisfaction with that environment to the extent that it touched on linguistics, and shows the new course he was trying to steer on the basis of ideas that seemed to open new and exciting perspectives, even though they were still vaguely defined. As Saussure himself was extremely reticent about his sources and intellectual pedigree, his stance in the lively European cultural context in which he lived can only be established through textual critique and conjecture. On this basis, it is concluded that Saussure, though relatively uninformed about its historical roots, essentially aimed at integrating the rationalist tradition current in the sciences in his day into a new, ‘scientific’ general theory of language. In this, he was heavily indebted to a few predecessors, such as the French philosopher-psychologist Victor Egger, and particularly to the French psychologist, historian and philosopher Hippolyte Taine, who was a major cultural influence in nineteenth-century France, though now largely forgotten. The present study thus supports Hans Aarsleff's analysis, where, for the first time, Taine's influence is emphasised, and rejects John Joseph's contention that Taine had no influence and that, instead, Saussure was influenced mainly by the romanticist Adolphe Pictet. Saussure abhorred Pictet's method of etymologising, which predated the Young Grammarian school, central to Saussure's linguistic education. The issue has implications for the positioning of Saussure in the history of linguistics. Is he part of the non-analytical, romanticist and experience-based European strand of thought that is found in art and postmodernist philosophy and is sometimes called structuralism, or is he a representative of the short-lived European branch of specifically linguistic structuralism, which was rationalist in outlook, more science-oriented and more formalist, but lost out to American structuralism? The latter seems to be the case, though phenomenology, postmodernism and art have lately claimed Saussure as an icon.     

WRITING THE HISTORY OF SPINOZISM

In this essay I reflect on Knox Peden's Spinoza contra Phenomenology, a history of French rationalist Spinozism in the mid‐twentieth century. The book marks an important intervention in modern French and European intellectual history, depicting the importance of Baruch Spinoza's thought in the negotiation of and resistance to the phenomenology that captivated much of twentieth‐century French intellectual life. With philosophical and historical sophistication, Peden tells the story of several relatively overlooked thinkers while also providing substantially new contexts and interpretations of the well‐known Louis Althusser and Gilles Deleuze. While accounting for Peden's major accomplishment, my aim is also to situate his work among a number of recent works in the history of Spinozism in order to reflect on the specific methodological questions that pertain to the widely varying appropriations of Spinoza's thought since the seventeenth century. In particular, I reflect on Peden's claim that Spinoza's thought cannot provide an actionable politics, a claim that runs counter to nearly two centuries of leftist forms of Spinozism. I offer a short account of some of the ways that theorists have mobilized Spinoza's thought for political purposes, redefining “action” itself in Spinozist terms. I then conclude by reflecting on the dimensions of Spinoza's thought (and recent interpretations of it) that make it possible for such significantly different claims about its political potential to be credible.     

Machiavelli against Method: Paul Feyerabend's Anti-Rationalism and Machiavellian Political ‘Science’

Contemporary scholars seeking to advance the study of political phenomena identify their inquiry as a ‘science' that attains success through rigorous method. Thus the ‘methodological anarchism' of Paul Feyerabend's philosophy of science might seem an inauspicious place to find a fruitful disciplinary vision. Nonetheless, it echoes a longstanding conception of the ‘science' of politics articulated by Niccolò Machiavelli. Looking to Feyerabend, we propose to surmount the impasse between Machiavelli's account of politics and the demands of modern science and recover his contribution to the scientific study of politics. In doing so, Machiavelli illustrates the potential of a Feyerabendian political science.     

Benjamin Constant and the politics of reason

This paper makes a claim about Constant’s intellectual sources in order to throw additional light on the nature of his liberalism. It assesses Constant’s views against the background of a tradition of political rationalism. Constant both criticized and inherited that tradition. This paper shows how this process of critical re-appropriation occurred principally with two figures that had a particular significance for Constant: the very Francophile William Godwin and Nicolas de Condorcet. Constant resisted these authors’ desire to replace a consent-based decision-making model by a truth-based decision-making model, and condemned their tendency to enrol individual judgment at the service of a politics of truth. At the same time, Constant did not renounce completely to their dream of bringing certainty into politics. As this double-move shows, it is not clear to what extent Constant succeeded in distancing himself from this tradition of political rationalism in order to establish what I call a rationalist liberalism. This problematic intellectual lineage not only challenges received interpretations of Constant’s liberalism either in terms of ‘scepticism’ or ‘pluralism.’ It should also invite us to reconsider the widespread idea according to which the French liberal tradition had a common and exclusive source in Montesquieu.     

Epilepsy in the Graeco-Roman World: Hippocratic Medicine and Asklepian Temple Medicine Compared

The rational system of medicine distinct from magical or religious practices originated with Hippocrates. This revolutionary change established diseases with natural causes and treatments. Epilepsy with its prominent physical and psychic features was regarded in ancient times with superstitious awe and given the name “Sacred Disease.” Hippocratic authors distanced themselves from the prevailing supernatural views but were careful not to oppose the traditional medicine especially the cults of Asklepios. This analysis of the practices of Hippocratic and Temple medicine in relation to epilepsy reveals some clear differences and also some overlapping features.     

Politics and Public Policy

Abstract

In the figure of Judge Holden, Cormac McCarthy has crafted perhaps the most haunting character in all of American literature. The antagonist of McCarthy's Blood Meridian, Holden is a richly composed portrait of human evil responsible for a litany of wicked deeds. This essay attempts to expound the character of judge Holden, to the end of clarifying McCarthy's definition of evil. It argues that McCarthy, with the judge, lays bare the contours of soul of the evil man, focusing especially on the tension between his ambitious repudiation of justice, on the one hand, and his steadfast, if unwitting, adherence to it, on the other. It is the evil man's conception of the purpose of knowledge, together with his desire to acquire boundless knowledge, that is the key to this tension in his soul.     

人本主义与理性主义的融合--阿米巴经营、理念哲学与京瓷企业文化特征

自20世纪80年代起,企业文化作为现代企业管理理论和管理方法的重要内容,引起了企业界、学术界的广泛关注和研究。由于这一现象是以“日本何以超过美国”这一问题为背景的,所以,日本企业文化的“人本主义”特征和美国企业文化的“理性主义”特征的比较,成为讨论的重点。本文通过对名列世界500强企业之一的日本京瓷公司的考察,批评了这种二元对立的讨论思路的简单化,指出“人本主义”与“理性主义”的融和,才是京瓷持续成功的根本原因所在,是京瓷企业文化的本质特征．     

合理主义与传统亲情的对立--菊池宽的独幕剧《父归》

菊池宽的独幕剧《父归》是一部反映父子亲情与家庭伦理问题的现实主义作品。菊池宽通过描写父亲与长子的对立冲突,深刻地反映了明治和大正时代,近代的自我意识渗透到社会各阶层,并开始挑战以父权为中心的封建家长制的社会现实。以及在这种社会现实之下生活的普通百姓的自我觉醒与烦恼。