Mathias Thaler

The illusion of purity: Chantal Mouffe’s realist critique of cosmopolitanism:

Over the last 20 years, cosmopolitan theories have been benefiting greatly from the dialogue between defenders and critics of world citizenship. Yet, the decidedly polemic aspect of this debate, while allowing for intellectual progress, is also responsible for overdrawn generalizations. Instead of entering into the debate directly, this article attempts to refute a specific anti-cosmopolitan claim raised by Chantal Mouffe. Her realist objection to cosmopolitanism, derived from the conceptual framework of agonistic pluralism, is mistaken at a crucial point: a firm dichotomy between politics and morality cannot provide an alternative to theories of world citizenship, because Mouffe’s embrace of multipolarity as a principle of global politics must equally appeal to a set of universal norms governing international relations. This article argues that even the realist model of multipolarity needs to conceive of a minimal morality to create the symbolic ground on which various power centres can be held accountable.

Just pretending: political apologies for historical injustice and vice’s tribute to virtue

Should we be concerned with, or alarmed or outraged by, the insincerity and hypocrisy of politicians who apologize for historical injustice? This paper argues that the correct reply to this question is: sometimes, but not always. In order to establish what types of insincerity must be avoided, Judith Shklar’s hierarchy of ordinary vices is critically revisited. Against Shklar’s overly benign account of hypocrisy, the paper then tries to demonstrate that only institutional and harmful forms of hypocrisy must be rejected in political apologies for historical injustice. Employing Melissa Nobles’ ‘membership theory’, this paper defends the claim that the sincerity standard for political apologies is, in stark contrast to apologies between individuals, agent independent. This means that in political apologies, rather than focusing on the remorse and regret of the agent who apologizes, we must primarily examine the apology’s consequences in terms of renegotiating the legal, political and affective dimensions of citizenship. In domestic affairs, the paper shows that apologies can only be considered sincere if they push the polity towards a more inclusive conception of membership in the political community.

Hope Abjuring Hope: On the Place of Utopia in Realist Political Theory:

This essay reconstructs the place of utopia in realist political theory, by examining the ways in which the literary genre of critical utopias can productively unsettle ongoing discussions about “how to do political theory.” I start by analyzing two prominent accounts of the relationship between realism and utopia: “real utopia” (Erik Olin Wright et al.) and “dystopic liberalism” (Judith Shklar et al.). Elaborating on Raymond Geuss’s recent reflections, the essay then claims that an engagement with literature can shift the focus of these accounts. Utopian fiction, I maintain, is useful for comprehending what is (thus enhancing our understanding of the world) and for contemplating what might be (thus nurturing the hope for a better future). Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel The Dispossessed deploys this double function in an exemplary fashion: through her dynamic and open-ended portrayal of an Anarchist community, Le Guin succeeds in imagining a utopia that negates the status quo, without striving to construct a perfect society. The book’s radical, yet ambiguous, narrative hence reveals a strategy for locating utopia within realist political theory that moves beyond the positions dominating the current debate. Reading The Dispossessed ultimately demonstrates that realism without utopia is status quo–affirming, while utopia without realism is wishful thinking.

Book Review: The Democratic Horizon: Hyperpluralism and the Renewal of Political Liberalism, by Alessandro FerraraThe Democratic Horizon: Hyperpluralism and the Renewal of Political Liberalism, by FerraraAlessandro. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.

alternative to the figure of “an original nothingness that haunts philosophy” (187). This involves the same text by Deleuze that played a key role in Althusser’s escape from structuralism by offering a Spinozistic way to think history as the production of singularities and that points toward “a philosophy of the encounter without the void” (187). The final chapter pursues the anti-eschatological theme with reference to “The International of Decent Feelings,” a polemical text written in December 1946. This was directed against a disparate group of secular and religious thinkers who, in the aftermath of the war, invoked a messianic fear that the end of humanity was nigh in order to resist the demands of communism. It was submitted to but not published by a Catholic journal and is addressed to fellow Christians in explicitly religious language. Montag comments that this was a text written by an Althusser who could invoke “The Last Judgment” without irony (191) and whose response to the post-war messianism of André Malraux, Albert Camus, Gabriel Marcel, Arthur Koestler and others was to denounce it as sacrilegious and “false prophecy” (206). Despite its explicitly Christian framework, Montag devotes the final chapter to this early text because in it “Althusser has provided all the means necessary for a critique of the eschatology of his final work” (191). Rather than the idea of a future yet to come, Althusser defends here the idea of a relation to another present, a heap of fragments from which the proletariat is “already salvaging the materials to compose their liberation” (208). At this point, we might wonder whether the lines of demarcation pursued by Montag really do make the case for Althusser’s status as a philosopher on a par with that of contemporaries such as Deleuze, Derrida or Foucault. At best, his reinvented Marxism exemplified the law of uneven development in thought. At worst, it was a rearguard effort that failed to engage in any productive way with the real transformations underway in France and the wider world during the 1960s and 1970s.

A Pragmatist Defence of the Ban on Torture: From Moral Absolutes to Constitutive Rules of Reasoning

This article seeks to contribute to the growing literature on pragmatism in political theory by revisiting the role of moral absolutes in politics. More specifically, it proposes the idea that pragmatism can support a particular defence of the ban on torture. In contradistinction with deontological accounts, it will be argued that the principles underlying the ban on torture should not be construed as transcendental values that impose external constraints on political action, but as constitutive rules that emerge from, and are sustained by, a web of intersecting social practices. While pragmatists vehemently reject the introduction of absolutes in politics, their anti-foundationalist conception of reasoning crucially hinges on the sustainability of adjustable banisters along which judgements are formed. The article suggests that the torture prohibition ought to be reinterpreted as one such banister.

On Time in Just War Theory: From Chronos to Kairos

This article examines the role of time in Just War theory. It maintains that contemporary Just War theory’s legalist focus on rules and principles, rather than judgment and interpretation, makes a serious engagement with timing appear quite irrelevant. To deal with this shortcoming, the article clarifies the dual nature of political time as both chronos and kairos, and argues that a cogent account of the justice of warfare needs to incorporate the two faces of political time. In addition, the article contends that a casuistic re-orientation of Just War theory would have the beneficial effect of putting critique back on the agenda. The moral core of the argument is that judgment and interpretation ought to be guided by the spirit of “pragmatic fallibilism,” which combines the willingness to assertively uphold one’s values with a disposition to revise one’s commitments through reflection and deliberation.

Neo-Grotian predicaments: On Larry May’s theory of international criminal law

The purpose of this review essay is to cast a critical, yet admiring, look at what can only be described as today’s most ambitious attempt to infuse the Just War tradition with new and much-needed lifeblood: Larry May’s extensive work on the normative foundations of international criminal law surely marks a milestone in the academic debate. The sheer scope of the project is staggering. May has managed to comprehensively address virtually every problem in this debate: from the crimes prosecuted at Nuremberg – war crimes (2007), crimes against humanity (2005) and crimes against peace (2008) – to genocide (2010), due process (2011) and transitional justice (2012). Even a quick glance at the pages of this multi-volume project will surely reveal that May has provided us with what can only be called, perhaps somewhat emphatically, a system of thought. Before delving into the more detailed discussion of the books under review, a word on the very nature of May’s endeavour. Its systematic design makes it the kind of project that will be of relevance to a wide range of audiences in academia, and possibly even beyond: from legal theorists, to international lawyers, political philosophers and historians of political thought – they all have something to learn from these books, no matter whether they will ultimately find themselves in complete agreement with May’s conclusions or not. The reason for this broad appeal is rather simple: Those who generally share May’s understanding of international criminal law will be delighted to realize that he has

Neo-Grotian Predicaments

The purpose of this review essay is to cast a critical, yet admiring, look at what can only be described as today’s most ambitious attempt to infuse the Just War tradition with new and much-needed lifeblood: Larry May’s extensive work on the normative foundations of international criminal law surely marks a milestone in the academic debate. The sheer scope of the project is staggering. May has managed to comprehensively address virtually every problem in this debate: from the crimes prosecuted at Nuremberg – war crimes (2007), crimes against humanity (2005) and crimes against peace (2008) – to genocide (2010), due process (2011) and transitional justice (2012). Even a quick glance at the pages of this multi-volume project will surely reveal that May has provided us with what can only be called, perhaps somewhat emphatically, a system of thought. Before delving into the more detailed discussion of the books under review, a word on the very nature of May’s endeavour. Its systematic design makes it the kind of project that will be of relevance to a wide range of audiences in academia, and possibly even beyond: from legal theorists, to international lawyers, political philosophers and historians of political thought – they all have something to learn from these books, no matter whether they will ultimately find themselves in complete agreement with May’s conclusions or not. The reason for this broad appeal is rather simple: Those who generally share May’s understanding of international criminal law will be delighted to realize that he has

Political judgment beyond paralysis and heroism

This paper seeks to contribute to the literature on political judgment by proposing that the faculty of judgment is essential for responsibly coping with the undeniable fact of distant suffering and the controversial duty of humanitarian intervention. To achieve this end, Mahmood Mamdani’s text ‘The Politics of Naming: Genocide, Civil War, Insurgency’ will be mobilized for a constructive dialogue about which specific conception of political judgment is at stake when we debate a situation like Darfur today. The main claim is that political judgment in times of acute crisis requires the members of the public sphere to strike a precarious balance between two contradictory impulses: the deliberative impulse to enlarge the pool of particular standpoints, and the decisionist impulse to finally bring the conversation to a halt and adopt a normative stance. The theoretical framework for this balanced view of the faculty of judgment will be articulated through a hybridization of Hannah Arendt’s notion of an ‘enlarged mentality’ and Jacques Derrida’s concept of an ‘aporetic decision’.