TELOSscope: The Telos Press blog

Is the Frankfurt School Still Relevant?

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 07:00:00 GMT

Each Tuesday in the TELOSscope blog, we reach back into the archives and highlight an article whose critical insights continue to illuminate our thinking and challenge our assumptions. Today, Philip Crone looks two articles about the Frankfurt School: Ben Morgan's "The Project of the Frankfurt School," from Telos 119 (Spring 2001), and James Gordon Finlayson's "Morality and Critical Theory: On the Normative Problem of Frankfurt School Social Criticisms,"from Telos 146 (Spring 2009).

In an earlier post on the TELOSscope blog, Nicole Burgoyne highlighted a 2001 interview with Paul Piccone in which he discussed the appearance of Telos in the 1960s. Piccone listed a number of ideological currents that played major formative roles in the early years of Telos, including Frankfurt School critical theory. Forty years after the first issue of Telos was published the journal is still going strong, but can the same be said of the critical theory of the Frankfurt School? The Frankfurt School itself long predates Telos; the beginnings of its program can be traced to the 1920s when the Institute for Social Research was founded by Carl Gr�nberg. The Frankfurt School, or at least what is known as its "first generation," reached its apex with the publication of the second edition of Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment in 1947. While thinkers influenced by this first generation continue to exert enormous intellectual influence, the ideas of the original group itself have waned.

Dialectic of Enlightenment is now viewed primarily has a "historical document" rather than a "theoretical treatise" with contemporary applications, or so argues Ben Morgan in "The Project of the Frankfurt School." Morgan does not disagree with a historical reading of the text, but he also does not discount the possibility of reworking the arguments of Horkheimer and Adorno for a more contemporary setting. Other thinkers have done as much. As Morgan points out, Frederic Jameson, J�rgen Habermas, Albrecht Wellmer, and Terry Eagleton have all reformulated the Frankfurt School notion of "mimesis" as part of their own work. Yet "[a]ll these re-workings of the term minimize its psychological and emotional content," and Morgan seeks to contemporize the project of the Frankfurt School while retaining the psychological import of "mimesis." He begins by explaining what Horkheimer and Adorno mean by the term:

. . . a world in which people are not only connected to or part of nature (an idea which is hardly controversial), but can directly experience this connection. The term Horkheimer and Adorno use to describe this experience is "mimesis." In using this term, they do not mean the forms of aesthetic representation Erich Auerbach discussed in his book of the same name. They invoke something closer to the biological use of the term�animal or gut reactions such as freezing to blend with nature when a predator is near, or the imitative practices whereby the shaman becomes like the environment he wishes to influence.

The psychological content of the term is clear from this definition, and yet it remains Morgan's task to preserve this psychological content while pushing the project of the Frankfurt School forward into more modern contexts. He attempts this by focusing on the psychoanalytic work of Donald Winnicott, work that encapsulates mimesis as an infantile "female state." This work can provides justification for mimesis in "empirically grounded psychoanalysis." Morgan argues that this type of psychoanalysis can serve as the starting point for a continuation of the Frankfurt School project, particularly for the advancement of the study of mimesis from a psychological perspective.

One problem that Morgan does not confront, but which could pose a problem for further articulations of Frankfurt School critical theory is what James Gordon Finlayson calls the "original criticism" of Horkheimer and Adorno. In "Morality and Critical Theory: On the Normative Problem of Frankfurt School Social Criticisms," Finlayson presents the problem as articulated by Habermas: "From the beginning, critical theory labored over the difficulty of giving an account of its own normative foundations. . . ." Finlayson argues that any critical theory of society must make claims as to what is wrong with society, and thus must have normative or moral conclusions. Furthermore, any theory with moral conclusions must have some moral foundations to justify those conclusions. This does not pose a problem for some social and political theorists, including those working in analytic philosophy, but it does pose a significant problem for the Frankfurt School since

Critical theory does not, and in some respects had better not, avail itself of any broadly moral standard (be this a conception of good, bad, right, or wrong). . . . Either it [critical theory] relies on broadly moral premises (or broadly moral considerations) and is therefore self-contradictory, or it does not, in which case its conclusions are unsupported.

Frankfurt School critical theory eschews broadly moral standards that could justify its conclusions for good reasons. In large part as a response to the Third Reich, critical theorists saw morality itself as having failed to prevent atrocities. Furthermore, they adopted Marxist and Hegelian interpretations that saw morality as a way to legitimate class interests. These characteristics of the theory are in many ways integral to its uniqueness, and thus it remains hard to see how they can be overcome. Finlayson concludes that critical theory is committed to unsupported conclusions. He takes this conclusion as inadequate and points toward resolutions of it, particularly in the work of Habermas and communicative ethics. Still, he does not reach any final conclusions about how to resolve this normative problem of the Frankfurt School.

Together, Finlayson and Morgan provide sketches of what needs be done to contemporize Frankfurt School critical theory while maintaining some of the critical elements of its first generation. Perhaps such a reworking of the Frankfurt School, were it to move forward, would inform the direction of Telos today much as the first generation of the Frankfurt School informed the journal in its early years.

Read the full version of Ben Morgan's "The Project of the Frankfurt School" and James Gordon Finlayson's "Morality and Critical Theory: On the Normative Problem of Frankfurt School Social Criticisms" at the TELOS Online website. If you are affiliated with an institution that is an online subscriber to Telos, you have free access to our complete online archive. If not, you can purchase 24-hour access to this and other Telos articles at the low rate of $5/article.

Jean Baudrillard on Terrorism and Europe

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 07:00:00 GMT

Each Tuesday in the TELOSscope blog, we reach back into the archives and highlight an article whose critical insights continue to illuminate our thinking and challenge our assumptions. Today, Ardevan Yaghoubi looks at two articles by Jean Baudrillard: "The Spirit of Terrorism," from Telos�121 (Fall 2001), and "Divine Europe," from Telos�131 (Summer 2005).

In his book The Perfect Crime, Jean Baudrillard wrote: "As for ideas, everyone has them�.�.�.�What counts is the poetic singularity of the analysis. That alone can justify writing, not the wretched critical objectivity of ideas." Across two essays published in Telos before his passing in 2007, Baudrillard embodied this aphorism with extended ruminations on hegemony, terror, and globalization, written in his characteristically engaging manner. "The Spirit of Terrorism" and "Divine Europe" brilliantly transition from individual political events�the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the referendum on the European Union's constitution, respectively�to their wider significance in Bataille's alternative economic categories of energy, flow, and gift.

Written after the event of the 9/11 terrorist attack, Baudrillard's "The Spirit of Terrorism" urges us to "take time to reflect." September 11, explains Baudrillard, demonstrates how "any system of domination fosters its own anti-system, its own disintegration." Focusing on the individual motivations of the perpetrators misses the point: terrorism operates like a virus by requiring a host cell (in the case of 9/11, this took the literal form of the airplanes), while the virus itself is an empty shell, neither living nor dead. The real significance of 9/11 is that it reproduces the very structure of globalization itself, terrorism as part-and-parcel of technologized hypermodernity:

So the conflict is neither a clash of civilizations nor of religions. It goes far beyond Islam and America, over which the conflict is focused in order to give the illusion of a visible confrontation and of a solution through force. It is really a fundamental antagonism, but one which designates, through the specter of America (which might be the epicenter, but not the only embodiment of globalization) and the specter of Islam (which is also not the embodiment of terrorism), triumphant globalization struggling against itself. In this sense, one can actually talk about a world war, not the third, but the fourth, and the only one really global, because what is at stake is globalization itself.

Baudrillard's distinctive take on the political sphere is shown again in "Divine Europe," where he pinpoints the vacuity of the "yes" or "no" choice to the constitutional referendum: "It is clear that if this time the vote is against, they will make us vote and revote until it is approved, as was the case in Denmark and Ireland (so, we should vote "yes" right off the bat�.�.�.�)." Drawing parallels to the 2002 Iraq War, where public will was severed from political reality, the "yes" or "no" vote on the future of Europe is similarly banal, since the question posed is really a "Yes to the yes." But the state of affairs in post-millennial Europe speaks to a wider inertia in politics:

All this goes well beyond the question of the referendum. It means the failure of the very principle of representation, to the extent where representative institutions no longer function in the "democratic" sense, i.e., from the people and the citizens to the power, but exactly in the opposite direction, from the top to the bottom, passing through the trap of consultation and of a circular game of questions and answers, in which the question responds to itself.

Both articles display the unique mind that was Jean Baudrillard.

Read the full versions of Jean Baudrillard's "The Spirit of Terrorism" and "Divine Europe" at the TELOS Online website. If you are affiliated with an institution that is an online subscriber to Telos, you have free access to our complete online archive. If not, you can purchase 24-hour access to this and other Telos articles at the low rate of $5/article.

Foucault and the Genealogy of Obedience

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 07:00:00 GMT

Each Tuesday in the TELOSscope blog, we reach back into the archives and highlight an article whose critical insights continue to illuminate our thinking and challenge our assumptions. Today, Marcus Michelson looks at Jean-Michel Landry's " Confession, Obedience, and Subjectivity: Michel Foucault's Unpublished Lectures On the Government of the Living," from Telos 146 (Spring 2009).

Why do we obey? Even when people rebel, it seems they simply reconstitute a form of obedience. We all know the old clich� "they aren't rebels, they're just following a 'rebellious' social code." The way people dress, their hairstyle, tattoos, earrings, piercings, etc., only seem to reinforce our belief in their obedience to well-defined social practices. Even if we aren't all playing by the same rules, we are all playing by rules. Do we even know what it would mean anymore to rebel? In the meantime, cultural critics admonish our decline, criticizing us for adhering to more philistine, insipid, or self-defeating values. But doesn't this criticism amount to saying that we are just obeying the wrong thing, whereas obedience itself is simply presupposed? Could obedience really be ubiquitous, and if so, how did we get this way? On the other hand, how can we describe a legitimate form of autonomy?

In "Confession, Obedience, and Subjectivity: Michel Foucault's Unpublished Lectures On the Government of the Living," Jean-Michel Landry proposes to "map out the points of articulation needed to appreciate the political reach of the statement that ends [Foucault's] 1980 course: to confess, to seek to know, and to produce the truth concerning oneself, amounts to submission." Rather than "Why do we obey?" the question "How do we submit?" comes to the fore. The latter requires a historical analysis focusing on practices of obedience, which in turn sheds light on contemporary forms of obedience. According to Foucault's genealogical analysis, obedience is something that we do, and we can investigate the circumstances through which the techniques of obedience were invented and developed. These circumstances were local, historically situated, and specific, hence the focus on the practices of confession in the monastery. The genealogical analysis theorizes that such techniques are first formed in a special context, such as the monastery, and then they are spread. Depending on the ability of given techniques to facilitate or otherwise become incorporated into more diverse social practices, they may become increasingly widespread, localized in specific communities, or simply die out.

Consider the following passage, in which Landry addresses Foucault's research into this matter:

Behind the doors of the first monasteries, Foucault sees a major displacement: the act of confession became linked to a requirement of permanent obedience. "Obeying in all things" and "keeping no secret thoughts": from that point on, these two principles would form a single requirement. Furthermore, this dual imperative introduced a fundamental break between the direction of Christian conscience and its ancestor, ancient philosophical direction. Unlike Christian direction, ancient direction remained provisional. Its role was limited to accompanying the person being directed until he became independent. The obedience required from the subject in the ancient world was instrumental: it was limited in time and subordinated to the objective of autonomy. In Foucault's view, monasticism inverted in every respect the ways in which ancient techniques of direction functioned. The Christian direction of conscience would be ongoing and would consider obedience no longer as a means, but as an end in itself (obedience generated obedience). Obedience, within monasticism, sought only to root obedience ever more deeply within the subject.

In his article, Landry explains the connections in Foucault's argument that the techniques of submission created by the practices of confession underpin our experience of knowledge of the self. Although the Western focus on subjectivity may be traced to many different origins, both Greek and Christian, Foucault attempts to uncover specific behavioral practices for the presentation of self- knowledge through which a focus on subjectivity may be elaborated. We may wonder whether he is right, and additionally, whether these techniques still linger and have effects today.

Read the full version of Jean-Michel Landry's " Confession, Obedience, and Subjectivity: Michel Foucault's Unpublished Lectures On the Government of the Living," at the TELOS Online website. If you are affiliated with an institution that is an online subscriber to Telos, you have free access to our complete online archive. If not, you can purchase 24-hour access to this and other Telos articles at the low rate of $5/article.

On the Berlin Holocaust Memorial

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 07:00:00 GMT

Each Tuesday in the TELOSscope blog, we reach back into the archives and highlight an article whose critical insights continue to illuminate our thinking and challenge our assumptions. Today, Etel Sverdlov looks at Arden Pennell's "Why Are They So Happy? Berlin's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Local Context," from Telos 144 (Fall 2008).

In all honesty, children playing under the shadow of the presidential statue in the Lincoln Memorial, sweethearts embracing behind the slabs of the World War�II plaza, or families picnicking in the shade of the Vietnam Memorial, seem odd and incongruous. Monuments are rarely expected to act as recreational spaces. Rather, the heavy subject matter solemnified in each should lend to reflection and concentration. The opposite, however, is the case with the Berlin Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, where the plaza filled with uniform rectangles of various heights provides visitors with a place to sunbathe, to cuddle, to play, to eat. In her article "Why Are They So Happy? Berlin's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Local Context," from Telos 144 (Fall 2008), Arden Parnell examines the cultural history of the area in order to explain why the monument has been adopted and used with such unaccustomed cheerfulness.

As the Berlin Wall rose and overshadowed both the western and eastern parts of the city, the neighboring streets and businesses began to lose their appeal. From 1961 onward, the focus of governments on both sides of the wall revolved around subtly deflecting notice from the areas that used to stand in the center of Berlin, but now formed the outskirts, due to the wall. Thus, Parnell explains, "The former center of town became a negative space on city maps." As the country unified, both sides, disparate in their politics, economy, and culture, faced the difficult reality that one of the few things they held in common, was the same wall that caused their division. The "dead zone" around the wall, gave rise to new construction and a real estate boom, which caused " 'former' Easterners�.�.�.�[to identify] this real estate transformation as the gloating triumph of one system over another." This area, besieged by corporate construction, needed a new symbol of unity, as powerful as the wall, without the awful political ramifications. Lea Rosh provided the idea for a Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe. "Her call for a memorial was a suggestion to rebuild a shared vocabulary of commemorated suffering, starting in the spot that undoubtedly symbolized "suffering" to everyone. The plan that she put forth allowed the spot's common history to continue, but with a gesture that belonged to neither East nor West, but to both."

Perhaps, used to the solemnity of the Mall of America, it becomes easy to forget that what happened with the Memorial in Berlin does not represent an isolated occurrence. Architecturally, the structure holds aesthetic merit, and following the tradition of other grand monuments, even those concerning death, morbidity rarely sways visitors into avoiding it. For what are the Pyramids but huge headstones? Yet they are now intrinsically a defining part of Egypt. How closely do death and the Colosseum associate? Yet the structure is one of the most famous of ancient ruins. Even without the great engineering, people take pleasure in large memorials. Gettysburg, which proved the staging ground for one of the American Civil War's bloodiest battles, now acts as picnic grounds and provides children's programs. I do not know what leads some memorials to facilitate recreation while others promote meditation. Whether the public embraces a commemorative structure as a place for relaxation or solemnity is an issue that only time can resolve. Even Lea Rosh, when she lobbied the newly united German government to construct a memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe, did not know how people would relate to it. The enthusiastic response thus spurs the question: if the point of a monument is to persist in memory, does the fact that it is an informal place really matter?

Read the full version of Arden Pennell's "Why Are They So Happy? Berlin's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Local Context"at the TELOS Online website. If you are affiliated with an institution that is an online subscriber to Telos, you have free access to our complete online archive. If not, you can purchase 24-hour access to this and other Telos articles at the low rate of $5/article.

The 2010 TELOS Conference From Lifeworld to Biopolitics: Empire in the Age of Obama

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 07:00:00 GMT

The 2010 Telos Conference is scheduled for Saturday, January 16, 2010, in New York City. The topic will be "From Lifeworld to Biopolitics: Empire in the Age of Obama." Click here to register at the Telos Institute website.

In the context of a dramatic reorganization of the relationships among state, market, and society, the 2010 Telos conference will turn its attention to competing accounts, both theoretical and empirical, of the new modalities of administration, domination, and power. Facing the authoritarian state and a politicized market, how does one "defend society"? Has the strong state and a repoliticization of society returned in the name of left populism in the United States? How does international power operate in new forms of empire? How will Obama's foreign policy and the economic crisis affect the structure of global relations?

The conference will address the extension of politicized control into ever greater realms of social life. What theoretical tools are available? How can we trace the process historically? Classical Critical Theory of the mid-twentieth century described a "totally administered society" in which an elaborate bureaucracy combined with a "culture industry" in order to eliminate spontaneity. Yet some viewed the era of deregulation (and the paradigms of postmodernism) as a rollback of administration and homogeneity. Do we now face the return to the strong state and a repoliticization of society in the name of left populism in the United States? Or has it been the transition from the old mass media to the Internet that has reshaped the dynamic of politics and culture?

Meanwhile, the brief moment of a presumed single superpower and unilateralism is shading into an international disorder of multiple power conflicts among strong states, no longer confronted with human rights expectations or a democratization agenda. The resurgent control of society has taken on global proportions: China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, and Venezuela. How does international power operate in new forms of empire? Have "military-industrial complexes" been replaced by cultural hegemonies, defined by the spread of languages and religions? Do developments such as political Islam or Chinese nationalism indicate that "society" has been the hidden driver of state power all along? What about the shared "liberal" and "realistic" assumption that economic liberalization will produce political opening and democratization? Has state capitalism in the East responded better to the global economic crisis than market capitalism in the West?

Space is limited, so register now for this special event!

Conference Registration Fee: $115, which includes a one-year subscription to Telos. For current holders of individual subscriptions to Telos, the registration fee is $55. Please add $50 to the registration fee if you will be joining us at the conference dinner. Click here to register at the Telos Institute website. If you have any further questions about the conference, please contact us at telospress@aol.com.

Kant, Schmitt, and Spinoza confront the War on Terrorism

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 07:00:00 GMT

Each Tuesday in the TELOSscope blog, we reach back into the archives and highlight an article whose critical insights continue to illuminate our thinking and challenge our assumptions. Today, Philip Crone looks at Fabio Vander's "Kant and Schmitt on Preemptive War," from Telos�125 (Fall 2002), and Michael Mack's "Toward a Redefinition of Europe�s Political Identity: Spinoza�s Non-hierarchical Vision," from Telos�145 (Winter 2008).

In the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, President Bush addressed a joint session of Congress, announcing the global war on terrorism and articulating the Bush doctrine of preemptive military action. His speech was followed shortly by the American-led invasion of Afghanistan, and a year later his administration began to make its case for war against Iraq. The formal campaign for the war began with President Bush's address to the UN Security Council on September 12 and eventually led to the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1441, which called for "serious consequences" should Iraq not comply with weapons inspections.

As the Bush administration made its case for war at the United Nations, in discussions with potential allies and before the American public, popular opinion was severely divided between pro- and anti-war factions. One of the key issues under contention was the Bush doctrine's call for preemptive war, and as the Bush administration made its case for preemptive war, Fabio Vander examined the contentious issue and its treatment by Immanuel Kant. Kant had a very narrow vision of the cases in which preemptive war could be legitimate. In particular, "preemptive war presupposes (and upholds) international lawlessness" for Kant because such war can only occur in the lawless "state of nature." In fact, for Kant all war takes place in such a "state of nature," with the exception of particular wars necessary to escape the "state of nature" in which lawlessness abounds. The seemingly paradoxical task is how to "[conduct] war according to principles, which always allows it to overcome this state of nature of states in their external relations in order to become a juridical state." For Kant, these "principles" rule out either a "punitive war" or a "war of extermination." The solution to the problem for Kant is to consider the situation of an "unjust enemy":

An "unjust enemy" for Kant is one who resists going from the "state of nature" to the "juridicial state." At first sight, even this is problematic, even redundant, because "the state of nature is itself an unjust state," and all subjects in it (friends and enemies alike) are "unjust." But the redundancy disappears when one considers that here Kant is dealing with another "border situation"�.�.�.�because it is not a question of two enemies in the "state of nature"�.�.�.�but of one who tries to overcome this condition, while the other opposes the restoration of legality and politics.

Thus, in the presence of international law, states may only engage in conflicts against such "unjust enemies" in order to overcome the "state of nature." Such conflicts not only preclude preemptive war, but also "punitive wars" and "wars of extermination."

Vander is not only interested in the Kantian conception of the "unjust enemy" and its relation to preemptive war, but also, more importantly, in Carl Schmitt's misunderstanding of these concepts. Furthermore, Vander links the Bush administration's rationale for preemptive war to Schmitt's misunderstanding of the "unjust enemy." Schmitt sees Kant's use of the term "unjust enemy" as discriminatory, as judging one state as superior to another in a conflict, but without understanding the key distinction between "just" and "unjust" in this context�the fact that one belligerent seeks to uphold law while the other seeks to preserve the "state of nature." Schmitt dismisses the Kantian distinction and the Kantian limits on military action. Schmitt's goal, according to Vander, "is to homogenize all subjects and to cancel all differences." By this rationale, "any 'war between states, between equal sovereigns [is] legitimate.'" The comparison to contemporary geopolitics is striking, as Vander makes clear:

But today there is also talk of "rogue states," against which war would not only be "just," but there would even be the right to fight without limits; where not having limits means that "war is legitimate even when it is "preemptive."�.�.�.� Preemptive war must be condemned and eliminated, not by rejecting�as Schmitt does�the underlying problem, i.e., the reality of an "unjust enemy" (today, terrorists), but by rejecting the preemptive-punitive war as the best solution, i.e., the doctrine according to which the "unjust enemy" can be eliminate only if democracy�the West, the civilized world�interjects its most characteristic paradigm: criminal logic and the aggressive charge that drives it.

Of course, even if we accept Vander's conclusions, questions abound. In particular, what kind of action should be taken against "unjust enemies," against terrorists, if not "preemptive-punitive war"? In the run-up to the war against Iraq, much was made of the reluctance of many European states, particularly France and Germany, to resort to war. Could the actions of these European states be seen as a model for engagement with threats in the future?

Michael Mack wrote in Telos�145 about how European geopolitics has indeed been construed as Kantian. "Strangely enough," Mack observes, "Kant still serves to represent not only 'the good German' but also 'the good European.'" Mack makes note of Robert Kagan's essay "Of Paradise and Power," which associates American military force with a Hobbesian "state of nature," whereas European preference for "formal proceduralism in international relations" is more Kantian. Mack takes issue with this characterization, particularly since both Hobbes and Kant had similar conceptions of a lawless, violent "state of nature." Mack makes the case that the current reluctance to engage in military action by European powers is the intellectual descendent of Spinoza, rather than Kant:

Contrary to his geometrical method, the content of Spinoza's thought is filled with uncertainty. This is why he tolerates religion within a secular state, refraining from opting for the absolute supremacy of any one entity. Instead, he argues for the coexistence of different ways of life.�.�.�.�It is this pluralistic and non-hierarchical aspect of his theology that makes Spinoza a more appropriate philosopher of postwar Europe than Kant. As Kagan himself acknowledges, the quasi-Kantian politics of peace is itself dependent on Hobbesian war. Spinoza, however, envisages a world that does without hierarchical divisions (be they racial, religious, economic, etc.) that give rise to violence in the first place. Whereas Hobbes and Kant opt for certainty in their respective political philosophies, Spinoza allows for uncertainty and difference.

Mack connects this allowance for uncertainty and difference to Spinoza's critique of teleological conceptions of God. Humans conceive of God as human-like in the sense that God has some end goal, some telos. This teleological theology gives rise to teleological thought in general:

The anthropomorphic, i.e., teleological, conception of God�.�.�.�lays the foundation for violence and ethnocentric discrimination within society itself. Teleological thought pitches the telos of one community against that of another.

Spinoza is interested in undercutting the claims of any one community's telos, thus allowing for different social arrangements to coexist peacefully. Is this truly the current approach of European geopolitics? If so, how is this reconciled with European action in Afghanistan, which is ostensibly a nation-building effort that is teleologically driven towards a Western-inspired outcome? Regardless of its accuracy in describing the current geopolitical outlook in Western Europe, is Spinozan pluralism a potential template for future conflicts? Or is the Kantian notion of the "unjust enemy" a better model?

Read the full version of Fabio Vander's "Kant and Schmitt on Preemptive War" and Michael Mack's "Toward a Redefinition of Europe�s Political Identity: Spinoza�s Non-hierarchical Vision" at the TELOS Online website. If you are affiliated with an institution that is an online subscriber to Telos, you have free access to our complete online archive. If not, you can purchase 24-hour access to this and other Telos articles at the low rate of $5/article.

Is Talk Therapy Dead?

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 07:00:00 GMT

Even the first-time reader of Freud recognizes some outdated theory, in part because he or she has already heard Freudian psychology made fun of as part of the pop culture understanding of psychotherapy. But has Freud's legacy—talk therapy—become obsolete in education as well as in practice? In his 2002 article "The Chemical Theory of Mental Illness," Jonathan Leo reviews two books that analyze a still dominant trend toward biological psychiatry in modern day academia and the general public. Leo takes a closer look at the idea that mental illnesses are just like other diseases, chemical imbalances that should be rectified by introducing ameliorating substances.

Aside from pointing out that nearly all scientific studies that establish a direct relationship between behavioral problems and chemical treatment have later been called into question, or found unsatisfactory in terms of replication, Leo also hits on a more insidious aspect of the trend toward biological psychiatry, the problem of successful corporate marketing:

In their marketing efforts to promote the biological explanations of mental illness, pharmaceutical companies have stretched their fingers into patient advocacy groups, consensus panels, continuing education for psychiatrists, and even major medical journals. Most problematic is the way funding drives research. Because they hold the purse strings, the pharmaceutical companies dictate what gets studied, resulting in little investigation into the role of psychosocial factors in the etiology of mental illness. Worse yet, doctors in search of information about a drug are much more likely to read a pharmaceutical company brochure than scientific journals.

Leo is particularly concerned that in a health care world ruled by health maintenance organizations (HMOs) driven by profit, patients are more likely to be prescribed a drug in ten minutes than be recommended for extended care. Don't most psychiatrists agree that a prescription for mental illness should always be taken under close supervision and in conjunction with more traditional methods of therapy? Perhaps, as Leo mentions, the dangers of some medications have been successfully hushed up.

The current health care reform is billed as attacking just such profit-driven oversights, but any change in general opinion and practice must come from more than just the opportunity for a different type of care. It would require integrating new discoveries of the brain chemistry of emotions with psychotherapeutic methods of addressing mental illness. One would have to accept that mental processes familiar to talk therapy, such as explaining oneself and one's actions, not only affect how we feel, but also impact the same chemical basis of how we feel that biological psychiatrists study. Where are the studies to support such a theory? Perhaps the proponents of talk therapy will just have to take a similar line of defense to that which the president of the American Psychiatric Association deployed for biological psychiatry: point to success in innumerable cases and say, "Until we have a better understanding, we will have to use these tools."

Will health care reform open the doors to new research that will help us better understand the tools we use against mental illness? Is talk therapy dead?

Read the full version of Jonathan Leo's "The Chemical Theory of Mental Illness," at the TELOS Online website. If you are affiliated with an institution that is an online subscriber to Telos, you have free access to our complete online archive. If not, you can purchase 24-hour access to this and other Telos articles at the low rate of $5/article.

New from Telos Press: Carl Schmitt's Hamlet or Hebuca: The Intrusion of the Time into the Play

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 07:00:00 GMT

Telos Press Publishing is proud to announce the newest addition to our book list: Hamlet or Hebuca: The Intrusion of the Time into the Play by Carl Schmitt, available for the first time in English translation.

Though Carl Schmitt is best known for his legal and political theory, his 1956 Hamlet or Hecuba provides an innovative and insightful analysis of Shakespeare's tragedy in terms of the historical situation of its creation. Arguing that the construction of the figure of Hamlet was shaped by the politics of James�I succession to the throne, Schmitt uses this interpretation to develop a theory of myth and politics that serves as a cultural foundation for his concept of political representation. More than literary criticism or historical analysis, Schmitt's book lays out a comprehensive theory of the relationship between aesthetics and politics that responds to alternative ideas laid out by Walter Benjamin and Theodor�W. Adorno. Jennifer�R. Rust's and Julia Reinhard Lupton's introduction places Schmitt's work in the context of contemporary Renaissance studies, and David Pan's afterword analyzes the links to Schmitt's political theory. Presented in its entirety in an authorized translation, Hamlet or Hecuba is essential reading for scholars of Shakespeare and of Schmitt alike.

Revisiting the Patriot Act

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 07:00:00 GMT

Each Tuesday in the TELOSscope blog, we reach back into the archives and highlight an article whose critical insights continue to illuminate our thinking and challenge our assumptions. Today, Marcus Michelsen looks at Jean-Claude Paye's "From the State of Emergency to the Permanent State of Exception," from Telos 136 (Fall 2006).

How long ago was 9/11? Is this really a new era? What does it look like? For many, for perhaps all of us, the terrorist attacks eight years ago came as a surprise and brought us to question our understanding of the world around us. Our answers have emerged in renewed and reinvigorated passions for social and international justice. Collectively, however, there is no one vision we can all subscribe to. Some blame the United States for the terrorist attacks; others call for the government to hunt down the terrorists and kill them. In the heat of the moment, emotions flare and opinions are erratic.

But perhaps it has been long enough for the dust to settle in our emotional lives to reconsider what kind of break 9/11 constitutes with respect to the past, and to revisit our government's actions with renewed empathy and criticism. We are, of course, still embroiled in two foreign wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but those have not been in the public eye so much after Obama's election. Even further from the spotlight, thousands of pages of documents contain hundreds of laws that were passed to empower the government in its fight against terrorism. What is the status of those laws now? How do we feel about them?

Because 9/11 was so shocking, it is difficult to come up with a theoretical perspective that does justice to the event. Yet the nature of the event has itself become a matter of political concern. On account of what it represents, 9/11 has justified the introduction of an entirely new dimension of executive power. The fairness of the newly anointed power rests on how that event is interpreted.

According to Jean-Claude Paye, in his article "From the State of Emergency to the Permanent State of Exception," from Telos 136 (Fall 2006), "[t]he intent of the government when it introduced the Patriot Act was to point to a rupture that had occurred, to establish a boundary between a before and an after September 11, 2001. The crossing of this boundary on September 11 thus, in effect, compels the population to consent to the relinquishment of its individual liberties." Paye's careful presentation of the shift in power from the judicial to the executive branch of the U.S. government invites us to reconsider whether we are making the right kinds of sacrifices in our quest to resolve our anxieties about the future. What started as a state of emergency has become, according to Paye's analysis, a permanent state of exception of questionable value.

Consider the following passage from the article:

While the attempts of the government to increase the prerogatives of the FBI through the reauthorization of the Patriot Act failed overall, it did succeed in imposing, amidst an almost general indifference, the establishment of a new police force whose function is quite openly to take away public freedoms, such as the freedom to assemble or demonstrate. Section 605 of the Patriot Act Reauthorization creates a new federal police force, which has the power to "make arrests without warrant for any offense against the United States committed in their presence, or for any felony cognizable under the laws of the United States if they have reasonable grounds to believe that the person to be arrested has committed or is committing such felony."

This new police force, which is directly under the authority of the Secretary of Homeland Security, is assigned a variety of jurisdictions, including "a special event of national significance." These terms are not defined. They do not imply the presence of a 'protected person,' such as a president. It is thus the administration, more specifically the police, which designates the event as having a "national significance." Consequently, the police can proceed with arrests at its pleasure.

Paye's article raises questions of crucial importance concerning the government's right to intervene into our lives, and those of others, that we must revisit in order to evaluate our response to 9/11 and our current political situation, and to think carefully about the right path forward.

Read the full version of Jean-Claude Paye's "From the State of Emergency to the Permanent State of Exception" at the TELOS Online website. If you are affiliated with an institution that is an online subscriber to Telos, you have free access to our complete online archive. If not, you can purchase 24-hour access to this and other Telos articles at the low rate of $5/article.

Going Green

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 07:00:00 GMT

Each Tuesday in the TELOSscope blog, we reach back into the archives and highlight an article whose critical insights continue to illuminate our thinking and challenge our assumptions. Today, Ardevan Yaghoubi looks at Manussos Marangudakis's "Ecology as a Pseudo-Religion?" from Telos 112 (Summer 1998) and Eileen Crist's "Beyond the Climate Crisis: A Critique of Climate Change Discourse" from Telos 141 (Winter 2007).

Despite political polarization over issues like health care and abortion, the urge in our media sphere to "Go Green" is now afforded the status of a priori ethical prescription. Even former President George W. Bush, who refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol, could not help but bend to the inundation of "Green," admitting the palpable effects of global climate change by the end of his second term. But the rapidity with which the media at large—media that, due to its ubiquity, functions as a stand-in for "common sense," or in other words, ideology—converted to Green should invite suspicion from those with a vested interest in environmentalism and reversing global climate change. The opportunism of Bush is matched only by that of the largest multi-national corporations, many of whom have rebranded themselves as environmentally friendly in recent years. But this standard line of argumentation, namely that corporate influence has corrupted an otherwise positive, democratic environmental movement, ironically loses sight of the forest for the trees.

As Manussos Marangudakis explains in his article "Ecology as a Pseudo-Religion?" (from Telos 112) the ideological content and pragmatic possibilities of the popular environmentalisms, such as Deep Ecology, warrant a closer examination. Tracing the history of environmental concern among conservatives figures like Knut Hamsen and Martin Heidegger, Marangudakis notes how in the 1930s, the "affection for nature and hostility to modernity [brought] ecologists close to National Socialism." And while more generally,

it has been assumed that environmental concerns belong to the Left[,] recent studies have shown that in the late 19th and early 20th centuries there were political ecologists associated with the radical Right. Some supported National Socialism, eugenics, the mystical union of mankind and nature, and other esoteric practices. Given this historical precedent, recent leftist flirtations with ecology raise a number of moral and political questions concerning the ideological character of ecology, since the latter can take a variety of forms: sometimes rational and progressive, at other times irrational or anti-modern.

So what of the most recent manifestation of environmentalism, what we might call the mainstream-corporatist Green movement? As Eileen Crist notes, in her article "Beyond the Climate Crisis: A Critique of Climate Change Discourse" (from Telos 141), global warming has been identified as "the most urgent environmental problem of our time," to the exclusion of ecological issues like biodiversity. Even more insidious, the "frame" of global warming, suggests Crist, results in a bevy of solutions that replicate the problem:

Identifying climate change as the biggest threat to civilization, and ushering it into center stage as the highest priority problem, has bolstered the proliferation of technical proposals that address the specific challenge. The race is on for figuring out what technologies, or portfolio thereof, will solve "the problem." Whether the call is for reviving nuclear power, boosting the installation of wind turbines, using a variety of renewable energy sources, increasing the efficiency of fossil-fuel use, developing carbon-sequestering technologies, or placing mirrors in space to deflect the sun's rays, the narrow character of such proposals is evident: confront the problem of greenhouse gas emissions by technologically phasing them out, superseding them, capturing them, or mitigating their heating effects.

Marangudakis's and Crist's articles raise important dilemmas that thus far have been largely glossed over in ecological discourse. Criticism of the green movement does not deny that "the dangers of climate change are real," as Crist writes, but instead, may give us a more efficacious perspective for how to minimize destruction of the planet and its resources.

Read the full versions of Manussos Marangudakis's "Ecology as a Pseudo-Religion?" and Eileen Crist's "Beyond the Climate Crisis: A Critique of Climate Change Discourse" at the TELOS Online website. If you are affiliated with an institution that is an online subscriber to Telos, you have free access to our complete online archive. If not, you can purchase 24-hour access to this and other Telos articles at the low rate of $5/article.

Revelation and Political Philosophy: An Exchange with James V. Schall, S.J.

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 07:00:00 GMT

James V. Schall's "Revelation and Political Philosophy: On Locating the Best City" appears in Telos 148. William Tullius follows up with some questions.

William Tullius: You wrote in your article that: "Political philosophy, at its best, is the discipline strategically located to reflect on how God, cosmos, man, and polity belong together." Yet, fundamentally, political philosophy is "aware of its own inability to answer its own highest questions"; namely, in what does the "best city" consist. The answer to political philosophy is supplied by revelation, which answers that political philosophy is capable of recognizing as an intelligible gift. If, however, political philosophy is subject to this sort of limit from the start such that it is dependent for its own answers upon something higher, what do you see as the need for political philosophy in the first place and what does this imply for the relation between faith and reason?

James V. Schall: Political philosophy is not subject to any limits "from the start." It arrives at its limits—my book is called precisely, At the Limits of Political Philosophy—by seeking itself to answer all its own questions. Philosophy must first be philosophy. We need political philosophy "in the first place" so that we know what it knows and, also, what it does not know but would like to know. Unless this reflection on what is known and what is not known by the discipline takes place in an inquiring mind, revelation has nothing to which to address itself. The great phrase fides quaerens intellectum means exactly that some intellect must be actively asking itself what it knows about political things. Thus, I would say that faith cannot be faith until reason becomes itself active reason knowing what it can know. Once this relationship is clarified or spelled out, we can wonder whether philosophy does not become more philosophy under this impetus.

Tullius: Often in contemporary intellectual culture, there is a temptation to discount revelation and any religiously inspired statement as flights of superstitious imagination or as politically motivated myths designed to subject people to ecclesiastical power. In contrast to this move, you make the strong assertion that revelation itself already contains logos. What tools remain accessible for us to be open to the logos of revelation in a way that is convincing to the current culture?

Schall: "Contemporary culture" would do well to suppress that temptation and leave itself open to all the evidence and reality available to it, including the reality of revelation and its content. This content in its intelligibility is what connects us with philosophy and reason. The issue of the presence and meaning of logos in revelation was the subject of "The Regensburg Lecture" of Benedict XVI. I have a book by that title on this very issue. The fact is that already in the Old Testament we find that scripture or revelation also includes things of reason which can indicate that the source of reason and revelation are in fact the same. Whether anyone can be "convinced" by the most convincing evidence is problematic.

Aristotle dealt with this issue. It brings us to the relation of ethics and how we live and philosophy or how are things? Many more intellectual problems are moral problems than we are wont to acknowledge. The "culture" is an abstraction. Only individual persons are "convinced" or "not convinced." But your question has to do with "tools" such as the fact that logos is found in Scripture. The other main "tool," if it can be called that, I think, is that revelation does not, nor does it pretend to answer every human question or solve every practical or political issue. It leaves these latter to human genius. What it essentially does is ask the highest question: "What is our highest end?" Once this end is seen not to be political, politics can be political and not metaphysics.

Tullius: In your article, you indicate that modern political philosophy has elevated politics to the position of the highest good, which has resulted in the secularization of politics and the replacement of the transcendent end, which had always been characteristic of politics, with a purely immanent end, while retaining "the supernatural means to this end." The result of this movement can be seen in any number of the utopian and totalitarian regimes of the past century, and its presence continues to be felt in contemporary politics. What do you see as the way toward recapturing the transcendent end of political life for both political philosophy and for the general culture as well in today's world?

Schall: Benedict XVI's encyclical Spe Salvi is exactly on this issue. My basic response is to return to Aristotle's Politics. The best way to do this is through Robert Sokolowski's book, The Phenomenology of the Human Person. The restoration of a realist philosophy, a philosophy of what is is essential. This is what Fides et Ratio was about. It is curious that the condition of philosophy as philosophy is a prime concern of the representatives of revelation, almost as if to say that philosophy will not save itself by itself. Your description of the origins of modern ideology is correct. Ironically, all the scientific and moral aberrations that seek to change human life have motivations that are better solved by the revelational answers. On every score, the revelational answer is better and indeed more noble than the alternatives proposed by the philosophic or scientific culture. An honorable death is better than keeping us alive by machines. Yet, it is not right to kill us or to ask us to commit suicide.

Politics is an ethics. It recognizes that we are mortals and that it is good that we are. Aristotle asked if we would be happy if we were someone else. He thought not. Yet, if we ask whether our loves have a touch of the everlasting in them, they do. But this is only really possible if there is a resurrection of the body. And if we want to solve the enigma of the crimes in the world, as Benedict saw in Spe Salvi, we can only do so by proposing what the Marxist philosophers proposed, again the resurrection of the body. This resurrection was intellectually possible only through the initial response of Aristotle to Plato about the reality of the human substance. So, I would say, spell out the consequences of the proposals that are in fact alternatives to the revelational implications. In every case, I suspect, the revelational answer will make more sense.

Tullius: You write, in referring to the tradition of "Roman Catholic Political Philosophy" that you intend it as a "paradox and a provocation." In what way is Roman Catholic political philosophy paradoxical and in what way does it serve to provoke?

Schall: You can see that I am a lover of Chesterton. The paradox implies that something that appears to be not true is, when spelled out, in fact true. And what seems most to "provoke" most of all is a truth that, in our minds, should not really be true. I have a book entitled, Roman Catholic Political Philosophy, in which I try to spell these things out. But essentially, I mean that no one would expect that the enigmatic issues that keep occurring in political philosophy could ever be properly addressed by the revelation that is central to Roman Catholicism. Yet, I think when drawn out, this is ironically the case. I love the section in Aristotle in which he brings up the famous issue of whether God is lonely. It appears that he must be. He has no other "god" like unto Himself.

Yet, friendship is one of the central human goods, the one that makes all politics worthwhile. Still it is beyond politics in its highest reaches. The revelational "answer" to this wonderment is extraordinary. It is that "God is not lonely." The Trinity, a doctrine that Aristotle did not know, is precisely in the line of his concern. So, as I say, the relation is paradoxical. And it is provoking because such a coherent answer should not exist. And that is right. It only exists if the gods reveal something to us and we listen. We do not have to listen. And this latter non-listening is probably the foundation of all subsequent hassles between philosophy and revelation. It is indeed provoking to be provoked by something we might want otherwise not to be true, but which seems to have rather more evidence for it than we might have wished.

Tullius: Finally, what do you see as Roman Catholic political thought's most definitive contribution to political philosophy?

Schall: Its most definitive contribution is the freeing of politics to be politics and not a substitute metaphysics or eschatology in which some human "system" is put forth. David Walsh's new book, The Modern Philosophical Revolution, is very good here, as is John Ranieri's book, Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin, and the Bible. One of my early inspirations as a thinker was Father Charles N. R. McCoy, whose book, The Structure of Political Thought, is a classic few know about. He used to talk about how politics could easily become a "substitute metaphysics," that is, an explanation for all things. This is the primary temptation of the political philosopher, I think. Politics is the highest of the practical sciences, as Aristotle said. If man were the highest being, politics would be the highest science. But he is not the highest being. The primary contribution of Roman Catholic political thought is the explanation of the reality of what is "beyond politics," to use Christopher Dawson's phrase. This explanation includes the understanding of salvation and eternal life for each citizen in and through their life in the city, but not exhausted or complete thereby.

Politics is the highest end in a certain order, but is itself a means to a higher end. The refusal to know the relation of the highest end to actual political life has exposed this life to ideology. The saving of politics from ideology, especially in democratic societies, is a potential mission of this thought. But it includes the realism of Augustine, and from this angle, the City of God and the city of man look ever more directly into our eyes. Political prudence means also the need to choose particular means that lead to our highest end. When we do not choose to know the end, politics in logic ceases to be politics and becomes, as McCoy said, a "substitute metaphysics" or as Benedict says "an eschatology."

TELOS 148 (Fall 2009): Political Theologies

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 07:00:00 GMT

When asked whether the U.S. government considers Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to be the "legitimate president" of Iran, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs responded laconically that "he's the elected leader," according to an AP report of August 4. The phrasing—and the omission of any reference to the brutal suppression of Iranian protests—offers an insight into key political orientations of the current regime. What counts is the outcome, not the process; what matters are the ends, not the means; and what is of greatest importance is the state and its apparatus, not society and its complexities. No doubt, the Obama administration's caution on this matter reflects its effort to emphasize diplomacy, as the opportunity for states to talk with states, and to back off from the democratization agenda of its predecessor. The way it has taken sides in Iran is, at least, consistent with its values. Diplomatic negotiations take place over the heads or behind the backs of society, which is why state departments and foreign ministries frequently find themselves at odds with the values of the polities they purport to represent.

This priority of state-to-state relations internationally corresponds domestically to the priority of the state over society. None of the expansion of policing powers of the previous era has been significantly retracted, while the management of the economy proceeds at a brisk pace, with the prospect of a biopolitical administration increasingly likely. Current events are breathing new life into Critical Theory's nightmare of a "totally administered society." Anxiety about the growth of the managerial state defined classical Critical Theory, and this was frequently enough one of the key issues that separated it from the orthodox left. For Telos, the political developments of the last third of the twentieth century seemed to indicate various rollbacks in the state apparatus and the potential emancipation of society. Has that historical episode come to an end?

The current discussion of political theology has erupted out of the renewed attention to Carl Schmitt, which Telos pioneered. Schmitt's theorem that modern political categories derive from the secularization of theology provides powerful insights, but, as with all academic discussions, this one too is susceptible to a flattening out into an anemic history of ideas. The constellation of articles in this issue should contribute to a recovery of the radical insight: politics not merely as the concepts that inhabit the desiccated carcass of secularized theology, but theology as the marker of the inescapable limitation on politics and state power. The theological turn can be as consistent with Foucault's exhortation to defend society against the state as it is with Adorno's insistence on considering all things from the standpoint of redemption. Yet those positions belong to an era of theory and society increasingly distant. What we need now is a political theology of the new bureaucratic regime. This issue is a first step.

The issue opens with Bassam Tibi bridging the decades between his encounters with his teacher Max Horkheimer in the days of the student movement and his own evaluation of contemporary Islamism. A self-described liberal Muslim, Tibi denounces Islamism as a new totalitarianism. This is however not an attack on Islam as religion but on its deformation into a politics of oppression. Islamism is to Islam as ideology is to ideas: a form of betrayal. Yet for Tibi, an even more urgent concern than Islamism is its leftist defenders in the West. Here, too, Tibi sees betrayal, the jettisoning of the ideals, which he suggests a left tradition ought to honor. It is precisely at this point however where further discussion could begin. In the current fascination of parts of the left with jihad, what can one make of the willingness of progressives to deep-freeze their long-held beliefs—in civil rights, in gender equality, in free speech, and so forth—in order to enter alliances with reactionary Islamists due to their veneer of anti-imperialism? Is this a tactical blunder (reminiscent of parts of the Iranian left and its misplaced enthusiasm for Khomeinism in 1979)? Or is there not a repressive streak within the left with a much longer genealogy, stretching back at least to 1793? That is where a discussion of terror ought to begin.

James V. Schall provides a systematic foundation to the possibility of political theology through a reflection on the relationship between reason and revelation. Both forms of knowledge can concern themselves with the "best city," the possibility of political excellence. But the revelational tradition surpasses the law, even if it tries to guide it. Politics remains incomplete, and necessarily so; the aspiration for a total politics, a full management of human affairs, runs counter to human limitations. Hence the importance of his conclusion with Aristotle's warning: "For it would be absurd for someone to think that political science or intelligence is the most excellent science, when the best thing in the universe is not a human being . . ."

Arthur Versluis undertakes an inquiry into the intellectual lineage of Schmitt's account of modernity. Rather than placing him primarily in relation to early modern political theory (Hobbes), Versluis traces discussions back to late antiquity and conflicts between an orthodoxy emerging around the Church and the mystical radicalism of Gnostic heresies. For Versluis, secular modernity results from an institutionalist emphasis on historicity over transcendence. The consistent marginalization of gnosis eliminates transcendence and "one is left only with a historical horizon," which becomes the space in which the total state operates. "Totalitarianism results from pursuing a distant mirage of enforced historical utopia, the pursuit of which left behind the bodies of many 'heretical' victims or scapegoats." Islamism, despite its opportunistic appeals to religion, fits into this model of a secularizing modernity because it has little to do with transcendence—consider its distance from Sufism—and everything to do with an immanentist "paradise on earth"—as lugubrious as that so-called paradise turns out to be. Against this enforced management of life, Versluis appeals to mystical and anarchic (i.e., anti-statist) traditions, as far apart as B�hme and P�guy.

Telos has a long history of transmitting international intellectual opinion, so following the explicit discussions of political theology, a set of essays presents critical voices from contemporary Scandinavia. The Scandinavian social model has of course long been the paradigm of the administered society, the most fully developed welfare states, in part due to unique circumstances of demography and culture, but in part as well because social-democratic advocates regularly invoke it as the template to emulate elsewhere. Some of the emergent tensions in contemporary Northern Europe—and therefore in the paradigm of the welfare state—are reflected in these essays. Frederik Stjernfelt's argument that secularism is not a fundamentalism responds to the rise of culturalist or multiculturalist agenda that have called for limitations on free speech: in Denmark this issue came to a head around the cartoon controversy, but it is indicative of a wider anthropological turn in culture that erodes the ability and will to make distinctions, even between democratic and totalitarian politics. For Stjernfelt, this represents "a major political step backward, which threatens to erode 250 years of enlightenment and to open the door to never-ending religious wars," a critique compatible with Tibi's attack on the western apologists for Islamism.

The paradox however is the alliance between statist expansionism and multicultural fragmentation. Kasper St�vring explores the transitions in cultural agenda in Denmark, from the (social) democratic radicalism aligned with modernism through the contradictions of elitist modernization to the more recent turn to a national conservatism. St�vring places this transformation in a European context and explicates it with references to Roger Scruton's positive evaluation of national community. Because of an implicit populism, it stands closer to elements of popular culture than did the radical advocacy for modernism, with its frequent avant-garde and therefore elitist profile. Klaus Solberg S�ilen moves the discussion to Sweden and to social policy. He traces the ideological origins of the Scandinavian welfare state, its ultimately depoliticizing impact, and its capacity to provide bountifully for the "new class." The Scandinavian model is less about radical redistribution than about the preservation of the status of a bureaucratic managerial class: "the welfare state today is less about solidarity than it is about self-interest," or in other words, an organized status quo with a high degree of inefficiency. For the new class, it serves as "a modern version of Robin Hood. Unlike in Sherwood Forest, however, most of the funds today go to the middle class, not to the poor."

A final trio of articles presents some contemporary treatments of philosophy and society. Rossen I. Roussev traces the decline of philosophical and more broadly humanistic education in colleges and universities and mounts a robust and appropriately philosophical defense of the need for a program to rectify this cultural impoverishment. He invokes Derrida's insistence on a "right to philosophy" and the importance of educational reform. Matthew Rampley provides a comprehensive discussion of art and society in the work of Niklas Luhmann, with striking contrasts to the accounts associated with Bourdieu and Foucault. Rampley also shows how Luhmann's emphasis on micro-social events rather than on larger frameworks can shed light on specific problems, such as the particular evanescence of contemporary art. Peter Gratton provides a comprehensive profile of Derrida's thought with regard to the internal tensions within democracy, the implications of sovereignty, and the possibility of a "non-sovereign freedom." That however can only imply a politics that escapes the constraints of a totalizing state.

G�bor T. Rittersporn provides an elaborate discussion of David Ost's The Defeat of Solidarity. At stake are the vicissitudes of post-Communism in Poland and the fraught relationship between liberal intellectuals and social movements. Even more, however, this discussion concerns the status of liberalism in general and its limits, especially in the face of the social devastation left by Communism. Gerhard Richter follows with a critical reply to Ulrich Plass's review of recent Adorno scholarship in Telos 146. Three book reviews conclude the issue. Mark Wegierski presents Paul Gottfried's anatomy of the conservative movement. Shafiq Shamel discusses Bassam Tibi (whose article opens this issue) and his strident critique of jihadism. Finally, Matthew Congdon explores Derrida's essay on the blind hubris of anthropocentrism. The humanism that denies its limits is akin to the limitless state.

The Ideal Republic

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 07:00:00 GMT

Each Tuesday in the TELOSscope blog, we reach back into the archives and highlight an article whose critical insights continue to illuminate our thinking and challenge our assumptions. Today, Philip Crone looks at Catherine Pickstock's "Justice and Prudence: Principles of Order in the Platonic City," from Telos 119 (Spring 2001), as well as a response to Pickstock's article from Donald C. Hodges and Christopher A. Pynes.

Recent discussions surrounding the death of Senator Ted Kennedy and talk about health care reform have reintroduced some of the most fundamental questions about justice and society into American political discourse. As ill-informed and histrionic as many of today's arguments are, the matters being discussed are of great importance. And while at first it may not seem to have much relevance to the issues currently discussed, Plato's Republic is in many ways the first comprehensive and influential work of Western political philosophy. The key questions of the Republic—the roles of social groups, the ideal qualifications for civic leaders, and the guiding principles for society—continue to have great contemporary relevance.

For those who encounter the Platonic dialogues as undergraduates and never approach them again, the theory of the Forms is likely the one feature of Plato's thought that they will remember, if they remember anything at all of Plato. The duality between the changing material world of "sights and sounds" and the eternal, immutable realm of the Forms and a clear preference for the "truer" Forms over the material world are central to Platonic thought. These concepts are developed over the course of many dialogues, including Plato's seminal Republic. There, the dualism between the material world and the Forms seems to undermine claims about ideal governance. Plato tasks the leaders of the city-state, philosopher-kings, with investigating the Form of the good, which leads to cumbersome questions: How can philosopher-kings take their theoretical understanding of the good and apply it to the practical problems of governance? Even if they succeed in doing so, would the practical application of their knowledge denigrate it?

Catherine Pickstock addresses these and other issues in her article "Justice and Prudence: Principles of Order in the Platonic City," in Telos 119 (Spring 2001). Pickstock takes issue with the standard emphasis placed on "a dualism between matter and spirit" in discussions of Plato. Focusing on the perceived dualism in the Republic, Pickstock examines Plato's treatment of justice in two spheres: the human soul and the city-state. As the former represents the spiritual, rather than the material, realm, a traditional dualistic interpreter would expect Plato to show more concern for the cultivation of justice in the human soul, not society. Pickstock, however, does not see this expressed in Plato's work:

However, despite this undeniable centrality of matters concerning the soul in Plato, in the Republic and elsewhere there is a significant tension concerning the priority of the soul over the city (or vice versa) as the optimum site of justice. In the Republic, Socrates seems to oscillate between talk of the soul and of the city, until one is uncertain where one ends and the other begins. Indeed, they are said to comprise the same tripartite structure, though on a different scale. More significantly, there is no consistent stress in the Republic or elsewhere that without the city one can have the good at all. First, the philosopher-guardians of the Republic are only produced by the right kind of education, which in turn depends on the right kind of city. They are not produced esoterically from nothing, but receive from without the public traditions of their formation. Second, one should not see the soul and the city as opposed to one another, simply on the grounds that the former is unified and singular, and the latter is relational and multiple. Indeed, for Plato the principle of the one and the indeterminate two is construed positively as the site of participation in the good.

The soul and the city-state possess the same tripartite structure, and the cultivation of justice in either is dependent on its cultivation in the other. The soul does not seem to take precedence over the city-state in matters of justice. This notion of justice that Plato develops is one of being well-ordered, and in the case of the city-state the philosopher-kings reign over the entire social structure to maintain this order. Tasked with the responsibility of contemplation of the Good, these philosopher-kings are also in charge of the practical matters of governance. Pickstock argues that these two responsibilities are bridged with the notion of phronesis or prudence:

Justice is not truly justice unless it is practiced with phronesis or prudent judgment. Socrates suggests this many times throughout the Republic. Early in the dialogue, he says that a soul is in its best condition when it is most courageous and most prudent. A soul cannot rightly be said to be just unless it deliberates, judges, acts freely; but these are essential features of phronesis, not dikaiosyne [justice]. . . . [ P]hronesis comprises not so much a compromise within the self as a creative exercise of judgment on the exterior world via a manifestation of reason in time. For Plato, there is no hierarchy of theoretical and practical reason.

Pickstock's analysis of the Republic uses the concepts of justice and prudence to show how philosopher-kings can both meditate on the Form of the Good and be practically minded rulers. Theoretical and practical knowledge are not antagonistic dualities, but rather form an interdependent symbiosis.

Following the publication of Pickstock's article, Donald C. Hodges and Christopher A. Pynes took issue with her analysis of the Republic in their article "Plato's Republic: A Tale of Two Cities," in Telos 123 (Spring 2002). Rather than critique her analysis of justice and prudence, they take aim at one of her more fundamental premises, namely, that there is a single, ideal city-state described in the Republic:

Pickstock takes too much for granted, namely, the existence of a single and uniform Platonic City. . . . Plato presents two cities in Republic. Since the first one is summarily dismissed, it is generally assumed that the second one is the ideal city. Yet, historical evidence strongly suggests that Socrates' preferred republic was the first, not the second. Did Plato disagree with Socrates on this crucial issue? The text of Republic provides no clear answer. So, to be fair to the text, one is compelled to take issue with Pickstock's reading.

The "first" city Hughes and Pynes mention is a city considered early in the Republic. It is a small, well-ordered society with no need for government because it lacks the vices of larger communities. The "second" city grows out of the first—it is large, complicated, and ridden with social problems. The bulk of the Republic is dedicated to resolving the problems of this "second" city by implementing the order and governmental structure that puts the philosopher-kings in charge. Hughes and Pynes argue that, in fact, the "first" city is the true ideal. Pickstock's analysis, according to Hughes and Pynes, misses the mark by ignoring this fact.

Is there a single ideal city-state presented in the Republic? If not, how are the seeming dualities within the text resolved? If so, which city, the small society with no government or the highly regimented and regulated city of philosopher-kings, is ideal? Are theoretical and practical knowledge inimical or co-dependent? How is a just social arrangement created? These questions are of immediate relevance to the Republic and our current political situation.

Click here to read Catherine Pickstock's "Justice and Prudence: Principles of Order in the Platonic City," from Telos 119 (Spring 2001). If you are affiliated with an institution that is an online subscriber to Telos, you have free access to our complete online archive. If not, you can purchase 24-hour access to this and other Telos articles at the low rate of $5/article.

For more on the Republic, take a look also at Adrian Pabst's "The Unity of the Platonic City" and Daniel R. Gandy-Jordan's "Plato: Utopian or Physician?" both of which appear in Telos 126 (Winter 2003).

Coming Soon in Paperback: Matthias K�ntzel's Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 07:00:00 GMT

Coming on November 1, Matthias K�ntzel's Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11 will be available in paperback format. Pre-order your copy now and save 20% off the cover price.

"In this short, powerful, passionate and thoughtful book, Matthias K�ntzel explores how and why radical Islam emerged as the most important political and ideological movement in world politics to place hatred of the Jews at the center of its ideology and policy following the defeat of the Nazi regime�.�.�.�Kuentzel's reconstruction impels us to rethink the issue of continuity and break before and after 1945 and expand our horizons beyond Europe to encompass the trans-national diffusion and impact of Nazism and fascism on the Arab and Islamic world." (From the foreword by Jeffrey Herf, Professor of History, University of Maryland).

For anyone interested in exploring the mindset of hatred that led to the crimes in New York and Washington on September 11th, 2001, this book is a must-read. For readers interested in the history of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, this book is a challenge to think outside of a narrowly European context. For everyone, this book provides crucial insight into the roots of terror that continue to threaten all of us.

Telos Press Publishing is committed to stimulating political and scholarly debate�no matter how provocative or unorthodox. K�ntzel's work rises to the challenge.

Matthias K�ntzel's Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11 will be available in paperback format on November 1. Pre-order your copy now and save 20% off the cover price.

Dissidence and the Putin Regime

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 07:00:00 GMT

Each Tuesday in the TELOSscope blog, we reach back into the archives and highlight an article whose critical insights continue to illuminate our thinking and challenge our assumptions. Today, Etel Sverdlov looks at Robert Hovarth's "The Putin Regime and the Heritage of Dissidence" published in Telos 145 (Winter 2008), a special issue on "Dissidents and Community."

As the child of Russian immigrants who fled the Soviet Union just before it collapsed, I grew up in a unique time-warp. Not knowing the modern Russia, I was raised on Soviet songs, movies, and references. I thought it simply an amusing situation for a child to experience, but as Robert Horvath's "The Putin Regime and the Heritage of Dissidence" makes clear, this sort of modern disconnect plays a strong, and damaging, part in contemporary Russian politics. Throughout the history of the Soviet Union, individuals of conviction found ways of subtly revolting against the oppressive Communist regime. Once that empire fell, however, these men began to feel the sting of obscurity. Sergei Kovalyov, "the most prominent former dissident in the State Duma," Vladimir Voinovich, a Soviet satirist, and the most famous of the group, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the long-bearded writer, all found themselves increasingly irrelevant in the new "democratic" Russia. The generation they belonged to had fallen away. Even Solzhenitsyn, whose books reached international fame, descended into irrelevance after going from a highly publicized and staged homecoming to having his television program canceled due to poor ratings. New issues confronted Russia, and yet the dissidents still seemed to be fighting against the former specter of the oppressive Soviet Union, and with such conviction that, instead of "alleviating the plight of victims of discrimination, disadvantage, and exclusion," they only succeeded in creating a stigma against dissidents.

Although Horvath emphasizes the danger of placing too much importance on the work and reputation of the dissidents, Russian politics under Putin showed a disconcerting willingness to eliminate opponents of the government through the court system, Soviet-style. For example, Horvath notes that in 2002, "Limonov was sentenced to a four-year prison term on charges of plotting to invade Kazakhstan." Thus a strange paradox consumed Russia. On the one hand, seemingly free from the Soviet past, the population should not need the outdated dissidents; and yet on the other, the stain of the former political regime remained. As Horvath observes, even the former president Putin asserted:

"I was never 'dissidentizing' [dissidentstvuyushchim], whether that's good or bad." He proceeded to recall, with barely disguised admiration, a KGB operation to thwart a dissident protest in Leningrad to which Western diplomats and journalists had been invited: instead of arresting the demonstrators, the cunning Chekists had organized a massive public ceremony to overwhelm the protest.

In every election in Russia following the fall of the Soviet Union, reformers and dissidents look for a blossoming of democracy. Putin no longer holds the presidency in Russia, and with his stepping down, the West can look hopefully to his successor, Dmitry Medvedev, to provide the much needed democratic change, so stalled under Putin. But as the Soviet past lingers in the career histories of Russian government officials, so too does the former president stay in power as prime minister. Recounting examples of the anti-democratic measures that solidified a dictatorial control for Putin, Horvath's analysis paints a sober picture of Russia's undemocratic past and its doubtful future.

Click here to read Robert Hovarth's "The Putin Regime and the Heritage of Dissidence" from Telos 145. If you are affiliated with an institution that is an online subscriber to Telos, you have free access to our complete online archive. If not, you can purchase 24-hour access to this and other Telos articles at the low rate of $5/article.