The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy

Space and time are considered as attributive features of matter's social form movement that allow to incorporate structure into the world political processes. The notions of wholismatic time and space are established to determine world's entering into planetary interconnected condition. Social space and time are considerate in unity being as coordinates of man and civilization's existence. Methodological approaches to East and West civilization cooperation are defined through varieties of spaces being specified in different types of human activity. Man and civilization interaction is shown in context of future social time as well as choice of development type and modernization of society.

The Battered Woman Syndrome, like the Cycle Theory of Violence, helps to illuminate the situation of the person victimized by domestic violence. However, it may also contribute to the violence of the battering situation. In this paper, I explore some of the implications of the Battered Woman Syndrome for domestic violence cases wherein an abused woman kills her abuser. I begin by delineating some of the circumstances of a domestic violence situation. I then discuss the particular moral issue of subjectivity or moral personhood involved in instances wherein a woman victimized by domestic violence responds by killing her batterer. Finally, I argue that the Battered Woman Syndrome and similar alternatives to or qualifications of self-defense are problematic because they strip a woman of her moral subjectivity. I conclude with a brief articulation of a proposal for reform of the criminal justice system specifically aimed at cases wherein there has been a long history of abuse or violence. This reform is unique because it does not rely on a separate standard of reasonableness particular to battered women, but arises out of consideration of the moral implications of legal proceedings involving domestic violence.

I defend the continued viability of Marx's critique of capitalism against Ronald Aronson's recent claim that because Marxists are 'unable to point to a social class or movement' away from capitalism, Marxism is 'over' 'as a project of historical transformation.' First, Marx's account of the forced extraction of surplus labor remains true. It constitutes an indictment of the process of capital accumulation because defenses of capitalism's right to profit based on productive contribution are weak. If generalized, the current cooperative movement, well advanced in many nations, can displace capitalism and thus counts as the movement Aronson challenges Marxists to point to. It will do this, I argue, by stopping capitalist exploitation, blocking capital accumulation, and narrowing class divisions. But in defending Marx by pointing to the cooperative movement, we have diverged from Marx's essentially political strategy for bringing about socialism onto an economic one of support for tendencies toward workplace democracy worldwide.

We are social animals in the sense that we spontaneously invent and continuously re-invent the social realm. But, not unlike other artifacts, once real, social relations, practices, institutions, etc., obey prior laws, some of which are moral laws. Hence, with regard to social reality, we ought to be ontological constructivists and moral realists. This is the view sketched here, taking as points of departure Searle's recent work on social ontology and May's on group morality. Moral and social selves are distinguished to acknowledge that social reality is constructed but social morality is not. It is shown how and why moral law requiring respect for the dignity and well being of agents governs a social world comprising roles that are real only because of their occupants' social intentions.

David Hume and James Madison believed that a republic can secure domestic tranquility by discouraging the development of factions. Modern computer technology shatters these hopes, which rest on the idea that factions will not grow because great distance makes it difficult for individuals to discover that others share their interests or grievances. Today, technology renders geographical distance increasingly irrelevant to communication with others. If Madison and Hume were right about the effects of distance prior to the current development of computer technology, then we may experience the growth of factions and associated violence that Hume and Madison feared. Increased domestic terrorism made more effective by technologically developed weapons of mass death could be the way of the future. I contend that education can modify such developments by giving priority to Jane Roland Martin's suggestion that we adopt an educational aim intent on securing domestic tranquility. I revise the content of her proposal to include features of communicative rationality as an indispensable element of political dialogue. This provides resources by which factional elements can access and influence political discussion. If we are to enjoy a decent degree of domestic tranquility in the future, we must integrate potentially factious elements into the political process. To marginalize such elements, no matter how repugnant their political views, will merely serve to legitimate their use of terror as the only option available to them for political expression.

This paper explores the connection between supererogation and the integrity of ethical agents. It argues two theses: (1) there is a generally unrecognized but crucial social dimension to the moral integrity of individuals which challenges individual ideals and encourages supererogation; (2) the social dimension of integrity, however, must have limits that preserve the individuals's integrity. The concept of integrity is explored through recent works by Christine Korsgaard, Charles Taylor, and Susan Babbitt. A life of integrity is in part a life whereby one 'lives up to' one's own deeply held values. Yet, as one seeks to transcend the realm of the morally customary or the dutiful, one must check one's progress not only against one's own ideals but against the ideals and behavior of the ethical community. To answer affirmatively to one's own ideals is to hear the call of integrity both from within oneself and from without. However, by being free to hear, the freedom to close one's ears inevitably will arise. Only actions displaying such freedom can be actions of moral integrity. Since supererogatory actions are always left to an agent's discretion-that is, are fully optional-they show in paradigmatic fashion the integrity of moral agents. While an ethic of integrity and supererogation provides challenges to members of an ethical community by encouraging them continually to reevaluate their actions and character in reference to postulated ideals, it also leads us to be quite wary of judging individual's moral motives from the outside. A passage by Jonathan Kozol is cited that suggests our society routinely demands supererogatory action from its poorest members. This is illegitimate since they live in conditions that alienate rather than integrate them both with themselves and with the rest of the community.

This paper intends to shed light on the issue of ideology as found in the work of Ricoeur. According to Ricoeur, ideology is not only distortive of social reality; it is as well related to society's power and integration, which in fact changes our way of understanding the entire world. Ideology is an endless and unresolvable problem, since there is no non-ideological place from which to discuss ideology. The phenomenological hermeneutic is employed in an attempt to mediate ideological phenomena in a Ricoeur-like fashion.

In this paper I offer an application of the philosophical analysis of meanings of "being" derived from existential phenomenology to the issue of race, distinguishing a static meaning (which I name "color") from a dynamic meaning ("race") by analogy to the sex/gender distinction. I then distinguish a substantialist meaning of race (as facticity, a socio-historically constituted meaning of color) from an existential meaning (race as lived, as intentionality). Finally I briefly explore the risk of this position on "race," how it is an invitation to bad faith, while being nonetheless essential to the struggle against racism.

I argue that we can find in Marx two objections to exploitation: (i) an entitlement objection according to which it is wrongful because of the unjust distribution of benefits and burdens it generates; and (ii) an expressivist objection according to which it is objectionable because of the kind of social relation it is. The expressivist objection is predicated on a communitarian strand in Marx's thought, whereas the entitlement objection is grounded in a more liberal account of the wrongfulness of capitalist exploitation. I conclude by connecting my analysis to the current debate between proponents and critics of market socialism. While market socialism could be a vehicle for realizing the values associated with the entitlement objection, this is not true for the expressivist objection. Furthermore, because the entitlement objection does not depend on a thick conception of the human good, it is in accord with the liberal ideal of political neutrality whereas the expressivist objection is not.

This paper reviews three social scientific accounts of the civic sector's role in society: the government failure, contract failure, and voluntary failure theories. All three explain the role of nonprofit organizations as compensating for the market's failure to provide certain collective goods. This approach involves a radical misinterpretation of the underlying principles of civic sector organizations. An account is needed that explains their economy in terms of their normative concerns, rather than explaining normative concerns in terms of their economy. I lay a foundation for such an account by examining (1) the self-understanding among civic sector organizations that they should be "mission-driven," and (2) the implications of this self-understanding for the sector as a "social economy." Whereas "mission-drivenness" calls attention to service-provision, resource-sharing, and open communication as the normative core of civic sector organizations, the notion of a "social economy" suggests a recirculation of money into channels where standard economic logic no longer holds. The key to the civic sector's role lies not in responses to market failure, but in the short-circuiting of a money-driven capitalist economy.

I discuss the basic conditions that allow us to grasp Hobbes's theory of the State from the standpoint of the imagination. I employ three interpretative points of view. First, I consider the role played by the concepts "person," "representation," and "theatre" in the institution of the social and political structure of the State. Second, I discuss the metaphorical value of the State, the persuasive function of which is derived from the biblical image of 'Leviathan.' Third, I consider the role taken by the counsellors of the State in the creation of images oriented toward obedience. In this way I attempt to demonstrate that the Hobbesian State can no longer be taken as an abstraction, but as a concrete result constituted by human nature as formulated by the imagination. Hence, one can understand Hobbes as extending the interpretation of modern political thought beyond the linguistic imperative of univocity. In this way we can grasp Hobbes's importance for the modern age.

The notions of freedom and equality in a group are precisely defined in terms of individual exertions of influence or power. Freedom is discussed in the version ‘freedom from’ influence rather than in the version ‘freedom to do’ what one wants. It is shown that at the ideal conceptual level complete freedom implies equality. Given the plausibility of the definitions this shows that political ‘folk rhetorics’ in which freedom and equality often are put in opposition are misled and misleading. Quantitative notions of ‘more freedom’ and ‘more equality’ are introduced and shown to be independent of each other. The bearing of these conceptual exercises on the comparison of political systems is discussed.

El propósito der este trabajo es abordar en tema bastante polémico, el de llegar a la resolución de cuestiones políticas con el mayor grado de legitimidad. La teoría de la democracia tiene dos vertientes marcadamente diferentes: la del discurso argumentativo y la de la teoría de la elección social. La primera estudia la forma de resolver los conflictos a través de la deliberación, del discurso argumentativo que apunta al consenso.Y la segunda es la que se ocupa de las formas en que la agregación de preferencias individuales lleva a un resultado social; ésta es la teoría de la elección social, una rama de la elección racional, dedicada especialmente a la teoría de la votación.Estas dos tendencias aparecen separadas la una de la otra, una concentrada en el consenso ideal y la otra, en los resultados electorales. No parece quedar claro por qué para los consensualistas no hay más que modelos ideales que no contribuyen a la resolución de los problemas políticos inmediatos. En el caso de los teóricos de la elección social, parece que aportan más al estudio de la teoría de la democracia porque no desconocen el hecho de que la filosofía política debe ayudar a la resolución de los problemas de la sociedad.

Constitutional paideia designates a form of constitutionalism that construes a nation’s constitution essentially in terms of ongoing processes of collective self-formation. This paper explores the notion of constitutional paideia as formulated by Hegel, who explicitly defines constitutionalism with categories of Bildung. The paper’s strategy is to present Hegel’ position in light of questions that can be raised about it. The paper advances three central theses: (1) in spite (and perhaps because) of his historico-culturist approach to law, Hegel is a theoretician of constitutional paideia; (2) despite construing constitutionalism in terms of ongoing processes of popular self-interpretation, Hegel does not vitiate the distinction between law and politics deemed so central to constitutional theory; and (3) despite construing constitutionalism in terms of self-formative processes of a particular culture, Hegel does not jettison the normativity and trans-contextualism long associated with modern constitutional theory. The paper concludes with some observations on the contemporary significance of Hegelian constitutionalism.

The paper concerns the principles presupposed in political protest against the totalitarian regime. In contrast to the utilitarian view of participating in political protest (K.D.Opp, M. Taylor) the author tries to suggest the moral model of political protest. According to this model, the main reason and motif for challenging the regime is the transgression of the limits of concession, which jeopardizes the spiritual identity and essential qualities of the individuals and all groups (i.e., Church, family, nation). The participants of the protest do not calculate in terms of egoistic or private interests and utilities but in terms of moral values. They consider what action is morally "good" and "bad" or morally "better" or "worse" in this situation, disregarding their personal profits and happiness. The overthrow of the communist system is an incalculating and contingent result of combating the extreme manifestations and worst excesses of the system.

Totalitarian political systems in the socialist countries of Eastern Europe destroyed and repressed the civil society that used to exist in them. The authoritarian and totalitarian ethos was formed under a powerful influence of ideologies of the communist parties and politocracy in these countries so that the political ethos of politicians dominated the political ethos of the citizen. The breakdown of the real socialism and its unsuccessful attempts to complete accelerated liberal modernization of these societies caused turbulence of social values in addition to the general moral chaos. The moral crisis has deepened; anomie increased as well as the society’s inclination to commit crime. This makes difficult the creation of the cultural matrix of the civil society and its moral values. The liberation and development of the political ethos of the civil society as an element of the democratic political culture require structural and mental changes in these societies. They imply abandoning the value matrices of the traditional and political societies based upon collectivism, tribalism, authoritarianism, egalitarianism, ethnocentrism, etatisme and mythologization of the past. They require the use of the citizens’ active potential as well as that of their associations, their readiness for political commitment, self-initiative, respect of the general interest and a courageous defense of freedom and social justice.

In this paper I discuss recent scholarly work on ideology, mostly by Europeans, that exposes a secularist bias in current political theory, invites a nonderogatory concept of religion, and (I argue) justifies more flexible church/state relations. This work involves (1) redefining ideology as any action-oriented ideas, whether destructive or ameliorative, including both secular theory and religion, then (2) drawing on hermeneutical and critical studies of the power/ideology relationship to rediscover a role for ‘utopia’ as a social catalyst for amelioration. I then call attention to the relevance of ‘mission’ to this work. For in both secular and sacred contexts, missions are defined and assigned to individuals or groups to enhance some aspect of the organizing entity’s sense of purpose and possibility. What stands out in each instance is that the sense of mission is not passively epistemic but actively project-oriented, goal-directed. It can be used with reference to any end or goal that is at least implicitly normative and which people seek to attain. A mission moves people, however, only if it is tied to some belief-based social identity which can be interpreted as oriented to that end. A case can be made, accordingly, for accommodating religious views in our political discourse, for they have a history of directing people’s thinking beyond what is to what ought to be, and without them we are ever more inclined to tolerate mediocrity in ourselves and despair in others.

La literatura política española de los siglos XVI y XVII consideraba que el ars regendi o ars gubernandi podía enseñarse y aprenderse. Proliferaron los ensayos tratando de formar futuros gobernantes, intentando plasmar la personalidad del príncipe perfecto en una estructura, técnica común a estas obras de carácter formativo. Diversos fueron los precedentes medievales, entre ellos, las narraciones históricas moralizadas, las colecciones de dichos agudos y sentencias filosóficas, y cierto género didáctico donde a la Pedagogía le concernía el afán moralizador en cuento era considerada Ética aplicada a la Psicología.(1) Si con Tomás de Aquino (1225-1274) culmina la asimilación del pensamiento de Aristóteles y, con ello, el movimiento de aristotelización iniciado por los comentaristas árabes (Ibn Rushd (1126-1198), conocido como Averroes) y judíos (Moses Maimónides (1135-1204)), la definitiva incorporación del Estagirita a la filosofía política y social significó hacer del Estado una institución natural cuyo fin era la protección del bien común. En tal contexto surge y se elabora desde el s.XIII hasta el s.XV la política como ars regendi o ars gubernandi; por una parte, scientia y por otra, virtus, esto es, una estructura racional que, a medio camino entre la sapientia y la prudentia,(2) debía facilitar una doctrina que guiara la práctica gubernativa.

The claim to rationality is disputed by two rival enlightenments, which collided in the dispute between Plato, Socrates and the Sophists, and which Marx united critically. He criticizes the capitalist system immanently as restrictive of production, and its market as not a case of freedom or equality (justice). However, Marx is most concerned with ontological injustice, coerced alienation of the human into being a commodity. He retains Promethean Enlightenment values however: technology, creativity, democracy, which should be economic, participatory and international. Marx criticized Hegel’s rationalization, idealization, ‘transfiguration and glorification’ of private property and the market. But he retains key elements of the idealist notion of human nature: that human is a ‘universal, therefore free being.’ The proletariat, with no other class to exploit, is therefore the philosophical ‘universal class.’ Freedom is class emancipation, justice is common ownership. There is an unwarranted skepticism about the rationality of such values and ideals. Rawls for instance misrepresents them by putting them in the same category as wants or preferences. Ideals, values, and enlightenments can and should be rationally argued over, in dialogue.

Both domestic and foreign policies of each state presuppose a certain ideology as a foundation. In a broad sense, an ideology may be regarded as a certain 'system of coordinates,' an interpretational model of the world (Weltanschauung) including both empirico-theoretical (realizing a nation's place in regional and global contexts, with a clear understanding of national interests, goals and resources) and metatheoretical (comprehending a nation in the context of human history and culture) levels. Some of the main issues on the agenda in Russia are the clear understanding and definition of national goals and interests, the formulation of a strategy of development in economic, social, political, etc., arenas, and the establishment of both domestic and foreign policy. I suggest that Russia currently does not have an ideology or a system of values able to unite the society. In short, I argue that Russia needs a new strategy of development, a new national idea which can replace (or fill the vacuum left by the collapse of) the old communist ideology.