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articles in english

201. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 69
Omid Payrow Shabani

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Over the past decade or so, the liberal principle of legitimacy, which requires the justification of coercive law based on public reason, has come under severe attack from all sides. Some have criticized what they see as the exclusion of religious reason from the public sphere. Still others argue that the liberal proviso assumes a too-narrowly secularist definition of public reason, which, in fact, is more restrictive than what the principle of separation of church and state demands. Critics argue that religious citizens’ participation in public debate should not be conditioned on whether they use public reason or not. Instead they should be free to use whatever reason they have—religious or not—in public deliberation on policy issues. While some political theorists have replied to these criticisms by engaging at the theoretical level with these arguments, I propose to assess them in practice. I start by granting the critics of public reason what they wish—namely to allow comprehensive reasons in discussion concerning justification of law—and examining the practical consequences of this measure. In assessing these consequences it will become apparent that, at the formal level of making and administering law, only those reasons that are accessible by all equally have a justificatory power.
202. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 69
Ming Shao

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Confucianism designed a kind of social political theory quite different from those in the west. It was rooted in their realistic understandings on man, society, and the natural world. Generally, Confucians held that humankind has a specific meaning owing to mind though man came from the natural world and connected with all things. Human nature had to be defined in terms of mind whatever it was looked like. The potential ability of mind would be formed and perfected in a long empirical history so as to shape one’s essence. The ability of mind to endow something with meanings was primary and then those of value judgment and rational cognition. It was the ability to plant meanings into things that was regarded as moral or positive in Confucians’ eyes because one’s world of meaning would be continuously widened and enriched. The process of resting meanings on things was exactly “efforts morally”. It led to a conclusion that education to help one require autonomy plays the key role in a society. It seems to be the only standard to judge whether a society is good or right.
203. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 69
Yekutiel Shoham

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While assessing the validity of the arguments in John Locke’s A Letter concerning Toleration, the scholarship on the English philosopher tends to overlook the distinction that he is making between three sources of religious intolerance, namely state, religious establishments and individuals, and concentrate mainly on the persecution by the state. The reason for this tendency in Locke’s scholarship is that nowadays toleration either by an established religion or by individuals is not an open question in the Western world. Consequently, Locke’s interpreters mostly focus on what the philosopher has to say about the possibility that the state will use its force in order to limit the freedom of its citizens, not necessarily their religious ones. This leads them in turn to interpretative disagreements about the validity of the three kinds of arguments that Locke raises against religious intolerance, namely political, religious and philosophical arguments, as well as to the question of how they relate to each other. I argue that these disagreements arise not only from underestimating Locke’s essential distinction between the three possible sources of religious intolerance, but also from underestimating Locke’s interweaving strategy of argumentation. The aim of this paper, then, is to show that when one pays the proper attention to Locke’s distinctions as well as to his polemical strategy the relations between his three main arguments and their validity become clearer. Consequently it makes Locke’s A Letter concerning Toleration an important text regarding contemporary challenges of religious toleration in the western world.
204. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 69
Denis Coitinho Silveira

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In this paper I want to show the importance of the concept of reasonableness in John Rawls’s theory of justice as fairness, as well as explain the problem of reasonableness in this theory. The starting point will be to stress the requirement of reasonableness that is made to the moral agent in justice as fairness. Later, I will identify some criticism about these criteria. I will show the criticism made by Estlund about the insularity of the concept of reasonableness and the necessity of truth for justification, and the criticism established by Timmons and Gaus regarding the requirement of reasonableness as excessive and ineffective too. In the next step, I shall try to respond to these criticisms and, at the end of this paper, I shall lay down an argument about a kind of reasonable moral responsibility that may be contained in justice as fairness.
205. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 69
Marko Simendić

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Contra Quentin Skinner’s and David Runciman’s influential accounts that aim to prove what kind of person the Hobbesian state is, in Leviathan Thomas Hobbes compares a commonwealth to an artificial man or an artificial God, but never to an artificial person, nor to a fictitious person. The commonwealth, therefore, should never be constrained to its persona civitatis since, besides its group personality, it also comprises “the multitude”, i.e. flesh and blood people disposed to act in a certain way. The analysis of Hobbes’s definition of a commonwealth will show that, although group personality (persona civitatis) symbolises unity through representation and although it is essential that this unity exists, we cannot simply identify it with the state. Hobbes’s state, therefore, should be defined as an entity that encompasses both material (“men”) and formal elements (persona civitatis).
206. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 69
Robert B. Talisse

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Republicans hold that freedom is non-domination rather than non-interference. This entails that any instance of interference that does not involve domination is not freedom-lessening. The case for thinking of freedom as non-domination proceeds mostly by way of a handful of highly compelling cases in which it seems intuitive to say of some person that he or she is unfree despite being in fact free from interference. In this essay, I call attention to a kind of case which directs attention to what seems to me to be a highly counterintuitive element of the republican conception of freedom. The challenge to republicanism is that of providing a compelling response to this kind of case.
207. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 69
Magdalini Tsevreni

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The concept of promise has lately returned to the philosophical arena. As a result, we can observe through a new perspective the relationship between the individual and society (state), action and justice. Furthermore, it addresses the crucial question on the connection between ethical and political theory. In this paper we will examine the genealogy of promise and its relation to contract theories, the transition from the early modern tradition of natural law to modern political theory. The central themes in the tradition of natural law revolve around ethics, juristic theory and the philosophy of Law. In this way, promise, agreement, vows correlate with the notion of contract and, generally, juridical conventions. The subsequent development of contract theories, however, underscores the moral character of promise in contrast to the notion of contract, which claims a strict, technical, juridical character. As a conclusion to the investigation of this difference, we will examine a question that refers to two contradictory theoretical views: is promise a precondition or a result of contract? In so doing, we will focus on the implications of the argument that promise is on the root of the social contract or that obligations and agreements originate in the state, not from the individuals.
208. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 69
Constantinos N. Tsiantis

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The representation of a population is not a conventional subjective choice, neither does it depend upon ideal and non-ascertained statistical conditions. The mathematic law that we present solves this problem and can become a foundation for the political-social sciences: If a population of size N is constituted by m groups of citizens and each group possesses percentage wi (i=1, 2,… m) of the entire population (w1+ w2+… + wm =1), then the minimum number of citizens n (sample) that have to be selected from all the population groups (n = n1+ n2+… + nm, where ni>0) for the representation of the entire population is given by the relation:This relationship explains the size of the Parliament in the Athenian Democracy, hence its name. It has been successfully tested in statistical sampling and may be tested in other areas as well.
209. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 69
Koray Tutuncu

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The relationship between politics and virtue has been a controversial issue. While some significant scholars of politics make a sharp distinction between what is political and what is not, others underline the impossibility of separating politics from the virtues despite the fact that the unity of political and virtuous lives had been more apparent in Ancient and Medieval times. This paper aims to re-consider the problem of virtue in terms of liberal politics in general and the liberal principle of neutrality in particular. In doing so, it distinguishes three different arguments, namely `inescapability of virtue`, `virtue lost` and `reclamation of virtue` arguments. First argument underlines the impossibility of separating politics from virtue, even liberal principle of neutrality is itself virtuous. Second argument shows the impossibility of virtuous politics in modern liberal politics for it is only Ancient politics that makes virtue possible. Third argument on the other hand criticizes liberal neutrality and individualism which undermines virtue politics. However, it is optimistic about the articulation of communal virtues into the liberal context. As opposed to these three arguments, this paper offers a Rawlsian solution which centralizes justice in particular as the first virtue of a well-ordered liberal society. It argues that without negotiating fundamental rights and equal liberties, the Rawlsian solution transcends the limitations of the liberal neutrality by articulating political virtuous into liberalism. As a result, the paper concludes that liberal democracies would be politically virtuous without imposing any particular virtuous life conceptions.
210. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 69
Evert van der Zweerde

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This paper elaborates a conception of democracy as a possible quality of all social situations in which political power is executed by some over others. Critical of proceduralist, substantivist, and ethical conceptions of democracy, exemplified by Van Parijs, Rancière and Dewey respectively, it does not propose a synthesis of those three, but aims to move beyond them, arguing in favour of an understanding of democracy as a mixing regime, consisting of a plurality of repertoires that, in each and every situation, can materialize the quality of democracy, and are therefore, themselves, an object of choice, decision, and contestation. This conception will be tested in an application to three recent cases (Tahrir Square in Egypt, presidential elections in Venezuela, and general elections in The Netherlands).
211. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 69
Liudmila Vedmetskaya

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We can hardly deny the fact that nowadays the sphere of public administration of any state is experiencing the effects of an extremely unstable and unpredictable world in the most concentrated form. Challenges of both endogenous and exogenous origins threaten the political and administrative systems, so modern government has to change its preferences and is called upon to play a more dynamic, more complex, and less certain role, to develop itself. The extent of development of the modern state substantially depends on the ability to make new knowledge, to raise a role of education and scientific activity in society, to modernize the public sphere. However state development in many ways depends on the ability not only to make knowledge in various areas of activity of society, but also to use it (to involve experts in the system of public administration, to develop new strategies, to prepare actual, viable administrative reforms and so on) for timely reaction to complication of horizontal and vertical communications in social and political spheres. One of the effective ways of knowledge production and its usage in economy and political governance is the development of knowledge networks. In the public sphere knowledge networks are based on the possibilities of e-government and electronic democracy. They also can be formal and informal: they can be formed in the system of public administration (an exchange of knowledge between various departments of state agencies), and mainly out of it (expert and analytical work of professionals in certain fields of knowledge).
212. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 69
Nicholas Vrousalis

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This paper argues that there is a conceptual connection between economic exploitation and domination. If I am right, then exploitation is a form of domination, rather than a form of distributive injustice. It follows that the contemporary infatuation of many analytical Marxists with distributive injustice is misguided, and their attention is better spent studying relations of power, in particular the possibility of abstract forms of domination.
213. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 69
Hong Xia

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Basic justice is needed everywhere, but the traditional criteria of substantive justice, such as liberty, equality, efficiency, or‘justice as fairness’etc., is challenged in contemporary society because of the ruin of the traditional metaphysics and religions. Habermas’s theory of discourse perhaps provides us a way to set a criterion for the post-metaphysical time. Justice is the union of the content and form. However, what his viewpoint on justice emphasizes is only the form of justice; he fails to consider the substance of justice, even for the criterion of substantive justice. In the post-metaphysical society of pluralized values, we can obtain the criterion of substantive justice from his theory of justice. This criterion is the discursive consensus.
214. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 69
Dazhi Yao

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There are two resources for the legitimacy of a government: agreement and good governance. People’s agreement is eminent via democracy and regular elections. In this sense, agreement is a procedural legitimacy. While good governance is reflected by a government’s execution of its responsibility and favorable performances. In this sense, good governance is a substantial legitimacy. Agreement and good governance are two consisting parts of legitimacy: agreement as procedural legitimacy originates from democracy and governance as substantial legitimacy originates from exceptional execution of a government’s responsibilities. A government is fully legitimate only when it is agreed by the people and meets the requirement of good governance in the same time.

articles in french

215. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 69
Hung Shih-Chian

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Face à la fragilité du monde, nous assistons à une forte sensibilisation, à l’émergence d’une nouvelle sollicitude et d’un souci de l’autre. En voyant les mauvaises conséquences de la mondialisation, comment doit-on considérer les étrangers qui vivent ensemble avec nous? Dans cet article, nous allons discuter la relation entre nous et les autres, selon le concept de la politique proposé par Jacques Derrida, tout en mettant l’accent sur l’hospitalité et la « démocratie à venir » , afin de pouvoir répondre aux questions qui sont soulevées entre « nous » et les autres. Notre travail est centré sur deux axes. D’une part nous soulignerons la dimension éthique de la déconstruction, c’est-à-dire nous discuterons de manière approfondie la relation entre nous et l’autre. De l’autre part nous développerons une déconstruction pratique à partir de l’action. Le concept d’hospitalité bouleverse le point de vue de l’État-nation, on ne distinguera plus aussi aisément les sans-papiers, les clandestins, les immigrés hors la loi. L’hospitalité caractérise un espace commun sans nom, réalisant finalement le rêve du cosmopolitisme et du citoyen mondial.

articles in german

216. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 69
Toros Güneş Esgün

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Die Frage, wie man das Politische definieren kann, ist eine der wesentlichen Fragen der gegenwärtigen politischen Philosophie: Was macht eine Handlung oder eine Idee „politisch“ oder „unpolitisch“? Um diese Frage zu beantworten, muss zunächst bestimmt werden, was das Politische von der Politik unterscheidet. Seit Carl Schmitt gibt es verschiedene Kriterien für diese Unterscheidung. Letztlich hat Jacques Rancière „das Politische“ als Antagonismus zwischen Politik und Polizei definiert und behauptet, ähnlich wie der Ansatz der politischen Anthropologie, dass die Politik außerhalb des Staates möglich ist. In diesem Zusammenhang ist Sophokles’ Tragödie Antigone problematisch, denn es gibt zahlreiche Kommentare, die Antigones Handeln „unpolitisch“ nennen. In diesem Beitrag werde ich versuchen zu zeigen, dass Antigones Position nicht „unpolitisch“ genannt werden kann. Am Schluss werde ich aus der Sicht Rancières erläutern, warum Antigones Handeln „politisch“ ist und wie Politik als Emanzipation und Gleichheit möglich sein kann.
217. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 69
Nazile Kalaycı

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Die Idee einer rationalen Öffentlichkeit, die als Bedingung jeder repräsentativen Demokratie gilt, wird heute einer immer heftiger werdenden Kritik unterzogen, sodass für eine Neu-Organisation des Gesellschaftslebens eine neue Idee der Öffentlichkeit notwendig geworden ist. Statt bzw. neben einem homogenen Öffentlichkeitsbegriff, der auf dem Staatsbürger beruht, sollte durchaus die Möglichkeit einer auf Multitude beruhenden kollektiven Öffentlichkeit untersucht werden, was auch zur Diskussion hinsichtlich einer „absoluten Demokratie“ beitragen könnte. In diesem Beitrag wird, ausgehend von der Antigone des Sophokles, die Funktion des Chors in der klassischen Tragödie behandelt und in Erwägung gezogen, inwieweit diese Funktion für die Entwicklung einer neuen Idee der Öffentlichkeit fruchtbar gemacht werden könnte. Dabei soll ersichtlich werden, dass eine solche Untersuchung des Chors mit all seiner Betonung des Konflikts, der Unbestimmtheit, der Kontingenz, gewisse Möglichkeiten in sich birgt, ein Verständnis der Politik zu transformieren, das auf Leitbegriffen wie Konsens, Ordnung, Notwendigkeit beruht und meist in Herrschaft endet. Ein von den heutigen Bedingungen ausgehender Ansatz zur Untersuchung der Funktion des Chors, dessen tragischer Aspekt in den Werken des Euripides mit Hilfe eines deus ex machina verwischt wurde, kann zu einem Begriff der Politik beitragen, der es ermöglicht, dass sich das Politische und das Tragische treffen und eine poetisch-feminine Idee der Öffentlichkeit entwickelt werden kann. Dieser neue Ansatz einer Untersuchung der Öffentlichkeitsfunktion des antiken Chors und deren Bedeutung für die heutige Politik werden in diesem Beitrag ausgearbeitet.
218. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 69
Roberta Pasquarè

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In diesem Beitrag soll systematisch untersucht werden, wie in der Moderne der Begriff der Tyrannis umgedeutet wird, und wie die moderne Auffassung der Tyrannis mit der Aufwertung des Antagonismus zusammenhängt. Von der Antike bis zum Spätmittelalter wird die tyrannische Herrschaft über die durch sie selbst herbeigeführte Auflösung des Staates definiert: Als tyrannisch gilt die Regierung, die jene in der Antike als normativ gesetzte und im Mittelalter als gottgegeben aufgefasste Harmonie des Gemeinwesens zerstört. In der Moderne gelten dagegen alle Regierungen als tyrannisch, die das Individuum bei oder gar in der Entfaltung seiner Talente und Eigenschaften hindern. Diese neue Begriffsbestimmung gründet auf die Aufwertung der Antagonismen als Bestandteile der menschlichen Natur und zugleich als Triebfeder des staatsrechtlichen Fortschritts. Die neuzeitliche Aufwertung der Antagonismen und das mit ihm zusammenhängende Primat der individuellen Freiheit haben zur Folge, dass vom Staat die Fähigkeit gefordert wird, die aus der Entfaltung der individuellen Freiheit entstehenden Antagonismen anzuerkennen. Erst in der Moderne wird nämlich der Anspruch zur Geltung gebracht, einen staatsrechtlichen Raum zu gestalten, der Antagonismen ohne Schmälerung der individuellen Freiheit zu regeln vermag.

articles in spanish

219. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 69
Virginia Aspe Armella

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The article aims to prove that neither the scholastic philosophical tradition nor the modern European Enlightenment ideas influenced the Independence of Mexico. The author analyzes a third wave of thinkers that emerged at the end of the colonial period of Mexico, authors that proposed a renovation on traditional philosophy incorporating the advances of the scientific European thinkers but rejecting their naturalistic point of view. In counterpart, these authors proposed an inclusive point of view: maintaining Catholic beliefs and the innovations of science. The article analyses this perspective through Calvijero VIth’s Dissertation, where he argues on these matters.
220. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 69
Héctor Bonilla Estévez

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A partir de la propuesta kantiana sobre la Paz Perpetua, en el mundo continuamente se ha procurado la paz entre las naciones y los pueblos, con la construcción de un proyecto de relaciones internacionales basadas en un derecho internacional que ha logrado avances con esas intensiones sin obtener los mejores resultados, los conflictos continúan en el mundo. La construcción de un derecho de gentes contemporáneo implica importantes transformaciones en las organizaciones internacionales, en la manera de ver a los ciudadanos como ciudadanos del mundo, en el establecimiento de un derecho cosmopolita basado en la positivización de los Derechos Humanos y en la procura de una justicia cosmopolita que permita mayores y mejores mecanismos de inclusión y participación en la solución de los grandes problemas globales.