Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons^™

Revolution And Dictatorship: The Violent Origin Of Durable Authoritarianism Steven Levitsky And Lucan Way. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2022. Pp. 656., Joseph L. Derdzinski

International Dialogue

W h y do s o m e ––a nd not other, of course— regimes survive? Surveying a comprehensive range of historical and more contemporary examples, Levitsky and Way's Revolution and Dictatorship: The Violent Origins of Durable Authoritarianism is an important contribution to scholarship that seeks to answer this fundamental question. While much of comparative political specifically, and political science more broadly, centers on democratic regimes and their fragility (and cases of stability, to be fair), why some authoritarian regimes "succeed" over multiple generations is less well understood. By focusing on the authoritarian regimes that emerge from social revolutions, Levitsky …

Untitled Poem (In Arabic), Asmaa Azaizeh

International Dialogue

No abstract provided.

Untitled Poem (In English), Asmaa Azaizeh

International Dialogue

No abstract provided.

Analysis Of The Plo And Hamas: Interview With Sir John Jenkins, Raphael Cohen-Almagor

International Dialogue

Sir John Jenkins is currently a Senior Fellow at Policy Exchange, the London-based think tank, for whom he has written extensively on Islamism and extremism more generally. Between 1980 and 2015 he served as a British diplomat, initially in Abu Dhabi (1983–86), Malaysia (1989–92) and Kuwait (1995–98) before being appointed Ambassador to Burma (1999–2002). He was subsequently HM Consul-General, Jerusalem (2003–06), Ambassador to Syria (2006–07), FCO Director for the Middle East and North Africa (2007-09), Ambassador to Iraq (2009–11), Special Representative to the National Transitional Council and 1subsequently Ambassador to Libya (2011) and Ambassador to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia …

Wuwei Praxis, Zachary L. Gelnaw-Rubin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The question of how to change the world is answered in the concept of praxis. For structural change to occur a “revolution in motivation or feeling,” - a paradigm shift - is needed. I argue that this requires the adoption of feminist liberation praxis, which involves a negativistic political stance, nonideal theorizing, and an openness to self-transformation. This entails a transformation of the concept of praxis itself within the Leftist idiom, a transformation which could be the linchpin of the needed paradigm shift in the larger culture.

The three parts of this thesis elaborate upon the different aspects of this …

The Contradiction Between Use-Value And Exchange-Value: Ecology, Imperialism, And The Telos Of Production, Larry Alan Busk, Elizabeth Portella

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

This article elaborates and defends a critique of capitalism which, despite its appearance in various bodies of work, has not been named or systematically differentiated. The critique locates a contradiction between production for use-value and production for exchange-value, or a contradiction in what we call “the telos of production.” While maintaining that it has some basis in Marx’s work, we defend this model as preferable to the critique of capitalism based strictly on the exploitation of labor (which we call the “exploitation-exclusive critique”). We attempt to show this by applying the two approaches to the empirical realities of the ecological …

Charge The Cockpit Or Die: An Anatomy Of Fear-Driven Political Rhetoric In American Conservatism, Daniel Hostetter

Senior Honors Theses

Subthreshold negative emotions have superseded conscious reason as the initial and strongest motivators of political behavior. Political neuroscience uses the concepts of negativity bias and terror management theory to explore why fear-driven rhetoric plays such an outsized role in determining human political actions. These mechanisms of human anthropology are explored by competing explanations from biblical and evolutionary scholars who attempt to understand their contribution to human vulnerabilities to fear. When these mechanisms are observed in fear-driven political rhetoric, three common characteristics emerge: exaggerated threat, tribal combat, and religious apocalypse, which provide a new framework for explaining how modern populist leaders …

The Lawgiver And "The Progress Of Evil", Andre Chang

Senior Theses

The study advances a reinterpretation of Madison’s concept of “constitutional liquidation,” presenting it not merely as a theory of legal interpretation but as a broader political strategy for preserving republican government amid recurring crises. Through an analysis of Madison’s responses to the Alien and Sedition Acts, the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, and the nullification controversy, the thesis demonstrates how Madison sought to balance constitutional stability with principled conflict, allowing fundamental questions of authority, justice, and union to be resolved through disciplined public deliberation rather than force or procedural formalism.

Finally, the thesis contends that Madison’s commitment to national supremacy and …

The Roaring Lion Of Berlin: The Life, Thought, And Influence Of Eugen Dühring, Arden Roy

Undergraduate Research Symposium

The life and influence of 19th-century German polymath Eugen Dühring remain but a mere footnote in the history of ideas, being primarily relegated to the status of little more than a theoretical rival to Marxism in the German socialist movement and the occasional object of Freidrich Nietzsche's rhetorical flogging. Despite the current consensus on the subject, Eugen Dühring was a scholar of vast, remarkable learnedness, contributing greatly to philosophy, economics, and the natural sciences. The aim of this talk will be to clear the fog surrounding the life and work of the controversial blind scholar and give an account of …

A Praxis Towards Social Change Based On Foucault's Conceptualization Of Experience As Relational, Lila Maureen Wakeman

Theses and Dissertations--Philosophy

This project develops a praxis towards social change based on the works of Michel Foucault. It first establishes Foucault’s philosophical assumptions, methods, and political goal of countering “objectivizing” modern Western social forces. It then draws on sources from the three major phases of Foucault’s career to trace his development of a general conceptualization of experience as relational, or as non-exhaustively co-constituted by and through three indispensable kinds of social forces: knowledge, power, and ethics. It then evaluates implications of Foucauldian experience for efforts towards social change to conceptualize a general Foucauldian praxis towards social change. The praxis aims to affect …

Brand Activism And Democratic Legitimacy: Exploring Pitfalls Through A Habermasian Analysis, Roxan Degeyter

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

Brand activism has emerged as a prominent practice among corporations, as they publicly take a stand on contentious socio-political issues such as gender inequality, climate change, or discrimination, often through advertising. While extensive research has been conducted on the impact of brand activism as a marketing tool, examining its effects on sales, brand image, consumer attitudes, and authenticity, only a limited number of studies have studied its influence on public debate and processes of democratic legitimation. The latter have portrayed brand activism as an empowering force for the supported social movements, the public sphere, and democratic legitimacy, largely ignoring the …

Clausewitzian Theory Of War In The Age Of Cognitive Warfare, Amber Brittain-Hale, Amber Brittain-Hale

Education Division Scholarship

We can reconceptualise warfare by contrasting Clausewitz with the modern practice of cognitive warfare, as evidenced by Ukraine’s defence methodologies. The strategic orchestration of ‘infopolitik’ and the sophisticated use of social media can shape narratives and public perception. This article revisits Clausewitz’s tenet of war as a political instrument and juxtaposes it with contemporary conflict’s multidimensional tactics. By scrutinising Ukraine’s digital and psychological warfare tactics, one may question the applicability of Clausewitz’s framework, seeking to understand if these novel dimensions of warfare compel a redefinition or an expansion of his thesis to navigate the complexities of contemporary geopolitical confrontations.

Table Of Contents, Rory J. Conces Prof.

International Dialogue

NOTES FROM THE EDITOR

REVIEW ESSAY

Enjoyment and Ideology: Surplus-Enjoyment-A Guide for the Non-Perplexed Edward Sankowski and Betty Harris

BOOK REVIEW

Mette Lebech European Sources of Human Dignity: A Commented Anthology and On the Problem of Human Dignity: A Hermeneutical and Phenomenological Investigation Robert McNamara

DISCUSSION

Kosovo-Serbia Dialogue: Development Fund for Municipalities in the North of Kosovo Seb Bytyci

Objects Supporting/Resisting a Democracy and Resisting an Occupation: Two Sides of the Same Coin—Kosovo and The Occupied Territories Rory J. Conces

Notes From The Editor: Volume 13, Rory J. Conces Prof.

International Dialogue

No abstract provided.

Review Essay: Enjoyment And Ideology Surplus-Enjoyment: A Guide For The Non-Perplexed Slavoj Žižek. London: Bloomsbury Academic. 2022. Pp. 400., Edward Sankowski, Betty J. Harris

International Dialogue

Slavoj Žižek’s Surplus-Enjoyment-A Guide for the Non-Perplexed is a difficult book. Reading it requires a different approach from what is usual with what seems to us more standardized philosophical or social scientific prose. Our approach initially at least no doubt assumes as our starting point a deploying of our shared norms, shaped by our backgrounds as U.S. based scholars aiming to advance dialogue with Žižek and some of the wide variety of authors with whom Žižek himself engages.

Kosovo-Serbia Dialogue: Development Fund For Municipalities In The North Of Kosovo, Seb Bytyci

International Dialogue

This article deals with the Development Fund for the northern municipalities, as a product of the Kosovo-Serbia dialogue. The existence of the Fund is largely ignored both by the parties and by the mediators, and there is little knowledge of it even by the citizens, although it is one of the pillars of the autonomy arrangements of the Kosovo Serbs.

Review: European Sources Of Human Dignity: A Commented Anthology Mette Lebech. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2019. Pp. 345. On The Problem Of Human Dignity: A Hermeneutical And Phenomenological Investigation Mette Lebech., Robert Mcnamara

International Dialogue

A coordinating feature of much contemporary discourse—philosophical and theological, social and cultural, political and legal—is the idea of human dignity. The sense of its necessity as an idea grounding and organizing thought, feeling, and action about the human being is shared across different and often otherwise contrary worldviews. But to what does the expression “human dignity” refer? What is human dignity? And why is it important? Anyone who has looked at the problem with anything more than a cursory glance knows that these are not easy questions, and Mette Lebech sets herself the task of attaining an answer in two …

Objects Supporting/Resisting A Democracy And Resisting An Occupation: Two Sides Of The Same Coin—Kosovo And The Occupied Territories, Rory J. Conces Prof.

International Dialogue

I thought I knew all there was to know about evocative objects, at least as much as I needed to know to talk about ordinary (political) ontology. But I was very wrong, as wrong as I could ever be. I didn’t know much about those objects. And maybe I still don’t, even after spending a chunk of my life in Bosnia and Kosovo and immersed in their ethnic divisions and enclaves. What I concluded from my Balkan experience was that since peace and democracy building were the ultimate goals for the region, the divisiveness of ethnic enclaves and the objects …

Panem's Parallel's: Authoritarianism In The Real World, Quentin J. Stewart

Honors Capstones

Throughout the twentieth century, there has been an increasing awareness and fear of authoritarian governments in the Western world, the United States in particular. While these methods of governance were steadily becoming more present in Western media throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, portrayals of authoritarianism and dystopia experienced a peak in popularity toward the end of the two-thousands decade, with book and film franchises like The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins spearheading this emergence. Many of the themes and aspects of the series setting alert the audience to many of the ways authoritarianism can be seen in real life, …

Economics Over All: How Neoliberalism Affects Our Paradigms Of Identity And Relationships In The 21st Century, Richard R. Murphy

2023 Symposium

Not much is more heavily debated in the realm of social sciences than the phenomenon of Neoliberalism. Philosophers and academics alike, from the lectures by Michel Foucault in the latter half of the 20th century, to the publications of David Harvey and Wendy Brown today, the only constant is that Neoliberalism is a complex and nuanced system of internal governmentality. These fundamental changes to our paradigms trigger an evolved adaptively plastic mechanism that regulates our inclusive and exclusive moralities. By analyzing the mechanic structure of Neoliberalism and how it changes our paradigms of identity and relations, we may begin to …

Social Pathologies As Educational Injustices, Esther Neuhann

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

For Axel Honneth, not all social problems can be understood as injustices. Therefore, he introduces the additional diagnostic concept of social pathology. In his book Freedom’s Right (FR), it is defined as an accumulation of persons’ inability to adequately participate in social institutions due to misunderstanding them. In contrast, injustices consist in the denial of access to social institutions for certain groups. According to the aim of presenting an ‘extended’ theory of justice in FR, Honneth intends to reconstruct all institutions necessary for realizing individual freedom in a liberal-democratic society. Like in the historical model of his project (Hegel’s Elements …

Political Theory, Activism, And Visual Media: The Ideology Of Protest Symbols, Jilly E. Crane-Mauzy Mx.

Whittier Scholars Program

Art changes culture while policy codifies it. Radical revolutionary movements are often accompanied by equally radical shifts in art and design. I cataloged, compared, and contrasted the semiotic power of three specific symbols and their most significant historical moments in the United States. Through the examination of; Stonewall, The Equality March March Against Death, The Day The World Said No To War, The 1968 Summer Olympics, and The 2020 Black Lives Matter, the shifting of each ideologies symbol from inflammation in the media to recognition showcases the clarifying function along with creating unity and pride in community that is integral …

An Emergentist Critique Of The Contract Theory Of The State Of Nature, With A Consideration On Two Types Of Polity And Their Origins., Ryan A. Apperson

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

The theories of the state of nature provided by the political philosophers Thomas Hobbes and John Locke have made a significant impact in the general conceptions of the origin of states. Though there are many critical differences in the conceptions of the state of nature between each in their seminal works, they both possess of a view of states that is rational and constructivist.

In this paper, I use the game theory concepts of the coordination game, collective action problem, and focal point to illustrate a lacuna in this rational and constructivist conception of the origin of states, as their …

Natural Lights & Natural Rights: The Problem Of The New Classical Natural Law Theory, Charles Neville Cacciatore

LSU Master's Theses

The present work examines the natural law jurisprudence of John Finnis. It argues that Finnis’s teaching is a genuinely new natural law theory. Finnis’s jurisprudence is not a re- presentation of the jurisprudence of St. Thomas Aquinas because its central element—a doctrine of natural rights—is a departure from Aquinas’s natural law teaching. In support of these claims, the present work relies upon the scholarship of Ernest L. Fortin, A.A. Following Fr. Fortin, it presents an understanding of the natural law that endorses a clear distinction between natural right and natural rights—between premodern political philosophy and modern political philosophy.

Discovering Dune: Essays On Frank Herbert’S Epic Saga., Edited By Dominic J. Nardi And N. Trevor Brierly, G. Connor Salter

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

G. Connor Salter reviews Discovering Dune: Essays on Frank Herbert’s Epic Saga, edited by Dominic J. Nardi and N. Trevor Brierly, considering its new contributions to studies of Frank Herbert's work. Essays included fit into four categories (Politics and Power, History and Religion, Biology and Ecology, and Philosophy, Choice and Ethics) and range from Herbert's use of ecology in Dune to how game theory may help explain certain characters' apparent ability to see the future. Discovering Dune also includes an appendix which contains the only up-to-date bibliography of Herbert's work (primary and secondary sources).

Review Of Against War: Building A Culture Of Peace, William J. Collinge

The Journal of Social Encounters

No abstract provided.

Review Of The Root Of War: Thomas Merton’S Advice To Peacemakers, Jerry Kendall

The Journal of Social Encounters

No abstract provided.

Review Of Social Defense, Eli Mccarthy

The Journal of Social Encounters

No abstract provided.

Are Saviour Siblings A Special Case In Procreative Ethics?, Elizabeth Finneron-Burns, Caleb Althorpe

Political Science Publications

Children conceived in order to donate biological material to save the life of an already existing child are known as 'saviour siblings'. The primary reasons that have been offered against the practice are: (i) creating a saviour sibling has negative impacts on the created child and (ii) creating a saviour child represents a wrongful procreative motivation of the parents. In this paper we examine to what extent the creation of saviour siblings actually presents a special case in procreative ethics. Although we do not deny that there is a unique feature present in the saviour sibling case—namely, that the child …

The "Roaring Flame": Pursuing Thymos In Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, Samrand Avestan, Owen G. Mordaunt

International Dialogue

Drawing principally from Francis Fukuyama’s (1952–) conception of thymos, this article focuses on exploring Okonkwo’s desire and his rigid personality in Chinua Achebe’s (1930–2013) magnum opus titled Things Fall Apart (1958). This paper hopes to prove how Achebe’s most famous character, Okonkwo, attempts to gratify his thymos which is described as a ‘desire for recognition’. Consistent with Fukuyama’s notion, this research examines how Okonkwo struggles to gain his thymos in confrontation with Ibo people and how his thymos-driven emotions incite him to reject the white colonists’ dominance in the fictional clan of Umuofia in Iboland. Therefore, we argue why Okonkwo’s …