https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.2307%2F3343168.pdf

Development as Freedom

政治自由主义 = Political liberalism

Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature brings to light the deep sense of crisis within the profession of academic philosophy which is similar to the paralyzing pluralism in contemporary theology and the inveterate indeterminacy of literary criticism. Richard Rorty's provocative and profound meditations impel philosophers to examine the problematic status of their discipline— only to discover that modern European philosophy has come to an end. Rorty strikes a deathblow to modern European philosophy by telling a story about the emergence, development and decline of its primary props: the correspondence theory of truth, the notion of privileged representations and the idea of a self-reflective transcendental subject. Rorty's fascinating tale—his-story —is regulated by three fundamental shifts which he delineates in detail and promotes in principle: the move toward anti-realism or conventionalism in ontology, the move toward the demythologizing of the Myth of the Given or anti-foundationalism in epistemology, and the move toward detranscendentalizing the subject or dismissing the mind as a sphere of inquiry. The chief importance of Rorty's book is that it brings together in an original and intelligible narrative the major insights of the patriarchs of postmodern American philosophy—W. V. Quine, Wilfred Sellars, and Nelson Goodman— and persuasively presents the radical consequences of their views for contemporary philosophy. Rorty credits Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Dewey for having "brought us into a period of 'revolutionary' philosophy" by undermining the prevailing Cartesian and Kantian paradigms and advancing new conceptions of philosophy. And these monumental figures surely inspire Rorty. Yet, Rorty's philosophical debts—the actual sources of his particular anti-Cartesian and antiKantian arguments—are Quine's holism, Sellars' anti-foundationalism, and Goodman's pluralism. In short, despite his adamant attack on analytical philosophy—the last stage of modern European philosophy—Rorty feels most comfortable with the analytical form of philosophical argumentation (shunned by Wittgenstein and Heidegger). From the disparate figures of Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Dewey, Rorty gets a historicist directive: to eschew the quest for certainty and the search for foundations.

Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature

The Law of Peoples John Rawls Harvard 1999 John Rawls, the great political philosopher, has turned his reflections to questions of international justice, much as his philosophical ancestor Kant did toward the end of his career. Indeed, Kant's conception of a "pacific federation" of states in Perpetual Peace is Rawls's acknowledged model for the "realistic utopia" sketched in The Law of Peoples, which expands upon his 1993 essay by the same title (without, however, revising its basic argument). Despite differing philosophical constraints and geopolitical conditions, both Kant and Rawls aim to develop an ideal normative framework for international law that accommodates a measure of realism and rejects the idea of a world-state. Unfortunately, in its uncritical acceptance of so-called "decent hierarchical societies" even at the level of ideal theory, the normative claim of Rawls's Law of Peoples is undermined. This philosophical appeasement, meant to secure perpetual peace in our time through a moderately demanding Law of Peoples that liberal and "decent" hierarchical societies alike can endorse, departs fundamentally from Kant's cosmopolitanism. For Kant, the "First Definitive Article of a Perpetual Peace-as opposed to a temporary interruption of hostilities-is that each member state of the foedus pacif cum must have a republican form of government, which is partly founded upon "the principle of legal equality for everyone (as citizens)." By contrast, Rawls weakens his ideal of international justice to buy the assent of hierarchical societies, which by definition lack equality among citizens, at the price of sacrificing a theoretical basis for justifying reforms of the practices and institutions of these hierarchical societies above a minimal level of decency. Rawls's complex argument begins by extending the original position, in which principles of justice for the basic structure of society are chosen under epistemic constraints that ensure fairness, from a single liberal society to what he calls the Society of Liberal Peoples. In a second step, though still within ideal theory, he argues that the substantive principles comprising the Law of Peoples are also acceptable to decent hierarchical societies, which possess decent consultation hierarchies and common good conceptions of justice. Despite being inegalitarian, decent hierarchical societies do respect basic human rights, allow some dissent, and at least consult with representatives of groups whose members are denied full citizenship rights. …

The Law of Peoples

This is the first new translation of both volumes of Nietzsche's Human, All-Too Human to appear since the beginning of the century. The first volume appeared in 1878, just before Nietzsche abandoned his academic life. In 1886 it was republished, incorporating in a second volume two books of aphorisms which Nietzsche had published in the meantime. Subtitled 'A Book for Free Spirits', Human, All Too Human marked for Nietzsche a new 'positivism' and scepticism with which he challenged his previous metaphysical and psychological assumptions. Nearly all the themes of his later work are displayed here with characteristic perceptiveness and honest), - it remains one of the works fundamental for an understanding of his thought.

Human, All-Too-Human: A Book for Free Spirits, Part 2

Transformation of the higher education (HE) sector in post-1994 South Africa serves a dual purpose. Firstly, it is a response to the local imperative of democratisation, in the sense of developing citizenship and social redress. Secondly, it is an attempt to reposition South African universities within the global HE terrain, which had changed considerably during the preceding period of South Africa's isolation. The scale of these changes has understandably caused feelings of discontent among academics, and has resulted in a growing literature, which seeks to explain both the process of transformation and its effects in terms of corporatisation. The authors argue instead that transformation of HE is better understood as a process of bureaucratisation. They acknowledge that this bureaucratisation has corporate aspects, but argue that these are incidental rather than essential. What is essential is the importation and imposition of an administrative structure which has brought academics increasingly under surveillance. This has not only changed the nature of the job, but also the ways in which academics relate to themselves and others, and has significantly eroded the autonomy of individual academics. The article ends by considering a range of responses to attend to this loss of autonomy.

Autonomy lost : the bureaucratisation of South African HE

In The idea of justice (2009), Amartya Sen builds on his previous work on capabilities to develop a theory of comparative justice which he contrasts to the contractarian approach. The theory has two parts: the proper materials of justice (capabilities); and, a procedure for assessing those materials. The procedure that Sen advocates is one of open impartial deliberation opera-tionalised through Adam Smith’s impartial spectator, which he contends is superior to contractarian view operationalised by Rawls’ original position. In this paper we argue that Sen’s open impartiality is too open and defend a more bounded version as more workable regardless of the operationalising device used. Moreover, we demonstrate that Sen’s own arguments against the possibility of agreement, though aimed at the contractarian tradition, undermine his own attempts to generate a contentful account of justice by driving a wedge between the materials and procedures. Sen’s attempt to provide an alternative approach to politic...

Sen and Sensibility

Transformation of the higher education sector in post-1994 South Africa serves a dual purpose. Firstly, it is a response to the local imperative of democratization, in the sense of developing citizenship and social redress. Secondly, it is an attempt to reposition South African universities within the global higher education terrain, which had changed considerably during the preceding period of South Africa’s isolation. The scale of these changes has understandably caused feelings of discontent among academics, and has resulted in a growing literature, which seeks to explain both the process of transformation and its effects in terms of corporatization. We argue instead that transformation of higher education is better understood as a process of bureaucratization. We acknowledge that this bureaucratization has corporate aspects, but argue that these are incidental rather than essential. What is essential is the importation and imposition of an administrative structure which has brought academics increasingly under surveillance. This has not only changed the nature of the job, but also the ways in which academics relate to themselves and others, and has significantly eroded the autonomy of individual academics. We end by considering a range of responses to attend to this loss of autonomy.

Autonomy Lost: the Bureaucratization of Higher Education

In this paper I consider what it might mean to see society as a kind of Rortian conversation. Although the idea of conversation is not always explicit in Rorty’s social thought, it is, I think, implicitly present. To therefore invoke it as a model is not to do an injustice to Rorty, but to bring out features of his own thought that he tends to underplay. In suggesting that we take seriously the notion of society as a kind of conversation, we should be careful not to overplay the aspect of talking, which is only a part of conversation. We should bear in mind that it also means living together. It must be admitted, nevertheless, that Rorty introduces the idea of conversation as a way of thinking about discourse, and so the notion as Rorty uses it prioritises the notion of talking. I would argue, however, that Rorty leaves his notion sufficiently vague and undefined to make it amenable to extension. In order to argue that we should look to the idea of conversation as a way of thinking about society m...

Sketch of a conversational society

As sympathetic outsiders trying to understand and explain the field of philosophical counselling to other (perhaps not so sympathetic) outsiders, we find ourselves repeatedly asking and being asked...

Julia Clare

Papers

Autonomy lost : the bureaucratisation of South African HE

Sen and Sensibility

Autonomy Lost: the Bureaucratization of Higher Education

Sketch of a conversational society

Towards a taxonomy of philosophical counselling