Political Theory 

About: Political Theory is an academic journal published by SAGE Publishing. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Politics & Political philosophy. It has an ISSN identifier of 0090-5917. Over the lifetime, 1697 publications have been published receiving 44778 citations. The journal is also known as: PT.

Human Functioning and Social Justice: In Defense of Aristotelian Essentialism

Abstract: It will be seen how in place of the wealth and poverty of political economy come the rich human being and rich human need. The rich human being is simultaneously the human being in need of totality of human life-activities — the man in whom his own realization exists as an inner necessity, as need.Marx, Economic andPhilosophical Manuscripts of 1844Svetaketu abstained from food for fifteen days. Then he came to his father and said, `What shall I say?' The father said: `Repeat the Rik, Yagus, and Saman verses.' He replied, `They do not occur to me, Sir.' The father said to him... `Go and eat! Then wilt thou understand me.' Then Svetaketu ate, and afterwards approached his father. And whatever his father asked him, he knew it all by heart.... After that, he understood what his father meant when he said: `Mind, my son, comes from food, breath from water, speech from fire.' He understood what he said, yea, he understood it.Chandogya-Upanishad, VI Prapathaka, 7 KandaWhen you love a man you want him to live and ...

American Nightmare Neoliberalism, Neoconservatism, and De-Democratization

Abstract: Neoliberalism and neoconservatism are two distinct political rationalities in the contemporary United States. They have few overlapping formal characteristics, and even appear contradictory in many respects. Yet they converge not only in the current presidential administration but also in their de-democratizing effects. Their respective devaluation of political liberty, equality, substantive citizenship, and the rule of law in favor of governance according to market criteria on the one side, and valorization of state power for putatively moral ends on the other, undermines both the culture and institutions of constitutional democracy. Above all, the two rationalities work symbiotically to produce a subject relatively indifferent to veracity and accountability in government and to political freedom and equality among the citizenry.

On Legitimacy and Political Deliberation

Abstract: The theoretical controversies that the notion of social justice provokes today go far beyond the traditional framework of debates about the respective roles of the market and the state in the distribution of wealth.' The principal arguments that have been proposed seek, in effect, to define social rules capable of bringing about the unanimous agreement of individuals. The most radical form of liberalism maintains that protection against arbitrary coercion is the sole common aim of all human beings living in society. The liberty of individuals is identified with their security: protected from coercion by others, every individual may freely seek happiness as he understands it, determine his own goals, and attempt to realize them, at least as long as this exercise of his freedom does not encroach upon the freedom of his fellows. Security is thus the only acceptable political principle; while all individuals have different concrete goals, they all wish to pursue their own goals in peace. If the rules promulgated by the political authorities limit themselves to guaranteeing liberty as defined in this manner, they can be universal, and apply to all in an identical fashion, because liberty is the sole aspect under which all individuals are strictly identical. Indeed, whenever

About the Beginning of the Hermeneutics of the Self Two Lectures at Dartmouth

Abstract: Texte integral des deux conferences donnees par M. Foucault au College de Dartmouth en 1980 sous les titres de « Subjectivity and Truth » et « Christianity and Confession ». Elles marquent une transition de l'etude des systemes de relations de pouvoir vers l'etude de la creation de l'agent ethique et font allusion aux themes qui apparaitront plus tard dans les volumes 2 et 3 de l'« Histoire de la sexualite »

The Procedural Republic and the Unencumbered Self

Abstract: O gLITICAL PHILOSOPHY seems often to reside at a distance from the world. Principles are one thing, politics another, and even our best efforts to "live up" to our ideals typically founder on the gap between theory and practice.' But if political philosophy is unrealizable in one sense, it is unavoidable in another. This is the sense in which philosophy inhabits the world from the start; our practices and institutions are embodiments of theory. To engage in a political practice is already to stand in relation to theory.2 For all our uncertainties about ultimate questions of political philosophy-of justice and value and the nature of the good life-the one thing we know is that we live some answer all the time. In this essay I will try to explore the answer we live now, in contemporary America. What is the political philosophy implicit in our practices and institutions? How does it stand, as philosophy? And how do tensions in the philosophy find expression in our present political condition? It may be objected that it is a mistake to look for a single philosophy, that we live no "answer," only answers. But a plurality of answers is itself a kind of answer. And the political theory that affirms this plurality is the theory I propose to explore.