Suchergebnisse

Universal principles direct political life by defending natural rights and by directing politics to the dominance of reason in enjoying other goods. Good politics comprises the institutions and laws that combine these principles in the most excellent conditions, and lesser politics would imitate these as appropriate to their own circumstances. Principles much like our founding ones are universal in this subtle manner, and are, therefore, justly available for export, in complex ways. Adapted from the source document.

Federalism has been described by Dicey as "a political contrivance intended to reconcile national unity and power with the maintenance of 'state right'". Dr. Schmitt, a contemporary German student of federal institutions, has stated that "the nature of union consists in a dualism of the political existence, in a combination of federative common existence and political unity on the one hand with the continuance of plurality, of a pluralism of political individual unities, on the other". Lord Bryce had expressed the same thought in more picturesque language in his earlier study of federal institutions in the United States.The central or national government and the State governments may be compared to a large building and a set of smaller buildings standing on the same ground yet distinct from each other. It is a combination sometimes seen where a great church has been erected over more ancient homes of worship. First the soil is covered by a number of small shrines and chapels, built at different times and in different styles of architecture, each complete in itself. Then over them and including them all in its spacious fabric there is reared a new pile with its own loftier roof, its own walls, which may rest upon and incorporate the walls of the older shrines, its own internal plan. The identity of the earlier buildings has, however, not been obliterated; and if the later and larger structure were to disappear, a little repair would enable them to keep out wind and weather, and be again what they once were, distinct and separate edifices.

This article takes a new idea, 'normative behaviourism', and applies it to global political theory, in order to address at least one of the problems we might have in mind when accusing that subject of being too 'unrealistic'. The core of this idea is that political principles can be justified, not just by patterns in our thinking, and in particular our intuitions and considered judgements, but also by patterns in our behaviour, and in particular acts of insurrection and crime. The problem addressed is 'cultural relativism', understood here not as a meta-ethical doctrine but as the apparent 'fact' that people around the world have culturally varying intuitions and judgements of a kind that lead them to affirm different political principles. This is a problem because it seems to follow (1) that global agreement on any substantial set of political principles is impossible and (2) that any political theory in denial of this 'fact' would be, for that reason, deeply unrealistic. The solution to this problem argued for here is that if domestic political principles (i.e. principles intended to regulate a single state) could be justified by normative behaviourism, and in reference to culturally invariant behaviour, then an international system supportive of such principles is justifiable by extension.

The Presbyterian and Reformed Review, volume 12, issue 45, pages 39-48

"The treatise . was originally a thesis written . in partial fulfilment [!] of the requirements for the degree of Master of arts at Boone university, Wuchang."--Pref. ; Mode of access: Internet.

Abstract
Although it is necessary for the truth of a cognition that the cognition answer to the thing known, still it is not necessary that the mode of the thing known be the same as the mode of its cognition.
—Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, II, 75
The only safe way to apply Kant's test of universalizability is to envisage the act in its whole concrete particularity.
—Sir David Ross, Kant's Ethical Theory

This article takes a new idea, 'normative behaviourism', and applies it to global political theory, in order to address at least one of the problems we might have in mind when accusing that subject of being too 'unrealistic'. The core of this idea is that political principles can be justified, not just by patterns in our thinking, and in particular our intuitions and considered judgements, but also by patterns in our behaviour, and in particular acts of insurrection and crime. The problem addressed is 'cultural relativism', understood here not as a meta-ethical doctrine but as the apparent 'fact' that people around the world have culturally varying intuitions and judgements of a kind that lead them to affirm different political principles. This is a problem because it seems to follow (1) that global agreement on any substantial set of political principles is impossible and (2) that any political theory in denial of this 'fact' would be, for that reason, deeply unrealistic. The solution to this problem argued for here is that if domestic political principles (i.e. principles intended to regulate a single state) could be justified by normative behaviourism, and in reference to culturally invariant behaviour, then an international system supportive of such principles is justifiable by extension.