Suchergebnisse

Was ist der politische cash value von Richard Rortys Neopragmatismus? Dieses Buch wendet die pragmatische Methode auf Rortys Denken selbst an und fragt u.a.: Ist die Figur der liberalen Ironikerin, die eine pragmatisch-kommunitaristische Verabschiedung des Begründungsproblems verkörpert, überzeugend? In dieser ersten umfassenden deutschsprachigen Monografie zu Rortys Neopragmatismus rekonstruiert Martin Müller dessen Neubeschreibung des Liberalismus als spannungsreiche Verbindung von Romantik und Pragmatismus und arbeitet im Vergleich vor allem mit Habermas, Rawls und Walzer seinen - ethisch motivierten - transformativen Charakter heraus. Das Buch enthält zudem einen E-Mail-Austausch zwischen Richard Rorty und dem Autor. »Die bislang wohl eindrucksvollste Monographie zu Rorty.« (Ulrich Weiß, Hochschule für Politik München) »Eine überragende Rekonstruktion und Diskussion des Rorty'schen Denkens.« (Wolfgang Bonß, Universität der Bundeswehr München)

Hegel's historical and political thought can best be understood if we understand its relationship to Rousseau's political theory and Kant's philosophy of history. Hegel's conception of the modem state closely resembles Rousseau's ideal community which was based upon rational freedom realized through a general will and reinforced by custom and tradition which shaped the character and interests of the citizens. However, Rousseau's community was utopian-it could not be realized in the modem world. It was incompatible with commerce and trade which promote particular interest and thus corrupt custom and erode the general will. These matters will be discussed in Section III. To explain the possibility of the ideal state in the modern worid, Hegel turns to Kant's philosophy of history where commerce, trade, and confliccing particular interests themselves lead to what morality the categorical imperative or the general will-would demand. Kant's ideal state, however, completely lacks custom, tradition, and community-what Hegel calls "Sittlichkeit." These matters will be discussed in Section II.

Kant combined two traditional approaches in his political theory, reference to a utopian and ideal universal moral order in common with Plato, Thomas More, and Jean Jacques Rousseau and an analysis of the pursuit of individual self-interest leading to the establishment of laws that enable citizens to satisfy their interests, like Thomas Hobbes, Niccolò Machiavelli, and Adam Smith. Kant focused on the international level, arguing that following the categorical imperative would arrange a society equitably while national commercial self-interest would lead to a league of nations to adjudicate international disputes. Kant was unique in providing both a theory of an ideal society and a method to achieve it.

In early work, I argued that Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States, often represented, in his political speeches and writings, a form of philosophical pragmatism with special relations to the University of Chicago and its reform tradition. That form of pragmatism, especially evident in the work of such early figures as John Dewey and Jane Addams, and such later figures as Saul Alinsky, Abner Mikva, David Greenstone, Richard Rorty, Danielle Allen, and Cass Sunstein, contributed greatly to the intellectual atmosphere that Obama breathed during his many years in Chicago as a community organizer, senior lecturer in the University of Chicago Law School, and emerging figure in Illinois politics. And that form of pragmatism has, from Dewey to Obama, been keenly concerned to appropriate for its purposes the legacy of Abraham Lincoln. My purpose in this essay is to set out these filiations in ways more accessible to a global audience, and to carry the story forward through the opening moves of the Obama presidency.

THIS ESSAY CONSISTS OF A COLLECTION OF ARGUMENTS WHICH have been more fully developed elsewhere but are presented here in rather summary form in order to point towards a fundamental problem concerning the present status of political theory in the discipline of political science. This problem is not easily defined; but the difficulty recalls Alfred Cobban's complaint twenty-five years ago that political theory had become disen aged Lom 'political facts' and 'political practice' and transformed into an 'academic discipline'. My concern is with the 'philosophization' of political theory. By this I do not mean simply that political theory is not relevant to politics or has become detached from actual political issues – although this is probably quite true – but that it has tended to become a residue of arguments in academic philosophy. The bios theoretikos and the bios philosophikos have become indistinguishable.

GREEN AND SHAPIRO'S 'PATHOLOGIES OF RATIONAL CHOICE THEORY' FAILS AS A CONVINCING CRITIQUE OF RATIONAL CHOICE APPLICATIONS IN POLITICAL SCIENCE BECAUSE IT LOCKS ITSELF INTO A STATISTICAL FORM OF ASSESSMENT. RATHER THAN SEEING THE CONSTRUCTIVE SIDE OF RATIONAL CHOICE THEORY, BOTH AS AN ENGINE OF THEORETICAL DEVELOPMENT AND AS A SOURCE OF NON-OBVIOUS EMPIRICAL INSIGHTS ABOUT POLITICS, GREEN AND SHAPIRO DEPART FROM THE PROCEDURE IN MOST SCIENCES, COMPARING RATIONAL CHOICE AGAINST AN IDEAL RATHER THAN SOME CONCRETE ALTERNATIVE. FINALLY, THEY FAIL TO NOTE THE RECENT EMPHASIS ON SOPHISTICATED EMPIRICAL TESTING OF RATIONAL CHOICE HYPOTHESES.