Henry Richardson succeeds John Deigh as Editor of Ethics

From the press release:

Henry S. Richardson named new Editor of
Ethics: An International Journal of Social, Political, and Legal Philosophy
Press salutes accomplishments of departing editor John Deigh

The University of Chicago Press salutes the service of John Deigh, Professor of Law and Philosophy at the University of Texas-Austin for his eleven year term of service as the editor of Ethics: An International Journal of Social, Political, and Legal Philosophy. He previously served as Associate editor from 1985-1997, and served as the book review editor from 1990-1996. Under his leadership, the journal strengthened its position as the premier journal in its field.

The Press is pleased to announce the appointment to a five year term of Henry S. Richardson as the new Editor of Ethics, where he is currently an Associate Editor, effective July 1, 2008.“I am excited to be taking over the helm at Ethics at this time,” Richardson comments, “for now it is more possible than ever before for this venerable and vibrant journal, so well nurtured under John Deigh’s leadership, to live up to its full title, Ethics: An International Journal of Social, Political, and Legal Philosophy. While moral philosophy will always lie at the journal’s core, I look forward to reaching out both to scholars abroad and to those in allied fields who write on normative issues.”

About Henry S. Richardson
Henry S. Richardson is Professor of Philosophy and Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University. Currently an Associate Editor of Ethics and Editor-at-Large of the Human Development and Capability Association, Richardson has taught at Georgetown since 1986. He has also served as visiting scholar at the Department of Clinical Bioethics, Clinical Center, National Institutes of Health. After earning his undergraduate degree at Harvard College, he went on to earn graduate degrees in law and in public policy at Harvard University before earning his Ph.D. there under John Rawls. He would later edit, with Paul Weithman, The Philosophy of Rawls. Dr. Richardson’s work centers on practical reasoning in all of its many guises: in the reasoning of individuals about their aims, in the democratic reasoning of citizens about public policy, and in our moral reasoning. Dr. Richardson’s initial work concerned the nature of individual reasoning. His more recent book, Democratic Autonomy: Public Reasoning about the Ends of Policy, won the Herbert A. Simon Award in Public Administration and the David Easton Award in the Foundations of Political Theory. He is the current recipient of an NEH Fellowship for University Teachers to begin a book project in moral theory entitled Articulating the Moral Community.

That aspiration to live up to the full title is a good one. It seems to me that Richardson is right-- while the journal is in great shape and is incomparable in moral philosophy, the articles section has seen social, political, and legal philosophy, to varying degrees, slip away over the past decade or so. (The same is not true of the book reviews.) Best of luck to him.

Bouchard-Taylor Commission: The Climax Approaches

The press has gotten ahold of a leaked (French) copy of the commission's report: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

From the summaries and reactions, it seems as though the report was filled with decency, moderation, and good sense (e.g. "enough about the hijab")... which means it's doomed to impotence. Better that than the alternative, but I feel for the commissioners; they're in for a brutal reception. As I've said several times, they were given an impossible combination of explicit and implicit missions.

I'll have more to say after I've read the report myself.

The official

Modern Political Thought, Winter, 2008

If I want my August to be free of hecticness, I ought to start thinking now about how to rework this. But here's what we did this past semester.

POLI 232: Modern Political Thought
Winter 2008, McGill University
Jacob T. Levy

This course provides an introduction to questions of morality and politics: what it is for a private person or an officeholder to act ethically in a political society, the degree to which an individual person ought to be free from political interference to follow his or her own moral understanding, what collective decisions ought to be made, and who ought to make them. Through analyses of some of the central ethical questions in politics (obedience, freedom, the use of bad means for good ends) and some of the central modern views about right and wrong in politics (liberalism, conservatism, socialism, and democracy) it will offer an introductions to key concepts in social science and in ethics.

1. January 4: Introduction

Part I. Ethics and Politics

2. January 7:
Thoreau, “Resistance to Civil Government” [appearing under the modern title “Civil Disobedience”]

3. January 9:
Max Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” in Gerth and Mills, eds., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, Oxford University Press, 1958 [1919] pp. 77-128

4. January 11:
Sophocles, Antigone, entire

5. January 14
Plato, “Crito” and “The Apology”

6. January 16-18
Machiavelli, The Prince, ch. 8-26

7. January 21:
Michael Walzer, “Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands” Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 2, No. 2. (Winter, 1973), pp. 160-180.
Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0048-3915%28197324%292%3A2%3C160%3APATPOD%3E2.0.CO%3B2-7

8. January 23-25:
Bernard Williams, “A Critique of Utilitarianism,” in Smart & Williams, Utilitarianism, for and against, Cambridge University Press, pp. 93-118.
Williams, “Politics and Moral Character,” and Thomas Nagel, “Ruthlessness in Public Life,” in Stuart Hampshire, ed., Public and Private Morality, Cambridge University Press, pp. 56-73 and 75-91

9. January 28:
Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, University of Chicago Press, 1996, pp. 19-38
Thucydides, “The Melian Dialogue,” from History of the Peloponnesian War

10. January 30- February 1:
Robert Nozick, “The Tale of the Slave,” from Anarchy, State, and Utopia, pp. 290-2.
Robert Paul Wolff, In Defense of Anarchism, University of California Press, 1970, pp. 3-19
Aristotle, The Politics, Everson ed., Cambridge University Press, pp. 65-8 and 170-1

11. February 5:
F. A. Hayek, “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” The American Economic Review, Vol. 35, No. 4. (Sep., 1945), pp. 519-530.
Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-8282%28194509%2935%3A4%3C519%3ATUOKIS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-1
John Dewey, The Political Writings, Hackett, pp. 158-60, 169-72

FEBRUARY 6: FIRST PAPER DUE

12. February 7-9:
Michael Oakeshott, “Rationalism in Politics,” in Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays, Liberty Fund, pp. 5-43
Jeremy Bentham, Bentham’s Handbook of Anarchical Fallacies, pp. 43-51, 131-5, 193-205

Part II. Liberty

13. February 12.
Plato, The Republic, Allan Bloom trans., pp. 235-242 (557a-564a), 251-60 (571a-579e)

14. February 14-16.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, in Gourevitch,ed., The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings, Cambridge University Press, pp. 49-54, 59-64, 121-2 (I.6-8, II.3-4, IV.1)
Benjamin Constant, “The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with That of the Moderns,” in Biancamaria Fontana, ed., Constant: Political Writings, Cambridge University Press, pp. 309-28

15. February 19.
Isaiah Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” in Four Essays on Liberty, Oxford University Press, pp. 119-54

16. February 21-23.
Berlin, “Two Concepts,” pp. 154-72.
Charles Taylor, “What’s Wrong With Negative Liberty,” in Philosophical Papers vol 2: Philosophy and the Human Sciences, pp. 211-29

Part III. Ideas, ideals, and ideologies: what shall we do?

19. March 3:
John Locke, Second Treatise of Civil Government, Cambridge University Press, pp. 269-78, 330-63, ch. 2, 8-11
Declaration of American Independence

21. March 5-7:
David Hume, “Of the Original Contract,” in Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, Liberty Fund, pp. 465-88
Hume, Political Writings, Hackett, pp. 51-73 [Treatise of Human Nature III.8-10]
Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The Conservative,” in Essays & Lectures, Library of America, pp. 173-89

22. March 10:
Oakeshott, “On Being Conservative,” in Rationalism in Politics, pp. 407-37

23. March 12-14
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, ch. 1-2

24. March 17
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, ch. 3-5

25. March 19
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Harvard University Press, 1971, pp. 3-33 and 54-65

28. March 26-28.
Karl Marx, “On the Jewish Question,” in Tucker, ed., The Marx-Engels Reader, pp. 26-52
“The Communist Manifesto,” sections 1 and 2, pp. 469-91

29. March 31.
Publius, The Federalist Papers, Rossiter ed., Signet, pp. 66-79, 297-322 (#s 9-10, 47-51
And review: Rousseau reading from February 14-16
Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen

30. April 2-4.
John Stuart Mill, Considerations on Representative Government, ch. 16, “Of Nationality.”

31. April 7
Isaiah Berlin, “The Pursuit of the Ideal,” in The Crooked Timber of Humanity, Vintage, pp. 1-19
George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language,” in The Orwell Reader, Harvest, pp. 355-66

Quote of the Day

From Brad DeLong.

Glaukon: But the bottom line is that we don't have good explanations at any deep level for why the U.S. today is and stays 30 times richer than Kenya.

Akhilleus: Or, rather, that we have good explanations but they are historians', political scientists', and sociologists' explanations--not explanations in which a facility with the differential calculus is terribly helpful and thus not explanations instrumentally useful to a sect of academics who want to use their facility with the differential calculus to impose a form of hegemonic domination over social science in general.

The post has a great title, too: "After the Examination All Professors Are Sad: A Dialogue About Teaching the Wrong Thing."

Neutrality conference roundup

Jon Mandle has posted a summary at Crooked Timber, and the commentators' remarks and the discussions (though not the paper presentations) are available for audio download.

Conference: "Justice, Culture and Tradition"

"Justice, Culture and Tradition"

To recognize Michael Walzer's contributions to the ethical and political philosophy of the twentieth century, a conference titled Justice, Culture and Tradition will take place June 2-4, 2008 at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), Princeton, New Jersey.

The Conference will consider the following questions:

How should liberalism treat cultures, cultural diversity and cultural identities?

How should the just society distribute resources and the goods social life produces?

When is waging war justified? What is the meaning of national self-defense and how is it related to self-defense in the domestic realm?

Is an international system constituted from fully sovereign states justified, or should the international society be federalized?

The political philosophy of the 20th century intensely explored the themes raised by these questions; however, a conception of the inter-relations among the issues they raise is still under-developed. A penetrating discussion of Walzer's philosophy will allow us to fill this gap.

Michael Walzer will attend and comment on the papers presented.

The conference is organized by Professor Yitzhak Benbaji of Bar-Ilan University and Shalom Hartman Institute.


All sessions are free of charge and open to the public. Please RSVP for each session by contacting Danielle Candy at dcandy@cceia.org, or 212-838-4120, ext. 259.

MONDAY, JUNE 2ND

9:45AM - 10:00AM Greeting Session
IAS Director Peter Goddard and Conference Organizer Yitzhak Benbaji (Bar-Ilan University)

10:00AM - 12:15PM "Distributive Justice"
Speakers
Thomas Scanlon (Harvard University)
Michael J. Sandel (Harvard University)
Commentator
Amy Gutmann (University of Pennsylvania)
Chair
Joan W.Scott (IAS)

2:00PM - 3:00PM "The Interpretive View of Ethics"
Speaker
Georgia Warnke (University of California)
Commentator
Susan Neiman (Einstein Forum)
Chair
Harry Frankfurt (Princeton University)

3:30PM - 6:00PM Round Table: "The Practice of Social Criticism"
Speakers
Mitchell Cohen (CUNY Baruch College)
Martin Peretz (The New Republic)
Menachem Lorberbaum (Tel Aviv University)
Axel Honneth (Institut fur Sozialforschung)
Chair
Ian Shapiro (Yale University)


TUESDAY, JUNE 3RD

10:00AM - 12:15PM "Multiculturalism, Civil Society, and the Politics of Recognition"
Speakers
Jacob T. Levy (McGill University)
Will Kymlicka (Queen's University)
Commentator
Charles Taylor (McGill University)

2:00PM - 5:00PM Round Table: "The Just War Theory - Moral and Legal Perspectives"
Speakers
Yitzhak Benbaji (Bar-Ilan University)
Jeff McMahan (Rutgers University)
Brian Orend (University of Waterloo)
Commentator
Noam J. Zohar (Bar-Ilan University)


Speakers
Michael Doyle (Columbia University)
Haim Shapira (Bar-Ilan University)
Chair
Joel Rosenthal (Carnegie Council)
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 4TH

10:00AM - 12:15PM "Tradition, Radicalism and Solidarity"
Speakers
Avishai Margalit (Institute for Advanced Study)
George Kateb (Princeton University)
Commentator
Moshe Halbertal (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)


2:00PM - 4:00PM "The Moral Standing of States"
Speaker
Ruth Gavison (The Hebrew University)
Charles R. Beitz (Princeton University)
Commentator
Nancy L. Rosenblum (Harvard University)
Chair
Jacob T. Levy (McGill University)


4:30PM - 6:30PM Round Table: "The Jewish Political Tradition"
Speakers
Leon Wieseltier (The New Republic)
David Novak (University of Toronto)
Pierre Birnbaum (Columbia University Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies)
Chair
Noam J. Zohar (Bar-Ilan University)

Now online

"It Usually Begins With Isaiah Berlin," my essay on Richard Flathman's Pluralism and Liberal Democracy for a symposium on the same in the current issue of The Good Society. The symposium also includes contributions from George Kateb, Eric MacGilvray, and Richard Boyd, and a response by Flathman.

Intentions and Motivations in International Relations

FRIDAY MAY 23 2008
Department of philosophy, University of Montreal, room 422

Sponsored by the Centre de recherches en éthique de l'Université de
Montréal (CRÉUM)
Convenors: Ryoa Chung / France Gaudreault / Jean-Baptiste Jeangène Vilmer
and Martin Blanchard


Workshop themes : This workshop proposes to examine the notions of
intention and motivation in international relations in the spirit of
an interdisciplinary dialogue between philosophy, law and political
science for the benefit of a deepened understanding of ethics in
international relations. The goal of this interdisciplinary workshop
is to explore new paths of research in the study of intentions and
motivations in political and moral agency and to better understand the
role they play in individual, collective or corporate action.

Participants :

Simon Caney (Oxford University)
Ryoa Chung (Université de Montréal)
Peter Dietsch (Université de Montréal)
Jean-Baptiste Jeangène Vilmer (Université de Montréal / ÉHESS / McGill
University)
Pablo Gilabert (Concordia University)
Frédéric Mégret (McGill University)
Christine Straehle (UQÀM)
Daniel Weinstock (CRÉUM)

where and when ?

Friday May 23 2008
Université de montréal
2910 boul. Edouard-montpetit
Room 422
Métro université de montréal

Full program here.

Now online

at my SSRN page: "Not so Novus an Ordo: Constitutions without Social Contracts," forthcoming in Political Theory.

CFP: Harvard graduate Conference in Political Theory

CALL FOR PAPERS
Harvard University
Graduate Conference in Political Theory
October 31–November 1, 2008

The Department of Government (FAS) at Harvard University will host its second conference for graduate students in political theory and political philosophy from October 31–November 1, 2008. Papers on any theme or topic within political theory—from the history of political thought to contemporary normative and conceptual theory—will be considered. Between seven and twelve papers will be accepted.

Each presentation should last no longer than 20 minutes; please limit your paper sub-
mission to 20 double-spaced pages. Please format it for blind review: the text should
include your title but also be free of personal and institutional information; and a
separate cover page should include your title; a brief abstract (100 words max.); and
your name, e-mail address, and institutional affiliation.

Discussion panels comprised of Harvard graduate students will accompany each accepted
paper. Each presenter will have a chance to answer questions during a general discus-
sion period after each panel discussion.

Food and housing will be provided by the Government Department and its graduate stu-
dents. Unfortunately, Harvard will not be able to provide funds for transportation.
Submissions are due via e-mail (in PDF) on August 1, 2008. Acceptance notices will
be sent by early September. Papers will be refereed by juries composed of current
graduate students in the Government Department at Harvard.

Questions, comments, and submissions should be sent to
•
For more information, please visit the conference Web site at
• http://isites.harvard.edu/k16266.

Charles Tilly

Mario Small at orgtheory reports that Charles Tilly, one of the dominant figures in the human sciences for decades, passed away this morning. He integrated and made major contributions to many fields of the social sciences, building systematic thinking and theorizing as well as deep knowledge of history in an incredibly fruitful way. This is a major loss.

Forecasts

Two interesting posts about pending or present difficulties in two different hybrid disciplines.

Josh Wright on the future of law and economics in an era of constantly-increasing technical sophistication in economics.

omar at orgtheory on organizations theory: "where are the phenomena?"

Elsewhere

If you're someone who should be reading Professor Fabio's Grad Skool Roolz series, you presumably already are reading it and don't need advice from me to do so. But just in case: "grad skool rulz #19: words for women."

AAAS 2008

(2007 post here, 2006 post here.)

One political theorist elected to the AAAS this year, Charles Beitz of Princeton. Congratulations, and congratulations also to former colleagues Sue Stokes and Stathis Kalyvas. Political philosopher Elizabeth Anderson was inducted, as was McGill's incoming Macdonald Chair in Moral Philosophy, Calvin Normore, and Princeton political philosopher/ religious scholar Jeffrey Stout. Margaret Jane Radin, who has also made important contributions to political theory, was chosen under law.

Hither and yon, New England road trip edition

Today: "Federalism and Constitutional Entrenchment," Harvard Law School Public Law Workshop.

Tomorrow: same paper, Brown University Political Philosophy Workshop.

Saturday: "The Publicity Puzzle," New England Political Science Association

Hm.

As far as I can tell, the Supreme Court Justices in oral arguments in this year's important Indian law case, Plains Commerce Bank v Long Family Land and Cattle Co., were pretty close to laughing Plains' attorney ("Mr. Banker," remarkably enough) out of court.

I'm happy to see that, because an adverse ruling in this case would be very, very bad for the ability of tribal governments to exercise even minimally coherent jurisdiction, something I've written about at some length.

At the same time, I kind of feel for the guy-- because, while he did not correctly describe the current state of the law, he did a pretty good job describing the first derivative of it. He plotted the dots of the various Supreme Court cases, drew the line connecting them, and extrapolated out to the next case. Several times he kind of stammers that he figures the Justices would want to keep going in the direction they've been going. In some areas of law, that's the right argumentative approach- you say "here are the principles underlying the caselaw, they successfully account for the trajectory and give it coherence, and we see that those principles get us this outcome in the case at hand, even though that's not actually what the current rules would say."

In Indian law, the correct answer to that is: "Principles? Coherence?" It's not always clear here that the Justices even remember what their own recent cases say, so they're left just looking at the place Banker wants to take them, not whether that place really does lie on the straight-line path connecting their previous cases. They seem to think it's a ridiculous place, which is true.

Anyway, it does now seem possible that the Court will find that the consent exception in Montana can be satisfied short of a non-Indian expressly choosing Indian law and tribal court jurisdiction. The Court has... not been in the habit of finding that the Montana exceptions could ever really be satisfied, which Banker appeared to be counting on. And it seems possible that the Court will reconcile the genuine tension in its caselaw about the relationship between adjudicatory jurisdiction and regulatory jurisdiction in favor of bringing them into line with each other.

These are both Good Things. Therefore I don't bet that they'll happen. In particular, I'm sure Kennedy is just playing with arguments in his exchanges with Banker-- his own past opinions mean that he's not really skeptical of Banker's view of non-members' rights. Oral argument can be like that sometimes; Justices explore ideas, and it's dangerous to treat that as if they were telegraphing their ultimate votes. But in the meantime, it's nice to see Scalia making Banker squirm, and to see at least some realization of how ridiculous the anti-tribal-jurisdiction arguments can become.

Over at the Legal Times blog, Tony Mauro notes a funny exchange between Roberts and Long's lawyer.

An important new paper

"Reassessing the Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism"

"In 'The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism,' Robert Pape presents an analysis of
his suicide terrorism data. He uses the data to draw inferences about how territorial
occupation and religious extremism afect the decision of terrorist groups to use
suicide tactics. We show that the data are incapable of supporting Pape's conclusions
because he 'samples on the dependent variable.' (The data only contains cases in
which suicide terror is used.) We construct bounds (Manski, 1995) on the quantities
relevant to Pape's hypotheses and show exactly how little can be learned about the
relevant statistical associations from the data produced by Pape's research design."

Great moments in multiculturalism and free speech


Marc Lebuis has

filed a complaint to the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) for "hate propaganda" against Montreal salafi imam Hammaad Abu Sulaiman Al-Dameus Hayiti who officiates at the Association Musulmane de Montréal Est mosque. The complaint relates to his book L'Islam ou l'Intégrisme ? À la lumière du Qor'an et de la Sounnah downloadable from the Internet, and his extremist teachings that are also broadcast on the Internet.

The teachings of imam Al-Hayiti are suprematists, misogynistic and hateful. According to the imam, his fellow non-Muslims are "koufars" (unbelievers, infidels, impious), Québec women are perverse, and the population is "stupid and ignorant." The imam also calls for the destruction of the "idols" of the West: democracy, human rights, secularism, freedom and modernity. By disseminating his teachings on the Internet, the imam tries to win adherents to his extreme views.

The CHRC has launched an investigation against Maclean's and writer Mark Steyn for "hate propaganda" in relation to the publication by Maclean's of an article entitled "The Future belongs to Islam" (excerpts from Steyn's bestselling book "America Alone"). The investigation follows a complaint filed by the Canadian Islamic Congress and four Toronto Muslim law students. This initiative is an attempt at censorship and an attack on freedom of the press, for which the CHRC acts as an enabler.

If the CHRC refuse to investigate my complaint, the public will be free to conclude that an institution meant to promote human rights is practicing a form of one-way absurd censorship. As a result, legitimate criticism of Islam is discouraged, while those who advocate the destruction of democracy and freedoms are protected. If the CHRC agrees to open an investigation, the writings of the imam will be exposed and scrutinized and, hopefully, discredited by the media. In the future, the media and the public will feel free to denounce subversive and hateful preachers without having to resort to the CHRC.

He continues to try to have it both ways in this follow-up press release:

1. If the CHRC refuses to consider my complaint (while currently investigating Maclean’s and Mark Steyn), we will be free to conclude that the CHRC defines its mandate as one of censorship of what any Muslim subjectively deems offensive or blasphemous, while protecting the spread of the Salafi ideology which advocates the destruction of democracy and the abolition of our freedoms. The CHRC will come out as an institution betraying its mandate and as being itself a threat to freedom and democracy.

2. If the Commission agrees to open an investigation (and regardless of the outcome), I will have directed the spotlights on the discourse of the imam and the Salafi ideology. The media and the public will be able to freely assess the dangerousness of this ideology and discredit it.[...]

Whatever the outcome of my complaint, I will have proved something. My sole purpose is to stimulate a public debate and strengthen freedom of expression.

If the Commission agrees to open an investigation, then core rights of religious liberty and freedom of expression will be chilled, and if the Commission fines Hayiti the latter's rights will have been violated. This is not a legal weapon to invoke in order to make a point about the weapon itself.

But one gets the strong sense that Lebuis wouldn't at all mind seeing Hayiti punished for his speech and writings. One can argue (correctly) that the Steyn prosecution is illegitimate and violates freedom of speech; or one can grind an axe against disfavored Islamic speech. Can't credibly do both, and the latter urge undercuts the former principle.

Immigration conference schedule

Cosmopolitan Duties and Domestic Consequences : The Case of Immigration

Montreal Political Theory Workshop – April 18th, 2008
Faculty Club, McGill University

Contemporary immigration regimes are increasingly scrutinized from a perspective of global justice. Do these regimes contribute to global injustice? Should we change immigration regimes in order to redistribute access to individual opportunities more fairly? Should we open our borders to the global poor? What would the consequences be for host societies? These are some of the important and timely questions the speakers at this year’s MPTW conference will address.

10 am
Welcoming remarks: Christine Straehle, UQAM

10:15
Shelley Wilcox, San Francisco State University: "Immigrants Admissions in the Non-Ideal World"

10:45
Joseph Carens, University of Toronto: "Open Borders Revisited"

11:15
Discussion by Ryoa Chung, University of Montreal

11:30
Open Discussion

12:30
Lunch

2:00
Patti Lenard, Harvard University: "Do Theories of Historical Redress Apply to Immigrants?"

2:30
Christine Straehle, UQAM: "Immigration, Trust and the Welfare State"

3:00
Discussion by Dominique Leydet, UQAM

3:15
Open Discussion

RSVP emmanuelle.richez@mail.mcgill.ca

Poor John!

That's the chorus I sing several times when I happen to have the chance to give a lecture on Adams' thought. A brilliant thinker, constantly out of synch with his times; a true man of virtue who showed how much more to life there is than virtue; outshone as the champion of independence by Paine, whom he despised, and Jefferson, whom he promoted; horribly miscast as ambassador to France; an anachronistic Presidency; etc. Deeply admirable and all wrong all at the same time.

I haven't been able to watch much of the HBO series, but the early part of tonight's episode, with Adams excluded from Cabinet and the Senate alike, inescapably brough "Poor John!" to my lips a good five or six times.

CFP: Canadian Society for Continental Philosophy

Via Will Roberts:

Canadian Society for Continental Philosophy
La société canadienne de philosophie continentale

Call for Papers

The Canadian Society for Continental Philosophy will hold its annual conference on October 30 – November 1, 2008, at the University of Montreal, Quebec.

We invite papers or panels on any theme relevant to the broad concerns of continental philosophy. Please submit complete papers (no more than 4500 words) and a brief abstract (150 words). If you are submitting a panel proposal, send only a 750 word abstract for each paper. Please prepare your paper for blind review as an attachment in Word.

All submissions (in French or English) must be sent electronically by June 1, 2008, to:
Diane Enns, CSCP President, ennsd@mcmaster.ca If you are a graduate student, please identify yourself as such in order to be eligible for the graduate student essay prize. The winner will be announced at the annual conference and considered for publication in the following spring issue of Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy.

Habermas on shariah and overlapping jurisdictions

From The Chronicle:

Religious Intelligence reports that the acclaimed German philosopher Jürgen Habermas has spoken in support of the Archbishop of Canterbury on the subject of Shariah.

The archbishop, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, caused a stir in February when he said there might be room in Britain for “overlapping jurisdictions” between national law and Shariah, or Islamic law. He suggested that “individuals might choose in certain limited areas whether to seek justice under one system or another.” [...]

Writing this month in a German journal, in an article adapted from a March talk at the University of Tilburg in the Netherlands, Habermas, according to Religious Intelligence, “accepted the contention of secularists who insist on the ‘absolute essentialness of equal inclusion of all citizens in civil society.’”

“Religious citizens and religious communities should not only assimilate on the surface level. They must embrace the secular legitimisation of the community within the premises of their own belief,” he said.

“However, the state must make room for religious belief and avoid rushing to reduce the polyphonic complexity of the spectrum of public voices because it cannot be certain that this might not sever society from the meager resources that generate meaning and identity.”

Some material from the linked "Religious Intelligence" article:

Habermas also questioned the contention that modernisation presumed secularisation and necessarily lead to a diminished role for religion in the public sphere. Europe was entering a post-secular phase, and its loss of religious beliefs was the exception not the rule, he argued.

America was the “spearhead of modernization,” he noted, but "the vibrancy of American religious communities and the unchanging proportion of America's religious committed citizens" belied the theory of secularisation going hand in hand with modernity.

America “seems to exemplify the norm, while Western rationalism that was once supposed to serve as model for the rest of the world is actually the exception,” he said.

The task facing society was to find the proper balance between the claims of religion and culture against the democratic imperative, becoming aware “of the fact that the other is a member of an inclusive community of citizens of equal rights, in which equal citizenship and cultural difference complement each other."

Muslims in Europe "must not only superficially adjust to a constitutional order. They are expected to appropriate the secular legitimation of constitutional principles under the very premises of their own faith,” Habermas said.

However, secularists must also enter a complementary learning process, for if they continued to reject the people with a religious mindset, they were abandoning the mutual recognition that shared citizenship entails.

Secular citizens must remain open to the possibility that even religious utterances, when translated into a secular context, can have meaning for them. "As not everything can be achieved by political decision and legal enforcement,” Habermas concluded.

Update:
See also this post from political theorist Simone Chambers on Habermas' view of religion in the public sphere.

Mexican federalism

Article 45 of the Mexican Constitution reads:

" The States and Territories of the Federation shall keep their present area and boundaries as of this day, provided no difficulties arise concerning them." [emphasis added]

If anyone happens to know anything about either the origins of this unusual verbiage, or any jurisprudence that has arisen on what constitutes a difficulty arising, please let me know.

Newly posted on SSRN

Montesquieu's Constitutional Legacies, forthcoming.

The only guide you'll ever need...

to campus architecture.