Feminism and women in African philosophy
- Etieyibo, Edwin, Tabensky, Pedro
- Authors: Etieyibo, Edwin , Tabensky, Pedro
- Date: 2023
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/453305 , vital:75244 , https://doi.org/10.1080/02580136.2023.2283674
- Description: In this preamble, we highlight some of the more recent work on gender and sexuality in African philosophy. We do this as a way of introducing the special issue on “African Philosophy, Women, and Feminism”. In particular, we outline and highlight the trajectory and intellectual landscape of several discussions on women and feminism in African philosophy in the issue, and in this way, build on some previous work on gender, women, sexuality and African philosophy.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2023
- Authors: Etieyibo, Edwin , Tabensky, Pedro
- Date: 2023
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/453305 , vital:75244 , https://doi.org/10.1080/02580136.2023.2283674
- Description: In this preamble, we highlight some of the more recent work on gender and sexuality in African philosophy. We do this as a way of introducing the special issue on “African Philosophy, Women, and Feminism”. In particular, we outline and highlight the trajectory and intellectual landscape of several discussions on women and feminism in African philosophy in the issue, and in this way, build on some previous work on gender, women, sexuality and African philosophy.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2023
Ethics and education as practices of freedom
- Authors: Tabensky, Pedro
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/305672 , vital:58602 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2020.1791822"
- Description: On the one hand, according to Richard Rorty, Paulo Freire and others, education is the practice of freedom. On the other hand, according to Michael Foucault, Mary Midgley and others, ethics is the practice of freedom. How, then, are education and ethics related to one another and what do these authors mean by ‘the practice of freedom’? In this piece, I argue that education and ethics are two mutually constitutive aspects of the practice of freedom. Individuals who are able to engage in this practice can most properly be said to be the authors of their lives, that is, individuals who, to borrow from Neil MacGregor, are able to find their ‘place in things’. To find our ‘place in things’ is to do the necessary educative work required for becoming the authors of our lives, that is, for self-actualization (as Rorty and John Dewey have argued). To take on the authorial role is, moreover, to be able effectively to take control of our lives, to organize them into unities for which we are individually responsible. This, according to Midgley, is precisely what it is to be ethical. This work, moreover, requires ongoing development, that is, education, in Dewey’s sense. I further argue that professional education and skills training cannot be understood properly in isolation from these broader educational aims and I criticize mainstream educational practices for not paying sufficient attention to the intimate relationship between the vocational and non-vocational aspects of education.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
- Authors: Tabensky, Pedro
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/305672 , vital:58602 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2020.1791822"
- Description: On the one hand, according to Richard Rorty, Paulo Freire and others, education is the practice of freedom. On the other hand, according to Michael Foucault, Mary Midgley and others, ethics is the practice of freedom. How, then, are education and ethics related to one another and what do these authors mean by ‘the practice of freedom’? In this piece, I argue that education and ethics are two mutually constitutive aspects of the practice of freedom. Individuals who are able to engage in this practice can most properly be said to be the authors of their lives, that is, individuals who, to borrow from Neil MacGregor, are able to find their ‘place in things’. To find our ‘place in things’ is to do the necessary educative work required for becoming the authors of our lives, that is, for self-actualization (as Rorty and John Dewey have argued). To take on the authorial role is, moreover, to be able effectively to take control of our lives, to organize them into unities for which we are individually responsible. This, according to Midgley, is precisely what it is to be ethical. This work, moreover, requires ongoing development, that is, education, in Dewey’s sense. I further argue that professional education and skills training cannot be understood properly in isolation from these broader educational aims and I criticize mainstream educational practices for not paying sufficient attention to the intimate relationship between the vocational and non-vocational aspects of education.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
Rebellion and revolution
- Authors: Tabensky, Pedro
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/305721 , vital:58606 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2019.1574085"
- Description: In this piece I will focus on what I think is a central aspect of Albert Camus’s thinking, embodied in the distinction he makes in The Rebel between rebel and revolutionary. His is a philosophy of rebellion and he thinks that revolutions are a distorted expression of our need to rebel against that which we cannot accept. His views should serve as a counterpoint to those who think that an all-or-nothing approach to social change is desirable (those who, for instance, are too quick to justify murderous campaigns allegedly aimed at justice). And the issue here is not that embodied crudely in the reactionary (or conservative)/radical dichotomy. Rather, it is a defence of the need to rebel within limits, not so much to preserve the old against the threat of the new but, instead, to preserve basic human decency from the dark side of outrage, without dismissing what is crucial about outrage and emancipatory struggles.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2019
- Authors: Tabensky, Pedro
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/305721 , vital:58606 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2019.1574085"
- Description: In this piece I will focus on what I think is a central aspect of Albert Camus’s thinking, embodied in the distinction he makes in The Rebel between rebel and revolutionary. His is a philosophy of rebellion and he thinks that revolutions are a distorted expression of our need to rebel against that which we cannot accept. His views should serve as a counterpoint to those who think that an all-or-nothing approach to social change is desirable (those who, for instance, are too quick to justify murderous campaigns allegedly aimed at justice). And the issue here is not that embodied crudely in the reactionary (or conservative)/radical dichotomy. Rather, it is a defence of the need to rebel within limits, not so much to preserve the old against the threat of the new but, instead, to preserve basic human decency from the dark side of outrage, without dismissing what is crucial about outrage and emancipatory struggles.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2019
Being at Home: Race, Institutional Culture and Transformation at South African Higher Education Institutions
- Tabensky, Pedro, Matthews, Sally
- Authors: Tabensky, Pedro , Matthews, Sally
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/142084 , vital:38048 , ISBN 9781869142902 , https://books.google.co.za/books?id=49o8rgEACAAJanddq=Being+at+home:+Race,+institutional+culture+and+transformation+at+South+African+higher+education+institutionandhl=enandsa=Xandved=0ahUKEwiPgsa6mpjjAhXNN8AKHbNwAtoQ6AEIKDAA
- Description: This edited work has gathered together contributions on how to transform universities in South Africa; as many are struggling to shift their institutional culture. In a South African context, transformation means to attempt to change higher education institutions such that they no longer reflect the values promoted by apartheid but rather reflect the values embodied in South Africa's 1996 Constitution. Institutional culture is the main subject for discussion in this book. In order to transform South Africa's universities, the contributors begin by analyzing the idea of what a university is, and relatedly, what its ideal aims are. A second theme is to understand what institutional culture is and how it functions. Moreover, transformation cannot occur without transforming the broader cultures of which they are a part. Related to this theme is a general concern about how contemporary moves towards the instrumentalization of higher education affect the ability to transform institutions. These institutions are being pushed to conform to goals that are outside the traditional idea of a university, such as concerns that universities are being 'bureaucratized' and becoming corporations, instead of a place of learning open to all. In conclusion it can be said that the contemporary South African academic community has an opportunity to recreate itself as the end of apartheid created space for engaging in transformative epistemic projects. The transformation of the tertiary sector entails a transformation of institutional cultures.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Tabensky, Pedro , Matthews, Sally
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/142084 , vital:38048 , ISBN 9781869142902 , https://books.google.co.za/books?id=49o8rgEACAAJanddq=Being+at+home:+Race,+institutional+culture+and+transformation+at+South+African+higher+education+institutionandhl=enandsa=Xandved=0ahUKEwiPgsa6mpjjAhXNN8AKHbNwAtoQ6AEIKDAA
- Description: This edited work has gathered together contributions on how to transform universities in South Africa; as many are struggling to shift their institutional culture. In a South African context, transformation means to attempt to change higher education institutions such that they no longer reflect the values promoted by apartheid but rather reflect the values embodied in South Africa's 1996 Constitution. Institutional culture is the main subject for discussion in this book. In order to transform South Africa's universities, the contributors begin by analyzing the idea of what a university is, and relatedly, what its ideal aims are. A second theme is to understand what institutional culture is and how it functions. Moreover, transformation cannot occur without transforming the broader cultures of which they are a part. Related to this theme is a general concern about how contemporary moves towards the instrumentalization of higher education affect the ability to transform institutions. These institutions are being pushed to conform to goals that are outside the traditional idea of a university, such as concerns that universities are being 'bureaucratized' and becoming corporations, instead of a place of learning open to all. In conclusion it can be said that the contemporary South African academic community has an opportunity to recreate itself as the end of apartheid created space for engaging in transformative epistemic projects. The transformation of the tertiary sector entails a transformation of institutional cultures.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
The countercultural university:
- Authors: Tabensky, Pedro
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/142133 , vital:38052 , ISBN 9781869142902 , https://books.google.co.za/books?id=49o8rgEACAAJanddq=Being+at+home:+Race,+institutional+culture+and+transformation+at+South+African+higher+education+institutionandhl=enandsa=Xandved=0ahUKEwiPgsa6mpjjAhXNN8AKHbNwAtoQ6AEIKDAA
- Description: This edited work has gathered together contributions on how to transform universities in South Africa; as many are struggling to shift their institutional culture. In a South African context, transformation means to attempt to change higher education institutions such that they no longer reflect the values promoted by apartheid but rather reflect the values embodied in South Africa's 1996 Constitution. Institutional culture is the main subject for discussion in this book. In order to transform South Africa's universities, the contributors begin by analyzing the idea of what a university is, and relatedly, what its ideal aims are. A second theme is to understand what institutional culture is and how it functions. Moreover, transformation cannot occur without transforming the broader cultures of which they are a part. Related to this theme is a general concern about how contemporary moves towards the instrumentalization of higher education affect the ability to transform institutions. These institutions are being pushed to conform to goals that are outside the traditional idea of a university, such as concerns that universities are being 'bureaucratized' and becoming corporations, instead of a place of learning open to all. In conclusion it can be said that the contemporary South African academic community has an opportunity to recreate itself as the end of apartheid created space for engaging in transformative epistemic projects. The transformation of the tertiary sector entails a transformation of institutional cultures.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Tabensky, Pedro
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/142133 , vital:38052 , ISBN 9781869142902 , https://books.google.co.za/books?id=49o8rgEACAAJanddq=Being+at+home:+Race,+institutional+culture+and+transformation+at+South+African+higher+education+institutionandhl=enandsa=Xandved=0ahUKEwiPgsa6mpjjAhXNN8AKHbNwAtoQ6AEIKDAA
- Description: This edited work has gathered together contributions on how to transform universities in South Africa; as many are struggling to shift their institutional culture. In a South African context, transformation means to attempt to change higher education institutions such that they no longer reflect the values promoted by apartheid but rather reflect the values embodied in South Africa's 1996 Constitution. Institutional culture is the main subject for discussion in this book. In order to transform South Africa's universities, the contributors begin by analyzing the idea of what a university is, and relatedly, what its ideal aims are. A second theme is to understand what institutional culture is and how it functions. Moreover, transformation cannot occur without transforming the broader cultures of which they are a part. Related to this theme is a general concern about how contemporary moves towards the instrumentalization of higher education affect the ability to transform institutions. These institutions are being pushed to conform to goals that are outside the traditional idea of a university, such as concerns that universities are being 'bureaucratized' and becoming corporations, instead of a place of learning open to all. In conclusion it can be said that the contemporary South African academic community has an opportunity to recreate itself as the end of apartheid created space for engaging in transformative epistemic projects. The transformation of the tertiary sector entails a transformation of institutional cultures.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
The ethical function of research and teaching
- Authors: Tabensky, Pedro
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/305738 , vital:58608 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-5812.2011.00813.x"
- Description: It is the epistemic as well as the ethical responsibility of academics to aim to approach their research and teaching with a proper understanding of the ultimate ethical purpose or telos of their defining activities and products,which is the practical aim of promoting human flourishing. Minimally, academics should aim at understanding, and a key component of understanding is to understand the ideal ethical purpose of what is being researched and taught. For instance, sadistic Nazi medical researchers and teachers—Mengeles of sorts—in addition to having reprehensible commitments,would be significantly ignorant about their own intellectual concerns by virtue of their abject (belief-expressing) commitments. I will show that insights drawn from extreme cases such as this one apply across disciplines and in less extreme cases.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2014
- Authors: Tabensky, Pedro
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/305738 , vital:58608 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-5812.2011.00813.x"
- Description: It is the epistemic as well as the ethical responsibility of academics to aim to approach their research and teaching with a proper understanding of the ultimate ethical purpose or telos of their defining activities and products,which is the practical aim of promoting human flourishing. Minimally, academics should aim at understanding, and a key component of understanding is to understand the ideal ethical purpose of what is being researched and taught. For instance, sadistic Nazi medical researchers and teachers—Mengeles of sorts—in addition to having reprehensible commitments,would be significantly ignorant about their own intellectual concerns by virtue of their abject (belief-expressing) commitments. I will show that insights drawn from extreme cases such as this one apply across disciplines and in less extreme cases.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2014
The Oppressor's Pathology
- Authors: Tabensky, Pedro
- Date: 2010
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/305750 , vital:58609 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.3167/th.2010.5712505"
- Description: In Black Skin, White Masks Frantz Fanon discusses the neurotic condition that typifies the oppressed black subject, their ‘psychoexistential complex’. He argues that this neurotic condition is closely related to another, the ‘psychoexistential complex’ of the white oppressor. Both of these complexes sustain and are sustained by social and economic injustice. But Fanon does not delve in detail into the nature of this second neurosis, for he was primarily interested in discussing this neurosis only insofar as it helps him understand the first. My aim in this paper is to provide an account of the white neurosis, and why it should be understood literally as a neurotic condition. Typical, white oppressors, not solely those who are militantly committed to oppressing others, are alienated from the world and from themselves, making their behaviour seem like that of soulless dolls, to use J.M. Coetzee’s image from Age of Iron.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2010
- Authors: Tabensky, Pedro
- Date: 2010
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/305750 , vital:58609 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.3167/th.2010.5712505"
- Description: In Black Skin, White Masks Frantz Fanon discusses the neurotic condition that typifies the oppressed black subject, their ‘psychoexistential complex’. He argues that this neurotic condition is closely related to another, the ‘psychoexistential complex’ of the white oppressor. Both of these complexes sustain and are sustained by social and economic injustice. But Fanon does not delve in detail into the nature of this second neurosis, for he was primarily interested in discussing this neurosis only insofar as it helps him understand the first. My aim in this paper is to provide an account of the white neurosis, and why it should be understood literally as a neurotic condition. Typical, white oppressors, not solely those who are militantly committed to oppressing others, are alienated from the world and from themselves, making their behaviour seem like that of soulless dolls, to use J.M. Coetzee’s image from Age of Iron.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2010
The Pursuit of Unhappiness
- Authors: Tabensky, Pedro
- Date: 2010
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/305774 , vital:58611 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00048400903521041"
- Description: Book review: I strongly recommend The Pursuit of Unhappiness to anyone interested in knowing where debates on happiness and well-being are at, and for a rich, intricately argued and thought-provoking engagement with an impressive array of literature in both philosophy and psychology. This book provides the most comprehensive and sophisticated interdisciplinary cutting-edge analysis of the ‘mongrel’ concepts of happiness and well-being that I know of, and it should be considered a central text for anyone interested in research on happiness. There will be plenty of material to disagree with, but any serious attempt to make progress in the debates on happiness will have to engage with The Pursuit of Unhappiness.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2010
- Authors: Tabensky, Pedro
- Date: 2010
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/305774 , vital:58611 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00048400903521041"
- Description: Book review: I strongly recommend The Pursuit of Unhappiness to anyone interested in knowing where debates on happiness and well-being are at, and for a rich, intricately argued and thought-provoking engagement with an impressive array of literature in both philosophy and psychology. This book provides the most comprehensive and sophisticated interdisciplinary cutting-edge analysis of the ‘mongrel’ concepts of happiness and well-being that I know of, and it should be considered a central text for anyone interested in research on happiness. There will be plenty of material to disagree with, but any serious attempt to make progress in the debates on happiness will have to engage with The Pursuit of Unhappiness.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2010
What's wrong with Walden Two?
- Authors: Tabensky, Pedro
- Date: 2009
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/305791 , vital:58612 , xlink:href="https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC96066"
- Description: Despite being eminently forgettable from the literary point of view, B. F. Skinner's novel, Walden Two, provides us with an excellent opportunity, not so much to show what is wrong with mainstream accounts of free will, as Robert Kane thinks, but rather to explore another key and importantly neglected condition for genuine agency; namely, that properly lived human lives are those that are and must continue to be vulnerable to unforseable reversals, as Aldous Huxley speculates in his Brave New World. In short, I argue, perhaps scandalously, that one of the central conditions for genuine agency is that our lives are and must continue to be, to a large extent, out of our personal control. The promise of too much personal control, not too little (as Kane thinks), is what is wrong with Skinner's social utopia.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2009
- Authors: Tabensky, Pedro
- Date: 2009
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/305791 , vital:58612 , xlink:href="https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC96066"
- Description: Despite being eminently forgettable from the literary point of view, B. F. Skinner's novel, Walden Two, provides us with an excellent opportunity, not so much to show what is wrong with mainstream accounts of free will, as Robert Kane thinks, but rather to explore another key and importantly neglected condition for genuine agency; namely, that properly lived human lives are those that are and must continue to be vulnerable to unforseable reversals, as Aldous Huxley speculates in his Brave New World. In short, I argue, perhaps scandalously, that one of the central conditions for genuine agency is that our lives are and must continue to be, to a large extent, out of our personal control. The promise of too much personal control, not too little (as Kane thinks), is what is wrong with Skinner's social utopia.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2009
The Postcolonial heart of African philosophy
- Authors: Tabensky, Pedro
- Date: 2008
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/305762 , vital:58610 , xlink:href="https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC96056"
- Description: This piece is one of among a handful that seek in the first instance to reveal the origin of African philosophy as an academic discipline, the source of its unity and distinctiveness. The discipline of African philosophy originates in tragedy, out of pain, confusion and rage stemming from colonial destruction; destruction that is responsible for what Fanon calls the ‘negro neurosis’ caused by what Biko would describe as the unbearable fusion of colonised and coloniser. I argue that the birth of African philosophy as an academic discipline is largely responsible for its character and, crucially, for its distinctive creative possibilities.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2008
- Authors: Tabensky, Pedro
- Date: 2008
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/305762 , vital:58610 , xlink:href="https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC96056"
- Description: This piece is one of among a handful that seek in the first instance to reveal the origin of African philosophy as an academic discipline, the source of its unity and distinctiveness. The discipline of African philosophy originates in tragedy, out of pain, confusion and rage stemming from colonial destruction; destruction that is responsible for what Fanon calls the ‘negro neurosis’ caused by what Biko would describe as the unbearable fusion of colonised and coloniser. I argue that the birth of African philosophy as an academic discipline is largely responsible for its character and, crucially, for its distinctive creative possibilities.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2008
Negotiating the Good Life
- Authors: Tabensky, Pedro
- Date: 2007
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/305688 , vital:58604 , xlink:href="http://10.1007/s10677-006-9030-x"
- Description: Book Review: Mark A. Young asks: “Is there a problem with community in America?” (p. 1). Agreeing with Robert Putnam’s views, embodied in Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Touchstone Press, 2000), regarding the breakdown of communal values in the US, but not with his nostalgic recommendations regarding the ‘good old days’ of univocal homogenous communities, Young proposes an alternative solution to Putnam’s, starting from Aristotle’s sophisticated account of the self/community relation and drawing important insights from Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, Amitai Etzione, Paul Ricoeur, Michael Sandel and especially Hannah Arendt.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2007
- Authors: Tabensky, Pedro
- Date: 2007
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/305688 , vital:58604 , xlink:href="http://10.1007/s10677-006-9030-x"
- Description: Book Review: Mark A. Young asks: “Is there a problem with community in America?” (p. 1). Agreeing with Robert Putnam’s views, embodied in Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Touchstone Press, 2000), regarding the breakdown of communal values in the US, but not with his nostalgic recommendations regarding the ‘good old days’ of univocal homogenous communities, Young proposes an alternative solution to Putnam’s, starting from Aristotle’s sophisticated account of the self/community relation and drawing important insights from Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, Amitai Etzione, Paul Ricoeur, Michael Sandel and especially Hannah Arendt.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2007
Realistic idealism
- Authors: Tabensky, Pedro
- Date: 2007
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/305700 , vital:58605 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.3167/th.2007.5411306"
- Description: Realists found in International Relations (IR) circles explicitly assign relatively minor importance to ethical ideals in their analyses of the international political domain, although a robust ethical ideal of sorts, implicitly for the most part qua ethical ideal, does guide their analysis of the international arena. For them, the key to order in the international arena is the balance of power reached between different nations aiming at asserting their wills, promoting their interests, in what is in effect perceived by IR realists as an international battle of wills guided primarily by the logic of power. As a purely descriptive claim regarding how nations, for the most part, actually behave, I have no axe to grind with the IR realist, or at least I do not have to grind an axe with them on this matter for the purposes of this paper, but the IR realist is committed to more than merely describing the behaviour of the international order. IR realists, implicitly and paradoxically, are forced, by the logic of their own position, to believe that the ethical ideal that ought to be guiding the international order is the balance of power between competing interests guiding the international behaviour of nations in their quest for power and (alleged) survival. The primary moral dictum of their position is that nations ought to pursue their self-interested interests relentlessly, but only to the extent that the fragile balance of power is not upset (which is, at any rate, a central ingredient for promoting national self-interest). IR realists do not altogether explicitly deny the role of ideals, but the role they assign to ideals is limited and, I will argue, ultimately incoherent, for ideals ought to be understood as flowing from the structure of our embodied existences and into every nook and cranny of our lives, understood individually and collectively, nationally and internationally. We are active creatures, as Aristotle observed, and activities are defined as such in relation to a functional ideal, an ideal of operation, which flows from our specific modes of embodiment. The norms or ends guiding the international political order ought to flow from this understanding of the human subject ideally conceived, as opposed to the largely Machiavellian pessimistic understanding of the human situation informing IR realism; a pessimism that stems from the fallacious move from raw observation to normative recommendation. To claim that our ends are Machiavellian, we shall see, is incoherent and this incoherence is at the heart of IR realism. The demands of reason, we shall see, should push us in the direction of a particular variety of optimism. By using a broadly Aristotelian teleological technique of analysis I will show that IR realists cannot be right. Without placing ideals at the centre of our understandings of our political lives we would be unable properly to understand the political domain, including the specific sphere of concern of IR specialists. The purely observational descriptions alluded to above do not provide the grounds for proper understanding. What does provide a proper understanding, we shall see, is observation through a conceptual lens informed by a teleological understanding of the human person (observation in the light of a conception of the good). That I think a robust conception of the good, of the set of ideals that out to be guiding rational human life, is necessary for properly understanding the international arena does not of course mean that I advocate any such conception of the good. As claimed above, the sort that I advocate, following Aristotle’s footsteps, flows from the specific configuration of our embodied lives. I refer to this form of idealism as realistic idealism.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2007
- Authors: Tabensky, Pedro
- Date: 2007
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/305700 , vital:58605 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.3167/th.2007.5411306"
- Description: Realists found in International Relations (IR) circles explicitly assign relatively minor importance to ethical ideals in their analyses of the international political domain, although a robust ethical ideal of sorts, implicitly for the most part qua ethical ideal, does guide their analysis of the international arena. For them, the key to order in the international arena is the balance of power reached between different nations aiming at asserting their wills, promoting their interests, in what is in effect perceived by IR realists as an international battle of wills guided primarily by the logic of power. As a purely descriptive claim regarding how nations, for the most part, actually behave, I have no axe to grind with the IR realist, or at least I do not have to grind an axe with them on this matter for the purposes of this paper, but the IR realist is committed to more than merely describing the behaviour of the international order. IR realists, implicitly and paradoxically, are forced, by the logic of their own position, to believe that the ethical ideal that ought to be guiding the international order is the balance of power between competing interests guiding the international behaviour of nations in their quest for power and (alleged) survival. The primary moral dictum of their position is that nations ought to pursue their self-interested interests relentlessly, but only to the extent that the fragile balance of power is not upset (which is, at any rate, a central ingredient for promoting national self-interest). IR realists do not altogether explicitly deny the role of ideals, but the role they assign to ideals is limited and, I will argue, ultimately incoherent, for ideals ought to be understood as flowing from the structure of our embodied existences and into every nook and cranny of our lives, understood individually and collectively, nationally and internationally. We are active creatures, as Aristotle observed, and activities are defined as such in relation to a functional ideal, an ideal of operation, which flows from our specific modes of embodiment. The norms or ends guiding the international political order ought to flow from this understanding of the human subject ideally conceived, as opposed to the largely Machiavellian pessimistic understanding of the human situation informing IR realism; a pessimism that stems from the fallacious move from raw observation to normative recommendation. To claim that our ends are Machiavellian, we shall see, is incoherent and this incoherence is at the heart of IR realism. The demands of reason, we shall see, should push us in the direction of a particular variety of optimism. By using a broadly Aristotelian teleological technique of analysis I will show that IR realists cannot be right. Without placing ideals at the centre of our understandings of our political lives we would be unable properly to understand the political domain, including the specific sphere of concern of IR specialists. The purely observational descriptions alluded to above do not provide the grounds for proper understanding. What does provide a proper understanding, we shall see, is observation through a conceptual lens informed by a teleological understanding of the human person (observation in the light of a conception of the good). That I think a robust conception of the good, of the set of ideals that out to be guiding rational human life, is necessary for properly understanding the international arena does not of course mean that I advocate any such conception of the good. As claimed above, the sort that I advocate, following Aristotle’s footsteps, flows from the specific configuration of our embodied lives. I refer to this form of idealism as realistic idealism.
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- Date Issued: 2007
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