Journal of Social Philosophy最新文献

This paper argues that the so-called ‘paradox’ of dehumanization is a mirage arising from misplaced abstraction. The alleged ‘paradox’ is taken as a challenge that arises from a skeptical stance. After reviewing the history of that skeptical stance, it is reconstructed as an argument with two premises. With the help of an epistemologically structured but pluralistic frame it is then shown how the two premises of the Skeptic's argument can both be debunked. As part of that it emerges that there are a couple of ways how dehumanization can be realized, and one such realization can be sufficient for affirming the reality of dehumanization for a specific case.

This paper brings together two distinct areas of philosophy that have so far not received much attention together: Critical Theory and non-ideal theory. Its main argument is that these two yet distinct areas of philosophy share a methodological stance when it comes to analyzing social reality, namely standpoint theory. While there is a well-acknowledged relation between Critical Theory and standpoint theory, the claim that non-ideal theory is committed to standpoint theory as a methodology deserves further explanation. In a co-authored paper, Johanna Müller and I (2022) argue for a descriptive claim, they urge non-ideal theorists to engage in an act of self-clarification about the way in which they are doing non-ideal theory and argue that the commitment to start from real world injustices always already entails a commitment to standpoint theory. According to this claim, any theorist is embedded in a given ideology and, thus, needs methodological tools to overcome the ideological arrogance that might prevent them from analyzing particular instances of injustice.¹

Here, I want to make an explicitly normative claim, namely that taking seriously the pervasiveness of ideology and the resulting challenge of false consciousness, means that any endeavor in non-ideal theory that is not committed to standpoint theory is fruitless. This claim is not just about self-clarification. Instead, it proposes a way in which non-ideal theory should proceed.² To do so, I am guided by three claims: First, if non-ideal theory is theory that is non-idealizing (as Hänel & Müller, 2022; Khader, forthcoming; and Mills, 2005 show), then ideology is a barrier to such theorizing. Second, critical standpoints (as advanced by versions of standpoint theory) can function as a tool to overcome such barriers, yet, critical standpoints have to be achieved or struggled for and are not necessarily given due to a person's social group memberships or social identities. And, third, being subject to (intersecting) oppressions can be an epistemic advantage insofar as it provides the moral ruptures or internal contradictions needed to achieve a critical standpoint. It should be noted that the paper's aim is rather modest insofar as none of its claims are original in themselves, rather I am relying on the toolbox of Critical Theorists, standpoint theorists, and non-ideal theorists. What is new is (a) the way in which I let these traditions talk to each other and (b) my focus on the “trap of ideology”; neither do non-ideal theorists concern themselves with this particular dimension of ideology as an obstacle for theorizing, nor do contemporary standpoint epistemologists pay much attention to this problem.

In recent years, feminist philosophers and other moral and political philosophers have been increasingly disappointed with the dominant Rawlsian paradigm of doing normative theory in which the

Skepticism about the democratic nature of elections-based institutional systems is a growing sentiment among political theorists. There are many reasons explaining such skepticism, but one prominent concern is that these systems make representatives susceptible to capture by economic elites, in other words, oligarchic capture. Champions of electoral democracy commonly claim that oligarchic capture can be fought through legally-based, formal mechanisms of regulation, such as campaign finance and anti-money-in-politics legislation. But others think that elections, as such, are an important factor contributing to this problem. Authors have thus claimed that we should either fully replace (e.g., Guerrero, 2014; Van Reybrouck, 2016) or complement (e.g., Abizadeh, 2020; Arlen, 2019; Arlen & Rossi, 2020; Gastil & Wright, 2019; Landemore, 2020; McCormick, 2011) election-based political systems with empowered “lottocratic” political institutions (henceforth LPIs), wherein representatives are selected randomly from a relevant demographic and then frequently rotated.ⁱ This, some argue, would help solving the oligarchical tendencies of electoral democracy and better realize its normative aspirations.

This article has two distinct aims: First, to suggest that we should reconsider our optimism regarding the anti-oligarchic strength of LPIs. Second, to show how we can amend the design of LPIs to resist oligarchic capture, particularly by making them class-specific so that they are more explicitly oriented to the satisfaction of the interests of nonwealthy citizens. The reason for my moderate pessimism is that LPIs might suffer from similar oligarchic ills as those plaguing electoral systems. Under nonideal conditions, where there is significant wealth inequality and a power imbalance between, on the one hand, influential organized elites and, on the other, widely economically self-interested and politically unorganized citizens, many representatives in LPIs would still have strong incentives to neglect the pursuit of responsive and democratic outcomes—despite the presence of legal mechanisms of regulation. Call this the problem of incentives-based capture (henceforth PIC). Thus, my argument is that we must think beyond formal, legally based measures of regulation, and focus on informal mechanisms, particularly on how the prevalence of class-based solidarity among lottocratic representatives could counteract PIC. Drawing on recent “plebeian” approaches in democratic constitutional theory, I shall defend the claim that introducing class-specific criteria in institutional design can help to buttress a reluctance among representatives to follow wealth-generated incentives. Plebeian constitutionalists usually argue that selecting members only with that class-specific profile makes it more