Pub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/08913811.2022.2030523
Jan-Werner Müller
ABSTRACT Militant democracy calls for pre-emptive measures against political actors who use democratic institutions to undermine or outright abolish a democratic political system. Born in the context of interwar fascism, militant democracy has recently been revived by political and legal theorists concerned about the rise of authoritarian right-wing populists. A long-standing charge against militant democracy—also articulated with renewed force in our era—is that, as a top-down way to deal with the intolerant, militant democracy is inherently elitist and bears uncomfortable similarities with technocracy (also understood as an intolerant form of governance). But while it is true that militant democracy relies on state institutions to preserve democracy, it by no means excludes citizen engagement: “courts or the people” is a false choice. On the other hand, citizens engaged in militant democracy must take on the difficult task of distinguishing very clearly between democratic essentials under threat and political questions about which citizens might reasonably disagree. While citizen assemblies are not the answer to all of contemporary democracies’ travails, they might be very helpful in clarifying such distinctions for wide audiences.
{"title":"Citizens as Militant Democrats, Or: Just How Intolerant Should the People Be?","authors":"Jan-Werner Müller","doi":"10.1080/08913811.2022.2030523","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08913811.2022.2030523","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Militant democracy calls for pre-emptive measures against political actors who use democratic institutions to undermine or outright abolish a democratic political system. Born in the context of interwar fascism, militant democracy has recently been revived by political and legal theorists concerned about the rise of authoritarian right-wing populists. A long-standing charge against militant democracy—also articulated with renewed force in our era—is that, as a top-down way to deal with the intolerant, militant democracy is inherently elitist and bears uncomfortable similarities with technocracy (also understood as an intolerant form of governance). But while it is true that militant democracy relies on state institutions to preserve democracy, it by no means excludes citizen engagement: “courts or the people” is a false choice. On the other hand, citizens engaged in militant democracy must take on the difficult task of distinguishing very clearly between democratic essentials under threat and political questions about which citizens might reasonably disagree. While citizen assemblies are not the answer to all of contemporary democracies’ travails, they might be very helpful in clarifying such distinctions for wide audiences.","PeriodicalId":51723,"journal":{"name":"Critical Review","volume":"34 1","pages":"85 - 98"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46551191","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/08913811.2021.2009174
Warren Breckman
ABSTRACT While Marx threw off his attraction to Romanticism when he was still a teenager, scholars have detected various senses in which deep structures of Romantic thought persist in his work. These structures have frequently been taken as contributing factors to Marx’s alleged millenarianism, doctrinaire rigidity, and intolerance. The mature Marx does draw on Romantic ideas at crucial moments; but rather than reinforcing an image of Marx as an intolerant ideologue, the Romantic element in his thought, properly construed, suggests theoretical openness and humility before an unmasterable reality.
{"title":"Marx and Romanticism","authors":"Warren Breckman","doi":"10.1080/08913811.2021.2009174","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08913811.2021.2009174","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT While Marx threw off his attraction to Romanticism when he was still a teenager, scholars have detected various senses in which deep structures of Romantic thought persist in his work. These structures have frequently been taken as contributing factors to Marx’s alleged millenarianism, doctrinaire rigidity, and intolerance. The mature Marx does draw on Romantic ideas at crucial moments; but rather than reinforcing an image of Marx as an intolerant ideologue, the Romantic element in his thought, properly construed, suggests theoretical openness and humility before an unmasterable reality.","PeriodicalId":51723,"journal":{"name":"Critical Review","volume":"34 1","pages":"28 - 52"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41692229","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-23DOI: 10.1080/08913811.2021.2001213
Rogers M. Smith
ABSTRACT Few denials of tolerance are more severe than rejection of the moral worth of another’s way of life. In the U.S. today, many traditional religious believers, especially fundamentalist Christians, and many LGBQT+ persons see each other’s ways of life as deeply evil in important respects. These gulfs probably cannot be bridged; but public policies can and should seek to accommodate all claims of conscience as far as this can be done without denying anyone meaningful possession of basic rights. By placing religious and moral consciences equally in a constitutionally “preferred position,” governments can foster a wider sense that citizens are engaged in a shared enterprise of helping everyone to pursue their distinctive forms of happiness.
{"title":"Who Is Intolerant? The Clash Between LGBTQ+ Rights and Religious Free Exercise","authors":"Rogers M. Smith","doi":"10.1080/08913811.2021.2001213","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08913811.2021.2001213","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Few denials of tolerance are more severe than rejection of the moral worth of another’s way of life. In the U.S. today, many traditional religious believers, especially fundamentalist Christians, and many LGBQT+ persons see each other’s ways of life as deeply evil in important respects. These gulfs probably cannot be bridged; but public policies can and should seek to accommodate all claims of conscience as far as this can be done without denying anyone meaningful possession of basic rights. By placing religious and moral consciences equally in a constitutionally “preferred position,” governments can foster a wider sense that citizens are engaged in a shared enterprise of helping everyone to pursue their distinctive forms of happiness.","PeriodicalId":51723,"journal":{"name":"Critical Review","volume":"34 1","pages":"146 - 158"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48736995","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-09DOI: 10.1080/08913811.2021.1988206
A. Abizadeh
ABSTRACT The transition away from the highly intolerant and persecutory regimes of late-medieval and early-modern Europe was facilitated by four important developments. First, Europeans learned that social order and cohesion are threatened less by diversity than by intolerance of it. Second, the traditionally paternalist vision of the state’s role was called into question by a new valuation of the individual conscience and consequently of individual liberties. Third, the assumption that the meaning of symbols is objectively determined was replaced by the recognition that symbols are intersubjectively determined by convention. Fourth, Europeans began to distinguish two senses of publicity: visibility and representativeness. The tenacious hold of these four assumptions is illustrated by laws of laïcité, which harken back to the medieval mindset on all four counts.
{"title":"Consequences, Conscience, and Fallibility: Early Modern Roots of Toleration","authors":"A. Abizadeh","doi":"10.1080/08913811.2021.1988206","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08913811.2021.1988206","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The transition away from the highly intolerant and persecutory regimes of late-medieval and early-modern Europe was facilitated by four important developments. First, Europeans learned that social order and cohesion are threatened less by diversity than by intolerance of it. Second, the traditionally paternalist vision of the state’s role was called into question by a new valuation of the individual conscience and consequently of individual liberties. Third, the assumption that the meaning of symbols is objectively determined was replaced by the recognition that symbols are intersubjectively determined by convention. Fourth, Europeans began to distinguish two senses of publicity: visibility and representativeness. The tenacious hold of these four assumptions is illustrated by laws of laïcité, which harken back to the medieval mindset on all four counts.","PeriodicalId":51723,"journal":{"name":"Critical Review","volume":"34 1","pages":"16 - 27"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-11-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42459565","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-02DOI: 10.1080/08913811.2021.2012041
Frederick C. Beiser
ABSTRACT Herbart and Hegel were contemporaries and both became famous, in their time and thereafter. It would be interesting therefore to know what they thought of one another. We could easily answer this question if they reviewed one another. Hegel never reviewed Herbart; but Herbart did review Hegel. Though in his later years Herbart protested that he did not want to engage with Hegel, he had already written, in 1822, one of his longest and most important reviews, which was of Hegel’s Philosophie des Rechts. Herbart maintained that there is a Spinozistic element to Hegel’s political philosophy which equates right with might. Hegel tried to avoid the implications of this equation by bringing Kantian transcendental freedom into his system, which for him boiled down to the idea of dialectical development. But Herbart rejected the fundamental idea behind dialectical development: that the ego posits the opposite of itself. Herbart then criticized Hegel’s attempt to revive natural law and his theory of the state. Herbart contended that reason cannot prove the fundamental principles of natural law, that reason by itself is an abstract and formal power and as such cannot demonstrate any principle having substantive content. And Herbart criticized Hegel’s doctrine that the individual finds his identity only in the state. Much more liberal than Hegel, Herbart stressed the importance of individuality outside the state.
{"title":"A Mayfly for Prof. Hegel: Herbart’s Forgotten Review of Hegel’s Rechtsphilosophie","authors":"Frederick C. Beiser","doi":"10.1080/08913811.2021.2012041","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08913811.2021.2012041","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Herbart and Hegel were contemporaries and both became famous, in their time and thereafter. It would be interesting therefore to know what they thought of one another. We could easily answer this question if they reviewed one another. Hegel never reviewed Herbart; but Herbart did review Hegel. Though in his later years Herbart protested that he did not want to engage with Hegel, he had already written, in 1822, one of his longest and most important reviews, which was of Hegel’s Philosophie des Rechts. Herbart maintained that there is a Spinozistic element to Hegel’s political philosophy which equates right with might. Hegel tried to avoid the implications of this equation by bringing Kantian transcendental freedom into his system, which for him boiled down to the idea of dialectical development. But Herbart rejected the fundamental idea behind dialectical development: that the ego posits the opposite of itself. Herbart then criticized Hegel’s attempt to revive natural law and his theory of the state. Herbart contended that reason cannot prove the fundamental principles of natural law, that reason by itself is an abstract and formal power and as such cannot demonstrate any principle having substantive content. And Herbart criticized Hegel’s doctrine that the individual finds his identity only in the state. Much more liberal than Hegel, Herbart stressed the importance of individuality outside the state.","PeriodicalId":51723,"journal":{"name":"Critical Review","volume":"33 1","pages":"277 - 288"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49377312","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-02DOI: 10.1080/08913811.2021.2001214
T. Pinkard
ABSTRACT Hegel viewed the task of philosophy as not to direct the present but to grasp its fundamental commitments by uncovering its animating baselines. This led him to depict the antinomies of modern life as manifestations of the same baseline: equal freedom. By grasping equal freedom as a progressive principle of modern life, Hegel was able to criticize the conservatives of his day for treating natural inequalities as unalterable. Hegel’s alternative was a holist account according to which the oppositions contained in modern society, such as that between nature and freedom, are gradually worked out in forms of life that aim to realize the baseline modern commitment to equal freedom.
{"title":"Hegel’s Own Time Grasped in Our Thoughts after Two Hundred Years","authors":"T. Pinkard","doi":"10.1080/08913811.2021.2001214","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08913811.2021.2001214","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Hegel viewed the task of philosophy as not to direct the present but to grasp its fundamental commitments by uncovering its animating baselines. This led him to depict the antinomies of modern life as manifestations of the same baseline: equal freedom. By grasping equal freedom as a progressive principle of modern life, Hegel was able to criticize the conservatives of his day for treating natural inequalities as unalterable. Hegel’s alternative was a holist account according to which the oppositions contained in modern society, such as that between nature and freedom, are gradually worked out in forms of life that aim to realize the baseline modern commitment to equal freedom.","PeriodicalId":51723,"journal":{"name":"Critical Review","volume":"33 1","pages":"378 - 391"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42307667","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-02DOI: 10.1080/08913811.2021.2001212
Alan Patten
ABSTRACT All of the major German Idealists perceived a gap between ideals and social reality. Kant sought to bridge this gap through an institutional design that forced self-interest to track the public good. Fichte embraced cultural nationalism, according to which, to overcome the gap between ideals and reality, a nation must revive and strengthen its original culture. Hegel’s solution, in contrast, rests on the idea of ethical habituation. For Hegel, the institutions of a well-designed social order encourage the habits and virtues needed for the successful reproduction of that order. The article reflects on the implications of these contrasts for the prospects of liberal democracy.
{"title":"Hegel’s Alternative to Nationalism","authors":"Alan Patten","doi":"10.1080/08913811.2021.2001212","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08913811.2021.2001212","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT All of the major German Idealists perceived a gap between ideals and social reality. Kant sought to bridge this gap through an institutional design that forced self-interest to track the public good. Fichte embraced cultural nationalism, according to which, to overcome the gap between ideals and reality, a nation must revive and strengthen its original culture. Hegel’s solution, in contrast, rests on the idea of ethical habituation. For Hegel, the institutions of a well-designed social order encourage the habits and virtues needed for the successful reproduction of that order. The article reflects on the implications of these contrasts for the prospects of liberal democracy.","PeriodicalId":51723,"journal":{"name":"Critical Review","volume":"33 1","pages":"359 - 377"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43088380","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-02DOI: 10.1080/08913811.2021.2014088
Jacob Roundtree
ABSTRACT In his famous critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Marx criticized Hegel’s contention that the general will can be achieved without popular sovereignty. Marx argued that Hegel’s first error lay in his Idealist method, which mistook the realities of the family and civil society as mere emanations of the Idea. This methodological error, according to Marx, led Hegel to misunderstand the rational essence of the state as consisting in a “universal” will that is abstracted from the real will of the people itself, allowing Hegel to defend the pursuit of the good of the whole not by popular government but government by a special bureaucratic, “universal” estate, represented in government by civil servants. However, Marx failed to direct the same type of critique against Hegel’s assertion that the bureaucracy would have the knowledge of the whole that it would need if it were to effectively regulate civil society in the universal interest.
{"title":"Marx’s Democratization of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right","authors":"Jacob Roundtree","doi":"10.1080/08913811.2021.2014088","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08913811.2021.2014088","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In his famous critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Marx criticized Hegel’s contention that the general will can be achieved without popular sovereignty. Marx argued that Hegel’s first error lay in his Idealist method, which mistook the realities of the family and civil society as mere emanations of the Idea. This methodological error, according to Marx, led Hegel to misunderstand the rational essence of the state as consisting in a “universal” will that is abstracted from the real will of the people itself, allowing Hegel to defend the pursuit of the good of the whole not by popular government but government by a special bureaucratic, “universal” estate, represented in government by civil servants. However, Marx failed to direct the same type of critique against Hegel’s assertion that the bureaucracy would have the knowledge of the whole that it would need if it were to effectively regulate civil society in the universal interest.","PeriodicalId":51723,"journal":{"name":"Critical Review","volume":"33 1","pages":"431 - 461"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46029650","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-02DOI: 10.1080/08913811.2021.2012995
P. Rosenberg
ABSTRACT The Philosophy of Right presents us with a vision of bureaucratic paternalism that is designed to check the excesses of free markets set in motion by the triumph of natural-law thinking, which abstracted the principles of private property and subjective freedom from the institutions that had tamed them and situated them in a stable context. Against these excesses Hegel pits the agricultural estate, which has not succumbed to natural-law thinking; and a “universal estate” of bureaucrats who are educated in Hegel’s philosophy itself, freeing them of the natural-law conflation of human needs with arbitrary and endlessly expanding preferences. Taught by Hegel to look after the needs of the organic whole that is society rather than the gratification of their own preferences, the task of the bureaucrats of the universal estate is to curb the tendency of free markets to produce the social preconditions for an alienated “rabble” to bring down the system.
{"title":"Hegel’s Political Philosophy","authors":"P. Rosenberg","doi":"10.1080/08913811.2021.2012995","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08913811.2021.2012995","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The Philosophy of Right presents us with a vision of bureaucratic paternalism that is designed to check the excesses of free markets set in motion by the triumph of natural-law thinking, which abstracted the principles of private property and subjective freedom from the institutions that had tamed them and situated them in a stable context. Against these excesses Hegel pits the agricultural estate, which has not succumbed to natural-law thinking; and a “universal estate” of bureaucrats who are educated in Hegel’s philosophy itself, freeing them of the natural-law conflation of human needs with arbitrary and endlessly expanding preferences. Taught by Hegel to look after the needs of the organic whole that is society rather than the gratification of their own preferences, the task of the bureaucrats of the universal estate is to curb the tendency of free markets to produce the social preconditions for an alienated “rabble” to bring down the system.","PeriodicalId":51723,"journal":{"name":"Critical Review","volume":"33 1","pages":"392 - 430"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42336287","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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