Pub Date : 2023-03-17DOI: 10.1080/10848770.2023.2188673
Jürgen Lawrenz
ABSTRACT In this article we confront the ineffability of music to seek out a tenable conception of profound depths being plumbed in many such works. We take our initial bearings from the writings of the late Peter Kivy, who was a musically trained thinker and tackled the subject no less than four times. Our main interest lies in his outright dismissal of the idea. However, the scaffolding of his arguments reveals that he privileges the discursive metier without any evidence in his support. Hence the bulk of the article is devoted to an analysis of the criteria relevant to this form of experience and to the construction of a more tenable perspective. It will be shown that the issue of profundity in music cannot be segregated from the implications of our reactions and responses to literature and, by extension, to the arts as a whole.
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Pub Date : 2023-03-15DOI: 10.1080/10848770.2023.2182279
A. Smith
It is the Right that has inherited the ambitious modernist urge to destroy and innovate in the name of a universal project. Through the war in Iraq through the unrequited desire to dismantle public education and health services, to the decades-long project of financial deregulation, the political Right – from Thatcher and Reagan to Bush and Blair – has abandoned the association of political conservatism with social moderation which served it so well from Disraeli to Heath, from Theodore Roosevelt to Nelson Rockefeller . (223) — Tony Judt , Ill Fares the Land (2010)
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Pub Date : 2023-03-13DOI: 10.1080/10848770.2023.2188672
Richard Avramenko
Watching Quentin Tarantino films is uncomfortable. They are mostly known for the all-too-real depictions of violence. The poster for his early film, Reservoir Dogs, has the main characters, all gangsters, walking shoulder to shoulder on their way to their ill-fated heist. The image is an homage to Sam Peckinpah’s Wild Bunch, a film about aging gangsters pulling off one last heist after the Wild West era of America history has ended. In the Wild Bunch, probably for the first time in cinematographic history, viewers are treated to blood splattering on the camera lens. The depiction of violence, especially for 1969, is jarring. In Reservoir Dogs, Mr. Orange is shot in the stomach during the heist and, unlike most Hollywood films, he doesn’t flop twice on the ground and die on the spot. He’s bleeding and dying painfully through the whole film, begging Mr. Blonde to take him to the hospital. The violence is jarring. In Tarantino’s Django Unchained and Inglourious Basterds the stylized violence continues unabated, but with political implications. Django Unchained is a “spaghetti southern” in which Django is killing Southern slavers. In Inglourious Basterds, the Basterds burst Nazi skulls with bats, scalp the Nazis they have killed, and generally slaughter anyone associated with Germany and/or the Nazi regime. The film ends with the fanatical leadership of the entire Nazi regime machine gunned down and burned, and Hitler himself filled with bullets in a paroxysm of violence. Fanatics massacring fanatics. What is most uncomfortable in Tarantino’s films, however, is not the violence. Instead, it’s that we don’t find ourselves hating psychopaths and fanatics. How is it possible that we don’t hate Vincent Vega (John Travolta) in Pulp Fiction when he carelessly shoots Marvin in the face? Who doesn’t revel in Southern slavers being killed in Django? Who doesn’t celebrate the execution and scalping of Nazis in Basterds? With Tarantino’s films, we are often forced to choose our heroes from a list of awful fanatics. And choose we do. In Fanaticism: A Political Philosophical History, Zachary R. Goldsmith argues that “fanaticism ought always to be rejected as an approach to politics because it is fundamentally antidemocratic, anti-political, anti-liberal, and never necessary” (155). The book is an effort to provide a semantic, or concept, history of “fanaticism.” This method, which Goldsmith describes numerous times in the book, prompts him to track the use of the word “fanaticism” from the ancient world through the modern. The author is careful to tell us that the idea ought not be conflated with its cousin “enthusiasm,” mostly because enthusiasm falls into the domain of religion. What is curious is that early in the book we are told numerous times that definitions of words like fanaticism are not possible because, citing Nietzsche, “such concepts are beyond definition” (3). However, in the next paragraph we’re given a ten-point definition, which is repeated two
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Pub Date : 2023-03-08DOI: 10.1080/10848770.2023.2187553
Erwin J. Warkentin
ments reflect a multifarious and divided society. A contribution to the uses of history and the studies of collective memory, this last chapter examines the ways in which a society deals and comes to terms with a greatly complex and traumatic past. Revisioning Stalin and Stalinism, a collection of well-written and informative but somewhat disparate ten essays, sheds some new light on the Soviet leader—his flawed personality, his system of beliefs, his undeniable influence and power, and some of his political choices. However, the book only supplements, but does not replace more general studies of the man himself, his Weltanschauung, and his regime, like Graeme Gill’s Stalinism (1990), Evan Mawdsley’s The Stalin Years (1998), David L. Hoffmann’s The Stalinist Era (2018), Mark Edele’s Debates on Stalinism (2020), and Ronald G. Suny’s Red Flag Wounded: Stalinism and the Fate of the Soviet Experiment (2020), to name only a few of the best studies that offer interested readers a much more complete portrait of Stalin and Stalinism.
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Pub Date : 2023-03-08DOI: 10.1080/10848770.2023.2187551
Warren Chernaik
This stimulating, ambitious interdisciplinary study, as its subtitle indicates, links seventeenth-century and modern concerns: a relationship between Milton and modernity is indicated in the titles of two earlier books by or edited by Feisal Mohamed, Milton and the Post-Secular Present and Milton’s Modernities . Though two major figures from the seventeenth century, Marvell and Milton, have a substantial chapter devoted to each, the author from this period who dominates the book is Hobbes, treated as primarily a political thinker. Hobbes, like the other figures treated in the book, is seen as a product of his times, yet asking questions which are as relevant today as in their original historical context. The modern theorist of sovereignty brought into dialogue with such diverse figures, familiar and unfamiliar, as John Selden, Lord Saye and Sele, John Barclay, and the anonymous author of the romance Cloris and Narcissus (1653), along with Marvell, Milton, and Hobbes, is Carl Schmitt (1888–1985), an advocate of absolute submission to the will of the all-powerful ruler, above the law or any restraints upon his power to decide. Notoriously, Schmitt, an active member of the Nazi party, attributed such an absolute power to Adolf Hitler, just as Samuel Parker, satirized by Marvell in The Rehearsal Transpros’d , chose Nero and Caligula as examples of rulers who must be obeyed without question, to secure the imperatives of order and discipline within the state. In this wide-ranging study, Mohamed sees the idea of sovereignty, as set forth by Hobbes and Schmitt, as problematical, and yet as a central concept for understanding the nature of political authority and providing a fresh perspective on the writings of Milton and Marvell. In his
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Pub Date : 2023-03-08DOI: 10.1080/10848770.2023.2187552
G. Gerson
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Pub Date : 2023-03-06DOI: 10.1080/10848770.2023.2184758
Christof Royer
ABSTRACT This article offers a novel interpretation of Karl Popper’s influential yet controversial book, The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945). Popper, it argues, sheds light on a pivotal social and political question: How can we value genuine human plurality without succumbing to the illusion that enmity can be removed from the socio-political realm? What we find in Popper, I argue, is an “anti-utopian agonism,” that is, his conception of an open society harbors significant agonistic elements—a commitment to human plurality, an endorsement of (some) social and political struggles, and an acute awareness of the tragic dimensions of political life. Simultaneously, Popper’s distinctive anti-utopianism makes an important contribution to agonistic theory on two fronts. First, his concept of “the strain of civilization” reveals a deeper notion of tragedy, which gives him the edge over the rather shallow notion of tragedy we find in the agonistic tradition. Secondly, he develops a tripartite notion of enmity, which is theoretically interesting and practically relevant. The aim of this article is not only to contribute to the scholarship on Popper and agonism but, first and foremost, to demonstrate how The Open Society still matters as an inspiring work that illuminates the practically relevant question of how to value diversity without illusions.
摘要本文对卡尔·波普尔（Karl Popper）颇具影响力但颇具争议的著作《开放社会及其敌人》（The Open Society and Its Enmies，1945）进行了新颖的解读。它认为，波普尔揭示了一个关键的社会和政治问题：我们如何在不屈服于敌意可以从社会政治领域消除的幻想的情况下，重视真正的人类多元性？我认为，我们在波普尔身上发现的是一种“反乌托邦的痛苦主义”，也就是说，他对开放社会的概念包含了重要的痛苦因素——对人类多元性的承诺，对（一些）社会和政治斗争的认可，以及对政治生活悲剧层面的敏锐认识。同时，波普尔独特的反乌托邦思想在两个方面对痛苦理论做出了重要贡献。首先，他的“文明的张力”概念揭示了一个更深层次的悲剧概念，这使他超越了我们在痛苦传统中发现的相当肤浅的悲剧概念。其次，他提出了一个三方对立的概念，这在理论上很有趣，在实践中也很有意义。本文的目的不仅是为波普尔和痛苦主义的学术研究做出贡献，而且首先也是最重要的是，展示《开放社会》作为一部鼓舞人心的作品仍然很重要，它阐明了如何不抱幻想地重视多样性这一实际相关的问题。
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Pub Date : 2023-03-05DOI: 10.1080/10848770.2023.2182262
A. Craiutu
ABSTRACT This article argues that moderation is a difficult, complex, and elusive concept that challenges our political imagination. It has several faces—epistemological, moral, constitutional, political and religious—and forms a rich intellectual tradition that has yet to be explored in all its complexity. Moderation is “the silken string that runs through the pearl-chain of all virtues” (Joseph Hall). As such, it ought to be examined not only as a virtue but also as a social practice, an intellectual sensibility, a way of life, a particular ethos, and a set of concrete institutions. Finally, moderation is best understood in relation with its synonyms (prudence, civility, compromise) and antonyms (extremism, fanaticism, zealotry).
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Pub Date : 2023-03-02DOI: 10.1080/10848770.2023.2184757
J. Bertolini
In Liberalism in Dark Times, an important, impressive and well documented book, Joshua Cherniss, associate professor of government at Georgetown University, focuses on an aspect of liberal theory that tends to not get very much attention, a gap that he thoroughly and satisfactorily addresses. This is a much needed study now that the liberal democracies face the rise of autocratic governments around the world as well as the rise of internal autocratic movements. With particular insight, Cherniss dwells on the issue of the liberal temperament and the question of ruthlessness in political action. Ruthlessness, as he defines it, “rejects all scruples, doubts, hesitation, and remorse in pursuing some ultimate purpose or serving some paramount principle” (2). By contrast, liberalism, by any definition, is centrally concerned with political limits and, hence, would have to be opposed to any example of ruthless conduct that rejects limits or self-restraint. But much current liberal thought has not particularly centered on this issue. Instead, it has “focused largely on questions of justification and institutional principles” (3) perhaps because, with the crimes of fascist and Nazi regimes and the Cold War in the rear-view mirror and all the 1990s talk about the end of history and the triumph of liberalism, the problem of ruthless political conduct did not seem so salient. But the twenty-first century has put an end to much of that complacency. With the example of the attack on the World Trade Center in New York in 2001, an act of political ruthlessness if there ever was one, and continuing through the threat of Islamist extremism, the resurgence of far rightist and neo-fascist movements in both America and Europe, and the violent assault on the U.S. Capitol building in January of 2021, the picture has certainly changed. Once again, liberalism, in response, is compelled to confront the question of limits and of its own ethical grounding as well. It is as if the more technical aspects of liberalism, at least for the moment, could be bracketed so that liberalism can again speak to the most fundamental, the most primal liberal concern, viz. how can political perimeters be secured so that the individual can safely exist and flourish in its own chosen course? And it is not as if the issue of political ethics hasn’t been raised before. Liberals and antiliberals clashed in the early to mid-twentieth century over political-ethical issues as well as policy matters. Each side argued for a different ethos, a term Cherniss heavily focuses upon. By ethos he means “the sensibility or manner through which a ‘creed’ or belief
{"title":"Liberal Democracy Critiqued and Affirmed","authors":"J. Bertolini","doi":"10.1080/10848770.2023.2184757","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10848770.2023.2184757","url":null,"abstract":"In Liberalism in Dark Times, an important, impressive and well documented book, Joshua Cherniss, associate professor of government at Georgetown University, focuses on an aspect of liberal theory that tends to not get very much attention, a gap that he thoroughly and satisfactorily addresses. This is a much needed study now that the liberal democracies face the rise of autocratic governments around the world as well as the rise of internal autocratic movements. With particular insight, Cherniss dwells on the issue of the liberal temperament and the question of ruthlessness in political action. Ruthlessness, as he defines it, “rejects all scruples, doubts, hesitation, and remorse in pursuing some ultimate purpose or serving some paramount principle” (2). By contrast, liberalism, by any definition, is centrally concerned with political limits and, hence, would have to be opposed to any example of ruthless conduct that rejects limits or self-restraint. But much current liberal thought has not particularly centered on this issue. Instead, it has “focused largely on questions of justification and institutional principles” (3) perhaps because, with the crimes of fascist and Nazi regimes and the Cold War in the rear-view mirror and all the 1990s talk about the end of history and the triumph of liberalism, the problem of ruthless political conduct did not seem so salient. But the twenty-first century has put an end to much of that complacency. With the example of the attack on the World Trade Center in New York in 2001, an act of political ruthlessness if there ever was one, and continuing through the threat of Islamist extremism, the resurgence of far rightist and neo-fascist movements in both America and Europe, and the violent assault on the U.S. Capitol building in January of 2021, the picture has certainly changed. Once again, liberalism, in response, is compelled to confront the question of limits and of its own ethical grounding as well. It is as if the more technical aspects of liberalism, at least for the moment, could be bracketed so that liberalism can again speak to the most fundamental, the most primal liberal concern, viz. how can political perimeters be secured so that the individual can safely exist and flourish in its own chosen course? And it is not as if the issue of political ethics hasn’t been raised before. Liberals and antiliberals clashed in the early to mid-twentieth century over political-ethical issues as well as policy matters. Each side argued for a different ethos, a term Cherniss heavily focuses upon. By ethos he means “the sensibility or manner through which a ‘creed’ or belief","PeriodicalId":55962,"journal":{"name":"European Legacy-Toward New Paradigms","volume":"28 1","pages":"355 - 367"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-03-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45465277","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"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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