Stefano Bartolini: The Political (ECPR Press)
Review on Ethical Theory and Moral Practice
Jeremy Waldron complained that political theorists after Rawls focused too much on justice and too little on ‘theorizing about politics’. As a reaction to Rawls, the increasingly debated paradigm of political realism puts politics back at the centre of normative theorizing. The meaning of politics however remains essentially contested, and realists are criticised for trying to define their opponents out of political theory. Indeed, systematic investigations on the nature of politics have become quite rare in the last 40–50 years. The recent book of Stefano Bartolini ‘The Political’ is thus a salutary attempt to revive an old, but crucial debate.
Elisabetta Galeotti: Political Self-Deception (CUP)
Ingannare se stessi per fuorviare il cittadino. Review Article on: Biblioteca della Libertà
Le menzogne abbondano in politica. Manipolazione e propaganda sono perciò temi ricorrenti nella storia della filosofia politica. Alcuni credono che tali sotterfugi siano inevitabili in politica (Edelman 2001), e in una qualche misura persino giustificati, giacché sono necessari a ottenere il potere politico necessario per realizzare qualunque fine (Machiavelli 2010). Questi stratagemmi sono occasionalmente qualificati come casi di “mani sporche”, qualora siano richiesti per evitare emergenze catastrofiche (Walzer 1973). Tali inganni sono tuttavia comunemente ritenuti dannosi in politica poiché essi minano due importanti virtù: la sincerità, e l’accuratezza (Williams 1996). La sincerità impone alle persone di dire ciò che credono, invece di ciò che è loro utile. L’accuratezza invece richiede alle persone di dire ciò che razionalmente dovrebbero credere alla luce dell’evidenza disponibile
Tamar Meisels: Targeted killing with drones? Old arguments, new technologies
Comment on Philosophy and Society
Many will feel uncomfortable with Tamar Meisels’s conclusion that killing terrorists with drones is permissible. Yet, there is little to criticize in this paper, because the most contentious parts of the argument are presupposed and understandably fall outside its scope. I will briefly sum up the argument, and then suggest two minor internal objections and a way to address its assumptions.
Keith Banting; Will Kymlicka: The Strains of Commitment
Review article: ‘Solidarity, diversity and the future of liberal societies’, published on Biblioteca della Libertà
The Strains of Commitments is an interesting attempt to deal with the perceived tension between solidarity and diversity in modern societies. There is an uncomfortable cognitive dissonance between the intuition that a just society cannot survive without a shared belief in some ‘we’, and the belief that such disposition could have oppressive effects on minorities and outsiders. The fear is that notional identities are being weakened, without being replaced by a cosmopolitan ideal capable to supply enough solidarity to sustain just institutions. With this aim in mind, Keith Banting and Will Kymlicka bring together political philosophers and social scientists to reflect on the multiple facets of this problem with their different contributions. The scientific core of the book revolves around three sets of questions: first, what solidarity is and why it is important, second to what extent (if at all) increasing diversity undermines solidarity, third how solidarity can be politically activated.
Luuk Van Middelaar: The Passage to Europe
Review article: ‘Solidarity, diversity and the future of liberal societies’, published on Biblioteca della Libertà
The book The Passage to Europe by Luuk Van Middelaar aims, as its subtitles clarify, at explaining how the continent became a union. However, the book does far more than that. Middelaar does not only provide a robust and insightful recollection of the intricate history of the European Union, enriched by his personal experience and insider’s knowledge. He also makes frequent reference to political thinkers to establish an interpretative framework for understanding the political meaning of these historical processes. Moreover, by explicitly rejecting the technicallanguage of EU scholars, the volume is also easy and pleasant to read.The book is divided in three parts, the first one tackles the theoretical question of how a politicalinstitution comes into existence, drawing from the historical precedent of the U.S. federation. In the second part, Middelaar investigates the history of the European Union to show how it came to be and to what degree we can say it exists today. The third and final part focuses on the Union’ssources of legitimacy, in order to investigate on what grounds it can continue to exist in the future