Tocqueville on Republican Politics and the Tyranny of Small Communities

Political Readings of Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville has been taken up within many perspectives: Religious Conservative, Libertarian near Anarcho-Capitalist, Neo-Conservative, Communitarian Left-Liberalism, Any other definition of Liberalism that might exist, Post-Marxist Democratic Theory, and no doubt a few positions I've overlooked. Despite this wide ranging appeal, some Marxists and near Marxists take him as the enemy. His support for, and involvement in the French colonisation of Algeria, and his assumption that Islam is culturally, intellectually and morally inferior to Christianity. are always emphasied by that tendency whoa re rather quieter about the racist and colonialist assumptions that can be found in Marx and other leftists of the time. Foucault's Society Must be Defended provides an account of how left-wing and democratic thought originate in an idea of a kind of 'race war' with a 'foreign' elite.

Universalism and Competition between Nations
The support for colonialism has been regarded favourably by some Neo-Cons as a committment to universalising liberal-democratic ideas, though surely at its best Neo-Conservativism shows more respect for all religions and the right of all nations to self-government, even if with the assistance of US intervention. There is evidently an element of Islamophobia round the fringes of Neo-Conservatism. The Marxists and Neo-Cons are rather too keen to drag support for European colonialism in the 19th Century into another context. Tocqueville's views on international relations were a mix of Realism and idealism. He was a Realist in the sense that he believed that nations conflict around questions of national pride and it is right to support the pride of your own nation. This itself refers to the element of this thought which emphasises the role of pride and the search for superiority in the human imagination, itself rooted in in his reading of Rousseau and Pascal. He was an idealist in the sense he believed that national policy should be directed to moral universalist goals like abolishing slavery, and he was certainly never at all attracted to the idea that any race is inferior or superior to any other. This post is principally concerned with his views on democratic theory and we will progress to that theme.

Tyranny of the Majority
The main concern here is to contest the assumption from a variety of directions that Tocqueville was for localism against the central state. We need to look at what he meant by the 'tyranny of the majority'. Beofre we even consider Tıcqueville's view of the 'tyranny of the majority', we have to deal with the widespread belief that John Stuart Mill coined that phrase. Mill used th phrase in On Liberty, but took it from Tocqueville, who he had met. Their relationship ended awkwardly, but Tocqueville certainly made an impact on Mill, who thought it worth writing long reviews on both parts of Democracy in America. Tocqueville used the phrase 'tyranny of the majority' in the Democracy to refer to local spirit in small town America. Though Tocqueville has enormous respect for the spirit of self-government in small town America, he also had deep concerns about the way that public opinion imposes conformity and crushes individuality in local communities. He thought a strong central state was necessary in order to balance that small town spirit. The inhabitants of the small towns needed to be able to appeal to a federal centre to resist the conformity of small towns. It is important to note that Tocqueville though public opinion could be just as dangerous to liberty as the state. That was the basis of his concern that democracy might lead to the worst kind of tyranny if a government resting on public opinion imposed the majority view in an authoritarian manner. Tocqueville should not, therefore, be invoked in support of the view that local participation in politics or the moral spirit of small communities, is the basis of liberty. This places Tocqueville closer to the more statist aspects of the Federalist Papers, than to the Jeffersonian belief in the absolute value of local community autonomy

Law and Conserving Liberty
Conservatism, in the sense of defending law against the tyranny of the majority, was best upheld by a new aristocracy, of the legal profession, which is necessarily committed to defending law and to its administration in a hierarchical structure headed by the central state. For Tocqueville the aristocracy was important in limiting monarchical power in the pre-democratic world. His
father was deeply connected with the 'ultra-monarchist' current in French politics. This is a misleading label in the sense that this current was for the aristocracy and against strong central monarchical power. Again for a good diagnosis, see Foucault, Society Must be Defended. Tocqueville caused great resentment in his family by adopting liberal constitutional democracy, which in the French context meant accepting the strong sovereignty of the National Assembly. Nevertheless, the concerns of the ultra-monarchists are in some way present in Tocqueville's political thought.

Tocqueville and Republicanism: Politics and Human Spirit
Two points here: Tocqueville provides an alternative to recent Republican theory; Tocqueville cannot be associated with anti-political forms of Libertarianism and archaeo-conservatism. This is also present in the Marxist and anarcho-communist wish to abolish the state. These currents tend to find politics degenerate compared with the emergence of decisions from the 'natural' authority present in established communities. Tocqueville's thought is Republican. He
thought politics was a part of the spirit of human communities and is necessary to liberty. He recognised that it rests on pride, envy, egotism and ambition, within himself and all who participate in politics, but considered competitive politics as the best way of using those tendencies in human character.

Tocqueville and Republicanism: An alternative to Current Republican Theory
The very welcome revival of Republican theory in Phillip Pettit and others, is largely a social democratic theory which places social and economic equality at the centre. Tocqueville recognised the need for state sponsored welfare, but was a lot more cautious about state action to promote equality, he thought the state has a role in preventing destitution not in redistributing property. Tocqueville provides an example of Republican participation as and end of human character, based on moderate welfarism and deep respect for property rights as the foundation of liberty and property, and the necessary basis for the independence of all from the state. Current Republicanism is very close to Communitarianism in assuming moral grounds for collective limitation of individualism, while adding more interest in politics as a part of human life. Tocqueville provides an alternative to the economic egalitarianism and to the moralistic view of politic as an instrument for moral goals.

Hegel, Recognition and Assimilation: From Legal Concepts to Biology.

Hegel places recognition at the centre of human personality and social relations. There are various accounts of where recognition arises, and how.

Recognition in the Phenomenology
The most famous discussion takes place in Phenomenology of Spirit. At this point, self-consciousness is where recognition arises. Consciousness requires self-consciousness. Self-consciousness requires awareness that something is conscious of the self. That could be the self becoming conscious of itself and it could be another self that becomes conscious of the first self. The two selves, or aspects of th self, become locked in combat. That leads the way to the struggle to the death in which the winner becomes the winner becomes the lord, and the loser becomes the bondsman.

Recognition in the Philosophy of Right I
The Philosophy of Right takes up at least two forms of recognition. The first arises in instituting private property. The owner of property demands that others recognise the personality of the owner. This seems far from the struggle to the death which institutes social relations in the Phenomenology. Recognition now arises from the tautology that what I won is mine (this is sweeping summary, but I believe it captures the spirit of Hegel's argument.) This tautology, which is never just a tautology in Hegel, because the apparent tautology always states a real difference between two ways of grasping the statement that is repeated.

Recognition in the Philosophy of Right II
Recognition appears later in the Philosophy of Right, when law emerges from the organisation of needs. In general, recognition is a development beyond mere need. Economic needs are organised through political economy, or a market economy. Recognition arises in the legal procedures which settle property disputes. Recognition always exist as a a way of overcoming mere need. It exists in overcoming the merely animal. Law saves us from the mere materiality of pursuing property in the open markets. Law is now emerging though it must already have appeared in the institution of private property. An economy described as political economy, is going to need more and more law to settle contractual issues. The contractualist approach is more appropriate than when law exists as divine will

Struggle of Life with the Non-Organic in Philosophy of Nature
Here life is struggling to overcome the non-organic. This is the part of Hegel which still attracts opprobium, the adventures of the dialectic in the material world of the natural sciences. We can still make sense of this by focusing on the issue of energy, more is required for organic states than non-organic states. This involves Hegel talking about the quantitative becoming qualitative, which is not really something anyone quotes in order to convince someone that Hegl is an important and worthy philosopher. Hegel is still maybe right to emphasise that nature becomes more complex and more self-organising in organic bodies. The defeat and assimiliation of the non-organic really belongs with the struggle of the Phenomenology. The teleology here is maybe not completely absent in Darwinian evolution. This surely rests on a general tendency of nature to become more and more complex and self-organising in the movement from matter to organism. I would not want to endorse all of Hegel's dialectic of nature, or revive vitalism in the philosophy of biology. Hegel does draw our attention to the way that categories of our consciousness inevitably intrude in our analyses of psychology, social thought, politics, economics and so on. Intrude in a way which is productive and enbabes thought to evolve.

Turkish Politics: Society Progresses not the Politics

I have not commented on this since Hrant Dınk was assassinated. I think for one thing, I was rather depressed by the total failure of the the political parties to seize the opportunity for reform. I'm still depressed about it, but I'm used to it. Certainly the economy and society is developing and growing. This process has come about through pragmatic accommodation of reforms which do not originate from within the Turkish political system. There is no real political force on behalf or real reform. The closest thing to that is a mixture of business lobbying, NGO lobbying partly funded by the EU and George Soros, and intellectual-journalistic opinion mongering.

Since Dınk's murder there has been a general election. I am afraid to say that political reform was not at the centre of the election. This reality has been obscured by a seemingly endless number of western commentators who are able to believe that the AKP, the governing party, is a party of modernising liberalising reform. These commentator also include Turks writing in western publications, but since it's difficult to meet Turks who believe such a thing and such a view has become less popular the longer the AKP has been in power, it really has to be concluded that they are fitting into a view that westerners need to believe.

The AKP government is certainly a lot better than might be expected given the Sahria law politics background of most of them. An organicist ideology of a pure Muslim-Turkish nation has involve into a developmentalism which implictly accepts change as defined by the European Union, World Bank, associations orientated to international business and the EU, and the more internationally oriented writers and academics. That is certainly not the platform the AKP compaigns on. It bases its appeal on nationalism, Muslim identity and patronage. Reforms are explain on the explicit level in those terms, not in the way westerners would like to understand them. Every political movement needs a bit of demagogy but the AKP's foundation is in demagogy against the elite and the non-Muslim/Turkic. Despite the western image their plains for political reform do not go beyond a minimalist adaptation to EU harmonisation requirements.

The trouble with the other parties is they are no better. The main opposition which is no better, is the 'social democratic' CHP. They are more a party of the secular state and the established middle and upper classes than a social democratic party. The social democratic element is in a statism and protectionism, expressed in opposition to some of the economic liberalisation of the reform process. This allowed them to be painted as more anti-EU than the AKP. I would say that claim has no underlying relation to reality whatsoever, but expect to hear more of it. I don't beleive the CHP deserve any sympathy. The other thing which has led d western commentators to paint them as less reformist than the AKP is the huge demonstrations for secularism which took place as the possibility approached that the new President of the Republic would be an AKP figure with a wife who wears a Muslim headscarf at all times in public. These demonstrations were seen as expressing an alliance between CHP and the armed forces, well maybe. There was no real chance of a coup, and if they were attmetping to pressure the democratic process they failed miserably. On one level it was all very self-defeating. Demonstrations were dominated by the Turkish flag as secularism was defended with reference to the nation state. The demonstrations looked like demonstrations on behalf of a strong state from a nationalist point of view. The idea that the AKP is any less nationalist or statist is absurd. They are less close to the army, but if they could co-opt the army they would, they are rooted in an Ottomanist ideology in which the state is defined by a father-sultan, sharia law, the Sultan's bureaucracy and the military which originally had a Jihadist function.

The consequence of this movement and subsequent manouvres at the top is that the President is an AKP man with a headscarved wife, but the President is the affable moderate former foreign minister Abdullah Gül, not the strong man of the AKP, Recep Tayyıp Erdoğan who is aggressive and demagogic in manner. This may be bad news for Erdoğan who everyone think longs to be President, but good news for the AKP which keeps its strongest figure at the centre of government and party politics. Whatever the personality of the President, the office inevitably leads to diastance from party politics and most government functions. If AKP lsoes its strongest figure to the Presidency it could well experience political decline, accelerating the disconnection between President and party. As Erdoğan will know have to wait to be President, it is even more likely that his Presidency will coincide with a down turn in the unity and popularity of the AKP. During the manouvres, the AKP managed to look like it had the democratic high ground by declaring it was in favour of the direct election of the President, that idea has disappeared since, maybe it will come back, I'm not expecting it

There is a new constitution being prepared, so that will put the AKP to the test and the CHP. Expect a minimalist adaptation to EU standards, not a big step forward. Things both AKP and CHP have been very quiet about: gay rights, sub-national identity, free speech, limiting executive privilege, university autonomy.

The third party is the ultra-nationalist MHP, who are more of a negative force in Turkish politics. No one expects them to have realistic proposals, they will just create the problem of how to get them to accept changes. The third party in the election was the Democratic Party, whichwas a failed attempt to relaunch the classical Turkish centre-right. Goodbye to them. The fourth party in the election, but the third in the National Assembly is the Kudish autonomy leftist DTP, the most important party in Turkey for many western left-wingers. Contacts with the DTP may, however, not be a successful substitute for interacting with the other 96% of Turkish voters, even including those tiresome ultra-nationalists in the MHP.

Unifying Analytic Philosophy and French Philosophy

This post started off as a comment on Brian Lieter's Blog which I've linked with this blog through an RSS feed, it is one of the best places to follow debates in the philosophical community. The comment became rather long and off topic so I've upgraded. The post I was reacting to was something quoting Jeff Macmahan (Rutgers) on the superiority of Analytic meta-ethics, to anything inspired by French philosophy. For those unfamiliar with metaethics, it refers to foundational issues in ethics (what the basic concepts are, their meaning, their validity, connections between them and so on).

Which French philosophy is opposed to the standards of Analytic Philosophy. The Phenomenology of Sartre and Merleau-Ponty have been taken up in relation to cognitive science, they are being taken seriously in Analytic Philosophy (overlooking the complication that some define Cognitive Science based philosophy as outside Analytic Philosophy because it does not put the analysis of concepts at the centre). Sartre and Merleau-Ponty did not think philosophy of consciousness should be based on breaking down a state of consciousness into separate parts; and they did not think contents of consciousness should be regarded as representations of ideas somewhere in the mind or of things in the external world. This puts into contact with at least two aspects of cognitive science: work on perceptual illusions which result from the context of a shape, colour patch or line in consciousness, the way we see one part of the visual field is determined by what we see in the rest of the field; work on anti-representationalism which concentrates on consciousness as embodied as a result of neural networks (changing networks of neurons in the brain which evolve according to feedback) in the brain.

Foucault has been discussed sympathetically by Charles Taylor and Ian Hacking, amongst others. Foucault seems to provoke the response either that he is a French charlatan or that he is an exception to French charlatanism because his work is very historical/social scientific in orientation. For Hacking, Foucault provides a model for discussing social reality and the structures of knowledge. Foucault's work includes themes of how knowledge is institutionalised and how those institutions function; the ways in which truths exist in pragmatic contexts; the ways in which knowledge is structured and builds on basic concepts. These can be, and have been, taken up by Analytic Philosophers working on social epistemology, social ontology and history of science.

What about Lévinas, who does not do history or social science of any kind, and who writes in a rather particular and difficult style? He looks like someone outside the scope of Analytic Philosophy, or is he? Hilary Putnam clearly does not think so, the title itself of his book Ethics without Ontology is a tribute to Lévinas. Lévinas favours a first philosophy of ethics, of the supremacy of the other, over a first philosophy of ontology (being). Putnam has something similar to argue, though in more pragmatic terms, in which ethics arises in the externality of language and knowledge to the ego. We do not have an absolute internal grasp of objects, so our perspective is limited and externally caused. Has Putnam degenerated philosophically since he started writing about Lévinas? That is not a widely held opinion.

Maybe Derrida is the antithesis of philosophical good sense. Tom Baldwin, now editor of *Mind* clearly thinks Derrida is worth taking seriously and has found it worth writing, if not very much, on Derrida as have Graham Priest and A.A. Moore. The themes that come up in comparisons of Analytic Philosophy include: impossibility of private language, contextuality and indeterminacy of meaning, the paradoxes of trying to state what absolute infinity is. Derrrida's philosophy is style dominated and this did sometimes become to much of an end in itself as time went on, but he started of with quite substantive discussions of Phenomenology, Structuralism, and post-Symbolist poetics. Despite Derrida's reputation for being all style, he had quite substantive things to say about ethics, law and politics in his later work. His best work maybe includes a meta-narrative of the impossibility of a complete philosophical language, because every such language must include abstractions which can never be complete, which always become contradictory. Abstractions always contain the possibility of becoming contradictory because of the contextuality of language,i and that refers to the impossibility of an infinitely applicable concept, that is any universal concept. This is in line with the paradoxes of trying to asset a complete infinity which always encounters the problem that there could always be an infinity we can construct which is larger than any infinity we have constructed so far. It should also be noted that despite the widespread beleif that Derrida's views on language are a development ıof those of Ferdinand de Saussure, he explicitly referred to Charles Peirce (founder of American Pragmatism) as the greater authority.

It would be difficult to write a truly comprehensive history of recent Analytic philosophy without mentioning some of the above examples. Not everything in French philosophy is equally great. A lot of commentators fail to take a critical distance from French philosophy, or their favourite part of şit, and treat explication of texts as a substitute for arguments. It is still a major area of philosophy. In the unification of French Philosophy from Sartre (or even Bergson) to Derrida with Analytic Philosophy, there is much that has already been gained and much more to come.

Morality in Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Pleasure, Pain, Psychological Health, Richnes of Life

We can examine the views of morality in Buffy the Vampire Slayer with reference to one of the less obviously thoughtful Buffy episodes. In Beer Bad (season 4, episode 5). Buffy is in her first year as a college student, at UC Sunydale. She is very disturbed that a student she spend a night with, Parker Abrams, rejects her afterwards. Some boys in the bar invite her to escape from her sadness by drinking with them. It turns out that the barman, who does not like snotty college kids, added a potion to the beer which turns them all into cavemen.

Before they turn into cavemen, the boys are having one of the conversations that irritate the barman, discussing morality. One of them declares that morality would have been put on a firmer basis under the influence of beer. That would lead to a morality based on what feels good and what feels bad (not the exact wordin g but that undoubtedly is the point).

There is such a morality, since the Nineteenth Century it has been known as Utilitarianism, the position which seeks to maximise the number of states of feeling good. That would be the Utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham which rates push pin as equal to poetry, that is 'low' pleasure as equal to 'high' pleasure; and not the Utilitarianism of John Stuart Mill who thought there are higher pleasures, so that Socrates unhappy is in a preferable state to a happy pig.

The boys seem to be Benthamites, though their descent into drunken incoherence is not what Bentham thought his philosophy was leading to. The boys progress towards cavemen like prelingualism and rage as a result of drink, could be regarded as a reductio ad absurdum
of Bethamite hedonism, the moral philosophy which seeks to maximise pleasure states. Pursuit of pleasure as a gaol ignores the rational reflective self in theory and leads to its destruction in practice. That may echo arguments of Plato against hedonism, in Gorgias and Philebus. In both dialogues, Plato attacks hedonism by suggesting that it must take the highest state to be that of eating and defecating at the same time, or scratching to relieve a pain. Both arise from seeking pure pleasure but both are repugnant. Pleasure itself can only be acheived in a hedonistic context whichj allows for the rational reflective self.

However, in Buffy, though the morality of hedonism is parodied, the idea that morality is based on feeling good is something difficult to get past. The show is premised on a rejection of moral abstractions. God is out, and so is all religious ethics. There is no absolute standard we can appeal to. The Vampires illustrate this, they defy every moral rule and enjoy the demonic pursuit of cruelty as and end in itself. They represent a logically coherent duty to cruelty as part of nature, which seems reminiscent of de Sade. There is no argument from pure moral reason against the vampires, which is why Buffy has to stake them. She certainly does not have any respect for ideas of moral duty, even if she lives a life of dutgy to her vocation of killing demons.

What makes Buffy different from hedonists turned cavemen? Notions of psychological health come in here, as when Buffy is contrasted with the 'dark' mentally unbalanced slayer Faith. Vampiric duty to kill is resisted with reference to the defence of a rich psychology and a rich way of life which is impoverished by Vampire attacks, and it is a way of life Vampires themselves lack as they are slaves to the lust for pain. The pain they desire is their own as well as that of their victims, they are masochists as well as sadists. One illustration of this is Darla the vampire's wish that Angel, the vampire who gets a soul/conscience should hurt her when he is unwilling to do so. Buffy is also shown to be drawn to the pain and sado-masochism but she also resists it. She resists it from a higher hedonism. Not quite the earnestness of Mill, but an argument for flourishing and richness of life and experience.

Philosophical Myths: Kierkegaard never talked about the 'leap of faith'

The Myth
A student presentation today in 'Introduction to Philosophy' brought up that persistent myth again. The myth that Kierkegaard used the phrase 'leap of faith'. The phrase is often attributed to Kierkegaard but was never used by him.

Irrationality and Subjectivism
This is not just some purely accidental slip in the history of philosophy. There are reasons people can believe that Kierkegaard used this phrase. They are based on a misunderstanding of Kierkegaard's philosophy. The misunderstanding is the belief that Kierkegaard was a subjectivist of an irrational kind who thought that beliefs can and should be adopted without reason, particularly the belief that a Christian God exists.

Fear and Trembling
Kierkegaard never held the view that reason should or could be subordinated to irrationality or that faith is a matter of an arbitrary decision. Part of the problem comes from the way that Kierkegaard's most widely read book, Fear and Trembling, is understood.

Abraham's Paradox
In Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard refers to the story of Abraham and Isaac. That is the story that Abraham is commanded to kill his son Isaac, by God. Abraham is ready to obey God's command, but at the moment Abraham raises his knife, a sheep appears as a substitute sacrifice. This has been understood as if Kierkegaard justifies anyone committing murder who claims to have heard a command from God. The point is that Abraham does not kill Isaac. The story is contrasted, by Kierkegaard, with the story of Agamemnon and Iphigenia in Euripides' play Iphigenia in Tauris. Agamemnon does sacrifice his daughter so that he can sail to Anatolia and attack Troy. Abraham has a 'teleological suspension of the ethical'. The 'teleological suspension of the ethical' is not permission to ignore ethics. It refers to the 'dialectic of the absurd, 'dialectic of paradox', according to which Abraham must recognise both the following theses:
1. God is absolute, and is therefore above ethics.
2. God will always follow ethics.

From Subjective to Absolute via Anxiety
The context for this dialectical dilemma is not a motiveless subjectivist view of decisions. Kierkegaard does favour subjectivism over objectivism. It is important to follow the argument.

The argument is that objectivism is contradictory because it requires subjectivity to know what is outside itself, which objectivity must be.

The problem of relating subjectivity to something outside itself is dealt with inside subjectivity. Subjectivity can relate to something outside itself because subjectivity can only exist as what goes outside itself.

The argument starts by looking at subjectivity in a rather Humean way, that is subjectivity as a series of distinct moments in time which have different contents and are unconnected. Subjectivity seeing itself as a series of discrete moments and aware of the freedom which comes from its indeterminacy arrives at melancholy and anxiety. These come from awareness of the nothingness in subjectivity and fear of making a decision when free will exists on a premise of non-determinism which means that decisions lack motivation.

Melancholia exists over time, it is in melancholia that we can grasp ourself as existing over time. We grasp the absolute in subjectivity. That is the basis of God in Kierkegaard, not a motiveless leap of faith. Even in his more pious religious texts, Kierkegaard is coıncerned with how a relaiton with God the absolute rests on a relation of subjectivity with the absolute within itself, Love of the neighbour depends on love of the self.

Martha Nussbaum and Michel Foucault on Eros and Ethics in Antiquity

Michel Foucault and Martha Nussbaum covered some similar territory with regard to the ethics of the Ancient world with regard to desire, sexuality, eros and love. In Foucault's case, this was work towards the end of his life in Hermeneutics of the Subject, Uses of Pleasure, and Care of the Self (the last two were volumes two and three of History of Sexuality). In Nussbaum's case, this was the work that really made her name: Fragility of Goodness and Therapy of Desire.

Comparisons of the two are not very frequent. Foucault tends to be best known amongst literary theorists; Nussbaum is known to philosophers (particularly those working in Ancient Philosophy, Philosophy and Literature, and Ethics) and also to people in legal and political theory. There would be great benefits in more philosophers reading Foucault, there would also be benefits in cultural theorists reading Nussbaum.

There are intermittent comments on Foucault in Nussbaum. As far as I know, Foucault never had anything to say about Nussbaum. As far as I know, Nussbaum's major comment on Foucault on antiquity, is that Foucault looked at sexuality with regard to the individual, and paid insufficient regard to the interest in its harmful effects on others in Antiquity. I don't really see a great difference between the fundamentals in how Nussbaum and Foucault present Antique ethics as concerned with the health of the individual.

The underlying difference between the two maybe in what they try to build on Antique ethics. Nussbaum wants to build Aristotelian social democracy, Foucault is concerned with the difficulties of building a theory of political obligation on Aristotle's ethics, or any Antique ethics. For Nussbaum, Aristotle shows a way out of a rigid concern with inner correctness. Aristotle becoems the bearer of an Antique moral externalism (morally significant actions have causes other than inner intentions). Foucault insists on exploring the difficulties Antique ethics poses for generating a sense universality in ethics and politics. The question for Foucault is how a self partly described in sexual terms has the right to sovereignty because it is sovereign over its passions. Upto the Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, this poses difficulty for universalising theory. Aurelius does not even think it worth discussing the state directly, it is his daily rule of his passions which settles the question of the legitimation of his power. Foucault explores to the limit, the idea of particular right to sovereignty. This is important to him as it confirms his libertarian tendency to find all power alien. It should also be said that in Hermeneutics of the Subject that Foucault is working on the distinction between pastoral power and governmentality, which is the difference between state absolutism and limited state. So Foucault is beginning to get beyond the gestures towards libertarianism which leave open the question of what the least bad government is in its exercise of power.

Nussbaum is comparatively indifferent to the problems of power in Aristotle, that it rests on a particularistic understanding of who is fit to govern. Despite her discussions of sexuality and a feminine point of view, there is a Puritan desire for morally perfect government with the right to make people good lurking in Nussbaum. This may look harsh but she clearly does not get why Foucault is suspicious of all power and she is advocating a Communitarian type political theory in which the government is moral in purpose. Some of her reactions show a neo-Puritan political correctness completely lacking in Foucault despite his adoption/kidnapping by the politically correct cultural progressives. In Nussbaum's Neo-Puritanism, consider her support for Cartherine McKinnon's proposal to make pornographers open to civil damages because of the supposed consequences of their publications, or her resentment on video that someone commenting on her position on ethical responsibility to animals referred to her 'hunting bigger game' (than Rawlsian political contractualism). I'm concerned about the same issues as Nussbaum is, but I thought that was funny remark and that her response was slightly sinister in its wish to enforce her own very constrained view of civility. She clearly thought the editor should not have allowed such a remark.

Foucault was an irresponsible provocateur, Nussbaum is the New Engşand moralist. Clearly Nussbaum is the greater scholar of Antiquity, by a very long way, but she is not convincing when she tries to criticise Foucault for emphasising the distance between Antique ethics and general theories of obligation. It is important that at this time Foucault was developing a more nuanced view of different types of political regime. In all cases he was trying to learn from Antiquity how politics always refers to particularistic sovereignty.

Gadamer, Nationalism and a Reductive view of Enlightenment and Romanticism

These thoughts come from an MA class from the Methodology course I give for the MA in Political Science in the Department of Humanities and Social Science where I am employed.

Truth and Method famously rehabilitates the concept of 'prejudice' as a term of legal process rather than as a negative term referring to a bad opinion based on poor reasoning. The use of 'prejudice' as a necessary first stage of a legal process is combined to Germany. Gadamer contrasts German usage with other usages going back to the Latin. What he does not do is consider various contextual issues in history and theory of law: Roman Law and Customary Law (which still existed in Germany in the era of Enlightenment and Romanticism), Roman Law and Common Law (English style law which gives a strong role to judicial precedent and innovation); and all consideration of law not based on a convenient German example. The section on legal hermeneutics has rather more to do with hermeneutics than law, leaving us with Gadamer's privileged example.

The German orientation is also present in his account of Enlightenment. French and 'English' Enlightenment are presented as sceptical in contrast with the historically grounded German Enlightenment. The fşrst point to make her is that the 'English' Enlightenment is better described as 'Anglo-Scottish' since the greatest figures were David Hume and Adam Smith. Other notable Scottish contributors include Adam Ferguson and Thomas Reid. Looking at the great philosopher in this context, David Hume, scepticism is a strong theme in Hume but it has an end. The end is in the habit, or custom, of the mind which provides a reliable basis for knowledge and ethics, though they cannot be based on determinate knowledge. Custom and habit also exist in history, in the accumulation of science, culture and morality. Something Gadamer could have taken into account.

The Italian Enlightenment is also pushed out of account. Vico is put in his place, by suggesting that he has failed to adopt the Hermeneutic method of moving between part and whole. Vico apparently leaves an unbridgeable confrontation between the individual and history as a whole. Another way of looking at Vico is that he shows the individual becoming more universal through history. Somehow Gadamer overlooks Vico's work on language, literature and law, which would disturb his extremely schematic contrast between Enlightenment and Romanticism. His presumed sharp separation ignores the way that Enlightenment includes the centrality of sensibility and imagination. These may have been initially conceived in mechanistic terms but that is something that is always breaking down, particularly if we consider the simultaneous development of the novel of sensibility. Gadamer claims that Romanticism is nostalgic, but the Jena Romantic Ironists in some sense invented Modernity as a value. They opposed the sentimental, romantic, modern novel to the naive, classical, antique novel in non-nostalgic terms.

Derrida French Nationalist and Conservative Europeanist

Loyal Derrideans will now doubt be perturbed to see Derrida accused of positions he rejected at the most explicit level. However, we cannot spare Derrida from the kind of reading that he brings to other people.

Derrida, Hegel and Algeria
The issue of Derrida the French nationalist first occurred to me after a class in which I was teaching 'Onto-Theology of National-Humanism' (available in Oxford Literary Review 14 1992, pages 3 to 23; or in Jacques Derrida: Basic Writings, Routledge, London, 2007). The text is devoted to the discussion of the Germanic tradition of identifying German Nationalism with Philosophical Humanism. Fichte, Heidegger and Adorno feature as might be expected. The less well known figure of Karl Grün features strongly. Grün must be best know for being criticised by Marx in the German Ideology, and that is what Derrida discusses. Bringing in Marx might appear to some people, possibly including Derrida himself, to neutralise anything nationalist looking in his work. However, Marx is full of German-European nationalist universalism. For Marx, Germany is the country furthest from revolution and therefore the closest philosophically. For Marx, European colonialism brings the colonised countries into a world community formed by Europeans.

Grün strongly criticises the French on philosophical and national grounds. He condemns the French interpretation of Hegel, a topic that is of great importance to Derrida when writing about the institution of philosophy in France, and which obviously forms a large part of the background to Derrida's own philosophical formation. He takes a critical view of French colonialism in Algeria, referring to the desirability of Algeria becoming a part of Morocco. The consequence of French colonial policies in North Africa was that the Moroccan monarchy continued to exist but was effectively reduced to a French satrapy.

In my class ( part of a course on Derrida based on the texts I selected for Jacques Derrida: Basic Writings), an International Relations students, in a group that was predominantly philosophy students) was very determined to takes this in the terms of IR Realism. Realism in IR refers to the view that states pursue their own interests and state interests conflict. He picked up on thew territorial issue and the issue of reading Hegel, and argued that Derrida's text was a reaction against both. Derrida was a pied-noir, a colon, in Algeria. That is be was born into a colonial family. As it was a Jewish family, no doubt their position in the pied-noir community was no doubt in some respects marginal, nevertheless they were part of that community, a community of a million white Europeans with roots going back to the 1830 annexation.

Derrida of course never identified with French colonialism but he did identify with his Algerian origin. There is a difference between justifying colonialism and valuing origins in a colonial community, but this can be a tangled issue particularly when we consider the pied noirs, who wished to stay in Algeria and wished for Algeria to be treated as part of France. They were not just a colonial addition on the top of a native community, that was what made their resistance to decolonisation and then de Gaulle (their saviour turned traitor) so bitter, and what made decolonisaiton of Algeria so trauamtic in France and so protracted and bloody in France.

Derrida and Tocqueville
Behind the pious image of progressive Derrida, let us admit there is someone with some French nationalist impulses with regard both to philosophical institutions and to colonial history. Rather tantaslisingly Derrida refers to a coming lecture on Tocqueville. 'Onto-Theology of National Humanism' is a lecture Derrida gave at the Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales. All of these lectures will be published but it will necessarily be a protracted process. The last I heard Geoffrey Bennington and Peggy Kamuf will edited the collected Derrida, but the publisher was unclear. Tocqueville was a enthusiast for French colonialism in Algeria and regarded Islam as clearly inferior to Christianity, on the basis that Mahgreb Muslims were less developed than European Christians (on religious-cultural grounds not racial-ethnic grounds). This is invariably the issue with which Marxist, or Marxisant, critics of Tocqueville like to attack with him, and to attack liberalism. Of course in this context they like to forget that Marx supported European colonialism, the rights of great nations and thought that Jews (like himself) should all give up all elements of Jewish identity. What did Derrida have to say about Tocqueville? Would it bring us any close to an understanding of the relationship between Derrida's own French philosophical universalism and the particularistic world view of the pied-noirs.


Europeanism: Plato and Christianity
On the issue of Europeanism, Derrida criticises Husserl's idealistion of Europe as the place of philosophy, and therefore of human goals in Introduction to the Origin of Geometry. What do we see in The Gift of Death in the discussions of Jan Patocka? Patocka was a Phenomenologist oriented to Plato and Christianity, influential on Czechoslovak anti-totalitarians, lie Vacllav Havel, and Catholic theologians including Karol Wojtyla (Pope John-Paul II). Derrida emphasises the Europe of Plato and Christianity in Patocka, a Europe that is identified with Christian spirituality and philosophical truth. Derrida emphasises heresy in Patocka and European responsibility, but the end result is still a taking up of an idea of Europe as a unified entity with a specific philosophical role.

It all looks very much Derrida thinks that Europe is the land which contains the spiritual and philosophical goals of humanity. Derrida would have denied such an ambition. Occasionally he makes gestures to the non-European origins of European culture, as when he refers to 'hetera' (other) as a word of Sanskrit origin in 'Signature Event Context' (though as far as I know it is a word which appears both in India and Europe and could with no clear indication of where it appeared first). Despite himself, no doubt, did not Derrida give way to a Eurocentric form of universalism, a universalism defined by the European philosophy (including Marx) and high literary tradition which forms the basis of his texts.

Greens join Bayrou: A new Movement in the French Political Centre takes shape.

François Bayrou and the Democratic Movement
François Bayrou's Democratic Movement (Modem) shows some signs of insitutionalising itself as a party. It is holding a founding conference this weekend. Bayrou is the only candidate to be party president and the party is very much his creation. Nevertheless it has at least passed the stage of being Bayrou's support organisation for elections in France earlier this year.

The new party has 50 to 60 thousand members which is promising. That's a bit less than the British Liberal Democrats and should be enough for a third party sustainable over time, and which might challenge the two main forces. Sarkozy has tried to seize control of the whole politicalş spectrum between the Socialists and the National Front. Bayrou has at at least succeeded in limiting Sarkozy's hegemonising project.

French greens join Modem
One of the most interesting news items about the congress is that one of the French green parties (CAp21) is integrating with Modem, suggesting a genuine force beyond one individual. CAP 21 is itself a very personalised party led by a former Environment minister, Corinne Lepage, who was allied with the old UDF. Modem has a strange history, or non-history, going back to the non-communist resistance during the Occupaiton of France, post-war catholic centrist politics, Giscard's UDF which brought Catholic centrists into alliance with other parties of the centre and centre right, the evolution of the Catholic centre into a more secular organisation, the absorption of most of UDF into a relaunched post-Gaullist right, and Bayrou's determination that there should be a continuing centrist political force. A party rooted in a tradition of liberal, radical and democratic principles would be preferable but that is not an option in France. Last time I checked Modem could not define a tradition or place itself in history. Maybe that will begin to happen now that Modem is a a fully formed party, already integrating a green party. This move gives Modem the chance to strike a distinctive note as party orientated towards green issues.

Political Traditions in France
Bayrou has some of the disadvantages of a politician from the Catholic centre, for one thing he opposes Turkey's membership of the European Union. The party is still in a very formative stage, we shall see. It's a bit difficult to define a clear liberal and radical (in the oldest sense tradition in France, On the whole liberalism has been applied to a part of the right and the radicals have been a neo-Jacobin statist party, which split between left and right currents in the 1970s.

We might now see a movement emerge that can refer itself to the great intellectual liberal tradition in France: Montesquieu, Benjamin Constant, Madame de Stael,Physicocrats, Alexis de Tocqueville; the moderate parts of the Revolution, Mirabeau the Younger and the Girondins; the most durable parts of the radical and republican tradition: secularism, citizenship, integration of all citizens into common citizenship. The Catholic centre made a great historical contribution, as the pro de Gaulle part of the resistance, as the current which produced Robert Schuman second architect of the European Union after Jean Monnet.