Articles #Rawls

Context is key in reading Rancière. His interventions are always that, interventions, logical revolts in specific contexts. He himself shows great versatility in using the same arguments and the same references differently in different contexts. His whole philosophical practice encourages us to use his ideas pragmatically depending on contexts and the aims we pursue. In France, the embrace of Anglo-American political philosophy in the 1980s corresponded with a concerted attempt to reign in left-wing forces associated more or less closely with Marxism. This was the time when the French Revolution was reinterpreted as a non-event or as a prologue to 20th century totalitarianisms, when people who were Maoists a decade earlier were burning the effigies of their youth. Continuing the End Times series, Richard Marshall interviews Jean-Philippe Deranty

Political liberalism offers a different, more inclusive, picture of liberal politics. On this view, liberal rights and institutions are not instruments to promote a particular way of life—they are rather meant to provide a fair framework within which each person can develop and pursue their own plan of life. You don’t need to hold a liberal view about how one ought to live to endorse this picture of politics—it’s meant to be a picture of our political life that can be freely endorsed by people with a wide variety of different doctrines.'On the more modest view that I prefer, pluralism is not an external constraint on liberalism, it’s rather a fact about liberal societies in particular. It’s a fact that in societies where basic rights and liberties are protected, there will always be the kind of reasonable disagreement that I described in one of my previous answers. Continuing the End Times series, Richard Marshall interviews Jonathan Quong

The problem with conceptions of justice forming the basis for organizing social institutions resembles the problems Rawlsians envision for basing society on conceptions of the good. Reasonable people disagree about which conception of the good is correct, and so imposing it on those who disagree will be a source of instability, and, in my view, distrust between those in power and those out of power. But if reasonable people can disagree about justice as deeply as they disagree about the good, then the same problems applies conceptions of justice. Continuing the End Times series, Richard Marshall interviews Kevin Vallier.

Climate change threatens to lead to climate colonialism in three ways. First: the imperative to respond is a colonialist imposition in and of itself in Nkrumah’s sense, given that the challenges posed by rising temperatures are disproportionately caused by the emissions of colonizer nations like the US and its effects will constrain or control the governing possibilities of the Global South (or Third World or whatever we’re saying these days). Secondly, the likely consequences will reverse whatever gains have been made since independence and cement colonial hierarchies of power: many Global South nations are positioned to be hurt first and worst by climate impacts and have worse infrastructure to prepare effective responses to climate crises. Lastly, the character of global climate justice efforts might themselves feed into climate colonialism. Powerful countries, corporations, and non-state actors may exploit the less powerful to secure their own resources and populations. Continuing the End Times series, Richard Marshall interviews Olufemi Taiwo