Category Archives: Volume 8, no. 2 (2013)

A note on the papers from the winter symposium of the Nordic Summer University held in Akureyri, Iceland, March, 1st-3rd 2013

The study group “Towards a New Ethical Imagination. Political and social values in a Cosmopolitan World Society” of the Nordic Summer University had its winter meeting at the University of Akureyri, Iceland, March 1-3, 2013. We discussed different topics in the fields of moral, political, economic, and social philosophy, with the addition of a special theme i.e. ethical, political and legal issues in the Arctic region. It was a very fruitful meeting and we would like to thank the organisers at the University of Akureyri, in particular Águst Thor Árnason, the Icelandic NSU Coordinator, for all the hard work done in Akureyri.

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Colonial Past and Constitutional Momentum: The Case of Iceland

In June 2010, nearly two years after the world-wide financial crisis of 2008 hit Iceland, the Icelandic Parliament passed an act on a Constitutional Assembly. Even if no one has succeeded to show any direct connections between the financial crisis and the provisions and the function of the constitution of 1944, loud voices did claim that Icelanders were fortunately faced with a “constitutional moment” and, subsequently, an opportunity to change the nation’s political as well as economic life; something people were ethically obligated to make use of. With no better justified or defined reasons for such an all-inclusive revision, however, it is a worth-while undertaking to take a closer look at the notion of a constitutional moment, and see if that can help us to understand why the Republic of Iceland should abolish its founding constitution without a preceding thorough analysis of its functional failures.

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Creativity in the Research Process. Accompanying Aristotle on a scuba diving excursion in the Red Sea

The paper investigates creativity as an attitude on demand from the researcher in a special situation in the research process. The situation occurs when the collected data does not coinside with the antecipated result. Hans Joas understanding of creative action is abolished for the adaptation of the Aristotelian concept of practical wisdom (phronesis) as the foundation for the attitude. The data has to be analysed with the unique and particular in focus in order for new connections and relations to be revealed. An attitude concentrated on revealing the particular in the data is necessary. From there a new attitude takes over that focuses the general on behalf of the particular. The research process is exposed in a parallell text on Scuba diving.

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Mammonist Capitalism – Ubiquity, Immanence, Acceleration. And the Social Consequences

This essay attempts at a general understanding of contemporary capitalism and some of its social and mental consequences. It works through combinations and variations of concepts from classical and contemporary social theory. Some key concepts are Mammonism, acceleration, ubiquity, self-dynamics, precariat, inertia, conformity, flexibility, specter of uselessness. The text refers to classical modern thinkers like Marx, Simmel, Musil, Benjamin, and to contemporary ideas in the works of Deleuze, Rosa, Crouch, Illouz, Standing, Hochschild. It is summoned up by asking some important, complex questions that regard democracy, community and autonomy.

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Some Varieties of Normative Social Critique

The article distinguishes between different forms of normative social critique: an external, an internal or immanent, and a disclosing form of critique. Whereas the external and internal critique appeal to or rely upon a certain standard or yardstick of critique, the disclosing form of critique aims at opening up our eyes to new ways of seeing social reality, and in the light of which our way of life can be seen as deficient or pathological. Depending upon the circumstances each form of critique may be a legitimate means to bring about a change.

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Transnational Discourses between Facts and Norms. Toward a Two-Track Model of the Public Sphere

This paper investigates how and to which extent the model of the liberal public sphere, firstly outlined by Jürgen Habermas and later developed by some of his scholars, can be translated into a global context. Such an idea of a transnational publicity will be considered both from a normative idealizing perspective, according to which the discursive public activities aim at legitimizing actual democratizing processes beyond the national boundaries, and from a diagnostic perspective, which focuses on the critical power that post-national publics exercise against relations of domination on the global level. In order to maintain both perspectives, and to question the Habermasian preference for the normative one, I am proposing a two-track model of the transnational public sphere illustrating how ideal and normative aspects are interwoven with factual and non-ideal ones.

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The Hopeful Liberal. Reflections on Free Markets, Science and Ethics

International crises and their dramatic outcomes notwithstanding, certain long-lived, deeply rooted beliefs are hard to die. Thus we keep hearing leading politicians and revered economic advisors who call for a return to growth and assert that structural reforms are imperative so that market confidence may be re-established and increased competitiveness achieved, without ever pondering upon the fact that these aims are precisely those that guided the global economy before the crisis. Could it ever be that endless growth, market confidence or competitiveness are misguided aims for the world’s economies? In these reflections of mine, I wish to address one of these resilient beliefs. Specifically, in the traditional philosophical way initiated by Socrates, I shall assess some logical knots arising from a hypothesis, that is, the commonplace liberal notion that the so-called “free market” possesses a unique capacity to generate prosperity.

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Ethical Challenges Facing Greenland in the Present Era of Globalization: Towards Global Responsibility

Recently, the developments of ethics and politics in the Arctic region have again become an issue for international discussion. One main issue is the problem of climate change and sustainability of the Arctic region. This problem is linked to the issue of exploitation of natural resources in the Arctic region, not at least in Greenland. Indeed, the general issue is how we should define ethics of the environment and sustainability as a general principle for the Arctic region. It is important to discuss what is at stake and how we define the problem in relation to the different participating stakeholders. This paper deals with these problems as a case for global ethics and it proposes a vision of ethical and political responsibility for sustainable development in order to deal with such problems.

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The Wider Impacts of Universities: Habermas on Learning Processes and Universities

The discourse of reform in higher education tends to focus narrowly on employability and the relationship between higher education and the labor market. Universities as research institutions are now considered solely in the dominant discourse of innovation. This way of conceiving universities is inspired by functionalist theory that focuses on the imperatives of a knowledge economy. Taking a departure in the theory of society developed by Jürgen Habermas this paper seeks to provide a theoretical framework for an empirical comparative analysis on the wider societal impact of universities. It is the argument that the wider impacts of higher education and research at universities must be seen in a more complex vision of modern societies. The paper is thus primarily a re-reading of Habermas’ critique of functionalist views of the university and an application of Habermas’ critique on current issues in the debates on higher education. A special discussion will be taken on issues of the self in view of the current tendencies to regard all education from the standpoint of the economic outputs. 

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Levinas on dying – An interpretation of Edvard Munch’s The Death of Marat II (1907)

Abstract: To make ethics a first philosophy was the French philosopher Emannuel Levinas’ Grand plan. His thesis that our responsibility for the Other (person) is infinite was central in achieving this goal. According to Levinas the Other’s death marks the end of his virility and heroism. By interpreting one of the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch’s paintings of Marat, I want to put forward Levinas’ thinking of death and elaborate on his underlying concepts of time, knowledge and suffering, and his use of the categories general and particular in relation to his concept of death. Levinas refers to Bergson, Sartre, Marcel and Heidegger in his writings on death.

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On New Beginnings and Democratic Legitimacy

This paper sets out to discuss the enigma of revolutionary new political beginnings of constitutional orders.  The problem is that when a political community is constituted, the act of constituting per definition is unconstitutional or extra-legal. For this reason the question of new beginnings is a political and not a legal question. The question of what the authority of the constituent act is presents an important question since the constitution is the fundamental law from which the legitimacy or authority of all other laws is derived. The problem for this paper is whether and in what way it is possible to think new beginnings that are not merely institutionalizations of factual relations of domination or arbitrary acts of violence. This problem is discussed on basis of two revolutionary theories in the tradition of constituent power—Emmanuel Sieyès and Hannah Arendt—that both understand power to emanate from below and not from above whereby they both, though in different way, present arguments against the understanding that new beginnings merely are institutionalizations of relations of domination and arbitrary acts of violence. The question of whether and to what extent they are successful and whether their theories are democratic will finally be discussed.

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Good, Evil and Successful Recognition. A Processualist View on Recognitive Attitudes, Relations and Norms

In this paper I am proposing a “processual” account of struggles for recognition. I read Hegel in the section of “Evil and Its Forgiveness,” in his Phenomenology of Spirit, as arguing for a transition from basically action-theoretic, relational or institutional conceptions of recognition to a processual conception. Furthermore, I will be claiming that John Dewey’s experimentalist social philosophy can be understood as an attempt at working out the implications of this move in Hegel’s thought. Finally, I will try to indicate how to integrate central concepts of the recognition-theoretical vocabulary into such a processual account.

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Philanthropy and Human Rights – The Genealogy of the Idea from Antiquity to Global Society

In the last couple of decades, philanthropy has become a concern which is taken seriously in the Western world. Normal people give donations and volunteer on a large scale within the institutions of civil society. This is the case for business corporations as well, who now have to act with a form of personal responsibility. Such a responsibility is institutionalized in the big global CSR movement, which has now been integrated in the UN Global Compact. Philanthropy has many dimensions; these include ethical, juridical, political, economic and cultural dimensions. In the last years, a lot has been written about philanthropy from a political, sociological, anthropological and managerial perspective. However, an essential question remains: what does philanthropy mean? In a Greek context, philanthropy is connected to a friendly act towards one’s owns close connections such as family or fellow citizens, and normally utilized to promote one’s own prestige in the city-state. In Roman context, universal humanism, humanitas, was invented. This universal perspective was also supported by Christianity. It is this universal concept of philanthropy which is the foundation for the different philanthropic traditions in Germany, England, France and USA. In each tradition is developed special features of the concept of philanthropy. The four traditions are summarized in the UN universal human rights, which has become the common normative reference for global philanthropy. In this way philanthropy has become, in a modern sense, a charitable act with the aim to promote human happiness independent of gender, class, race, etc. This is the genealogy of the modern understanding of philanthropy, which will be developed in this paper.

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