On the Renewal and Reconfiguration of Modern Philosophical Practice

2018

In contemporary literature, it is acknowledgeda safact thatw hile we currentlyfind ourselvesfacing the 'EraofGlobalization',still very little work has been done to analyze this concept,which rather appears as a deus ex machina; as ap roduct of the contemporary crisis, lacking political history and semantic genealogy, wanting nevertheless to become an explanatory wildcard for all present events, both in apositive and negative sense. The initial thesis of this article is thatt he current concept of globalization is an emptyone that has been stripped of its historical content.This emptying is part of the 'postmodern' processes of thinning and deformation afflicting ethical-political concepts (freedom, equality,d emocracy) by depriving them of their 'modern' content without endowing anyother.Taking this into account,Idefend the consequent thesis that the suppression of these concepts' semantich istory implies in turn the eradication of the ethical commitment thatthey entailed,whose inheritance by contrast should not be renounced. Iconclude that thereisthe need for asocio-political pedagogy that contributes to transmitting 'responsibility for the concepts' that are the true shapers of collective identities. Without this responsibility, our ability to adopt anyother type of historical, ethical or political responsibility would be impeded. With this proposal, Iw ant to recover in its true 'universal'-not 'global'-sense the Leibnizian motto 'Theoria cum praxi' taken up by the Enlightenment,i n which ar enewed philosophyo fh istory acts as ab ridgeb etween history (memory) and politics (action), endowing both with ethical content.

Part One: The Subversion of Ethical Theory by Positivism. Human beings are today in the throes of a paradigm-shift from the early-modern paradigm and toward a fundamentally different orientation that I call 'the holistic paradigm'. The former is based on a series of false conclusions drawn from early-modern science (the so-called Newtonian paradigm). One of these false assumptions involves this radical distinction between fact and value that was introduced into much of Western thinking as a result of this scientism. This essay examines the role of holism behind the emerging global ethics in terms of ten global ethical principles. Each of these ten principles is discussed as intrinsic to a complete set of holistic and integrated global ethical principles. Finally, the essay considers the relation of these ten principles to our global social contract. Much traditional ethical theory going back to such thinkers as Plato, Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas to Spinoza in the 17 th century was substantially holistic. These thinkers were concerned with the virtuous development of the whole person, a process that never made a radical separation between the 'facts' of the cosmos in which we are immersed and the values recognized by a developing attentive human mind. However, with the explosive rise of early-modern science in the 17 th and 18 th centuries, a number of thinkers developed a radical distinction between fact and value, thereby fragmenting and distorting the realities of our human situation. The pervasive positivism of much political and ethical thought throughout the past century has derived in part from this historic, apparently unbridgeable, distinction between fact and value, between what is the case and what should be the case. This distinction was made by such 18 th century thinkers as Kant and David Hume and is integral to the early-modern paradigm. These thinkers found no credible place for the human mind within their epistemology of objective observation and empirical testing. A trained observer ignored his or her values, feelings, and personal beliefs and just observed the facts. Subjective thoughts, feelings, and desires had nothing to do with the objective facts. Within the objective set of facts, no value was observed, attributions of value were considered merely subjective assessments imposed upon the impersonal reality of the situation [1] Thomas Hobbes in the late 17 th century, David Hume in the 18 th century, and others since that time declared that the only thing 'real' and 'true' about the world was that it was a collection of 'facts' that could be empirically identified and verified. Like the atomism introduced by Newton as part of his well-known 'machine model' of the universe (i.e. everything is reducible to its parts and can be understood in terms of the external relationships among these parts) Hume, and positivism following him, understood 'reality' as a collection of empirically identifiable facts, and all our theories about the universe were built up through theoretical models of the external relationships among these parts [2]. This simplistic understanding of ethics culminated in the positivism that remains foundational to much thinking. I have explored this early-modern paradigm in several of my books and will not repeat the inquiry in this essay [3]. The radical distinction between fact and value remains part of what I call the 'fragmentation' introduced by this early-modern perspective. This positivist ideology spilled over into the economics and politics of the western-dominated world that has led to such terrible consequences as

Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 2003

The currently used humanity model is chaotic, devoid of logic or coherence. In Part 1 of this two-part paper, we examined human traits of a scientific model in absence of 'born sinner' starting point. We demonstrated that the so-called 'viceroy model' that is characterized as scientifically sustainable can replace the existing models that are based on fear and scarcity. Part Two of the paper deals with adequate definition of moral campus that conforms to the viceroy model. In this paper, it is shown that the talk of morality or a moral compass is aphenomenal in absence of strict necessary and sufficient conditions. It also follows that natural justice can only be followed after defining the term 'natural' with the same scientific rigor as that of the viceroy model. Once these terms are consistently defined, one is well poised to talk about inalienable rights, moral compass, environmental sustainability, and humanity. The immediate consequence of this model is the demonstration that currently used governance models, such as democracy, is inherently implosive and must be replaced with a new model that is in conformance with the scientific definition of 'natural'. This emerging model is free from inconsistencies and will remain effective as a governance tool that optimizes individual rights and balances with the right of the state as well as a Creator. It is concluded that this model offers the only hope of maximizing individual liberty without compromising universal peace and natural justice. At this point, morality and legality become equivalent to each. The implications of this paper are overwhelming, making all current judicial actions immoral, in essence repudiating the entire Establishment as little more than a mafia entity, bringing back 'might is right' mantra, packaged as 'social progress'. The paper finally shows how a standard that is necessarily and sufficiently universal can become impetus for a true knowledge.

European Journal of Social Theory, 2007

This article re-assesses classical social theory's relationship with cosmopolitanism. It begins by briefly reconstructing the universalistic thrust that is core to cosmopolitanism and then argues that the rise of classical social theory is marked by the tension of how to retain, but in a renovated form, cosmopolitanism's original universalism. On the one hand, as the heir of the tradition of the Enlightenment, classical social theory remains fully committed to cosmopolitanism's universalism. On the other, however, it needed to rejuvenate that commitment to universalism so that it could work without the normative burden that its traditional natural law elements now represented in the modern context. The article then argues that, in the cases of Karl Marx, Georg Simmel, Emile Durkheim and Max Weber, they all started to differentiate the claim to universalism into three different realms: (1) the normative idea of a single modern society that encompasses the whole of humanity;

2009

Nationalism, democracy and the market economy are the three ideas that have dominated the political and economic history of our times. They form the basis for a social philosophy that holds the nation-state to be the most appropriate expression of political sovereignty. They require this sovereignty to be exercised through representative democracy, the rule of law, free speech, the protection of individual rights and perhaps, secularism in mundane matters. This school of thought argues for a market economy, with modest public interventions, as the most workable form of economic organisation. It is a philosophy which has been challenged at many times in the past, most notably by imperialism with respect to the first element, by fascism with respect to democracy and by communism with respect to the market economy. Imperialism and fascism were no longer influential as ideologies after the Second World War and, after the collapse of communism in Europe in the late eighties, there was a sense that we had come to a defining moment-the phrase used was "the end of history" 2. From this point on, it was argued, the world could be put on auto-pilot, ideological differences were at an end, and it was just a question of the gradual extension of market economy and liberal democracy to the rest of the world. Since then there has been a reaction to this ideology, a growing recognition that it has not delivered even in terms of its own objectives and that it has not given people the freedom or the equality that it promises. We see the persistence of poverty, homelessness and marginalization; the phenomenon of growing unemployment, the spread of deviant criminal behaviour including drug abuse and trafficking; the horrors of ethnic violence and the obscenity of ethnic cleansing. These factors have shown the limitations of an ideology which many thought was going to lead to a convergence of the world system to some Kantian ideal.