Philosophy and Critical Theory
Because of the value monism of Judith Shklarâs liberalism of fear it is both prescriptive and utopian. And because of its value monism, it is beset by epistemological weaknesses, but also it remains blind to the moral harms committed in its name. These problems will afflict other value monist approaches to political thought as well, whether or not they are sceptical. What, then, are the alternatives? Shklarâs first book, After Utopia, fails in its attempts to be both sceptical and also completely free from normativity. Indeed, all political thought will be normative insofar as it engages in a critical analysis of the values and paradigms of politics, as is the case, for example, with the various conceptions of freedom and the diverse liberal models of political life. We must therefore consider how political thought can be normative and yet avoid the shortcomings of value monism. Value pluralism provides the compelling answer. If we have not identified the general rule for resolving moral conflict, political theory cannot offer moral guidance in politics. It requires both that political theory should play a restricted role, and that it should be supplemented by practical reasoning and practical judgement.
What do the victims of tyranny owe each other? In this chapter, I examine whether they can be condemned for betraying their friends, and I do so through a novel interpretation of Judith Shklarâs political thought. Shklar is a widely acknowledged and significant influence on non-ideal theory, including political realism. However, there is also a previously unnoticed transformation between her early and mature work, for, although she remains a sceptic, her approach to moral conflict changes from value pluralism to value monism. In addition, it is only in her mature work, as a monist, that she believes tyranny cancels obligations of justice. I argue here that Shklarâs monism fails, and this in turn has important implications for non-ideal theory. While non-ideal theorists have focused on developing a sceptical critique of ideal theory, this interpretation of Shklarâs work illustrates that greater awareness is needed of the pitfalls of monist strands of scepticism
This chapter examines what role utopianism can play in political thought. For Shklarâs liberalism of fear, utopianism is unjustifiable both on sceptical grounds and because it is implicated in illegitimate uses of cruelty. And yet the mature Shklar in fact defends utopian reforms that are, she believes, necessary so as to prevent greater cruelties and, therefore, to secure our freedom. Not only that, as argued here, Shklarâs position on utopianism in fact changes dramatically over the course of her writing career, reflecting a process of continual reappraisal of the work of Rousseau in particular. However, the monist utopianism of the liberalism of fear is marked by the following shortcoming: in her mature work she is, despite her scepticism, unable to identify the prima facie wrongs committed in the name of even legitimate utopias, including the radical and Rousseauian reforms she calls for in The Faces of Injustice and American Citizenship. And I will try to show that value pluralism is free from these problems. More generally, my argument is that a monist position on moral conflict, even when it is also a sceptical one, lacks a critical dimension crucial to the evaluation of such utopian projects.
This chapter examines how Europe can address its crisis at the beginning of the twentieth century â and perhaps even take advantage of it â by reengaging its citizenry to create a democracy at the supranational level by transforming direct memories of total war into a more durable social imaginary. While collective memories of Europeâs age of total war helped push the Union through two phases of integration, it is clear that they can no longer play this role. This chapter argues that developments such as rising rates of intra-European marriage and the advent of the first generation of Europeans that grew up on a continent of open borders, combined with civic education focusing on teaching national history within its European context, can help ground the intra-European solidarity necessary for a true supranational democracy. In this way it can combat the negative memories spread by populism and reengage the constructive resources of collective memory.
This chapter details the founding of the first European institution, the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in 1951, and of the European relance of 1957, which brought the European Economic Community (EEC) into existence. Using historical and archival research, it documents how important postwar leaders, particularly the first President of the European High Authority Jean Monnet, French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman, and German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, negotiated their differing memories and opposition from more traditional political actors to create the first European institutions. They all viewed the Second World War as an important historical rupture requiring basic changes to the political architecture of the continent. They believed that Europeâs experience of total war necessitated supranational cooperation as a way of curbing the violent tendencies of nationalism.
This chapter links individual remembrance to the paradigm of collective memory and shows how history played into postwar European politics. Since the end of the Second World War, the remembered past has increasingly been recognised as an important source of stability allowing individuals and communities to integrate new experiences into existing understandings of the past. Although these narrative frameworks help maintain individual and group identities, the chapter develops a critical theory of memory as a resource for rethinking the foundations of political life in the aftermath of historical ruptures. Building on the work of the Frankfurt School, it argues that the experience of total war between 1914 and 1945 created a rupture in European understandings of its past. Despite its many traumatic consequences, this caesura gave political leaders the freedom to rethink the foundations of political order and provided them with the cognitive, motivational, and justificatory resources to reimagine the future.
This chapter sums up the argument, reflecting on the importance of collective memory in the origins and development of the European Union. It also explains fears of a return of fascism by reflecting on the loss of the generations that experienced and had personal memories of the rupture of 1945. The book concludes by reflecting on the continued usefulness and applicability of the Frankfurt Schoolâs approach to critical social research in a period of increasing globalisation, which has been accompanied by a concordant decline of the nation-state. It argues that critical theory â and political theory more generally â is an important resource for analysing the problems of international capitalism and the crisis of the Eurozone, just as it was for understanding the political and economic pathologies of the interwar years.
The first phase of European integration was followed by a period of institutional stagnation lasting through the 1970s. This chapter argues that this Eurosclerosis was the result of a counter-narrative brought to the fore by Charles de Gaulle, who sought to return the state to the centre of political and economic power in Europe. The expansion of Europe beyond its Franco-German core reinforced the Gaullist challenge by forcing Europe to confront new understandings of the past. This was reinforced by the accession of the United Kingdom, whose differing, more triumphalist memories of the war meant that the British took a fundamentally different view of the European project from the start. However, by the mid-1980s a new group of leaders reacted against this challenge to what the chapter refers to as the classic narrative by building on their own childhood memories of the Second World War. Commission President Jacques Delors, French President François Mitterrand, and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl set the second phase of integration in motion with a series of initiatives that once again combined the economic logic of prosperity with the moral logic of cooperation across borders.
Just as the founding of the first European Communities in the 1950s produced a backlash in the 1960s and 1970s, the second phase of integration has also met with resistance. Recent challenges to the classic narrative have taken a number of forms: the desire of the new member-states from East-Central Europe for recognition of their suffering under communism, the growing economic problems brought about by the Eurozone crisis, and the threat of disintegration posed by Brexit. In the case of European expansion, continental institutions and existing member-states were again confronted by conflicting understandings of the European past. In particular, the states of the east have challenged the central place of the Holocaust and the image of Auschwitz in the classic narrative of integration. The combined monetary, banking, and sovereign debt crisis brought on by the Great Recession of 2008 merely reinforced these cleavages. This was followed by the Brexit vote on 23 June 2016 and is further threatened by the rise of populism and the spectre of additional votes to leave the EU. These proximate challenges have been compounded by rise to power of the first generation of European leaders with no personal memories of Europeâs age of total war.
The dangers posed to political institutions following the passing of the individuals that toiled in their foundation reveals the important generational dynamics involved in the (re)founding of political communities. This chapter reflects on these dynamics by moving away from the context of European unification and taking a comparative perspective on the problems new polities experience with the loss of the generation of the founding. By drawing on accounts of memory and rupture in the history of the United States, it compares the current problems of Europe to the divisions America experienced in the period leading up to the Civil War. This brings the book into conversation with the broader debates on constitutional moments and the founding of political communities. It thus reflects further on how the dynamics of rupture, innovation, and generational change play out in the development of all political communities.