Resenha: "Toleration in Conflict"

O livro "Toleration in Clonflict: Past and Present" de Reiner Forst (Goethe University) foi resenhado na Notre Dame Philosophical Review. Traduzido do alemão, o livro conta com duas partes: uma história do conceito ("passado") e a proposta de um teoria da tolerância para as democracias contemporâneas ("presente"). Vale lembrar que Forst escreveu o verbete "Toleration" para a Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy no qual ele discute em linhas gerais as tipologias usadas no livro.

- Forst: "Toleration" [SEP] 

Toleration in Conflict: Past and Present

Rainer Forst, Toleration in Conflict: Past and Present, Ciaran Croni (tr.), Cambridge University Press, 2013, 635pp., $110.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780521885775.

by John Horton (Keele University)

Rainer Forst is one of the outstanding political philosophers of his generation, and Toleration in Conflict is simply the most impressive philosophical work specifically on toleration that I have ever read (and over the years I have read rather a lot of such books). It is an immensely long and thorough work, and it is hard to resist a smile when reading in the Preface that it is actually an abridged version of the German edition, originally over 800 pages, although Forst generously reassures us that the English-language edition 'contains everything essential' (p. xiii). One reason for this length is that it is almost two books in one. (Given the cost, though, I resist any tendency to write "two books for the price of one".) About three quarters of the text consists of a history of toleration in Western thought (and to some extent practice) from antiquity to the twentieth century, while in the last quarter of the book Forst develops his own theory of toleration. There is also a forty-four page bibliography and an exemplary index. The original German edition was published ten years ago, and (entirely reasonably) there has been no attempt to update it, so more recent work has not therefore been addressed; for example, Wendy Brown's tirade against toleration. The translator, Ciaran Cronin, has worked closely with Forst, whose own English is in my experience exemplary, and the result is an English-language text that reads both fluently and idiomatically, the very occasional 'Germanicism' aside.

Although I have described it as almost two books in one, it would be misleading if this gave the impression of any disconnect between the parts. While each probably could just about be read independently of the other, a good deal would be lost in so doing. The historical story is informed by the theory of toleration of the second part, which is in turn largely reconstructed from the historical analysis of the first part. Thus the book opens with a discussion of the concept of toleration and various ideas (conceptions) of how that concept can be interpreted, including a consideration of the so-called 'paradoxes' of toleration. The structure of the concept as Forst sets it out is clear and compelling, and is likely to elicit only minor disagreements at most. However, considerably more distinctive and original is his identification of four principal conceptions of toleration: the permission conception, the coexistence conception, the respect conception (which admits of two forms -- formal equality and qualitative equality) and the esteem conception.

The permission conception, which for much of the history of the theory and practice of toleration has been its dominant form and probably remains the most common understanding of it,

designates the relation between an authority or a majority and a minority (or several minorities) which does not subscribe to the dominant system of values. Toleration here means that the authority (or majority) grants the minority the permission to live in accordance with its convictions so long as it -- and this is the crucial condition -- does not question the predominance of the authority (or majority). (p. 27)

The coexistence conception can be understood as an adaptation of the permission conception in circumstances where there is no longer a single dominant group but, instead, 'groups of approximately equal strengths who recognise that they must practise tolerance for the sake of social peace and in their own interests' (p. 28). On this conception the 'toleration relation is thus no longer a vertical one, as in the permission conception, but a horizontal one: those who exercise tolerance are at the same time also tolerated' (pp. 28-9). (Generally, the distinction between horizontal and vertical forms of toleration, roughly those exercised by dominant powers and by fellow citizens, respectively, has an important role in Forst's analysis.) However, what is fundamental is that neither the permission nor the coexistence conceptions 'lead to a form of mutual recognition which goes beyond the sufferance of others and rests on farther-reaching moral or ethical considerations' (p. 29).

The respect conception of toleration, by contrast, does just that: it 'proceeds from a morally grounded form of mutual respect on the part of the individuals or groups who exercise toleration. The tolerating parties respect one another as autonomous persons or as equally entitled members of a political community constituted under the rule of law' (p. 29). Ultimately, the respect conception is grounded in an acceptance of 'the right to justification', which requires collective norms to be reciprocally and generally valid. As this is the conception of toleration to which Forst wishes to give primacy, I shall have more to say about it later. However, it is worth remarking here that it can take one of two forms: formal equality or qualitative equality. 'The former assumes a strict separation between the private and public domains according to which ethical differences between citizens should be confined to the private domain and must not lead to conflicts within the public political sphere' (p. 30). Qualitative equality, on the other hand, is more accommodating of the public political expression of ethical and cultural identities, and 'implies recognising the claim of others to full membership in the political community without demanding that in the process they must renounce their ethical-cultural identity in ways that cannot be reciprocally required' (p. 31). The final conception of toleration, the esteem conception,

involves a more demanding form of mutual recognition than the respect conception, for, according to it, toleration means not only respecting the members of other cultural or religious communities as legal and political equals but also esteeming their convictions and practices as ethically valuable. (p.31)

Forst has little to say about this conception, which he associates principally with value-pluralism, but intimates that he thinks it is too demanding.

Sen: "India's Women: The Mixed Truth"

Treze anos após seu famoso artigo sobre o problema das "mulheres faltantes" na Índia ("More Than 100 Million Women Are Missing") o filósofo e economista indiano Amartya Sen volta ao assunto na última edição da NY Review of Books. A partir dos últimos confrontos sociais na Índia motivados por violência de gênero, Sen retoma sua análise da falta de mulheres como um caso de violência "silenciosa": levando em consideração o número de mulheres que deveríamos encontrar na população atual (dada a proporção normal entre entre homens e mulheres) podemos afirmar que a desigualdade de gênero estrutural condiciona a expectativa de vida das mulheres indianas tanto quanto a violência visível. 

                (Razão estimada de nascimentos mulher-homem para cada 1000 homens)

India's Women: The Mixed Truth

by Amartya Sen

“I am not a boy, I am a girl,” wrote a twenty-one-year-old woman in Delhi, called Jyoti, who was studying at a medical college to be a physiotherapist. This was in a text message sent in December 2010 to a twenty-six-year-old man who worked in information technology and who had initially taken Jyoti to be a man. They met, and what began as a casual communication became a close friendship.

Two years later, on December 16, 2012, after they had seen a film, The Life of Pi, Jyoti was gang-raped with extreme brutality, and the man was severely beaten as he tried to protect her. They had been tricked into boarding a bus that seemed to be going their way and that had offered them a ride. It was a closed bus with darkened windows in which five determined rapists were waiting for their prey, with their impatience heightened, it is alleged, by the drugs they had taken. The battered bodies of the abused pair were dropped off on a lonely street, and by the time Jyoti received medical attention, she was on her way to death from the injuries, despite specialized medical care in Delhi, and later in Singapore.

The gang rape, including the violence accompanying it, not only got headlines in every serious Indian newspaper, it received continuous coverage around the clock on radio, television, and cable channels. It also led to large-scale public protests and demonstrations that continued for many days in Delhi as well as in other Indian cities, with agitated crowds—men and women—much larger than any seen before in protests of this kind. The insecurity of women, including their vulnerability to rape and abuse, became overnight a national issue in a way it had never been.

Public anger at gender inequality in India must be seen as an important—and long-overdue—social development, and it can certainly help in remedying the persistent inequalities from which Indian women suffer. It is, however, very important to understand the nature of female disadvantage in India, which can take many different forms. If the lack of safety of women is one aspect of it, the old phenomenon of “boy preference” in family decisions is surely another. Boy preference relates closely to the deep-rooted problem of what has been called “missing women,” which refers to the shortfall of the actual number of women from the number we would expect to see, given the size of the male population, and the female–male ratios that could be expected if there were symmetry in the treatment of women and men. There is, moreover, strong evidence that the economic and social options open to women are significantly fewer than those available to men; and going beyond women’s well-being, we have reason to ask also about women’s limited role in society and their ability to act independently, and how their initiatives and actions influence the lives of men as well as women, and boys as well as girls.

Numbers and Insecurity

One of the positive consequences of the agitation following the barbaric incident of December 16 has been to draw attention both to the prevalence of sexual brutality and rape in India, and to the failure of the media to report on it seriously, thereby limiting public discussion and the likelihood of social change. Even though Indians buy more newspapers every day than any other nation, the reporting of sexual assaults and sexual harassment had been quite rare in the widely circulated papers. It is, therefore, impressive and encouraging that newspapers in India, smarting from intense criticism of the negligence in their coverage, rapidly reinvented themselves as rape-reporting journals, and many of them have been devoting several pages every day to reports of rapes gathered together from all the different parts of India. This dramatic change is certainly a welcome development, but it can be asked whether the ongoing news reporting is well aimed and as helpful for public discussion as it could be.

How frequent is rape in India? If there are pages and pages of reports of rapes from across the country in the newspapers, the incidence must be high. There are, in fact, good reasons to believe that the majority of rapes go unreported in India, and the actual incidence of rape may be much higher (some estimates suggest that it is larger by a factor of five or more) than what gets recorded by the police. Based on the news coverage of rape across India, it has been argued, with some plausibility, that India has an extraordinarily high frequency of rape. To what extent is this the right way of thinking about India’s problem? Rape and brutality against women are not exactly unknown around the world. One question is whether rape is relatively more common in India than elsewhere, despite the increased attention it is now getting in Indian news reports.

In fact, if we go by the comparative statistics of reported rape, India has one of the lowest levels of rape in the world. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime found the incidence of rape in India for 2010 to be 1.8 per 100,000 people, compared with, for example, 27.3 in the US, 28.8 in the UK, 63.5 in Sweden, and 120.0 in South Africa. The number of recorded rapes in India is certainly a substantial underestimate, but even if we take five times—or ten times—that figure, the corrected and enlarged estimates of rapes would still be substantially lower in India than in the US, the UK, Sweden, or South Africa (even with the assumption that there is no underreporting in these other countries).

High frequency of rape may not be the real issue in India, but all the evidence suggests that India has a huge problem in seriously monitoring rape and taking steps to reduce it. The failure of the police to help rape victims and to ensure the safety of women is particularly lamentable. Following the December incident there were large clashes with the police by protesting crowds, not only because of the attempts by the police to break them up, but also because the demonstrators frequently confronted the police for their very poor record in dealing with this problem.

Even though the alleged rapists in the particular case on December 16 were picked up by the police quite quickly and promptly charged in court, the police were criticized for acting too slowly in giving emergency care when the raped victim and her beaten male friend were found lying on the street. Even in dealing with another terrible aspect of the December incident, the failure of people in passing cars to stop to help the victims (even though some of them did call the police), it was claimed that many passersby are afraid to get involved in a scene of criminal activity because of the fear that the police can—and often do—harass the good Samaritans who are found near the victims of crime, rather than searching diligently for the criminals who have fled the scene.

There was discussion also of the large number of cases in which the police seemed to doubt the credibility of a rape victim on the ground that the suspected rapist told a different story that seemed “equally credible” to the authorities. The Indian judicial system is itself extremely slow, and has not typically been able to rise to the challenge of bringing about speedy convictions of rapists and assaulters on the basis of the information provided by the victims. But the courts are certainly not well served by the unclear information provided by police reports on what exactly happened. From what we know, India’s problem may well lie not so much in a particularly high incidence of rapes, but in its inefficient policing, bad security arrangements, slow-moving judicial system, and, ultimately, the callousness of the society.

Przeworski na USP

No dia 9 de outubro (quarta) o CEM e o DCP/USP organizam um seminário com o cientista político Adam Przeworski (NYU). No encontro, Przeworski pretende discutir de que modo o seu modelo de inclusão e competição eleitoral consegue explicar os padrões de extensão do sufrágio feminino.  Abaixo encontra-se o estudo comparativo de Przeworski a respeito das lutas históricas pela ampliação do sufrágio eleitoral.

- Przeworski (2009): "Conquered or Granted?: a History of Suffrage Extensions"

Para que serve a ciência política?

Na última edição da American Political Science Association (APSA) a palestrante convidada Jane Mansbridge (Kennedy School) respondeu a seguinte questão "Para que serve a ciência política?". Segundo Mansbridge, a principal contribuição que devemos esperar da disciplina é a possibilidade de encontrar novas formas para o uso (necessário) da coerção publica. Nesse sentido a ciência política seria - mais do que a ciência empírica das instituições e menos do que a crítica radical do poder - simplesmente a arte do autogoverno. É claro que não faltarão críticos às teses de Manbridge....

Leiam abaixo o working paper:

- Mansbridge: "What is political science for?" [working paper]

[...]

Yet if political science is “for” anything, I think it is, and should be, for helping us to govern ourselves.  We don’t actually know very much about how to govern ourselves.  And political science is the only academic discipline specifically organized to study this.  Other disciplines – law, psychology, sociology, economics – make great contributions.  But we, as a discipline, are organized around the question of governing.  Because we have consciously created social structures that let us think together, and because of our specialized toolkits, we -- of all the people in the world -- are the best organized to be of help on this.  And the world certainly needs that help.

What don’t we know about how to govern ourselves?  We know very little compared to our needs.  We don’t know how to coerce ourselves into giving up what we need to give up in order to stop global warming.  We don’t know how to stop nuclear proliferation.  We don’t know how to transition from autocracy to democracy without descending into violence.   Closer to home, we don’t know how to tax ourselves sufficiently to keep our infrastructure from crumbling or to pay for the rising medical costs of an aging population.   We don’t know how to produce laws in a polarized Congress or how to reduce that polarization.  We don’t know how to keep ourselves from drifting into greater and greater inequality.  At this moment of great need and relative ignorance, political science is the one academic discipline explicitly organized to study how we make our collective decisions on these matters, and how we can make them legitimately. 

Samuel Scheffler: A importância do além-vida

Samuel Scheffler (NYU) publicou no blog The Stone uma pequena síntese de suas Tanner Lectures ministradas em 2012. Nessas conferências Scheffler defendeu a importância da noção de "além-vida"  em nossos projetos e planos. Se todos nós, se a humanidade, fosse disaparecer em uma ou duas gerações o quanto poderíamos dizer, por exemplo, que os esforços para descobrir a cura do câncer, a composição de uma obra-prima ou mesmo escrever os posts deste blog (!) valeriam a pena? Ao contrário da concepção cristã de "além-da-vida" (individualista e extra-física), contudo, Scheffler defende que apenas uma noção coletiva e material de sobrevivência da espécie importa para dar sentido para  aquilo que, hoje, acreditamos valer a pena. Parte importante da discussão depende do "argumento da extinção" extraído do romance (e depois filme) Children of Men de P. D. James.  

The Importance of the Afterlife. Seriously

By SAMUEL SCHEFFLER

I believe in life after death.

No, I don’t think that I will live on as a conscious being after my earthly demise. I’m firmly convinced that death marks the unqualified and irreversible end of our lives.

My belief in life after death is more mundane. What I believe is that other people will continue to live after I myself have died. You probably make the same assumption in your own case. Although we know that humanity won’t exist forever, most of us take it for granted that the human race will survive, at least for a while, after we ourselves are gone.

Because we take this belief for granted, we don’t think much about its significance. Yet I think that this belief plays an extremely important role in our lives, quietly but critically shaping our values, commitments and sense of what is worth doing. Astonishing though it may seem, there are ways in which the continuing existence of other people after our deaths — even that of complete strangers — matters more to us than does our own survival and that of our loved ones.

Consider a hypothetical scenario. Suppose you knew that although you yourself would live a long life and die peacefully in your sleep, the earth and all its inhabitants would be destroyed 30 days after your death in a collision with a giant asteroid. How would this knowledge affect you?

Visões sobre a Síria: crise humanitária ou ameaça imperialista?

Alguns artigos e opiniões sobre a crise humanitária (e geopolítica na Síria) repercutiram na comunidade acadêmica nas últimas semanas. Fizemos um pequeno levantamento de algumas delas indo dos acadêmicos radicais de sempre aos congressistas que votaram contra a participação inglesa no conflito. 

- Michael Ignatief [Boston Review]: "Bosnia and Syria: Intervention Then and Now"

- Zizek [The Guardian]: "Syria is pseudo-struggle"

- James Martin [The Dissent]: "From Civilizing Missions to Collateral: Syria and the Rules of War"

- David Davis [The Wall Street Journal]: "Why I voted against Syria intervention"

- Michael Walzer [Dissent]: "Syria: What Ought to Be Done?" 

Beitz: Dignidade Humana e Direitos Humanos

Na edição de setembro da Philosophy and Public Affairs, Charles Beitz (Princeton) publicou um ensaio no qual avalia a discussão recente sobre o papel da "dignidade humana" nas teorias contemporâneas dos direitos humanos. Existiria um fundamento extra-legal e universal ("dignidade humana") na base dos direitos humanos? Entre os principais trabalhos recentes sobre a questão estão o livro de Micheal Rosen ("Dignity: Its Meaning and History") e as já célebres Tanner Lectures de Jeremy Waldron ("Dignity, Rank and Rights"). 

- Beitz: "Human Dignity in the Theory of Human Rights: Nothing but a Phrase?"

- Waldron: "Dignity, Rank and Rights" (Tanner Lecture) 

[Ver também outros posts sobre o Waldron no blog!]

Bolsas para o encontro da Political Studies Association (PSA)

A Associação Brasileira de Ciência Política (ABCP) está recebendo trabalhos de doutorandos ou recém-professores interessados em apresentar suas pesquisas na 64a. reunião anual da Political Studies Association (PSA) - a associação inglesa de ciência política. O encontro será em Manchester entre os dias 14 e 16 de abril do ano que vem. O prazo para a inscrição é 20 de outubro.

Abaixo seguem as exigências da ABCP:

Perfil dos candidatos:

- Doutorandos de programas de pós-graduação de ciência política;

- Professores de departamentos ou programas de pós-graduação de ciência política que tenham defendido sua tese depois de 20 de outubro de 2008 (cinco anos de doutoramento, no máximo).

Os candidatos devem enviar ao email abcp@cienciapolitica.org.br os seguintes documentos:

- CV Lattes em PDF;

- Titulo e resumo, ambos em inglês, do artigo a ser apresentado (resumo em 10 linhas)

Os selecionados devem participar dos 3 dias completos do evento. Não pagarão taxa de inscrição e receberão o convite, sem custos, para o “Annual Dinner” da PSA. Também terão suas despesas de hotel cobertas pelos organizadores (4 noites) e apresentarão seu artigo, em inglês, em um dos painéis do evento. O apoio para a passagem de avião será parcial.

A pedido da ABCP, a Profª Claudia Faria (UFMG) relatou brevemente sua experiência este ano durante a 63ª Conferência Anual da PSA, na cidade de Cardiff, e recomendou a participação a todos os interessados. Na carta, Claudia afirma que “a conferência é extremamente bem organizada e a recepção aos pesquisadores selecionados pelas Associações de Ciência Política de outros países é muito acolhedora” e que “as discussões foram muito enriquecedoras para o campo de estudo que me dedico, bem como para o aprimoramento do artigo apresentado.”

Outras informações podem ser encontradas na página da PSA: www.psa.ac.uk

Oficina: "Political Utopia: Promise or Peril?"

O workshop de ética aplicada e política pública da Bowling Green University (Ohio) está recebendo resumos de trabalhos para seu evento anula em ética aplicada que ocorrerá nos dias 25 e 26 de abril do ano que vem (2014). O tema do evento será as possibilidades e os limites a teoria ideal (ou não-ideal) na teoria política contemporânea. Os palestrantes convidados serão David Estlund (Brown) e Gerald Gaus (Arizona). O prazo para a submissão de resumos é dia 1 de novembro.  

Political Utopia: Promise or Peril? 

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS

The Bowling Green Workshop in Applied Ethics and Public Policy

Political Utopia: Promise or Peril?

April 25^th-26^th, 2014

The Bowling Green Workshop in Applied Ethics and Public Policy will take place in Bowling Green, Ohio, April 25^th-26^th, 2014. The keynote speakers are David Estlund (Brown University) and Gerald Gaus (University of Arizona).

Those interested in presenting a paper are invited to submit a 2-3 page abstract (double-spaced) by November 1, 2013. We welcome submissions in all areas in applied ethics and philosophical issues relevant to public policy. Special consideration will be given to papers relevant to this year’s conference theme: on the prospects of ideal and nonideal theory in contemporary political philosophy. The theme is to be construed broadly, so we encourage submissions that draw on normative ethics, metaethics and applied ethics.

Only one submission per person is permitted. Abstracts will be evaluated by a program committee and decisions made in November 2013. Please direct all abstracts and queries to:pibarra@bgsu.edu

Further information about the Workshop and previous workshops are available on the workshop website (under construction):http://www.bgsu.edu/departments/phil/conferences/index.html

Lançamento: "A Forma da República"

Na próxima segunda-feira (16/09) a Editora Martins Fontes realizará o lançamento do livro "A Forma da República - Da Constituição Mista ao Estado" do professor Cícero Araújo (DCP/USP). A obra propõe reconstituir as principais correntes teóricas que deram forma a noção contemporânea de republicanismo (em especial os conflitos entre as tradições dos governos mistos, por um lado, e as teorias da soberania, por outro). 

Uma versão preliminar do cap. 3 do livro pode ser encontrado abaixo:

- Cícero Araujo: "O Estado como parte da República"

Vagas de pós-doutorado: Normative Orders

O centro "The Formation of Normative Order" com sede na Universidade Goethe em Frankfurt abriu duas vagas para pós-doutores na área de justiça global. O prazo é 30 de setembro e as exigências são a formação acadêmica em filosofia ou teoria política e interesse em problemas globais. Serão aceitas inscrições tanto em inglês como em alemão. O centro é um dos mais prestigiados da Europa na área e já contou com a presença de brasileiros em seus quadros. 

[Do blog Public Reason]

The chair of International Political Theory, Prof. Darrel Moellendorf, Cluster of Excellence “The Formation of Normative Orders” at Goethe- University Frankfurt is seeking to fill two Post Doctoral Research Associate positions (wissenschaftliche/-r Mitarbeiter/-in E 13 TV-G-U, 100 %) as soon as possible.

The initial appointment period is for two years with the possibility of one two-year renewal (not longer than 31 October 2017). Applicants should have a PhD in political philosophy or political theory and research interests in international political theory, broadly construed.

The deadline for receipt of applications is 30 September. Applications may be in German or English and should include a letter of interest that summarizes the applicant’s research project, a CV, and three letters of recommendation.

Applications should be sent to:

Exzellenzcluster Normative Orders, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, Frau Rebecca Schmidt (Geschäftsführerin), Grüneburgplatz 1, Hauspostfach EXC-5, 60323 Frankfurt, office@normativeorders.net

Goethe University seeks to increase the number of female scientists and encourages them to apply. Disabled persons with comparable qualifications will be given preference.

Filosofia como disciplina humanista: Berlin, Hampshire e Williams

O site da NY Review of Books disponibilizou as conferências que o periódico organizou em junho para a comemoração de seus 50 anos. Desta vez as conferências tiveram por tema três dos colaboradores mais ilustres da revista: os filósofos Isaiah Berlin, Stuart Hampshire e Bernard Williams. Em comum os três revalorizaram o papel da história e da política na filosofia analítica e defenderam a aproximação da filosofia com os estudos humanísticos mais do que com as demais áreas do conhecimento (como a lógica ou as ciências empíricas por exemple).  A lista das contribuições de cada um dos autores para a NY Review (inclusive o célebre ensaio de Berlin sobre Maquiavel) pode ser acessada nos links abaixo. 

Estão entre os palestrantes que foram convidados para o evento Alan Ryan, Avishai Margalit, John Gray, Samuel Scheffler, Jeremy Waldron, entre outro.

- Isaiah Berlin: NY Review

- Stuart Hampshire: NY Review

- Bernard Williams: NY Review 

- Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline: The legacy of Isaiah Berlin, Stuart Hampshire and Bernard Williams (podcasts)

2013 APSA Meeting

Os painéis do encontro anual da APSA (American Political Science Association) em Chicago já estão disponíveis no site do evento - que ocorreu entre os dias 29 de agosto e 1 de setembro. O número de mesas é imenso mas estão organizadas por temas: panel index. 

Entre os destaques de teoria política, o aniversário de "O Príncipe", o novo livro de Philip Pettit, rumos da democracia deliberativa e teoria crítica hoje. As mesas podem ser acessadas nos links abaixo:

- Political Thought and Philosophy

- Foundations of Political Thought

- Normative Political Theory