PROGRAMMES OFFERED

SUBJECTS AND SUBJECT AREAS

I detail below the subjects and subject areas in which tutoring is offered in the humanities and social sciences (Ethics, Philosophy, Political Theory, Sociology, Social Theory, Urban Studies).

The materials are arranged according to level, ranging from A level and first year undergraduate up to postgraduate and research levels.

I offer good general coverage in a range of subjects and subject areas.

I indicate my specialist areas in philosophy, social and political theory and urban ecology.

A LEVEL TO UNDERGRADUATE

ETHICS

Moral language; Ethical arguments and Theories; Moral relativism; Cognitivism and Non-Cognitivism; Objectivity in Ethics; Egoism; Hedonism; Utilitarianism; Deontology; Kantian Moral Philosophy; Virtue ethics; Consequentialism; Practical Morality; Situation ethics; Applied ethics; Feminist ethics; Business ethics; Media ethics; Environmental ethics. 

PHILOSOPHY

Epistemology; Metaphysics; Language and Logic; Mind; Ethics; Politics; Aesthetics; Continental Philosophy; Religion; Social Explanation.

GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS

Concepts and Models in Politics; Representation; Political Parties; Electoral Systems; Group politics; Political Ideologies; The law and the Judicial process; Local government.

SOCIOLOGY

Sociological methods; Social differentiation and class; Families and households; Education; Crime and deviance; Work and Leisure; Mass media; Social interaction; Culture, consciousness, identity; Poverty, social exclusion and welfare; Globalisation; Work and economic life; Cities and urban spaces; the Environment.

HISTORY

Europe 1643-1945; Social and Economic History (Industrial Revolution); History of Ideas; The Renaissance; The Enlightenment.

POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

The State and Civil Society; Democracy; Citizenship; Justice; Rights; Liberty; Equality; Identity and Pluralism; Liberalism and Communitarianism; Conservatism; Marxism; Feminism; Ecology; Social Movements; Globalisation and New State Spaces; Multiculturalism; Civic Republicanism. 

URBAN STUDIES

 Cities and Civilisation; Urban Design; Urban and Regional Planning; Town and Country Planning; Urban Geography; Urban Political Economy; Urban Sociology; City Cultures; Urban Networks; Global Cities; Urban ecology; the Urban Public Realm; Urban Futures.

Read below for a detailed breakdown of the areas offered at A level, degree and postgraduate, and research levels. 

e-Akademeia offers tutoring across the Humanities and Social Sciences, from A level to degree and postgraduate level. More details concerning coverage can be found in the lower half of the page.

A AND AS LEVEL

Ethics; Philosophy and Ethics; Sociology; Government and Politics

DEGREE 

Ethics; Philosophy; Contemporary Political Philosophy; Political Philosophy; Political Ideologies; Sociology; Political Sociology; Urban Studies

POSTGRADUATE RESEARCH INTERESTS

Being and Place

(environmental ethics, politics and philosophy)

Studies in Rational Freedom

(The Greco-Germanic tradition connecting freedom, flourishing, happiness and reason - Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Spinoza, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Weber, Habermas)

Reason, Justice and Sustainable Living in the City

(Social, environmental and urban justice)

Read below for a detailed breakdown of coverage in all these areas.

A AND AS LEVEL

ETHICS

Ethical Theories

AS

Utilitarianism

Kant

Natural Law

Absolute and Relative morality

Situation Ethics

Religious Ethics

A2

Virtue Ethics

Free Will and Determinism

Conscience

Meta Ethics:

•Emotivism •Intuitionism •Prescriptivism

Applied Ethics

AS

Abortion

Euthanasia

The Right to Life

The Right to a Child

Genetic Engineering

Embryo Research

War, Peace and Justice

A2

Sex and Relationships

Business Ethics

Environmental Ethics

PHILOSOPHY AND ETHICS

ETHICS

1 The Existence and Nature of God 2 Issues of Faith and Philosophy 3 Religion and Experience 4 Religion and Science 5 Religion and Language 6 Metaethics 7 Ethical Theories 8 Medical Ethics

PHILOSOPHY

1 Theory of knowledge 2 Moral philosophy 3 Philosophy of religion

THE NATURE OF PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEMS

1 The Nature of Philosophical Problems

2 Human Nature and Culture

(The Darwinian framework, a Rational Animal)

3 Language and Logic

(On Concepts, The Meaning of Words, Logic of Affirmation, Forms of Argument, Ockham’s Razor)

4 Theory of Knowledge

(What Can We Know?, Plato’s Cave, Reason and Experience, Appearance and Reality, Doubt, The External World, Perception, Subjective Idealism)

5 Philosophy of Religion

(Existence and Nature of God, Experience, Science, Language, The Problem of Evil, Design, Ontological and Cosmological Arguments, Meaning of Life, Freewill)

6 Metaphysics

(Status of Science, Problems of Freedom, Absolute Metaphysics)

7 Philosophy of Mind

(Metaphysics of Mind, Other Minds, Mind and Body Dualism)

8 Philosophy of History

(History and Humanism, The Ahistoric Ideal, History as Empathy)

9 Ethics

(Free Will, Right and Wrong, Naturalistic Ethics, Experience Machine, Value Judgements, Opinion, Taste, Preference, Choice, Freedom and Determinism)

10 The Problem of Egoism and Altruism

(The Prisoner’s Dilemma)

11 Politics, Justice and the State

(A Rational Theory of Tradition, Justice, Public Opinion, Utopia, Positive and Negative Freedom, The Difference Principle, Leviathan)

12 The Philosophy of Human Rights

(Cultural Relativism, World Consensus, Peoples or Governments, Theories of Punishment, Women’s Rights, Human Right to a Safe Environment, Genocide)

13 Animal and Planetary Rights

(Do Animals Feel Pain? Lifeboat Earth, Planetary Rights, Do Animals Have Rights?)

14 War and Peace

(Just War, Cruelty and Oppression)

15 The Philosophy of Social Explanation

(Prediction in the Social Sciences, Methodological Individualism and Methodological Collectivism, Neutrality in Political Science, Societal Facts, Social Science)

16 The Philosophy of Education

(Schools of Thought, Distribution of Education, Equality as a Curriculum Aim)

17 The Philosophy of Science

(Conjectures and Refutations, Truth, Rationality and the Growth of Scientific Knowledge, Paradigm Shifts)

18 Aesthetics

(Is Art Sacred, Art and Experience, Technical Maxims, What is Art?, Aesthetic Evaluation)

19 Continental Philosophy

20 Philosophy of Today and Yesterday

(The Scope of Philosophy Today, Back to the Presocratics, The Past of Philosophy, The History of Our Time, The Contemporary Scene)

SOCIOLOGY

Unit 1: The sociological perspective

1. The study of sociology; 2. The individual and society; 3. Socialisation, culture and identity.

Unit 2: Sociological methods

1. Methods of research; 2. Theory and methods.

Unit 3: Social differentiation and stratification

1. Social class; 2. Gender; 3. Ethnicity

Unit 4: Families and households

1. The family in social context; 2. Changes in the family and marriage.

Unit 5: Education

1. Education in social context; 2. Structures and processes within schools

Unit 6: Religion

1. Religion and social change; 2. Religious movements

Unit 7: Crime and deviance

1. The social construction of crime and deviance; 2. Measurement and patterns of crime; 3. Theories of crime and deviance

Unit 8: Work and leisure

1. Occupational structure; 2. Management and the organisation of work; 3. The experience of work; 4. Non-work and leisure

Unit 9: Mass media

1. Ownership and control of the mass media; 2. Media content; 3. Audience effect

GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS

1 Studying politics

(The Study of Politics; The Meaning and Scope of Politics)

2 Variations in State Structures

(Politics, Power and Authority; Classification of Governments; Political Culture)

3 Concepts and Models in the Study of Politics

(Levels and Approaches; Central Models of Democracy; Political concepts; Political Theory and British Politics; The British political system in a comparative context)

4 Economy, Society and Politics

(Politics, Democracy and Power; The Context Of British Politics; The ideological context; The Economic and Social Context; The historical context)

5 Legitimacy

6 Political Socialization

7 Representation, Elections and Voting Behaviour

(Representation and Participation; Elections and Voting Behaviour; Election systems; electoral reform; Voting and the Electorate)

8 Political Parties and Electoral Systems

(Party Politics; The Political Parties)

9 Group Politics

(Pressure Groups)

10 Politics and the Mass Media

11 Political ideologies and Alternative ideologies

12 The Evolving British Constitution

(The Constitution; A Bill of Rights and Human Rights; Constitutional Issues; Change in Political Systems)

13 The House of Commons

(Parliament; the legislative process)

14 The House of Lords Introduction

15 Prime Minister and Cabinet

16 Government at the Centre

(The Political Executive; Executives and Assemblies; Assemblies; Executive; The Public Bureaucracy; Bureaucracies; Ministers, departments and civil service; The civil service and the machinery of central government)

17 The law, politics and the judicial process

(Law; Courts and the Political Process)

18 The Military and Politics

(The Police and the Military)

19 Government Beyond Whitehall

(Quangos)

20 Local Government in England and Wales

21 Devolution

(Devolution and Federalism; Local Politics; Territorial Politics)

22 The European Dimension

(Britain and the European Union; The European Union)

23 Political issues in the modern UK

(Politics of Inequality; The new British state;

24 The Policy Process

(Managing the economy; Economic Policy; Delivering public services; Tackling poverty and exclusion; Social Policy; Environmental Politics; The politics of diversity; Foreign and Defence Policy; Who governs; Organised Interests After Thatcher; Migration and the Politics of Race)

25 Globalization and the Influence of International Politics

(World Society and Transnational Politics)

26 The social and political context of American government

(The United States Congress; The United States Presidency and Administration; Parties and pressure groups in the USA; Federalism and the states)

DEGREE AND POSTGRADUATE

ETHICS

1 Introduction

(The Sacred and the Profane, The Good, Salvaging the Sacred)

2 The Origin of Ethics

(Primate Ethics, Why Be Moral?, Sources of Moral Precepts, Morality and the Self, Human Relations, Objective Basis of Morality, The Natural State, Affection, Duty, Moral Rationalism, Human Flourishing, Ethical Egoism, Morality as a System of Hypothetical and Categorical Imperatives, Reason and the Emotions, Normativity)

3 Moral Language

(What is Morality?, Morality as a Good, Emotive Theory of Morality, The New Subjectivism, How to Derive Ought from Is, Emotivism, The Status of Morality, Morality not Derived from Reason, Moral Relativism, Realism, The Role of Reason, Object of Morality, Society the School, Justification in Ethics)

4 History

(Ancient Greece, Medieval and Renaissance Ethics, Modern Ethics, Seventeenth Century Rationalists and Empiricists, Modern Germany, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Britain, Nineteenth Century Europe, Twentieth Century Britain, Twentieth Century Europe)

5 Human Nature and Natural Law

(What is Natural?, Morality and Human Nature, Universal System of Laws, The Rational Foundation of Ethics, Theory of Natural Rights, The Essence of Law, Law and Morals, The Ideal Law)

6 Metaethics

(Normative Ethics, Ethical Arguments and Theories, Moral Relativism, Cognitivism, Non-Cognitivism, Objectivity in Ethics, Egoism, Hedonism, Utilitarianism, Deontology, Kantian Moral Philosophy, Naturalism and Virtue Ethics, Consequentialism, A Non-Consequentialist Morality, Practical Morality and Virtue Ethics, Situation Ethics, Necessary Standards, Realism, Naturalism, Intuitionism, Rationalism, Subjectivism, Emotivism, Prescriptivism, Hypothetical Judgements, Universalisation)

7 Moral Responsibility

(Deciding What is Right, Free to Choose, Moral Dilemmas, Conscience, Social Structure and Moral Agency, Freedom and Necessity, The Implications of Determinism, The Metaphysics of Responsibility, Causal Determinism and Human Action, Hard and Soft Determinism)

8 Religion and Ethics

(God and Immortality, God, Morality and the Moral Order, God and Objective Morality, The Golden Rule, The Meaning of Life, Religion and Aesthetics, Buddhist Ethics, Christian Ethics, Hindu Ethics, Jewish Ethics, Islamic Ethics)

9 The Good Life

(The Shared Community Worldview Imperative, The Meaning of Good, Good in Morality Contexts, The Good for Man, Value, Good Outcomes and Right Acts)

10 Practical Morality

(The Personal Worldview Imperative, The Embedded Values Approach, Applied Ethics, Neo-Aristotelian Reflections on Justice, Egoism, Rights and Property, Truth, Lies and Agreement, Extensions of Morality)

11 Rights

(Natural Rights and Law, Absolute Human Rights, Animal Rights, Unborn Generations)

12 Religion, Law and Politics

(Contractarianism and Contract Ethics, The Rule of Law, The Public and the Private, Public Policy, Obligations and Reasons, Law and Order, Morality and Law)

13 Feminist Ethics

(Gender and Morality, The Idea of a Female Ethic, Equality for Men and Women, Moral Orientation and Moral Development, Particular Justice and General Care, The Masculine Bias in Traditional Ethics)

14 Global Ethics

(Multicultualism, Global Poverty, One World – a Global Ethic)

15 War and Peace

(Just War, Politics and Dirty Hands)

16 Environmental Ethics

(Is Nature Sacred, Technology and Economics, Types of Harm, Nature and the Environment, Biocentrism, Ecocentrism, Valuing Reconsidered, Conflicts and Trade Offs, Travails of the Biosphere, Science, Ethics and the Environment, Forests, Pollution, Responsibilities to Nature, Animals and Future Generations, The Inherent Value of Life, Wilderness, The Land Ethic, Deep Ecology, Social Ecology, Eco-Feminism, Science, Ethics and the Environment, Ethical Theory and the Environment, Forests and Pollution, Wilderness, Anthropocentric and non-Anthropocentric ethics, Environmental goods and human well-being, the Problem of Cooperation, Environmental Virtues, The Cultural Approach to Conservation Biology, Economic Valuation of Environmental Goods, Identification, Oneness, Wholeness and self-realisation, Transpersonal Ecology, The Value of Nature, Meta Ethics, Normative Ethics)

17 Science and Evolution

(The Sacred and the Scientist, Evolution and the Basis of Morality)

18 Sexual Ethics

(Sex, Personal Relationships, Morality and Psychological Development)

19 Medical Ethics

(Euthanasia, Abortion, Is Life Sacred?, Genetic Engineering, Cloning)

20 Business Ethics

21 Media Ethics

22 Crime and Punishment

PHILOSOPHY

PHILOSOPHY THEMES

1 The Nature of Philosophical Problems

2 Human Nature and Culture

(The Darwinian framework, a Rational Animal)

3 Language and Logic

(On Concepts, The Meaning of Words, Logic of Affirmation, Forms of Argument, Ockham’s Razor)

4 Theory of Knowledge

(What Can We Know?, Plato’s Cave, Reason and Experience, Appearance and Reality, Doubt, The External World, Perception, Subjective Idealism)

5 Philosophy of Religion

(Existence and Nature of God, Experience, Science, Language, The Problem of Evil, Design, Ontological and Cosmological Arguments, Meaning of Life, Freewill)

6 Metaphysics

(Status of Science, Problems of Freedom, Absolute Metaphysics)

7 Philosophy of Mind

(Metaphysics of Mind, Other Minds, Mind and Body Dualism)

8 Philosophy of History

(History and Humanism, The Ahistoric Ideal, History as Empathy)

9 Ethics

(Free Will, Right and Wrong, Naturalistic Ethics, Experience Machine, Value Judgements, Opinion, Taste, Preference, Choice, Freedom and Determinism)

10 The Problem of Egoism and Altruism

(The Prisoner’s Dilemma)

11 Politics, Justice and the State

(A Rational Theory of Tradition, Justice, Public Opinion, Utopia, Positive and Negative Freedom, The Difference Principle, Leviathan)

12 The Philosophy of Human Rights

(Cultural Relativism, World Consensus, Peoples or Governments, Theories of Punishment, Women’s Rights, Human Right to a Safe Environment, Genocide)

13 Animal and Planetary Rights

(Do Animals Feel Pain? Lifeboat Earth, Planetary Rights, Do Animals Have Rights?)

14 War and Peace

(Just War, Cruelty and Oppression)

15 The Philosophy of Social Explanation

(Prediction in the Social Sciences, Methodological Individualism and Methodological Collectivism, Neutrality in Political Science, Societal Facts, Social Science)

16 The Philosophy of Education

(Schools of Thought, Distribution of Education, Equality as a Curriculum Aim)

17 The Philosophy of Science

(Conjectures and Refutations, Truth, Rationality and the Growth of Scientific Knowledge, Paradigm Shifts)

18 Aesthetics

(Is Art Sacred, Art and Experience, Technical Maxims, What is Art?, Aesthetic Evaluation)

19 Continental Philosophy

20 Philosophy of Today and Yesterday

(The Scope of Philosophy Today, Back to the Presocratics, The Past of Philosophy, The History of Our Time, The Contemporary Scene)

CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

1 Introduction

2 State and Civil Society

(Social Contract, From City States to Cosmopolitan Order, Political Representation, State Formation, Public-Private Distinctions, Corporate Control)

3 Democracy

(Citizenship and Social Class, Resurgence of the City, The Public Sphere, Deliberation and Legitimation, Formal and Procedural Democracy, New Forms)

4 Citizenship

(Citizen Rights, Welfare)

5 Justice

(Fairness, Procedural Republic, Group Difference)

6 Rights

(Associational Rights, Natural Rights, Welfare Economics)

7 Liberty

(Individual and Society, Negative and Positive Liberty, Two Concepts)

8 Equality, Identity and Pluralism

(Liberal Equality, Oppression and Group Difference, Cultural Diversity, Difference, Identity Politics)

9 Contemporary Liberalism

(The Coming of the Welfare State, Politics and Markets, Utilitarianism, Libertarianism)

10 Conservatism

(Oakeshott on Law, Rationalism in Politics, Hayek, Voegelin, Popper, Strauss, Jouvenal, Oakeshott)

11 Marxism

(Lukacs and Democratisation, Western Marxism, The Second International, Critical Theory, Russian Revolution)

12 Totalitarianism

(Aron, Critics of Totalitarianism)

13 Poststructuralism and Postmodernism

(Discourse Theory)

14 Feminism

(Theory and Political Sociology, Sexual Inversions, Moral Woman and Immoral Man, Women’s Right to the City)

15 Ecology

(Ecologism and Environmentalism, Principles of Green Politics, Development and Women)

16 Social Movements

(Dimensions of Sociality, Conflict after Class, Democracy Beyond the State, Social Movements and Change)

17 Globalisation and New State Spaces

(Cities, States and the Explosion of Public Spaces, State Spatial Process under Capitalism, Interlocality Competition as a State Project, Global Flows and Global Citizenship, Global Governance and Democratic Accountability)

18 Multiculturalism

(Ethnic Cleavages, Freedom and Culture, Politics of Recognition, Multicultural Citizenship)

19 Non Western Political Thought

20 Psychology and Politics

21 Ethics and Politics

(Reasons and Morality, Language of Morals)

22 Liberalism and Communitarianism

(Sandel, MacIntyre, Taylor, Walzer, Rawls and Political Liberalism, Rorty, Dworkin, Raz)

23 Civic Republicanism

(Primacy of Virtue, Freedom in Classical Republicanism, Participation and Inclusion in the Extensive Republic, Common Goods and Public Virtue, Participation and Deliberation, Recognition and Inclusion in a Pluralist World)

24 Conclusion

THEMES IN POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

1 What is Political Philosophy

(Political Thought and Politics, Political and Philosophical Thinking, Definitions of Politics, Emergence of Political Sociology)

2 Authority and Power

(Problem of Political Authority, Force, Legitimacy, Power in Communities)

3 Human Nature

(Evolutionary Ethics, Happiness and Misery, Natural Virtues, Human Nature as a Universal Concept, Universalist Political Theory, The Capacities of Human Nature, Challenges)

4 State, Law and Political Obligation

(Rule Making and Breaking, Justification, Definitions of the State, Legalism, After the Law, Law and Order, Positive and Natural Law)

5 Justice

(Social Justice, Distributive Justice, Justice as a Larger Loyalty, Economic Justice, Property and Wealth, The Personal Worldview Imperative, The Embedded Values Approach, Religion and Aesthetics, Diversity and the Common Body of Knowledge, The Shared Community Worldview Imperative, Public Policy, The Just Society)

6 Rights

(Are there any Natural Rights?)

7 Liberty

(Autonomy, Autonomy as Pure Rationality, The Liberty Principle, False Consciousness and Emancipation, Idealism and Freedom, Negative and Positive Liberty, Liberty and Freedom, Liberty and Equality, Toleration, Democratic Society)

8 Equality

(Property, Social Justice, Welfare)

9 Democracy

(Two Concepts of Democracy, Representation, Rule, The Public Interest)

10 Community

11 The Common Good

(Public Virtue, the Political Community, Is Civic Virtue Oppressive?, Civic Education, Is Civic Virtue Moralistic?, Civic Virtue and Political Obligation, The Good Life, Public Spaces, Civic Religion, Justice and the Common Good, The Public Dimension of Morality)

12 The Social Contract

(Contractarian Method, Rawls, The Artificiality of the State)

13 War and Peace

(Militarism and the State, A Global Perspective, War and Revolution, Order and Justice in World Politics, Alternatives to the States System)

14 Political Economy

(Property and Wealth, Industrial Society, Economic Justice, Property, Planning and the Market, Elitism and Class Dominance, Corporatism)

15 Political Science

(Metaphysics, Particularistic Interdependence, General Systems Theory, Behavioural Science, Methodology, The Inclusive System, Communication, Games Theory, Empiricism)

16 Culture

(Modernism in Art, Culture as Mobilizing Citizens, Forms of Culture)

17 Living With Difference

(Toleration, Difference, Liberation)

IDEOLOGIES: POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

1 Introduction

(understanding ideology, from concepts to ideologies, ideology and justification)

2 Conservatism

(Limited government, moral foundations of the market, Green conservatism, communitarianism and the social concept of the self, reason and tradition)

3 Liberalism

(Liberalisms, toleration and pluralism, welfare liberalism, grand projects)

4 Socialism

(Associationalism, syndicalism, capital and labour, council communism, Guild socialism, Fabianism, market socialism, moralism, Green and post-industrial socialism, rationalism, Marxism)

5 Anarchism

6 Libertarianism

(anti-libertarian markets, economic liberalism, markets, government and the common good)

7 Democracy

(the meaning of democracy, liberty and equality, two concepts of democracy, pluralism, corporatism and the public good, political participation)

8 Religion

(Morality and religion, fundamentalism)

9 Pacifism

10 Feminism

11 Ecology

(Ecologism, environmentalism, Green ideology)

12 Nationalism

(the national state, imperialism)

13 Fascism and Racism

(A synthesis of ideas, psychological approaches, social and economic roots, cultural approaches)

14 Utopianism

(Health, education, prosperity and equality, law and order, design, need and nature, consensus and decision making)

15 Conclusion

SOCIOLOGY

BASIC QUESTIONS IN SOCIOLOGY

1 What is Sociology

(the discipline, critical approach, terms and concepts, the nature of human society)

2 Sociological Questions

(being sociological, studying society, power and money, the nature of social science, thinking the social, reason and freedom, logic and methods)

3 Theory and Society

(origins of society, sociological theory and research, cultivating sociological imaginations, methodology, social facts)

4 Social Interaction in Everyday Life

(the sociology of knowledge, reality of everyday life, micro sociological analysis, social structure, language and knowledge, making social life)

5 Culture, Consciousness, Language, Identity

(culture and diversity, civilisation, being, socialisation, feelings and emotions, interaction and identity)

6 Families and Intimate Relationships

(intimate relationships, households, series and nexus)

7 Socialisation, the Life Course and Ageing

(youth, old age, becoming a member of society)

8 Health, Illness and Disability

(medicine and the body)

9 Class and Stratification

(social division, the stratified community, industrial relations, wealth and income, social mobility, the politics of inequality, differences and inequalities)

10 Poverty, Social Exclusion and Welfare

(suffering inequalities)

11 Industrialisation and Development

(industry and society, anomie and a new integration, development and underdevelopment, global inequality, social change)

12 Nationalism

(formation of new nations, nationalism in comparative perspective)

13 Globalisation

(globalisation and modernity, global issues, global local times, localities and social change, counter-hegemonic globalisation)

14 Religion in Modern Society

(the role of religion, knowledge and belief, secularisation, social problems, megatrends)

15 Sexuality and Gender

(learning sex roles, socialisation and gender roles, identity politics, sexual politics)

16 Race, Ethnicity and Migration

(theories of race and state, critical race theory, ethnic diversity)

17 The Media and Communication

18 Organisations, Bureaucracy and Networks

(bureaucracy and consciousness, commodity production, institutionalisation, technological production, the network conception of society, the iron cage revisited)

19 Education

(learning, informal and formal education, educational psychology)

20 Work and Economic Life

(working and consuming, trading, social mobility, work and production, work and leisure)

21 Crime and Deviance

(social control and resistance, the problem of order, the nature of social order, agencies of social control, disciplinary control, primary and secondary deviation)

22 Politics and Government

(political sociology, legitimation, neopluralism and neofunctionalism, power and politics, state centred institutional theory, elites or equality, state and capital, political parties, state formation, war, militarism and states, economic policy in a global capitalism)

23 Cities and Urban Spaces

(communities and cities, urbanisation, belonging, city cultures and postmodern lifestyles, cities to come)

24 The Environment

(population, resources and pollution, sources of power, environment as global risk)

25 Modernity and Postmodernity

(the promise of modernity, modernity and its discontents, demodernizing consciousness)

26 Technology

(mediating)

27 Social Futures

(emerging issues, society in the future, social theory today, megatrends)

POLITICAL SOCIOLOGY

1 Social Theory

(social explanation, philosophy of social science)

2 Capitalism, Democracy and Social Movements

(democracy and social classes, class and social movements, parties and political action, new social movements, from institutional help to self-help, from representative democracy to participatory democracy, city states and cosmopolitan order, surveillance and modernity)

3 Citizenship

(solidarity, interaction and social practice)

4 Community

(community as an idea, community and society, difference and dissent, urban community, cosmopolitan community, virtual community, sovereignty and association)

5 Culture

(culture and ideology, logic and language)

6 Differentiation and Stratification

(the stratified society and community)

7 Information, Labour and Society

(information society, short to long term, centralisation to decentralisation, informational politics and the crisis of democracy, social and human capital, restructuring and globalisation, informational capital, information management and manipulation, reflexivity and surveillance)

8 Power

(pluralist conceptions of power, two dimensional power, power and interests)

9 Power, Authority and the State

10 Rationality, Critique and Language

(social criticism, rational choice theory, reason and ritual)

11 Science, Civilisation and Society

(modern realism and empiricism, the philosophy of science)

12 Sex, Gender and Feminism

13 Social Anthropology

(the limits of functionalism)

14 Technology and Machine vs Organic Civilisation

(the dialectic of science)

15 The Body

(the body taboo, theory of the body, sociology of the body, civilising appetite, bio-politics, genealogy)

16 The Subject, Structure and Agency

(theory of structuration, system and social reproduction, methodological individualism)

17 Time, System and Organisation

(the organisational society, power in organisations, classification of organisations and organisation structure, organisation as system, roles and rules, the individual in the organisation, upside down society, organisations as constructors of social reality)

URBAN STUDIES

1 CITIES AND CIVILISATION

1 Introduction (A Proper Study of Mankind; Ideal Cities; Urban Form; City Worlds; The Origins of civilisation; scene of man; Historical Precedents; The Practice of Urban Morphogenesis; The Choice of Capitals for Convenience; Philosophical Notion of the City; Civic Order; Confederal Municipalism as the Commune of Communes; On to Megalopolis; Universal Principles and Difference; The Search for Coherence).

2 Sacred Origins (Projections of power; Civic Spirituality; Sacred Origins of urban and agricultural revolutions; The Urban Theology)

3 The Urban Revolution (Definitions, Evidence and Prehistoric Chronology; From Tribe to City; Tribalism and Governance; Introduction ancient world; Natural world determinants; Background to the Emergence of the City; Early settlements; the first commercial capitals; The Choice of Capitals for Strategy; Ancient City and Imperial Bureaucratic Control; The Ancient City and the Country)

4 Catal Huyuk (Anatolia Abortive Cities; How Did It Begin; Catal Huyuk and agricultural primacy)

5 Mesopotamia (The City Emerges in Sumer; Sumer and Warfare; Mesopotamia Early Technological and Social Progress; The Second Urban Revolution; The Meaning of Politics and the Evolution of the State; Babylon; The Persian Empire)

6 Egypt (Nature and communication; Palaces and civilisation)

7 Ancient Greece (Archaic Greece The Emergence of the City; Greek City States; Urban Development And The Old Cities Of Greece; The Origins And Development Of Greek Planning; The Polis; The Fountainhead – Athens; Aristotle and Politikon Bion; Communal self formation of the demos; The Greek Citizen Ideal The League of Cities; Town Planning In The Hellenistic World)

8 Israel (Canaan Cities of Commerce; Jerusalem; Kingdom of Judah)

9 Rome (Emergence from the Ancient World; The City in Early Italy and the Rise of Rome; War, Greece and Rome; Etruscan And Roman Planning In Italy; Republican Rome Success And Failure As A City; Planning In The Roman Empire; The Ancient City And The Urban Infrastructure; The Early Roman Empire An Oecumene of Free Cities under One Rule; The Obsessive Image – Hadrian; The Late Roman Empire Withering of the City; Roman assembly and the cult of Libertas Rome Creates an Urban Geography of the West; the eclipse of the classical city; The Polis against the Nation State)

10 China (cities of the middle kingdom China to 1000; Ching; Holy City; Kyoto; Mongols)

11 Early Christianity (Roman Origins of Medieval Civic Freedom; Fourth to Seventh Centuries; Eighth to Eleventh Centuries; The City in the Early Mediaeval West and in the Byzantine East; German Empire; Governance; holy city from secular capital; monasteries; Norman conquest; The Christianisation of the Landscape)

12 India (The Indus Valley A Dead End; Buddha; Calcutta and Delhi; capital city)

13 East Roman Empire (Byzantium; Constantinople Urban survivor; The City in Byzantium; Venice)

14 Medieval Cities (Urban Life 1000-1450; institutional urbanism; geographies of urban law; The Disintegration into Feudalism; Economy 400; Commerce, Trade and Urban Networks; Markets; urban services; Merchant Guilds and municipal regulation; lordship and urbanisation; Medieval Towns; Urban Revival High Middle Ages; Community; Neighbourly Controls; Urban Communes and the Growth of Municipal Autonomy; Municipal Autonomy and late Middle Ages; Commercial destruction of Communal Dependencies; urban landscapes; urban property and landholding; Towns, Civic Pride and Urban Autonomy; townspeople and townscapes; Elites, landowners and merchant patricians; Church and the nation state Commerce, Nation and the Rise of the Centralised State; Culture and Confraternity 14-15C; Medieval Leagues; The Italian Maritime Cities; The Italian City States; Poverty and Public Provision 14-15C; Social Protest; Towns, Assemblies and Communes)

15 Islam (The Islamic archipelago; Islamic Cities of the Middle East; Mecca holy city)

16 Meso America (Central America; Cities Built on Water; Mexico City; Maya; the postcolonial dilemma)

17 The Renaissance (The Idealization of the City from the Renaissance Onwards; The Prince’s Capital and the Merchants’ Town; In the Name of God and for Profit; Europe urban Renaissance; Communal rituals and ceremonies late 16C; Culture and Landscape in Reformation Europe; Economic relations and market rules; Governance towns and central government; military appropriation of the ideal city in the sixteenth century; Poverty and Public Provision; Poverty and Urban Disorder late 16C; The Emergence of Market Towns; The Nation State; The Regional Imperative; Utopia from More to Bacon)

18 Baroque Rationalism (Urban worlds around 1750; Nationalism; The Integration of the Urban Network; cities of mammon Europe's expanding urban order; Cities, Local Loyalties and Absolutism; Commercialisation; Demography and Urban Decline 17C; Social Impact of economic expansion 18C; The Polarisation of the Urban Hierarchy; Urban Government 18C; Urbanisation, Trade and Growth 18C)

19 The City as Machine (The Horizons of Knowledge; The Monastery and the Clock; Archigram; Enlightenment Cities; New Design of Central Urban Areas)

20 The French Revolution (The Body Set Free; French Communes; Urban Protest)

21 The Industrial Revolution (Industrial urbanization; Cities of the Industrial Revolution; European Urbanisation; cities and technology; The New Hades; Engines of urban expansion; The Revolution of Economy and Evolution of the City; The Search for Order in the Age of Great Cities; By What Complicated Wheels; Mechanized Cities; Varieties of urban protest; Pursuits of urban improvement; Piety and philanthropy; Public authority and policing)

22 The Victorian Great Cities (The challenge of the big cities; The relentless pace of urban growth; Victorian Cities and the Railways; Merchant Princes and Municipal Palaces; Sewage, Saxons and Self-Government; Technology, Transportation, and Disease; Manufacturing in the Metropolis; Toward the social city; Varieties of philanthropic voluntarism; Contexts for public intervention; Municipal Government; State and Municipal Government; Active citizens; Public Health and Environmental Reform; The Urban Working Class; Urban Education)

23 The Cities of Europe (Urban cultures; Popular culture and mass leisure; Imperial and colonial cities; Europe in the Contemporary World; The Metropolis as a Construction; European Capital Cities; Remodelling Central Districts)

24 World Cities (Colonial India; Allahabad: a Sanitary History; Colonial Cities; industrialism and its discontents Japan)

25 The Totalitarian City (Reconstruction; The Development Of Public Transportation In St Petersburg; Urban Technology Transfer; Housing The Citizens In Soviet Russia; Russia; The Nazi Experiment)

2 URBAN DESIGN

1 Historical Precedents (Urban Utopias, Howard and Garden Cities, The City Beautiful Movement, Le Corbusier, Frederick Law Olmsted)

2 Norms of Good City Form (Lynch, Jacobs, Urban Design Manifesto, The City Edge, The Neutral City)

3 Dimensions of Place Making (image of the city, critical regionalism, place memory and urban preservation)

4 Contemporary Challenges (Sprawl, the New Urbanism, Density in Communities, Compact Cities, Suburbia, Neighbourhood Units, Urban Scale, Land Use)

5 Typology and Morphology (Urban Components, Typomorphology, Community Form as Combinatorial Form)

6 Elements of the Public Realm (Habitat, Livelihood, Civility, Connectedness, Green Streets, Hertzberger, Neighbourhood Space, Public Empowerment and Active Citizenship, Urban Plazas)

7 Practice and Process (The Communication Process, Design Guidelines).

3 URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

1 The World of Planning (Megaforces, Urban Revitalisation, The Inner City, Pluralistic Planning for Multicultural Cities, The New Suburban Typology)

2 History and Theory of Planning (Modernism and Early Planning, the Art of Planning, Urban Process, Planning Theory)

3 Planning Classics (Downtown, The Metropolitan Region, Advocacy and Pluralism in Planning)

4 Regional Planning (The Planning Context, The Regional Framework, Regional Growth and Change, Spatial Structure of Regions, Growth Pole Theory, Inter- and Intra-Regional Planning)

5 The Plan – Origins and Contemporary Use (Land Use, Regionalism, Emergence of Modern Planning, Planning Critiques, Justifications and Directions, Development Regulations)

6 Planning Practice and Methods (Conflict, People and Places, Advocacy, Geographic Information Systems, The Communicative Turn, Equity Planning, Coalition Building, Local Economic Development)

7 Key Topics (Environmental Planning, Urban Sprawl, Metropolitan Regions)

8 Megalopolis (Growth of the City, The Megacity, The Capitalist City, Megastructures, Regional Cities, Transport)

9 Planning and Feminism (A Gender Agenda, A Different Voice)

10 Urbanisation (Land Use and Urban Form, Spatial Organisation, Town and Country)

4 TOWN AND COUNTRY PLANNING

1 The Nature of Planning (The Evolution of Town and Country Planning, Planning Agencies).

2 Planning Policy Framework (The Control of Development, Land Policies, Heritage Planning)

3 The Countryside

4 Urban Policies (Transport Planning)

5 The Planning Profession

6 Sustainability Principles (New Towns to Green Politics, Social Town Planning)

7 Gender, Race and Culture (Planning for Health, Cultural Planning, Time Planning)

5 URBAN GEOGRAPHY

1 Philosophy and Human Geography (Human Geography, Positivist Approaches, Humanist Approaches, Structuralist Approaches, Conflict and Accommodation)

2 Geography and Geographers (Foundations, Behavioural Geography and alternatives to positivism)

3 Urban Geography (Origins of Cities, Evolution of the Urban System, Globalisation, Telecommunications, Urban Land Use, Landscapes of Production, Housing Markets, Segregation, Race and Poverty, Metropolitan Governance)

4 Cultural Geography (Culture and Ideology, Popular Culture and Class, Gender and Sexuality, Languages of Race, The Politics of Language)

5 Space and the City (Cities, Spaces and the Explosion of Spaces, Non-Spatial Urban Ecology, Spatial Architectonics, State Spatial Process under Capitalism)

6 URBAN POLITICAL ECONOMY

1 The Urban Experience (Money, Time and Space, Labour, Capital and Class Struggle, Urbanisation of Consciousness)

2 Social Justice and the City (new urban inequalities, industrialisation and the city, economic inequality, urban violence)

3 Techno-Industrial Urbanism (Rise and Fall of Great Cities, Cities for the Machine Age, European Economy Nineteenth Century and Twentieth Century, Banking and Finance, Mass Production, The Innovative Milieu)

4 Unfairly Structured Cities (Positivist Explanations, City as Resource Distributing Mechanism, Competitive Capitalism and Industrial Urbanisation, Urban Conflict and the Property Market, Inequality in Land and Housing)

5 The Urban Question (Process of Urbanisation, Mode of Production, Theory of Space, Urban Social Movements, Urban Crisis)

6 Making Sense of Cities (Processes and Patterns, Urban Systems, Location of Economic Activities, Housing Markets, Environments and Living Conditions, Urban Management and Politics)

7 Economic Development Model of the City (city as growth machine, cities and economic development, urban restructuring, redevelopment and restructuring, the entrepreneurial conception)

8 The New Urban Economy (changing economic context, livelihood)

7 URBAN SOCIOLOGY

1 Urbanism and Community (Urbanism as Way of Life, What is a City, Whose City, Community and Society, Metropolis and Mental Life, Suburbanism, Social Dimensions of Urbanism)

2 The Form and Function of the City (Human Ecology, Natural Arenas of the City, City as Growth Machine, Los Angeles School, Chicago School)

3 Globalisation and Urban Change (World City Hypothesis, Impact of Economic Globalisation, Power in Place)

4 Inequality and Social Difference (The Cost of Racial and Class Exclusion, Segregation, Change and Fragmentation, Migration, Difference)

5 Urban Exclusion and Social Resistance (The Carceral City, Los Angeles, Fortified Enclaves, Power, Space and Terror, Gentrification, Glocalizing Protest, the Ecology of Fear, Urban Social Movements)

6 Gender and Sexuality (Space and Power, The Gendered City, Bodies, Sexuality and the City, Social Status of Women)

8 CITY CULTURES

1 Forms and Spaces (Sidewalks, Sensory Landscape, Market as Mandala, Thinking and Seeing Space, Tacticity)

2 Politics and Economics (The Urban as a Spatial Unit of Collective Consumption, From Managerialism to Entrepreneurialism, New Urban Inequalities, Space and Symbols)

3 Culture and the Urban Economy (The Creative City, Neighbourhood Change, Mass Culture, The Culture Industry, The Learning City)

4 Culture Industries (The Culture Industry, Public Art, City Monuments, Power of Place)

5 Culture and Technologies (Archigram, Hyperactive World, the Clock)

6 Everyday Urban Life (Critique of Everyday Life, Moments and Categories, Spaces and Events)

7 Memory, Imagination, Identity (Visual Phenomena and Movement, Critical Regionalism, Typological Questions, Reimagining the Global)

8 Representations of the City (Public Space and the New Urbanity, City and Symbols, The Postmodern City, The Urban as Ideology, City Images, City as Text, City as Art, Differential Space)

9 The Life of the City (Identity and Culture, Contact, Social and Cultural Life, Typological Questions)

10 Creating City Culture (Cultural Literacy, Building City Culture, The Intercultural City, Cultural Layering, Cultural Impact, Cultural Knowledge and Awareness)

11 Utopia and Dystopia

12 Culture and Ecology (Place, Hannover Principles, Designing for a Safe Future, Urban Ecology)

13 Possible Futures (Lost Metropolis, Arcology, Soft Cities)

9 URBAN NETWORKS

1 Network Society (Information Technology Revolution, The Network Enterprise, Transformation of Work, Culture of Real Virtuality, Space of Flows)

2 Power of Identity (Communal Worlds, Greening of the Self, Globalisation, Identification and the State, Informational Politics, Democracy and the State)

3 The Informational City (Informational Society, The Technoburb, The City in the Global Information Economy, Simcities, Hyperactive World, The Industrialisation of Information, ICT and Urban Futures, The Destruction of Distance)

4 The Social Wealth of Networks (The Networked Information Economy, Peer Production and Sharing, The Economics of Social Production, The Political Economy of Property and Commons, The Networked Public Sphere, Cultural and Political Freedom, Networking and Social Ties, the Institutional Ecology of the Digital Environment)

5 Community Informatics (Physical Place and Cyberplace, The Safety Net, Digital Community Networks, Online Forums and People Centred Governance, Surveillance in the Community, Cultivating Society’s Civic Intelligence, Community e-Gateways)

6 Urban Futures (The Post City, Informational Society, Future Urban World, Planetary Urban Networks)

10 GLOBAL CITIES

1 Understanding Globalisation (The Globalisation Debate, Globalizing Modernity, Rethinking Globalisation, Problems of Globalisation Theory, Clash of Globalisations, Globalisation as Empire)

2 Global Communication (The Fate of National Culture, The New Global Media, Cultural Identity, Towards a Global Culture, Global Governance and Cosmopolitan Citizens)

3 Global City Formation (Global City Theory, World City Hypothesis, The Global City, The Metropolitan Explosion, Urban Specialisation in the World System, Centres and Margins, World City Formation, The New International Division of Labour)

4 Structures, Dynamics and Geographies of Global City Formation (Cities and Communities in the Global Economy, Locating Cities on Global Circuits, World City Network, Global Cities and Global Classes, Inequality in the Global City)

5 Local Pathways of Global City Formation (Cities, IT and the Global Economy, Landscapes of Power, Urban Restructuring Process, Global Cities and Developmental States, The Urban Interface)

6 Globalisation, Urbanisation and Uneven Development (Global Agora vs the Gated City, Shelter For All, The New Geo Economy, Global Information Capitalism, Corporate Geography of Cities)

7 Globalisation and Inequality (Patterns of Global Inequality, Spreading the Wealth, Gendered Inequality, Divided Cities, Problems of Urban Order Inequality, The Promise of Global Institutions)

8 Building Livable Cities (Housing, Finance and Shelter, Urban Health, Water and Sanitation, Urban Transport, Building a Common Future)

9 Contested Cities – State Restructuring, Local Politics and Civil Society (Political Spaces and Civil Society, Declining Authority of States, Governing the Global Economy, Modes of Regionalist Governance, Directions of Urban Governance, Glocalisation and Glocal Cities, Urban Social Movements)

10 Representation, Identity and Culture – Rethinking Local and Global (Cosmopolitan Virtue, Community and Ethnicity, Citizenship, Territory and Gender, Multicultural Citizenship, Global Media Cities)

11 Global Governance (Global Flows and Global Citizenship, Normative Policy Frameworks, Towards Cosmopolis, Who Governs the Global City?, Priorities for Global Justice, Global Civil Society, Beyond the States System)

12 Emerging Issues in Global Cities Research (The Immigrant City, Whose City Is It?, Spaces in the Globalizing City, Immigration and the Global City Hypothesis, World City Topologies)

11 URBAN ECOLOGY

1 The Origins of the Sustainability Concept (Howard and the Garden City, Lewis Mumford, Leopold and the Land Ethic, Jacobs and Great Cities, Frank and Underdevelopment, Limits to Growth, The Steady State Economy, The End of Nature, Sustainable Development)

2 Economic Development (Growth Pattern Management, Urban Growth Management, Shops and Shopping, Leisure and Recreation, Natural Capitalism, Import Replacement, Strengthening Local Economies)

3 Environmental Justice and Social Equity (Spatial Interaction and Spatial Structures, Structures in Mind and Social Structures, People of Colour Environmentalism, Domesticating Urban Space)

4 Dimensions of Sustainable Urban Development (People and Environment, Infill Development, Cities and the Environment, Conservation with Development, Sustainability Planning)

5 Urban Eco-Design (Urban Design Manifesto, Ecological Design, Hannover Principles, Arcology, Transport and Transit)

6 Energy, Climate and Materials (Climate Change, Wind Patterns, Thermal Balance, Heat Island Effect, Urban Pollution, Role of Green Spaces, The Metabolism of Cities, Waste as Resource, Integrating Energy Conservation)

7 Eco Cities and Green Architecture (Design, Ecology and Ethics, City in Nature and in History, Access and Transportation, Sustainability and Building, Organic Architecture, Sustainable Architecture, Ecological Planning, Eco-Philosophy, Integration of Architecture and Landscape, The New Eco-Architecture)

8 Urban Ecology and Restoration (Designing for Nature, Assessing Natural Resources, Natural Areas, City and Nature, Land, Trees and Spaces, Urban Woodlands)

9 Tools for Sustainable Planning (The Ecological Footprint, Politics of Meaning, Cyber Planning, Illich, Urban Sustainability Reporting)

10 Sustainable Urban Development Internationally (Planning for Sustainability, Collective Citizen Action, Agenda 21, Environmental Sustainability)

11 Visions of Sustainable Community (Car Less Streets of Ecotopia, Belonging and Well Being, Towards the Ecopolis)

12 THE URBAN PUBLIC REALM

1 Urban Theories (Urban Politics and Theory, Pluralism, Elite Theory and Growth Machines, Regime Theory, Bureaucrats and Urban Politics, Local Government Institutions, Urban Social Movements, Citizenship and Urban Politics, Women Redefining Local Politics, Autonomy and City Limits, Marxist Theories, Regulation Theory)

2 Urban Politics and Government (Democracy, Citizenship and the City, Urban Political Power, Post-Fordist City Politics, Citizen Participation, Urban Governance and State Spaces, Imagining Democratic Urban Citizenship, Associational Rights, Urban Citizenship, Governance in the Global Era)

3 The Urban Civic Public (Politics and Urban Public Space, Communal Municipalism, The New Municipal Agenda, Confederal Municipalism)

4 Reconceptualising the Political and the Public (The Imperative of Public Space, Death and Rebirth of the Public Realm, Cities Need Citizens, Public Buildings, The Political Arena, Good Life and Good Governance)

5 Community Development and the Renewal of Civil Society (The Potency of Community Power, The Small Community, Community Organizing, Comprehensive Community Planning, Pooling Resources, Bringing Socialism Home)

13 URBAN FUTURES

1 What is the Future of Cities (Deciphering City Futures, The Future Urban World, Possible Futures)

2 Urban Futures (Trends and Outcomes, Rising to the Urban Challenge, Good Governance in Practice)

3 Urban Prospects (Car Ceral, Prestige Projects, Landscape, Ecology and Art, Gentrification and Social Exclusion, Resistance or Security)

4 Alternative City Futures (The Post-City, Planetary Urban Networks, Architecture and Consciousness, Alternative Urban Development, Soft Cities, European Cityscape)

RESEARCH INTERESTS

I have four principal research fields:

• Being and Place
• Studies in Rational Freedom
• Reason, Justice and Sustainable Living in the City
• The Common Good and the Common Ground

These fields represent my past and current research interests. I have extensive research notes and materials in these areas and welcome interest from students and researchers seeking tutoring and guidance in any of these fields.

STUDIES IN RATIONAL FREEDOM

1  The Conception of Rational Freedom

Philosophy as the Rational Utopia – The Good Life and the Common Good.

2 Plato and Aristotle

Reason – The Republic – the Rule of Reason – the Eudaemonistic conception – public life and social being

3 Rousseau’s Democratic Social Contract

The General Will – Autonomy and Rational Authority  – Sovereignty and Representation.

4 Kant’s Community of Ends

The Categorical Imperative – the Universal Law – the Realm of Ends – Political Peace – The Critique of Kantian Rationalism.

5 Hegel’s Embodied Freedom

The Grounding of Kant’s Morality and Rousseau’s Democracy – the Philosophy of Right –   the Associative Civil Public.

6 Marx’s Normative Democratic Community

The Critique of Hegel’s State – the Critique of Atomistic Society – the Ontology of the Good Community.

7 The Ontology of Reason – the Concept of Active Materialism

Social Citizenship – Michel Foucault: Reason and Repression – the Realisation of Philosophy – Ontology: Praxis, Power and Nature – the Democratisation of Politics, Power and Philosophy.

8 Reason and Rationalisation

Weber: Modernity and Morality – Alienation and Separation as Key Figures – the Dialectic of Alien and Common Control – Individuality and Communality.

9 Human Organisation - The Cooperative Commonwealth

The Cooperative Mode of Production – The Political and the Public – The Democratic Transformation of ‘the Political’ – Commune Democracy as Social Self-Government.

10 Reason and the Communicative Community

Habermas: Autonomy and Solidarity - The communicative Reformulation of the Graeco-Germanic Conception of Rational Freedom – System World and Life World – the Ideal Communication Community – the Discursive Public Sphere

11 Rational Freedom and Contemporary Political Theory

Double-Democratisation and the Recovery of Liberalism (Held and Keane) – ‘Liberal Socialism’ (Norberto Bobbio) – Liberalism and Communitarianism – (Rawls, Sandel, Raz, Walzer, Finnis, Galston) – the Relational Turn of Feminism – Radical Democracy (Laclau and Mouffe, Hirst, Heller)..

BEING AND PLACE

The research delineates the complex interconnection of nature, environment, and society from ancient and pre-modern thought to contemporary social theorising. The work highlights the essentially contested character of the environment and emphasises the need for critical analysis with respect to 'nature' and 'environment'. Drawing on a broad – ancient philosophical - understanding of ethics and politics, the research examines the ways different moral systems and religions conceptualise the natural and the built human environment. The development of ideas in humanities and the social sciences are traced from ancient and pre-Socratic philosophy through to the Renaissance of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to the rise of scientific thinking. The research also examines the role that the nonhuman environment plays in the perspectives of thinkers such as Rousseau, Malthus, Marx, Darwin, Mill to Freud, Horkheimer and the Frankfurt School, exploring the relationship between gender and the environment as well as postmodernist modes of thought.The research is based upon an interdisciplinary social ecological philosophy which combines insights from the natural sciences such as evolutionary biology, psychology and ecology with social scientific knowledge drawn from social, political and ethical theories and ideas. Combining scope and depth, the research surveys the entire range of social thought and theory: philosophy, religion, ethics, politics, economics, sociology, history, urban studies and ecology. The research offers a comprehensive overview of the normative frameworks behind various approaches to urban and ecological questions. The work is located in the emerging academic field that is the intersection of social theory and urban and environmental studies. The work combines historical sweep, comprehensive range, and socio-theoretical sophistication to address the perennial theme of how humans value, create, recreate, use and think about ‘the environment’ in which they live. Sustaining the analysis throughout is a conception of ecopolis, defining ecocities in the present age in terms of principles of balance, proportion and scale found in the ancient polis. A way is sought of reclaiming the original premises of ethics and politics in ancient philosophy on a modern terrain. Recovering an objective morality, the work steers a course to deep green city-republics of the future, grounded not in nostalgia for the Greek polis but based on technologies, architectural designs and functioning cities that actually exist or are emergent in several places around the globe, according to concepts and practices that meet the approval of city planners. This affirms a radical transformation which is commensurate with the problems facing humanity, examining the built community of cities, towns and villages — the greatest products of human praxis – as both the cause of but also as the potential solution to the greatest problems facing humanity and future life on Earth. Relating contemporary urban studies to philosophical and political conceptions of cities and city-states, the research offers an account of how cities can be transformed into spaces of communal and civic self-governance and places of sustainable living, which are also a joy and inspiration to live in. Thus recovering the Aristotelian conception of happiness, eudaimonia, as integral to the public life of human beings. The research therefore considers future city development as more than planning and design, but also for how it speaks to the nature of being concerning the true meaning of the city.

REASON, JUSTICE AND SUSTAINABLE LIVING IN THE CITY

PART 1

THE RATIONAL CITY

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

(the City - the urban public sphere – the grand narrative of the ‘good city’ - oekologie - ‘being a part of nature’ – techne - concepts of security - security versus freedom – the ecology of fear versus the happy habitat - the relationship of man to nature - The new biosphere politics - boundaries and the need for limits – the biosphere as a large bioregion)

THE PHILOSOPHICAL ROOTS OF THE RATIONAL CITY

1 THE PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAL

(The task of philosophy - the conditions of the Personal Life - Denaturalisation leads to dehumanisation – the ideal city – the principle of rational freedom – philosophy as the rational utopia)

2 THE ORIGINS OF THE RATIONAL CITY

(the Hellenic and medieval conception of the city as an ethical union of citizens – Athenian and Roman models for two types of popular government - the Concept of Citizenship - Civic reempowerment of the citizen - The Creation of Politics in ancient Greece - polis - The Philosophers - the Greek Origins of Freedom - Aristotle and the Centrist Utopia - The classical Greeks as a public people – ‘urban animals’ - The rationalist tradition and the separation of the mind from the body, the observer from the observed, and humanity from nature - the reason-nature/mind-body dualism - The Hellenistic Period - the ideal of polis democracy - Plato’s republic - Plato and social justice - who rules – people or philosophy? - the philosopher ruler - the laws - Plato and Gaia - Aristotle and the polis ideal - Aristotle’s urban ecology- Rome and civitas - Roman Republic - Stoic and Epicurean philosophies - Stoicism and citizenship - Stoics - Cicero - Definition of a State - Character of Greco-Roman Historiography: Humanism - the chain of being)

3 THE MEDIEVAL CORPORATE COMMUNITY

(Augustine - Medieval Christian Citizenship - church and state – goodness and justice - The liberal ideal of law by force, belief by consent - Organic principles for the universal state - The universalism of the Christian attitude - Ascending and Descending themes of power - The fusion of Roman law with Christian doctrine - The Foundations: the Roman and Biblical Background - The Hierocratic Doctrine in its Maturity - Citizenship in the North)4 THE NEW CIVIC URBANISM(The New Civic Urbanism 14th C - The New Science of Politics - Practical Manifestations of the Ascending Thesis - Incipient Humanism and Natural Science - Aquinas - the new Aristotelian-Thomist movement - The Revival of Aristotle and its Background - Aristotelian Principles – Thomism)

5 THE CITY AND SECULARISATION

(The Middle Ages and the Secular Reaction - Dante, Dubois and Marsilius on citizenship - The Intellectuals View of the City - Dante - The Sovereignty of the People - Popular Basis of the Ruler’s Power - Marsilius - The People as Sovereign Legislator - The Italian City-States - The Ideal of Citizenship - European civic development - Freedom in Medieval Law - Medieval Aristotelianism - The City and the Citizen - Bartolus - Conciliarism and the conciliar experiment – the disintegration of united Christendom - Cusanus - Alternative Conceptions of Freedom)

6 CITIZENSHIP IN THE RENAISSANCE

(social, technological, and ecological changes - Civic Humanism - Machiavelli and the Denial of Divine Law – the Denial of Natural Law - The Art of Ruling - Virtue and Fortune - Republics and Princedoms - View of Human Nature - Superiority of Free States - Freedom of a State - Virtue in a People Necessary to Freedom - History of Prudence)

7 THE REFORMATION AND THE RISE OF THE NATION STATE

(Luther and the Reformation - The Anabaptist Protest - The rise of the nation-state - Natural Law Theory - The English Revolution - Thomas Hobbes - left-Aristotelian inversion is a radical pantheism)

8 THE RATIONAL FREEDOM OF SPINOZA

(Philosophical Background - Outline of Metaphysics - The Infinite Attributes - Mind and Body - Extension and its Modes - knowledge and intellect - freedom and morality - wisdom and the life of the free man - eternal life and the intellectual love of god - politics and religion - Aristotelian ethics - Grotius and Hobbes – God - Substance, mode, and attribute - The Ontological Argument - The Attributes of God - God or Nature – Man - Sub specie aeternitatis – Freedom - Ethics and the absolute view - Good and evil - Active and passive - The Geometry of the Passions - The Amendment of the Passions - Freedom and Power - time and eternity - The Body Politic - Prophecy and politics - Natural Law and natural right – Justice - ‘Constitutio libertatis’ - The nature of the state)

9 ENLIGHTENMENT UTOPIA

(The Enlightenment - primitivism Diderot, Foigny and Swift - Samuel Taylor Coleridge - William Godwin - VICO - Grotius (1583-1645) Pufendorf (1632-94)

10 MONTESQUIEU AND ROUSSEAU

(Romanticism - The Politics of Authenticity - Political Masks – Liberalism - The Paradox of Modernity - A New Politics – The Authentic Citizen - Participatory Democracy)

11 THE GERMANIC CONCEPT OF SOCIAL GOVERNMENT

Pufendorf - Thomasius - Wolff - Schloezer - Moeser - Von Stein - Mueller – Welcker - Karl Follen - Herder - Kant - Schiller - Fichte - Schelling - The Philosophical Conception Of Rational Freedom)

12 THE RATIONAL FREEDOM OF JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU

(The Philosophy of Rousseau – The Criticism of Society - The State of Nature and the Nature of Man - The Psychological Development of the Individual - The Moral Development of the Individual – Religion - Political Theory - The Unity of Rousseau’s Thought - The Discourse On The Arts And Sciences - On The Origin And Foundation Of The Inequality Of Mankind - A Discourse On Political Economy - The Social Contract - Autonomy And Authority - Rational Authority Book I - Force And Legality - Alienation And Sovereignty - The Limits to Sovereignty - The Law - Book III Forms of Government - How The Sovereign Authority Maintains Itself – Representation - The General Will)

13 THE RATIONAL FREEDOM OF IMMANUEL KANT

(Kant’s Community Of Ends - The Morality Of Ends - Peace And Freedom Under Law – Praxis - The Republican Constitution - Kantian Rationalism)

14 THE RATIONAL FREEDOM OF HEGEL

(Hegel’s Civil Public - Hegel And The Embodiment Of Freedom - Hegel Beyond Kant - Hegel Beyond Rousseau - Hegel’s Philosophy Of Right - Hegel’s Associative Public)

15 MARX AND RATIONAL FREEDOM

(Marx’s Democratic Public - Marx’s Normative Democratic Community - Marx’s Critique Of Hegel’s State - Marx’s Critique Of Bourgeois Society - Citizenship And The Rights Of Man - Active Materialism - Marx’s Social Citizenship - The Realisation Of Philosophy - Ontology – Praxis, Power And Nature - Praxis As The Democratisation Of Politics, Power And Philosophy - Communist Individuality And Community - Common Control - ‘Human Organisation’ - The Cooperative Community - The Cooperative Mode Of Production - The Political - Marx’s ‘Proletarian Public’ - Commune Democracy - The Political Institutions Of Communism - The Democratisation Of Authority And Morality)

16 THE RATIONALISATION OF THE CITY

(The alien power of state and capital - The effect of capitalism - Securing The World - The Enclosure Of The Global Commons - The Nation State - Capital And The Overscale City - Weberian disenchantment – the tyranny of abstraction – overscale – The City Rationalised - Complexity - The Public Of Everyday Life – Foucault)

PART 2 THE ECONOMIC CONCEPTION OF THE CITY

17 URBAN POLITICAL ECONOMY

(The Critique of the Contradictory Dynamics of Global Capitalist Urbanisation - The Main Theories Of Political Economy - Industrial Urbanism - Capital as the architect of spatial structure – Marxist theories of urban space - The Process Of Capitalist - Urbanisation - The City Of Life)

18 GLOBALISATION

(The Globalisation Of Economic Relations - Neo-Liberalism And The Social Market Alternative - The Globalisation Of Space - the World City – the ‘glocal’ conception)

19 FROM FORDISM TO POST-FORDISM

(The Crisis Of Fordism - Post-Fordist Economics - The Symbolic Economy - The Information City - The Dual City)

20 URBAN INCARCERATION

(Socio-Economic Polarities - Lost Angeles – Urban Utopia And Dystopia - The Destruction Of Public Space - Urban Regeneration – Metropolarity)

21 THE CRISIS OF MODERNIST PLANNING

(Post-Fordism And Urban Regeneration - The Partnership Model Of Urban Regeneration - Partnership And The Capitalist Mode - The Local Growth Coalition - Capacity Building And Community Organisation - Partnership And Socialisation - the Partnership Model – Local Urban socialisation)

PART III

THE SOCIAL CONCEPT OF THE CITY

22 LIBERALISM, COMMUNITARIANISM AND DEMOCRATISATION

(the Postmodern political culture – Community and the politics of difference – The Universal And The Plural - The Politics Of Difference And Community - The Universal Frame - The Civic Tradition Of Rational Freedom - Beyond Liberalism - The Civic Tradition - Rawls – Justice And The Search For Community - Justice In The City - the City after Rawls – the Relational concept of the city - Communitarianism – The Social Embodiment Of Justice - Double Democratisation – The Left And Liberal Democracy - Plural And Socialist Democracy)

23 THE ESSENTIALIST PUBLIC

(The Democratisation Of Authority And Morality - Feminism And The City - Anarcho-Aristotelianism - Anarchist Roots – Proudhon – Kropotkin – Lewis Mumford)

24 NEW SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

(Urban Social Movements - Community Control - The Municipal agenda - Confederalism - the ensemble of decentralization, localism, self-sufficiency, interdependence - A Civic Ethics - community development - confederations - a ‘commune of communes - The city embodying the forms of associative and communal activity – the City as Use value)

25 THE COMMUNICATIVE ETHIC, URBAN PLANNING AND THE PUBLIC

(Communicative Planning And Dialogic Community - The Communicative Ethic Of Jurgen Habermas - Urban Planning After Habermas - The Public Sphere After Habermas - The Social Ecology Of Communication - Eco-Epistemology – The Dialectic Of The Rational - Outlook Of The Organic Society The Ecology Of Distance - Ecologizing The Dialectic)

26 URBAN ECOLOGY

(Technological Unreason - A Critique Of Modern Technology - Towards A Libertarian Cosmology - Martin Heidegger - Social Ecology - Bookchin - Ecological Marxism - The Stationary State Of John Stuart Mill - Environmental Justice And The City - A New Relationship With Gaia - Urban Ecological Design – the Dialectics of Scale – Liveable and Sustainable cities - The Free City Must Be Geographically Limited - A Good Network Of Wildness - Reclaiming The Ground Of Being)

27 GREENING THE CITY

(Eco-Community - What Is Social Ecology? - Ecocommunities And Eco-Technologies - Town Or Neighbourhood Assembly - The Culture Of Cities - Sustainable Cities - Sustainable Architecture - London: The Humanist City - Cities For A Small Planet - A Matter Of Scale - A New Prospectus: Policy Direction - Streetwork And Town Trails - New Communities - Sustainable Development - The Earth Summit And The National Sustainability Plan - Planning Policy Guidance - Interpreting Sustainable Development - The Principle Of Local Self-Sufficiency. - Each Level Treated As An Ecosystem - Energy Decision Making - The Issue Of Choice - Environmental Audits and Indicators - Environmental Stock)

28 URBAN PROBLEMS AND THE URBAN FORM

(Traditions In Community Design - Urban Patterns – On Urban Form As A Combination Of Typologies - Urban Patterns - Urban Aggregations - Below The Urban Surface – How Urban Systems, Organised In Complex Hierarchies, Are The Roots Of Urban Form - Urban Systems - Self-Organisation And Self-Regulation - Urban Complexity - Urban Hierarchies - Cities In Evolution - The Process And Laws Of Growth - Principle Of Nucleation - Principle Of Equal Advantage - Change And Evolution - Aging And Obsolescence)

29 URBAN SCALE

(How Urban Form, Size And Function Are Interrelated Through Growth - Laws Relating Growth, Size And Form - Law Of Differential Growth - Communications - Urban Alternatives To Increasing Size - Size And Functional Differentiation - The Disadvantage Of Size And Design Strategies - The Planning Component Of Urban Form - Land Use In Cities - How Segregation And Homogeneity Have Threatened The Social Ecology Of Urban Areas. - The Need For Diversity - The Grain Of Land Uses)

30 DENSITY IN COMMUNITIES

(A key to reconstituting the culture of cities - Propinquity and Communications Technology: Myth and Reality - Development and Redistribution of Urban Centres - Reconcentration And Nodality - Planning New Centres - Applications Of Traditional Settlements To Community Design - Unbuilt Space-Built Form Interface - Visual Phenomena And Movement)

31 CONCLUSION

CONSTITUTING PUBLICITY: RATIONALISING CITYSPACE

We must not retreat into the particular because the universal seems so difficult.

I am currently writing a book on the basis of the above materials:

The aim of this book is to recover the city as an anthropological datum through the conceptual formulation of the urban public sphere. Examining the philosophical, social and ecological conditions for the recovery of the grand narrative of “the good city”, the book challenges postmodernist celebrations of otherness, difference and conflict (Boyer 1983). The postmodernist view is criticised as a condition of urban diremption. The book adopts an ambitious interdisciplinary approach, organising conceptual framework into three parts: 1) philosophy; 2) urban political economy; 3) social and ecological praxis. The book examines the philosophical origins of urban studies to define principles of urban scale and justice and of ecological balance. The book proceeds to chart the problematic unfolding of reason within the city through the reduction of urban process to mechanisms of accumulation and valorisation. The book goes on to project the evolution of the normative city of the future in which social and environmental justice is constituted through citizen discourse, association and interaction. The purpose of the book is to develop a thorough understanding of the human political ecology, moralising the urban environment so that spatial structures correspond to the human ontology rather than contradict it. A brief outline of the chapters indicates the importance and originality of the book in relation to the contemporary literature.

1 THE PHILOSOPHICAL ROOTS OF THE RATIONAL CITY

This chapter grounds the conception of public life in a normative philosophical anthropology which identifies the city as a moral and social realm promoting culture and civilisation. Proceeding from a discussion of Plato and Aristotle, the chapter establishes a concept of “rational freedom” through the work of Rousseau, Kant, Hegel and Marx. Through these philosophers, freedom is defined as an interdependent notion connecting each individual with all other individuals. This defines an ethic of urban justice which affirms values and structures of reciprocity, interaction and solidary exchange within the associational space of civil society.

2 THE RATIONALISATION OF THE CITY

The modernist break with the “rational” philosophical legacy is located in a Weberian process of rationalisation, implying the commodification, instrumentalisation and bureaucratisation of the urban lifeworld. The city is no longer conceived as the embodiment of a rational telos but instead emerges as an instrument of force, of autonomy-denying alien power.

3 URBAN POLITICAL ECONOMY

The structuring and functioning of the city is located in the interplay between relations of production, consumption and exchange, revealing capital to be the architect of the socio-spatial order of alien power, creating the physical landscape for accumulation. The perspectives of Harvey (1973 1975) and French urban theory (eg Lamarche 1976) are developed to show how the expansionary dynamic of the capital system generates the overscale anti-city which violates the “rational” urban principles pertaining to the physical, socio-relational and anthropological infrastructure for human self-realisation.

4 THE GLOBALISATION OF THE CITY

Global shifts and connections are examined with respect to economic relations, the media, electronic landscapes and communications to contest assertions of the end of geographic space (Lash and Urry 1994). The argument identifies possibilities for a renewed emphasis upon place, highlighting the intersection of the local and the global in a regional politics of scale (Storper 1997). The chapter adapts the “glocal” conception of Swyngedouw (1997) to project the recovery of the city state ideal in the face of the globalised city region.

5 THE URBAN PROSPECT – REGENERATION OR INCARCERATION?

The critical focus of this chapter is upon abstracting and diremptive tendencies within the city, particularly with respect to new symbolic and informational economic geographies. Critical attention is paid to the iniquitous realities behind the provision of post-industrial infrastructures (convention centres, office developments, finance-insurance-real estate stations, consumer landscapes, gentrified downtowns) in contemporary urban development and regeneration. The chapter shows that the result of social division and exclusion is an “ecology of fear” generating the militarisation of urban space and the privatisation of residential and commercial space. The chapter examines the urban consequences of social and spatial injustice through the work of Mike Davis (1990 1998).Taking the view that a genuine regeneration depends upon the quality of human relationships, the key task emerges as that of reconciling the new techno-urban paradigm with place based social meaning so as to check escalating metropolarities.

6 URBAN JUSTICE

This chapter addresses the problematic character of the “common good” in a modern plural world by developing a conception of urban justice. This is achieved by locating the “rational” philosophical ideal within contemporary social and political theory. The argument defines a conception of reasonable commonality which integrates the “politics of difference” (Young 1990) within a universal frame. The conception of urban justice builds upon the work of John Rawls (1973) but rejects Rawlsian universalism as abstract and disembodied in being identified with formal legal-institutional structures in favour of an ethic based upon the responsive social intercourse of individuals within community. This ethic draws upon essentialist (Nussbaum 1986 1992), feminist (eg Gilligan 1982), communitarian (Sandel 1982) and ontological liberal (Raz 1986) modes of thought to locate individual rights within a conception of human flourishing within expansive structures of community interaction and communication.

7 THE CITY AS SOCIAL MOVEMENT

This chapter identifies the possibility of reasserting place based social meaning in the principle of community control. Developing themes and perspectives drawn from the work of Castells (1983), urban social movements are examined as social experiments in the transition from the top-down, centralised “monological” modes of thought, action and organisation to recursive-interactive “dialogical” modes which emphasise citizen interaction, association and discourse constituting urban life as a public sphere. The principle of “rational freedom” connecting the freedom of each with the freedom of all thus comes to be placed on an associative basis within community.

8 THE DIALOGICAL MODE OF THE CITY

This chapter applies the communicative ethic of Jurgen Habermas to urban planning so as to restore the connection between urbanisation and the normative anthropological rationalisation which makes the city integral to human self-realisation. Habermasian insights concerning the normative framework of language are shown to entail the formation of the urban sphere as a discursive community oriented towards mutual understanding and agreement. The “rational” ethic connecting the freedom of each and of all is thus placed on a communicative basis.

9 URBAN ECOLOGY

Putting reason on a rational basis through the social and discursive constitution of the city makes it possible to develop the ecological implications of “rational” principles of scale and justice. This concluding chapter shows that a genuine rationalisation is characterised by the interpenetration of social and environmental justice facilitating the integration of communities in their ecological community. Recreating the symbiotic relationship between nature and culture ensures that reason no longer takes irrational (anti-human/anti-ecological) forms. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach to the study of the city, the book offers a comprehensive discussion and original interpretation of key issues in urban studies, integrating perspectives and concepts drawn from philosophy, social and political theory, sociology, economics, urban studies and ecology to mark a radical new departure in urban thought.

THE COMMON GOOD AND THE COMMON GROUND

This research project restores the ancient tradition of practical reason to the centre of ethical and political theory, restoring politics to its original meaning as the politikon bion or public life enabling human self-realisation. Philosophically and historically informed, the research traces the key phases in the development of moral and political theory and practice. The research considers Aristotle the most influential philosopher of practice, and explores the historical and enduring importance of Aristotelian philosophy in ethics and politics. Grounded in the philosophical bases of what Plato and Aristotle said about the connection between ethical, political and productive activity, the research traces the historically evolving connection between reason and freedom through the ideas of such figures as St Paul, St Augustine, St Thomas Aquinas, the rationalists and the empiricists of the seventeenth century, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Heidegger and Habermas, up to contemporary liberal-communitarian, democratic and civic republic thinking.The guiding thread of the research is the various receptions and transformations of ancient practical philosophy generally, with a particular focus upon virtue ethics and a non-consequentialist morality. The research destroys monolithic conceptions to differentiate those Platonisms and Aristotelianisms that are elitist from those that are anti-elitist in order to formulate democracy as a rational ideal, a practice and way of life which is immanent in the human ontology and its unfolding. The argument highlights rational freedom as a universal category premised upon and promising the liberatory unity of each and all individuals within the virtuous community of human flourishing. This revision of Platonism and Aristotelianism distinguishes ethical excellence from social elitism to democratise philosophy in a manner suggestive of Marx’s original project. Seeking a social form that corresponds to rather than contradicts the human ontology, social practices are analysed in teleological terms, opposing them to exploitative and elitist institutions to argue for a cooperative and communicative conception of creative human agency as a moral agency. The research challenges the view that science, dealing with the way the world ‘is’ rather than the way the world ‘ought to be’, has nothing to say about ethical matters. The research draws upon evolutionary biology and psychology to consider the contribution that natural science can make to the moral discourse of natural law and virtue ethics. The claim is that only a multidisciplinary approach, drawing on psychology, philosophy, biology and social science and anthropology, can enable us to understand and ground morality in real practices and relations.The research examines different ethical views in time and place, paying particular attention to notions of freedom, justice and right, in order to show the history, development and possible futures of the world's moral systems. By integrating the argument with the origins and the emergence of world religions, the research purports to demonstrate that moral systems are derived from the creative unfolding of the human ontology in interaction with the social, cultural and physical experiences of individuals in time and place. According to this conception, morality is neither fixed nor free, but is a creative act balanced between what individuals do and what they are supposed to do.

The research adopts a multidisciplinary approach to address the necessity of morals in light of the ubiquity of religious systems.

1 ALTRUISM AND EGOISM

(Rational Choice Theory and the Prisoner’s Dilemma – Sociobiology – The Commons – The Evolution of Cooperation – The Cooperative Principle – Public Choice and Public Goods – Political Implications – Civilisation)

2 PUBLIC LIFE, VIRTUE AND NATURE IN ANCIENT GREECE

(The Polis and Politeia – The Sophists and Socrates – Ethos as Way of Life – Plato – Reason and Justice as the Good Life – Virtue and the Forms of the Good – Aristotle and the Teleological Conception of Politics – Eudaimonia)

3 HELLENISM AND ROME – FROM POLIS TO COSMOPOLIS

(Epicureanism and Individual Well Being – Stoicism and Happiness – Knowing the Self Through Others – Cynics and Sceptics as Anti-Social – Roman Jurisprudence and the Reign of Law – Roman Stoicism and Natural Law)

4 JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN THOUGHT

(Judaism and Logocentrism – Paul - Faith and Reason, Theology and Philosophy – Hebraic, Hellenic and Latin Traditions in Christianity – Basil and Christian Communism – Augustine, Citizenship and the City of God)

5 NATURAL LAW AND VIRTUE ETHICS

(The Natural and the Rational Foundation of Ethics – A Universal System of Laws - Morality and Human Nature – Natural Law and Natural Rights – Law and Morals - The Essence and Rule of Law and Right – The Public and the Private – Individuals and Groups – Ethics, Knowledge and Action - The Global Ethic of One World)

6 THE RECOVERY OF ARISTOTLE

(Aquinas – The City States of Italy - The Secular Reaction – Medieval Aristotelianisms and Republican Liberty - Marsilio of Padua – Pierre Dubois – Cusanus and Conciliarism – The Dissolution of the Universal Ideal of Christendom)

7 THE RENAISSANCE

(the Recovery of Greek Ethics – The Platonism of Marsilio Ficino – More and Utopian Communism – Pico Della Mirandola and Universalism – The Republic of Machiavelli - The Commercial Revolution and the Dissolution of the Christian-Aristotelian Worldview)

8 RATIONALISTS AND EMPIRICISTS

(Contract and Political-Philosophical Anthropology – Hobbes, Natural Law and the Limits of Contract, Rights and Obligation - Locke’s Liberalism as an Equilibrium Between Consent and Natural Law social movements – Freedom, Activity and Self-Determination in Descartes – Rational Human Nature and the Good Life in Descartes and Spinoza – Leibniz’s Determined Freedom – Freedom as the Rational Appreciation of God as Nature – Vico’s New Science – Reason and Culture)

9 CULTURE BETWEEN REASON AND NATURE IN THE ENLIGHTENMENT

(State, Citizen and Human Nature in Montesquieu, Rousseau and Burke – Rationality as a Way of Life – Civic Virtue in a Modern Republic – Civic Vision and the Spirit of the Laws – The Pursuit of Happiness – The Political Constitution – From Rationalism to Realism – Republican Institutions as the True Social Contract – Civic Education The Political Reason of Edmund Burke – Practical Reason and Politics – The Political Order and Social Change – The People as the Source of Political Power)

10 THE GERMAN IDEA OF FREEDOM, RIGHT AND REASON

(The Absolutists and the Constitutionalists - The Concern with Legitimate Foundations – Kant and The Teleology of Practical Reason – Legality, Morality and Fichte’s Rational Community – Hegel’s Ethical Totality)

11 MARX AND WEBER

(Alienation and the Dialectics of Labour – Reason, Interest and the Necessity of History – Praxis as the Realisation and Democratisation of Philosophy – The Transcendence of Morality – The Classless Society as a Polity – The Spirit of Modernity – Self-Alienation, Rationalisation, and the Critique of Materialism and Determinism – Personality and Life-Orders – The Hellenic Sittlichkeit or the Iron Cage of Modern Rationalism)

12 LIBERALISM AND COMMUNITARIANISM

(Rawls and Liberalism Neutralised - The Critique of Contract and Convention – Balance in the Body Politic – The Two Liberalisms of Individual Rights and Public – Walzer’s Complex Equality – The Binding Force of Small Groups – Raz and the Flourishing Community – Nussbaum on Capabilities – Justice, the Moral Subject and the Good in Sandel)

13 THE ASSOCIATIONAL CIVIL PUBLIC

(Beyond the Public-Private Dualism - Habermas’ communicative public – The Economic Basis of Deliberative Democracy – Socialism as Classical Polis – Associationalist Ethics and the Logics of Collective Action – Associative Governance and Citizen Democracy– Localising Public Life - Aristotelian Notions of Ruling and Being Ruled in Turn)

14 THE JUST SOCIETY

(Normative Worldviews – Personal Imperatives – Embedded Values and Identity Within Social Relations – Plurality and the Common Good – The Shared Community Worldview – Justice and Public Life).

15 CIVIC REPUBLICANISM

(Republican Freedom – Personal and Political Autonomy – Promoting Autonomy – Realising Common Goods – Modes and Practices of Citizen Participation and Deliberation – Creating Public Space and Multiple Publics – Common World and Public Sphere – A Republican Community of Recognition and Inclusion).

The aim of this research is to affirm the unity and centrality of an essentialist, teleological and non-consequentialist conception of ethics and politics in the modern world. The research establishes the foundations of human rights in a conception of natural law that transcends the atomistic and contractarian bases of the modern state and civil society. The approach strengthens communal bonds, local loyalties and everyday solidarities to found an active citizen public of function and purpose that reconciles the freedom of each individual and all individuals within a universal framework of active sovereignty and subsidiary power. The argument is developed through classical and contemporary treatments of ethics and politics. The intention is to affirm the unity of ethics and politics and defend the notion of a public life that realises ethos as a way of life in the social lives, practices and activities of individuals as rational, autonomous citizens. Rather than limiting the scope of morality to the private choices of individuals, the emphasis is placed on the need to ground the ethico-political foundations of public life as a communal modus vivendi articulating the common good in order that individuals are better able to live and flourish together, nationally and internationally, connecting the local and the global, the particular and the universal. The approach taken is timely in its critical appropriation of themes and perspectives in theoretical and practical ethics to demonstrate the enduring power of substantive moral positions commonly considered passé and indefensible in a modern society formerly considered a world of irreducible subjective opinion. Recovering notions of objective morality and the common good, the attempt is made to delineate the connection between reason and freedom by means of traditional moral theory, pointing to a civic and associative (re)public beyond a demoralised, nihilistic and vacuous modernity. The Public Life of Reason and Freedom develops an alternative to the neutralised conceptions of modern politics and morality to show that far from being monolithic and moribund, the system caricatured as 'traditional morality’ retains a purpose and a power that have the potential to resolve the moral and political impasse of modern society and recreate public life as the sphere of free and rational beings being the economic determinism of the global capital system. The central concepts, principles and objectives of ‘traditional’ morality – natural law, rights, justice, the good, the common good, virtue, and, centrally, the fundamental value and sanctity of human life – are critically appropriated and reapplied as an alternative and feasible futurity embedded in the historical unfolding. This is to do more than recover or restate ‘traditional morality’ as sufficient to overcome the moral impasse of modernity, which is merely a reactionary rejection of modernity that seeks refuge in the residues of a lost past that continue to survive in the modern world. Rather, the argument is more nuanced and more historically based, seeking to extract the rational core of traditional morality from within the nostalgic mode of their statement to demonstrate that hope lies not in the resurrection of the past but in those elements of modernity which point towards an alternative future. The research is organised around a central idea, the idea that reason and freedom are connected. The research attempts to reaffirm the promise of that connection, so eloquently stated by Spinoza when he argued that ‘the more a man is guided by reason, the more he is free’. Spinoza was writing specifically of the political peace and law of the commonwealth, but the notion of ascending the levels of cognition from the limited freedom of appetite and desire to the true and full freedom of reason applies. The idea goes back to ancient Greece and to Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. The research proceeds from this foundation to examine the various receptions and transformations of ‘traditional morality’, the Platonic trinity of the true, the good and the beautiful, Aristotelian practical philosophy, Stoic universalism, the objective morality of the Judaeo-Christian tradition to demonstrate that this ‘tradition’ is very far from being monolithic and very far from being outdated. The argument is therefore concerned to differentiate those conceptions and principles that are elitist from those that are anti-elitist and to distinguish those implications that are reactionary and exclusive from those that are revolutionary and inclusive. Thus the philosophical point of Plato’s Philosopher-Ruler is realised as the argument that philosophy should rule, transforming a plainly elitist notion into a democratic one on the assumption that all possess the potential to rule on account of possessing the essential human capacity to reason. The research is an ambitious attempt to establish the connection between reason and freedom at the centre of ethical and political theory so as to envisage a public life which rests upon the unity of each individual and all individuals. Philosophically and historically informed, the book presents a distinctive account of the critical phases in the development of ethico-political thought, culminating in an extensive examination of contemporary liberal, democratic, communitarian and republican thought.Plato and Aristotle are the most influential philosophers of ethics and politics, and this work explores the continuing importance of Platonic and Aristotelian notions of public life as the essential moral and political community enabling human self-realisation. The book examines the philosophical bases of what Plato and Aristotle argued about the ethical and political life of human beings. In the process a concept of ‘rational freedom’ is defined which affirms the unity of each individual and all individuals in a virtuous community that enables each and all to ascend the levels of cognition to attain the appreciation of the common good. The book then traces ideas of ‘rational freedom’ through such figures as St Paul, Augustine, Aquinas, Marsilio, Machiavelli, showing how the universal ideal of Christianity kept alive the notion of the common weal but lost a sense of the political character of freedom. The recovery of Aristotle followed by the secular reaction brought forth a strong statement of republican politics, only for this to be occluded by the emergence of commerce and capitalism, effectively blocking the possibility of virtuous citizenship. Locke and Hobbes are considered to have defined the classic conception of individual liberty in the conditions of modern market society, but the more ambitious notions of reason and freedom were developed by Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza. Montesquieu, Rousseau and Burke are considered together as critical of an Enlightenment inclined to oppose an abstract reason derived from the emerging systems of state and commerce to practical rationality as lived by real people.The German Idea of Freedom is particularly important in that it addresses the emerging subjectivism of modernity in a way that retains the Aristotelian sense of human beings as social-political animals who can individuate themselves only in a social matrix and ethical community. Kant, Fichte, Hegel, and Marx offer distinctive liberal, communitarian, conservative and socialist versions of this theme. The classic argument against these notions of an Hellenic Sittlichkeit came from Max Weber, who affirmed the irreducible subjectivism of modernity, hopelessly divided between irreconcilable opinions with no moral means of deciding between one view and another. Weber is particularly important in expressing the moral impasse of modernity, its disenchantment, desacralisation, nihilism as its central characteristic. For this reason, the book considers Max Weber to be the key theorist, indeed philosopher of modernity. Weber has formulated the modern predicament with such clear sighted precision that, to avoid the pitfalls of wishful thinking, he demands an answer. If no adequate response can be made to Weber’s points concerning rationalisation, then ‘rational freedom’ is revealed as a nostalgic project and Weber’s gloomy conclusions remain. The approach taken in this research accepts Weberian rationalisation as a moral and political impasse. It argues that capitalist modernity is a fundamentally nihilistic system – its central purpose being accumulation for the sake of further accumulation and hence by definition endless – that continues only by means of a parasitism on the moral and cultural capital generated by previous social orders. Ultimately, this moral and cultural capital will be dissipated, leaving nothing but what Marx – following the conservative Carlyle – said would remain, the nexus of callous cash payment. Monetary ties are the least solid of all. Capitalist modernity requires morality but renders it impossible. Modernity both demands morality and destroys the grounds for taking it seriously. Capitalist social relations render it impossible to create a social identity that serves to unify egoism and altruism. As a result, the individual good and the common good exist as polar opposites, with each individual having no good reason to choose altruism over egoism. Private interest trumps public good, with the result that the restrictive terms of the Prisoner’s Dilemma are applied. Individual reason issues in a collective unreason so that the freedom of each individual and all individuals together is diminished. This research seeks a way out of the dilemma by creating a social identity that connects the private and the public good, overcoming the separation of egoism and altruism. And this is where Weber is challenged. The argument is not that the modern world destroys the ground for believing in certain universal moral principles and values, making their recovery not only nostalgic but also impossible; it is that modernity is self-imploding in that it can provide no good reason for believing in its own principles and values. Modernity has developed distinctive notions of freedom as individual liberty and choice, leading to a notion of reason as autonomous agency. This notion of freedom as individual liberty and choice traps individuals on the lowest rung of the ascending levels of cognition, restricting people to the immediacy of appetite and desire and effectively promoting what Aristotle condemned as licence in the place of liberty. Further, in separating the choosing individual from the public good, this conception has the consequence that the altruistic claims of morality have little influence over the egoistic motivations of those to whom they are addressed. Capitalist modernity has developed a conception of individual freedom – and democracy - which systematically prevents the possibility of morality. As Weber argued, morality can no longer be a matter of rational belief, but instead is reduced to mere subjective opinion. In a world which is antithetical to objective and substantive notions of morality, only personal faith or dogmatic conviction remain, neither of which command any authority to any but those amongst the convinced. All of which means that morality lacks the authority it requires to give meaning and order in a social and individual life that merits the designation ‘good’. The argument is that, whereas the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle could legitimate elitism, and whereas the Christian theology could justify a descending theme of power in which the people are at the bottom of a hierarchy presided over by God, the potential exists to separate the true and the good, ethical excellence and the virtues from social elitism to outline the contours of a free and flourishing community. The research analyses social practices in essentialist and teleological terms, opposing autonomy enhancing social relations to the autonomy inhibiting to capitalist institutions, demanding a social form that corresponds to rather than contradicts the human ontology and arguing for the communal, cooperative, and communicative promotion of our rational-moral nature. In condensing ideas drawn from ancient Greece, Judaism and Christianity, Medieval and Renaissance Republicans, Continental Rationalists, and German Idealists, the research advances the case for the primacy of the ethico-political community as the statement of human freedom as against the false necessity and economic determinism of the modern world. The research is undertaken in the belief that an answer to Weber is possible. The argument sets the Marx-Weber debate in a wider ethical and philosophical context. This approach highlights Weber’s frequent references to wider issues whose significance extends far beyond the field of 'scientific sociology' and show the existence of a philosophical anthropology concerning the appropriate regimen for human beings. This concern with values of individual autonomy, spontaneity, and the dignity of the human person in modern conditions indicates that, beyond debates between materialism and idealism, Weber, like Marx, sought to demonstrate the need to preserve ultimate values. These are the substantive values underpinning human self-worth which Weber clearly believed both should and could be defended against the very extension of impersonal, 'formal' rationality into all spheres of social life. But to be able to make this defence, this research holds that Weber requires an ethico-political philosophy which is of the ‘traditional’, substantive type, the very thing which modernity prevents. Weber criticised the dehumanising consequences of capitalist modernity as much as Marx, particularly the autonomy-denying structures which he saw as diminishing the scope of human potential. But it is in seeking the means whereby human autonomy and self-worth could be affirmed against the standardizing influences of industrial production and bureaucracy that Weber’s limitations become apparent. In ruling out substantive ethical systems in an irredeemably pluralistic world characterised by a polytheism of subjective values and in asserting the permanence of rational forms, Weber lacks a politics and an ethics which defends his philosophical anthropology. Putting Weber's quasi-philosophical positions on a sounder ethical footing enables the critical evaluation of Weber's sociological methodology in such a way that restates substantive philosophical principles against a systemic-institutional world which denies them. Insofar as there is a ‘philosophy’ in Weber, there are fundamental contradictions within it. Weber denies fundamental truth and objective morality but affirms values which require the commitment to and existence of both. Against Weber, the research affirms that there is such a thing as theoretical or practical wisdom and that there is a true intellectual harmony between wisdom and the particular sciences. In doing this, the study reveals Weber to be less a philosopher than an ideologist of rationalisation, dehistoricising rational forms that are quite particular to specific social relations in time and place. The argument of recent Weber scholarship that Weber was motivated by the ethical development of Menschentum has the merit of recovering Weber the philosopher requiring an objective morality against Weber the sociologist committed to the separation of values and science in the quest for an objective science of social action. Weber’s ‘science of man’ involves more than value free social science and focuses upon the relationship between social 'conditions of existence' and the quality or 'virtue' of man. Weber's concern for human values and virtues in light of the onslaught of modernization in the shape of industrial capitalism and state bureaucracy reveals that Weber’s central concern is with an 'anthropological' analysis of the relationship between 'personality and life-orders'. This rediscovery of Weber’s ethical concerns, in the work of Hennis and others, does more than call for a reassessment of Weber’s sociology. The search for a doctrine concerning values and a practice involving virtues locates Weber in an older tradition of ethics and philosophy that is concerned with normative issues that goes back to Plato and Aristotle. And it demands a genuine philosophy that is lacking in Weber. At this point, the argument draws upon Voegelin and Strauss to reaffirm the purpose of political philosophy as the good life. Such a view challenges the reduction of philosophy to scientific positivism. And it rejects the scepticism and historicism that see in values the expression of particular social relations and transitory cultures, views which do not recognise any permanent truth and which uphold the claim of freedom to be self-sufficient in itself, a subjectivist notion that acknowledges nothing above it or beyond it. Affirming the good society as the complete political good, the goal of the statesman is the common good and all practical action is directed towards knowledge of the good. Political philosophy emerges when citizens make knowledge of the good life and of the good society their political goal. The most nuanced part of the thesis concerns the creative unfolding of this objective conception of the good through a human praxis bounded by time and place in history. This is to argue that the historicism of Hegel and Marx does not reject the idea of the good society on account of the essentially historical character of the modes of social organisation, thought and action, only the notion of the good society. The degeneration of modernist movements and doctrines into moral and political wastelands has proven that human beings cannot abandon the quest for the good society, since this quest is coeval with humanity. The emergence of the good society is not the dispensation of fate. Whilst affirming much of what Marx wrote, the view is taken that Marx underestimated the extent to which creative and critical praxis is also a moral praxis in which human beings seeking the good society are motivated more by values than by material interests. Human beings cannot free themselves from the responsibility for seeking the good by deferring to History or to any of its surrogates in class, party and state. Weber’s concerns with values and virtues, in other words, do not amount to a philosophy but do serve as a signpost for those concerned with the traditional concerns of philosophy and ethics. For this normative concern with the most appropriate mode of life for human beings suggests a natural inclination to wisdom which, in its metaphysical root, is inherent in human nature and indicates a qualitative mechanism by which to evaluate the differential modes of conduct of life and sustain a politics of creative human self-realisation.

THE COMMON GOOD AND THE COMMON GROUND

The research restores the ancient tradition of practical reason to the centre of ethical and political theory, restoring politics to its original meaning as the politikon bion or public life enabling human self-realisation. Philosophically and historically informed, the research traces the key phases in the development of moral and political theory and practice. The research considers Aristotle the most influential philosopher of practice, and explores the historical and enduring importance of Aristotelian philosophy in ethics and politics. Grounded in the philosophical bases of what Plato and Aristotle said about the connection between ethical, political and productive activity, the research traces the historically evolving connection between reason and freedom through the ideas of such figures as St Paul, St Augustine, St Thomas Aquinas, the rationalists and the empiricists of the seventeenth century, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Heidegger and Habermas, up to contemporary liberal-communitarian, democratic and civic republic thinking. The guiding thread of the research is the various receptions and transformations of ancient practical philosophy generally, with a particular focus upon virtue ethics and a non-consequentialist morality. The research destroys monolithic conceptions to differentiate those Platonisms and Aristotelianisms that are elitist from those that are anti-elitist in order to formulate democracy as a rational ideal, a practice and way of life which is immanent in the human ontology and its unfolding. The argument highlights rational freedom as a universal category premised upon and promising the liberatory unity of each and all individuals within the virtuous community of human flourishing. This revision of Platonism and Aristotelianism distinguishes ethical excellence from social elitism to democratise philosophy in a manner suggestive of Marx’s original project. Seeking a social form that corresponds to rather than contradicts the human ontology, social practices are analysed in teleological terms, opposing them to exploitative and elitist institutions to argue for a cooperative and communicative conception of creative human agency as a moral agency. The research challenges the view that science, dealing with the way the world ‘is’ rather than the way the world ‘ought to be’, has nothing to say about ethical matters. The research draws upon evolutionary biology and psychology to consider the contribution that natural science can make to the moral discourse of natural law and virtue ethics. The claim is that only a multidisciplinary approach, drawing on psychology, philosophy, biology and social science and anthropology, can enable us to understand and ground morality in real practices and relations. The research examines different ethical views in time and place, paying particular attention to notions of freedom, justice and right, in order to show the history, development and possible futures of the world's moral systems. By integrating the argument with the origins and the emergence of world religions, the research purports to demonstrate that moral systems are derived from the creative unfolding of the human ontology in interaction with the social, cultural and physical experiences of individuals in time and place. According to this conception, morality is neither fixed nor free, but is a creative act balanced between what individuals do and what they are supposed to do.

The research adopts a multidisciplinary approach to address the necessity of morals in light of the ubiquity of religious systems.

1 ALTRUISM AND EGOISM

(Rational Choice Theory and the Prisoner’s Dilemma – Sociobiology – The Commons – The Evolution of Cooperation – The Cooperative Principle – Public Choice and Public Goods – Political Implications – Civilisation)

2 PUBLIC LIFE, VIRTUE AND NATURE IN ANCIENT GREECE

(The Polis and Politeia – The Sophists and Socrates – Ethos as Way of Life – Plato – Reason and Justice as the Good Life – Virtue and the Forms of the Good – Aristotle and the Teleological Conception of Politics – Eudaimonia)

3 HELLENISM AND ROME – FROM POLIS TO COSMOPOLIS

(Epicureanism and Individual Well Being – Stoicism and Happiness – Knowing the Self Through Others – Cynics and Sceptics as Anti-Social – Roman Jurisprudence and the Reign of Law – Roman Stoicism and Natural Law)

4 JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN THOUGHT

(Judaism and Logocentrism – Paul - Faith and Reason, Theology and Philosophy – Hebraic, Hellenic and Latin Traditions in Christianity – Basil and Christian Communism – Augustine, Citizenship and the City of God)

5 NATURAL LAW AND VIRTUE ETHICS

(The Natural and the Rational Foundation of Ethics – A Universal System of Laws - Morality and Human Nature – Natural Law and Natural Rights – Law and Morals - The Essence and Rule of Law and Right – The Public and the Private – Individuals and Groups – Ethics, Knowledge and Action - The Global Ethic of One World)

6 THE RECOVERY OF ARISTOTLE

(Aquinas – The City States of Italy - The Secular Reaction – Medieval Aristotelianisms and Republican Liberty - Marsilio of Padua – Pierre Dubois – Cusanus and Conciliarism – The Dissolution of the Universal Ideal of Christendom)

7 THE RENAISSANCE

(the Recovery of Greek Ethics – The Platonism of Marsilio Ficino – More and Utopian Communism – Pico Della Mirandola and Universalism – The Republic of Machiavelli - The Commercial Revolution and the Dissolution of the Christian-Aristotelian Worldview)

8 RATIONALISTS AND EMPIRICISTS

(Contract and Political-Philosophical Anthropology – Hobbes, Natural Law and the Limits of Contract, Rights and Obligation - Locke’s Liberalism as an Equilibrium Between Consent and Natural Law social movements – Freedom, Activity and Self-Determination in Descartes – Rational Human Nature and the Good Life in Descartes and Spinoza – Leibniz’s Determined Freedom – Freedom as the Rational Appreciation of God as Nature – Vico’s New Science – Reason and Culture)

9 CULTURE BETWEEN REASON AND NATURE IN THE ENLIGHTENMENT

(State, Citizen and Human Nature in Montesquieu, Rousseau and Burke – Rationality as a Way of Life – Civic Virtue in a Modern Republic – Civic Vision and the Spirit of the Laws – The Pursuit of Happiness – The Political Constitution – From Rationalism to Realism – Republican Institutions as the True Social Contract – Civic Education  The Political Reason of Edmund Burke – Practical Reason and Politics – The Political Order and Social Change – The People as the Source of Political Power)

10 THE GERMAN IDEA OF FREEDOM, RIGHT AND REASON

(The Absolutists and the Constitutionalists  - The Concern with Legitimate Foundations – Kant and The Teleology of Practical Reason – Legality, Morality and Fichte’s Rational Community – Hegel’s Ethical Totality)

11 MARX AND WEBER

(Alienation and the Dialectics of Labour – Reason, Interest and the Necessity of History – Praxis as the Realisation and Democratisation of Philosophy – The Transcendence of Morality – The Classless Society as a Polity – The Spirit of Modernity – Self-Alienation, Rationalisation, and the Critique of Materialism and Determinism – Personality and Life-Orders – The Hellenic Sittlichkeit or the Iron Cage of Modern Rationalism)

12 LIBERALISM AND COMMUNITARIANISM

(Rawls and Liberalism Neutralised - The Critique of Contract and Convention – Balance in the Body Politic – The Two Liberalisms of Individual Rights and Public – Walzer’s Complex Equality – The Binding Force of Small Groups – Raz and the Flourishing Community – Nussbaum on Capabilities – Justice, the Moral Subject and the Good in Sandel)

13 THE ASSOCIATIONAL CIVIL PUBLIC

(Beyond the Public-Private Dualism - Habermas’ communicative public – The Economic Basis of Deliberative Democracy – Socialism as Classical Polis – Associationalist Ethics and the Logics of Collective Action – Associative Governance and Citizen Democracy– Localising Public Life - Aristotelian Notions of Ruling and Being Ruled in Turn)

14 THE JUST SOCIETY

(Normative Worldviews – Personal Imperatives – Embedded Values and Identity Within Social Relations – Plurality and the Common Good – The Shared Community Worldview – Justice and Public Life).

15 CIVIC REPUBLICANISM

(Republican Freedom – Personal and Political Autonomy – Promoting Autonomy – Realising Common Goods – Modes and Practices of Citizen Participation and Deliberation – Creating Public Space and Multiple Publics – Common World and Public Sphere – A Republican Community of Recognition and Inclusion).

The aim of this research is to affirm the unity and centrality of an essentialist, teleological and non-consequentialist conception of ethics and politics in the modern world. The research establishes the foundations of human rights in a conception of natural law that transcends the atomistic and contractarian bases of the modern state and civil society. The approach strengthens communal bonds, local loyalties and everyday solidarities to found an active citizen public of function and purpose that reconciles the freedom of each individual and all individuals within a universal framework of active sovereignty and subsidiary power.The argument is developed through classical and contemporary treatments of ethics and politics. The intention is to affirm the unity of ethics and politics and defend the notion of a public life that realises ethos as a way of life in the social lives, practices and activities of individuals as rational, autonomous citizens. Rather than limiting the scope of morality to the private choices of individuals, the emphasis is placed on the need to ground the ethico-political foundations of public life as a communal modus vivendi articulating the common good in order that individuals are better able to live and flourish together, nationally and internationally, connecting the local and the global, the particular and the universal.The approach taken is timely in its critical appropriation of themes and perspectives in theoretical and practical ethics to demonstrate the enduring power of substantive moral positions commonly considered passé and indefensible in a modern society formerly considered a world of irreducible subjective opinion. Recovering notions of objective morality and the common good, the attempt is made to delineate the connection between reason and freedom by means of traditional moral theory, pointing to a civic and associative (re)public beyond a demoralised, nihilistic and vacuous modernity. The Public Life of Reason and Freedom develops an alternative to the neutralised conceptions of modern politics and morality to show that far from being monolithic and moribund, the system caricatured as 'traditional morality’ retains a purpose and a power that have the potential to resolve the moral and political impasse of modern society and recreate public life as the sphere of free and rational beings being the economic determinism of the global capital system. The central concepts, principles and objectives of ‘traditional’ morality – natural law, rights, justice, the good, the common good, virtue, and, centrally, the fundamental value and sanctity of human life – are critically appropriated and reapplied as an alternative and feasible futurity embedded in the historical unfolding. This is to do more than recover or restate ‘traditional morality’ as sufficient to overcome the moral impasse of modernity, which is merely a reactionary rejection of modernity that seeks refuge in the residues of a lost past that continue to survive in the modern world. Rather, the argument is more nuanced and more historically based, seeking to extract the rational core of traditional morality from within the nostalgic mode of their statement to demonstrate that hope lies not in the resurrection of the past but in those elements of modernity which point towards an alternative future. The research is organised around a central idea, the idea that reason and freedom are connected. The research attempts to reaffirm the promise of that connection, so eloquently stated by Spinoza when he argued that ‘the more a man is guided by reason, the more he is free’. Spinoza was writing specifically of the political peace and law of the commonwealth, but the notion of ascending the levels of cognition from the limited freedom of appetite and desire to the true and full freedom of reason applies. The idea goes back to ancient Greece and to Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. The research proceeds from this foundation to examine the various receptions and transformations of ‘traditional morality’, the Platonic trinity of the true, the good and the beautiful, Aristotelian practical philosophy, Stoic universalism, the objective morality of the Judaeo-Christian tradition to demonstrate that this ‘tradition’ is very far from being monolithic and very far from being outdated. The argument is therefore concerned to differentiate those conceptions and principles that are elitist from those that are anti-elitist and to distinguish those implications that are reactionary and exclusive from those that are revolutionary and inclusive. Thus the philosophical point of Plato’s Philosopher-Ruler is realised as the argument that philosophy should rule, transforming a plainly elitist notion into a democratic one on the assumption that all possess the potential to rule on account of possessing the essential human capacity to reason. The research is an ambitious attempt to establish the connection between reason and freedom at the centre of ethical and political theory so as to envisage a public life which rests upon the unity of each individual and all individuals. Philosophically and historically informed, the book presents a distinctive account of the critical phases in the development of ethico-political thought, culminating in an extensive examination of contemporary liberal, democratic, communitarian and republican thought. Plato and Aristotle are the most influential philosophers of ethics and politics, and this work explores the continuing importance of Platonic and Aristotelian notions of public life as the essential moral and political community enabling human self-realisation. The book examines the philosophical bases of what Plato and Aristotle argued about the ethical and political life of human beings. In the process a concept of ‘rational freedom’ is defined which affirms the unity of each individual and all individuals in a virtuous community that enables each and all to ascend the levels of cognition to attain the appreciation of the common good. The book then traces ideas of ‘rational freedom’ through such figures as St Paul, Augustine, Aquinas, Marsilio, Machiavelli, showing how the universal ideal of Christianity kept alive the notion of the common weal but lost a sense of the political character of freedom. The recovery of Aristotle followed by the secular reaction brought forth a strong statement of republican politics, only for this to be occluded by the emergence of commerce and capitalism, effectively blocking the possibility of virtuous citizenship. Locke and Hobbes are considered to have defined the classic conception of individual liberty in the conditions of modern market society, but the more ambitious notions of reason and freedom were developed by Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza. Montesquieu, Rousseau and Burke are considered together as critical of an Enlightenment inclined to oppose an abstract reason derived from the emerging systems of state and commerce to practical rationality as lived by real people. The German Idea of Freedom is particularly important in that it addresses the emerging subjectivism of modernity in a way that retains the Aristotelian sense of human beings as social-political animals who can individuate themselves only in a social matrix and ethical community. Kant, Fichte, Hegel, and Marx offer distinctive liberal, communitarian, conservative and socialist versions of this theme. The classic argument against these notions of an Hellenic Sittlichkeit came from Max Weber, who affirmed the irreducible subjectivism of modernity, hopelessly divided between irreconcilable opinions with no moral means of deciding between one view and another. Weber is particularly important in expressing the moral impasse of modernity, its disenchantment, desacralisation, nihilism as its central characteristic. For this reason, the book considers Max Weber to be the key theorist, indeed philosopher of modernity. Weber has formulated the modern predicament with such clear sighted precision that, to avoid the pitfalls of wishful thinking, he demands an answer. If no adequate response can be made to Weber’s points concerning rationalisation, then ‘rational freedom’ is revealed as a nostalgic project and Weber’s gloomy conclusions remain. The approach taken in this research accepts Weberian rationalisation as a moral and political impasse. It argues that capitalist modernity is a fundamentally nihilistic system – its central purpose being accumulation for the sake of further accumulation and hence by definition endless – that continues only by means of a parasitism on the moral and cultural capital generated by previous social orders. Ultimately, this moral and cultural capital will be dissipated, leaving nothing but what Marx – following the conservative Carlyle – said would remain, the nexus of callous cash payment. Monetary ties are the least solid of all. Capitalist modernity requires morality but renders it impossible. Modernity both demands morality and destroys the grounds for taking it seriously. Capitalist social relations render it impossible to create a social identity that serves to unify egoism and altruism. As a result, the individual good and the common good exist as polar opposites, with each individual having no good reason to choose altruism over egoism. Private interest trumps public good, with the result that the restrictive terms of the Prisoner’s Dilemma are applied. Individual reason issues in a collective unreason so that the freedom of each individual and all individuals together is diminished. This research seeks a way out of the dilemma by creating a social identity that connects the private and the public good, overcoming the separation of egoism and altruism. And this is where Weber is challenged. The argument is not that the modern world destroys the ground for believing in certain universal moral principles and values, making their recovery not only nostalgic but also impossible; it is that modernity is self-imploding in that it can provide no good reason for believing in its own principles and values. Modernity has developed distinctive notions of freedom as individual liberty and choice, leading to a notion of reason as autonomous agency. This notion of freedom as individual liberty and choice traps individuals on the lowest rung of the ascending levels of cognition, restricting people to the immediacy of appetite and desire and effectively promoting what Aristotle condemned as licence in the place of liberty. Further, in separating the choosing individual from the public good, this conception has the consequence that the altruistic claims of morality have little influence over the egoistic motivations of those to whom they are addressed. Capitalist modernity has developed a conception of individual freedom – and democracy - which systematically prevents the possibility of morality. As Weber argued, morality can no longer be a matter of rational belief, but instead is reduced to mere subjective opinion. In a world which is antithetical to objective and substantive notions of morality, only personal faith or dogmatic conviction remain, neither of which command any authority to any but those amongst the convinced. All of which means that morality lacks the authority it requires to give meaning and order in a social and individual life that merits the designation ‘good’. The argument is that, whereas the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle could legitimate elitism, and whereas the Christian theology could justify a descending theme of power in which the people are at the bottom of a hierarchy presided over by God, the potential exists to separate the true and the good, ethical excellence and the virtues from social elitism to outline the contours of a free and flourishing community. The research analyses social practices in essentialist and teleological terms, opposing autonomy enhancing social relations to the autonomy inhibiting to capitalist institutions, demanding a social form that corresponds to rather than contradicts the human ontology and arguing for the communal, cooperative, and communicative promotion of our rational-moral nature. In condensing ideas drawn from ancient Greece, Judaism and Christianity, Medieval and Renaissance Republicans, Continental Rationalists, and German Idealists, the research advances the case for the primacy of the ethico-political community as the statement of human freedom as against the false necessity and economic determinism of the modern world. The research is undertaken in the belief that an answer to Weber is possible. The argument sets the Marx-Weber debate in a wider ethical and philosophical context. This approach highlights Weber’s frequent references to wider issues whose significance extends far beyond the field of 'scientific sociology' and show the existence of a philosophical anthropology concerning the appropriate regimen for human beings. This concern with values of individual autonomy, spontaneity, and the dignity of the human person in modern conditions indicates that, beyond debates between materialism and idealism, Weber, like Marx, sought to demonstrate the need to preserve ultimate values. These are the substantive values underpinning human self-worth which Weber clearly believed both should and could be defended against the very extension of impersonal, 'formal' rationality into all spheres of social life. But to be able to make this defence, this research holds that Weber requires an ethico-political philosophy which is of the ‘traditional’, substantive type, the very thing which modernity prevents. Weber criticised the dehumanising consequences of capitalist modernity as much as Marx, particularly the autonomy-denying structures which he saw as diminishing the scope of human potential. But it is in seeking the means whereby human autonomy and self-worth could be affirmed against the standardizing influences of industrial production and bureaucracy that Weber’s limitations become apparent. In ruling out substantive ethical systems in an irredeemably pluralistic world characterised by a polytheism of subjective values and in asserting the permanence of rational forms, Weber lacks a politics and an ethics which defends his philosophical anthropology. Putting Weber's quasi-philosophical positions on a sounder ethical footing enables the critical evaluation of Weber's sociological methodology in such a way that restates substantive philosophical principles against a systemic-institutional world which denies them. Insofar as there is a ‘philosophy’ in Weber, there are fundamental contradictions within it. Weber denies fundamental truth and objective morality but affirms values which require the commitment to and existence of both. Against Weber, the research affirms that there is such a thing as theoretical or practical wisdom and that there is a true intellectual harmony between wisdom and the particular sciences. In doing this, the study reveals Weber to be less a philosopher than an ideologist of rationalisation, dehistoricising rational forms that are quite particular to specific social relations in time and place.  The argument of recent Weber scholarship that Weber was motivated by the ethical development of Menschentum has the merit of recovering Weber the philosopher requiring an objective morality against Weber the sociologist committed to the separation of values and science in the quest for an objective science of social action. Weber’s ‘science of man’ involves more than value free social science and focuses upon the relationship between social 'conditions of existence' and the quality or 'virtue' of man. Weber's concern for human values and virtues in light of the onslaught of modernization in the shape of industrial capitalism and state bureaucracy reveals that Weber’s central concern is with an 'anthropological' analysis of the relationship between 'personality and life-orders'. This rediscovery of Weber’s ethical concerns, in the work of Hennis and others, does more than call for a reassessment of Weber’s sociology. The search for a doctrine concerning values and a practice involving virtues locates Weber in an older tradition of ethics and philosophy that is concerned with normative issues that goes back to Plato and Aristotle. And it demands a genuine philosophy that is lacking in Weber. At this point, the argument draws upon Voegelin and Strauss to reaffirm the purpose of political philosophy as the good life. Such a view challenges the reduction of philosophy to scientific positivism. And it rejects the scepticism and historicism that see in values the expression of particular social relations and transitory cultures, views which do not recognise any permanent truth and which uphold the claim of freedom to be self-sufficient in itself, a subjectivist notion that acknowledges nothing above it or beyond it. Affirming the good society as the complete political good, the goal of the statesman is the common good and all practical action is directed towards knowledge of the good. Political philosophy emerges when citizens make knowledge of the good life and of the good society their political goal. The most nuanced part of the thesis concerns the creative unfolding of this objective conception of the good through a human praxis bounded by time and place in history. This is to argue that the historicism of Hegel and Marx does not reject the idea of the good society on account of the essentially historical character of the modes of social organisation, thought and action, only the notion of the good society. The degeneration of modernist movements and doctrines into moral and political wastelands has proven that human beings cannot abandon the quest for the good society, since this quest is coeval with humanity. The emergence of the good society is not the dispensation of fate. Whilst affirming much of what Marx wrote, the view is taken that Marx underestimated the extent to which creative and critical praxis is also a moral praxis in which human beings seeking the good society are motivated more by values than by material interests. Human beings cannot free themselves from the responsibility for seeking the good by deferring to History or to any of its surrogates in class, party and state. Weber’s concerns with values and virtues, in other words, do not amount to a philosophy but do serve as a signpost for those concerned with the traditional concerns of philosophy and ethics. For this normative concern with the most appropriate mode of life for human beings suggests a natural inclination to wisdom which, in its metaphysical root, is inherent in human nature and indicates a qualitative mechanism by which to evaluate the differential modes of conduct of life and sustain a politics of creative human self-realisation.  

GENERAL INTEREST

Courses of studies for the general reader

PHILOSOPHY

1 Introduction

(Why Truth Matters; Branches of Philosophy)

2 The History of Philosophy

(The Past of Philosophy; Later Ancient Philosophy; Medieval Philosophy; Kant; Bentham to Nietzsche; Peirce to Strawson; Freud to Derrida; Back to the Pre-Socratics)

3 Human nature & culture

(What is human nature?; Are we rational animals?)

4 Language & Logic

(On concepts; language and bewitchment; The Meaning of Words; Asking the right questions; Logic; Can we understand each other)

5 Epistemology

(Am I a ghost in a machine?; the theory of knowledge; The Antinomies of Truth; How Do We Know Anything; What do we know?; What can we know?; Truth, Doubt and the Philosophers; How can I lie to myself?; Wishful Thinking and Epistemological Confusion)

6 Metaphysics

(Appearance and reality; Does time go by?; The Corrigibility of Metaphysics; What fills up space; The Metaphysical Problem of Freedom; Why is there something and not nothing?)

7 Philosophy of Mind

(Other minds; the mind-body problem; Can machines think?)

8 Philosophy of Religion

(God; Do we need God?)

9 Ethics

(Why be good?; Moral philosophy; Is it all relative?; right and wrong; value judgements)

10 Freedom and the self

(Am I free?; free will and determinism)

11 Political Philosophy

(Authority and the state; Is there such a thing as society?; Politics, Ideology and Evolutionary Biology)

12 Rights, Justice, Liberty, Equality

(What are my rights?; Justice)

13 Social Science

(The philosophy of social science; The Social Construction of Truth; Institutions, Academe and Truth; other branches)

14 Philosophy of History

(The Philosophy of Society and History)

15 War and Peace

(The Just War; Of War, Cruelty, Oppression)

16 Animal and Planetary Rights

(Do animals feel pain?; Do animals have rights?; Planetary Rights; Lifeboat Earth)

17 The Philosophy of Education

(Education and the Social Order; Ethics and Education; Experience and Education)

18 Philosophy of Science

(Science and method; Four Types of Explanation Aristotle; Mathematical Science and the Control of Nature; The Limits of Scientific Explanation; The problem of induction; Cause and effect; Causality and our Experience of Events; The Uniformity of Nature; Science and Falsifiability; Scientific Realism versus Instrumentalism)

19 Aesthetics

(Moral and Aesthetic Evaluation; What is beauty?)

20 Continental Philosophy

(the Continental tradition after Hegel)

21 Life and its Meaning

(What is it all for?; The meaning of life; Is death to be feared?)

22 Philosophy Today

(The contemporary scene; The scope of philosophy today)

THE PHILOSOPHERS

1 Introduction

(What is Philosophy?; On People and Society)

2 Origins of Philosophy

(Thales; Anaximander; Pythagoras; Heraclitus; Xenophanes; Parmenides; Democritus; Empedocles; Zeno; Protagoras and the Sophists; Socrates; Plato; Aristotle; Confucius; Lao Tzu; Mozi; the Bhagavad Gita; Buddha)

3 Hellenism

(The Cynics; Diogenes; The Sceptics; Pyrrho; Epicurus and Epicureanism; Marcus Aurelius; Epictetus; The Stoics; Zeno of Citium; Cicero; Seneca; Sextus Empiricus; Philo of Alexandria; Plotinus)

4 Medieval Christian

(Augustine; Boethius; Anselm; Aquinas; John Duns Scotus; William of Ockham; Nicholas of Cusa; Meister Eckhart)

5 Medieval Islamic and Jewish Philosophy

(Averroes; Al Farabi; Al-Ghazali; Avicenna; Moses Maimonides)

6 The Renaissance

(Erasmus; More; Machiavelli; Francisco de Vitoria; Francisco Suarez; Michel de Montaigne; Copernicus; Giordano Bruno)

7 Seventeenth Century

(Francis Bacon; Galileo Galilei; Hobbes; Hobbes; Locke; Descartes; Spinoza; Leibniz; Malebranche; Berkeley; Blaise Pascal; Arnauld; Newton; The Hidden God)

8 Eighteenth Century

(Joseph Butler; David Hume; Adam Smith; Reid; Diderot; Voltaire; Paine; Burke; Wollstonecraft; Rousseau; Kant)

9 Nineteenth Century

(Bentham; Mill; Sidgwick; Fichte; Schiller; Schelling; Hegel; Feuerbach; Marx; Schopenhauer; Kierkegaard; Comte; Durkheim; Darwin; Bergson; Nietzsche; Francis Herbert Bradley; Emerson)

10 Analytical Philosophy

(Frege; Carnap; Godel; Russell; Moritz Schlick; Wittgenstein; Quine; Gilbert Ryle; Austin; A.J. Ayer; George Edward Moore; Vygotsky; Strawson; Tarski; Kripke; Chomsky; Dennett; Searle; Donald Davidson; Gadamer)

11 Practical Philosophy

(C.S. Peirce; William James; John Dewey; Freud; C.J. Jung; Mach; Einstein; Turing; Keynes; Skinner; Thomson; Whitehead; Popper; Thomas S Kuhn; Feyerabend; Nozick; Rawls; Rorty; Peter Singer; Arne Naess; Dawkins; Nishida Kitaro)

12 Continental Philosophy

(Edmund Husserl; Heidegger; Merleau Ponty; Jean Paul Sartre; Simone de Beauvoir; Camus; Arendt; Foucault; Jaspers; Derrida; Levi Strauss; Ernst Bloch; George Santayana; Gilles Deleuze; Jean Francois Lyotard; Jose Ortega y Gasset; Jurgen Habermas; Max Scheler; Althusser; Miguel de Unamuno; Theodor Adorno; Titus Brandsma)

13 Conclusion

(The future of philosophy)

POLITICAL IDEAS

1 Liberalism

2 Conservatism

(rationalism in politics; liberalism versus conservatism)

3 Socialism

(marxism; post-marxism)

4 Anarchism

5 Libertarianism

6 Communitarianism

(The Procedural Republic; community; the missing dimension of sociality; off the shelf ethics)

7 Feminism

(Public Private Distinctions; sexual inversions; Feminism and Antifoundationalism; women workers and capitalist scripts; Moral Woman and Immoral Man)

8 Environmentalism

(Ecologism and environmentalism; the principles of green politics; Development, ecology and women)