Liberty after Liberalism: Civic Republicanism in a Global Age

186 Pages·2006·17.783 MB·English

by  Lawrence Quill (auth.)

Liberty after Liberalism
Liberty after Liberalism
Civic Republicanism in a Global Age
Lawrence Quill
own
© Lawrence Quill 2006
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2006 978-1-4039-4249-4
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First published 2006 by
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ISBN 978-1-349-52141-8 ISBN 978-0-230-59891-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230598911
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Quill, Lawrence, 1971-
Liberty after liberalism :civic republicanism in a global age I Lawrence
Quill.
p. em.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Common good. 2. Public interest. 3. Republicanism. 4. Liberty.
JC330.15.Q55 2005
320'.01'1-dc22 2005049577
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06
Transferred to Digital Printing in 2008
For Haleema-Jazmin, who remains the reason
Contents
Preface ix
1 Introduction: From Polis to Cosmopolis 1
1.1 Introduction: Republican liberty and political space 1
1.2 Republicanism in context 4
1.3 Republicanism: Relevant debates 8
1.4 A dead hypothesis? 13
1.5 Overview of the argument 14
2 The Transformation of Political Space 17
2.1 Political space in the early republic 18
2.2 The problem of size 26
2.3 The irrelevance of republican citizenship? 33
2.4 Conclusion 38
3 The State We Are (No Longer) In 41
3.1 The liberal political space 43
3.2 Protective developmental and bureaucratic spaces 45
1
3.3 The virtues of being a liberal citizen 53
3.4 After the liberal state? 63
3.5 Conclusion 65
4 Republicanism Revisited 66
4.1 Bringing the state back in 67
4.2 The polis within the state 72
4.3 Re-imagining political community 79
4.4 Citizen-nomads and citizen-ships 82
4.5 Conclusion 86
5 On the Ancient and Modem Origins of Cosmopolitanism 89
5.1 Cosmo-political space 93
5.2 The cosmopolitan citizen 98
5.3 A new politics of cosmopolitanism? 104
5.4 Conclusion 110
6 The Case for Political Education 114
6.1 Liberalism: Educating for minimal autonomy 116
6.2 Republicanism: Educating for citizenship 121
vii
viii Contents
6.3 Cosmopolitanism: Educating for world citizenship 126
6.4 Conclusion 132
7 The World Turned Upside Down 134
7.1 The anti-political space of empire 135
7.2 Adifferentcitizen? 140
7.3 Public irony and political hope 142
7.4 Conclusion 149
8 Conclusion: After Liberalism? 152
Notes 155
Bibliography 162
Index 176
Preface
This book has been long in the making, beginning life as a doctoral
dissertation at the University of Essex, UK (1996-2000). I would like to
thank my dissertation advisor Dr Barry Clarke for his constant support
and good humor during the years of research and writing. I would also
like to thank the members of my dissertation committee, Dr Michael
Freeman and Dr Aletta Norval, my internal examiner, Dr David
Howarth, and my external examiner, Dr Adrian Oldfield, for their
generous advice and suggestions for improving the text.
I owe a special debt of thanks to the undergraduate students at the
University of California, Santa Cruz, with whom I shared many long
and fruitful conversations about life, politics and surf. Members of the
Heidegger Reading Group, notably Nicole Wernimont and Jessica
Rutberg, and those truly remarkable students from my courses in the
history of political thought, especially Greg Ferenstein, during the years
2001-2003. All contributed to the current volume and were further
proof, if proof were needed, that the most important study occurs
outside of the classroom or lecture hall.
I would also like to thank Dr Hasmet Uluorta whose enthusiasm for
learning is matched only by his brilliance, and John M. Pollard, a dear
friend these many years, whose uncommon sense and good humor
continue to provide both instruction and inspiration. Special thanks
also go to my mother, Thelma Ann Caldera, who has shown time and
again that kindness is the greatest virtue and to the late Ronald
Lawrence Palmer without whom none of this would have been possible.
ix
1
Introduction: From Polis to
Cosmopolis
Political philosophy has hitherto been concerned with the
polis and has devised its questions and concepts accordingly. It
defies imagination to contemplate what change political
philosophy will need to undergo when the cosmopolis replaces
the polis as its primary framework of reference.
-Parekh, 1982, p. 201
1.1 Introduction: Republican liberty and political space
The title of the present work, Liberty after Liberalism, was chosen to
reflect the deep ambiguity of the present political condition - both for
liberalism and for the citizens of liberal-democratic states. Citizens
today, not by any means all but a significant and growing number,
are presented with opportunities for political participation that were
largely absent less than a generation ago. As they exercise this freedom,
often in defense of their liberal rights and protections, they do so
beyond the confines of the liberal political space - the nation-state.
This, then, is a special kind of freedom; a freedom that is both ancient
and distinctly postmodern. It is ancient because it is one of the earliest
kinds of political freedom. It is probably not the first example of this
kind of freedom in human history- cities, where it originated, existed
in Mesopotamia for thousands of years before the urban and socio
economic preconditions that enable this kind of freedom emerged in
the West. It is postmodern because something like this experience of
freedom is being exercised today but in an entirely new context,
beyond both the ancient city-state where it began and the modern state
and nation where its appearance has been infrequent.
1
2 Liberty after Liberalism
The philosopher Hannah Arendt understood well this idea of freedom
and the ambiguous position it occupied in modernity and in modernity's
political space, the nation-state. Indeed, for her it was the 'lost treasure'
that was occasionally reclaimed, the 'miracle' of collective action that
when it burst upon the scene had the potential to alter political and
social reality.
In a discussion of the Resistance movement in France during World
War II, she described this freedom in the following terms:
The collapse of France, to them [the Resistance] a totally unexpected
event, had emptied, from one day to the next, the political scene of
their country, leaving it to the puppet-like antics of knaves or fools,
and they who as a matter of course had never participated in the
official business of the Third Republic were sucked into politics as
though with the force of a vacuum. Thus, without premonition and
probably against their conscious inclinations, they had come to consti
tute willy-nilly a public realm where- without the paraphernalia of
officialdom and hidden from the eyes of friend or foe - all
relevant business in the affairs of the country was transacted in
deed and word.
(Arendt, 1987, p. 3)
We can deduce a number of features peculiar to this form of liberty
from this description. First, it is unpredictable, often arising at moments
of crisis. Arendt could identify the emergence of this freedom when the
political imaginary during the war years had been stripped away, leaving
the Emperor naked and the population with a profound existential
anxiety as they confronted a world they no longer recognized. Second,
it is an active or positive notion of freedom (Berlin, 1969) with ontolog
ical significance, a freedom that has to be exercised to be realized by
people who are not necessarily professional, expert or 'career' politi
cians, nor are they bureaucrats, technocrats or functionaries. Indeed,
'officialdom' is likely to be quite suspicious of this kind of political
activity when qualifications for the enterprise are neither the completion
of a civil service examination, the harnessing of influential pressure group
influence nor the gathering of votes in an election. The only qualification
for this kind of politics is that you are human, and that you value the
public world.
This sort of freedom does not fit easily within the institutional
structure or imaginary of an age that purposely supplants public, civic
engagement for the dubious joys of technical management, control and