Name: Adrian N. Atanasescu
Section: Political Theory
Professional Email: na.atanasescu@utoronto.ca
Professional Status: Graduate Student
Institution: University of Toronto
Scheduling Preference: No Preference
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Paper Title:  Immigrant integration in a post-secular society
Abstract:
Multiculturalism has fallen on hard times. All across Europe, in academic discourse no less than in the area of public policy, one witnesses a retreat from multicultural models of immigrant integration fuelled by a general sense that multiculturalism has failed to deliver on its promises, leading to poor integration rates among immigrant population and encouraging parallel cultures. In the past decade or so, the concept of “civic integration” has been introduced to replace multiculturalism. Used as an umbrella term for various integration measures in a post-multicultural context, “civic integration” stresses the dominate values of host societies, their cultural identity, and it is instantiated by “citizenship tests”, schemes of “probationary citizenship”, language tests. Although the civic model has gained some traction in many European countries, it remains fiercely contested by many activists, commentators and policy-makers, who fear a return to assimilationist, non-liberal and discriminatory measures. In this paper I want to move the discussion beyond these two models and propose a new paradigm of immigrant integration in Western liberal societies. In this purpose I draw on Jürgen Habermas’s recent writings, and in particular on the concept of a “post-secular society”. Habermas has recently called for the abandonment of a “rigid and exclusive secularist self-understanding of modernity” and advocated for a more expansive role of religious discourse in the democratic public sphere of Western societies. Central to a “post-secular society” is a new “ethics of citizenship” which requires secular and religious citizens to practice mutually taking perspective, see each other at eye level and learn about one another’s deep commitments and values. The main argument of my paper is that the concept of “post-secular society” offers promising normative resources for conceiving of immigrant integration in a way that avoids the main disadvantages of the civic/assimilationist perspective, on the one side, and those of the multicultural paradigm, on the other side, while preserving some of these competing models’ most important advantages.

Name: Eugene Callahan
Section: Political Theory
Professional Email: ejc369@nyu.edu
Professional Status: Associate Professor
Institution: NYU
Scheduling Preference: Friday Afternoon
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Paper Title: Hayek and Oakeshott on Rationalism 
Abstract:
F. A. Hayek and Michael Oakeshott were two of the most prominent 20th century critics of what they referred to as "rationalism." The two thinkers knew each other personally, and read each other's work. So it would be easy to assume that, when each attacked rationalism, each was aiming his arrows at the same enemy. But was this really the case? In this paper, I will argue that, in fact, Hayek and Oakeshott understood the problem of rationalist thought quite differently. Furthermore, I contend, this difference is not a mere "brute fact," but can be understood as based in their differing philosophical outlooks.

Name: Nels Frantzen
Section: Political Theory
Professional Email: nfrantzen@albany.edu
Professional Status: Graduate Student
Institution: SUNY Albany: Department of Political Science
Scheduling Preference: No Preference
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Paper Title:  Götterdämmerung: Weber on Clarification and Political Life
Abstract:
Recent Weber scholars (from the 1980’s to the present) have focused too much on the concept of rationalization in Weber’s work, largely ignoring an older generation of scholars like Karl Löwith who focused upon the process of ‘self-clarification’ that Weber argues social science provides individuals. Weber’s process of self-clarification is purely focused upon the individual person, as ‘self-clarification’ allows for an individual to make conscious decisions about how they will rationally orient their lives to achieve rational ends. This total focus on the individual leaves him open to being critiqued as an elitist concerned only with those who he thinks are capable of consciously determining their own lives. As opposed to his individual decisionism, at the political level Weber leaves us trapped in purely pragmatic politics whereby government is fought over by pragmatically "responsible" politicians, charismatic leaders and an ever-expanding bureaucracy. Using Charles Taylor’s “Social Theory as Practice”, the concept of self-clarification can be stretched to become an unfolding process of 'social-clarification' of social practices, norms, and beliefs, which are analyzed, questioned, and through social practice are aligned to desired values and ends. This process of social-clarification breaks us out of the pragmatic political trap Weber puts both us and himself in, allowing social theory and science to examine and experiment free from the constraints of “responsible” politics.

Name: Sacha Ghandeharian
Section: Political Theory
Professional Email: SachaGhandeharian@cmail.carleton.ca
Professional Status: Graduate Student
Institution: Carleton University
Scheduling Preference: No Preference
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Paper Title: The Contingent Self and the Future of Critical Theory
Abstract:
The focus of this paper is on Habermasian attempts to reconcile the tension between, on the one hand, the universalist (humanist) moral and ethical approach found in all three generations of the Frankfurt School (Geuss 1981; Rush 2004), and, on the other, the anti-foundationalism characteristic of postmodern approaches to the self. The paper interrogates a significant effort at such a reconciliation – that is, between a universalist ethics and contingent theory of the self – offered by Seyla Benhabib and her ‘narrative model of identity’ (1999). Benhabib suggests that it is the ability to build a coherent narrative of one’s personal identity, rather than to identify a core self, that is morally salient; by focusing on narrative, Benhabib asserts that one is able to reconcile the universal (that is, the notion of a coherent narrative) and the contingent (the lack of a transcendental self). Turning to Lois McNay’s post-structural critique of Benhabib’s ‘narrative model of identity’ (2003), this paper argues that Benhabib is not as successful as first appearances suggest because she relies on an overly simplistic – and cohesive – notion of narrative in relation to the subject. This paper sees the debate between Benhabib and McNay as indicative of the broader ways in which the problematique that is ‘the self’ is left unresolved by the Habermasian privileging of procedure. The paper also considers the ways in which post-structural and/or post-modern approaches – offering a decentralized and contingent notion of the self – can be politically ineffective. Reading the debate between Benhabib and McNay is a means through which one can explore the continuing influence of the antinomy between universalist and contingent conceptualizations of the subject in contemporary critical theory.

Name: Donal Gill
Section: Political Theory
Professional Email: dsgill@dawsoncollege.qc.a
Professional Status: Graduate Student
Institution: Concordia University
Scheduling Preference: No Preference
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Paper Title: Escaping Vice or Engaging Corruption: Travel, Edification, and Degeneration in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels
Abstract:
This paper addresses the questions of travel, edification, and degeneration in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726.) Through a close reading of the text in conjunction with an examination of Locke and Montesquieu on the theme of the benefits and dangers of travel, this paper argues that Swift presents Gulliver’s Travels as a stern warning against taking travel lightly, in the process critiquing nascent individualism whilst nonetheless rebuking many aspects of man’s natural sociability in organic society. When the King of Brodingnag says to Gulliver “As for yourself (…) who have spent the greatest part of your life travelling; I am well disposed to hope you may hitherto have escaped many vices of your country”, he raises a persistent theme throughout European intellectual history, that of the value of travel as a means to correct the corruptive forces committed upon the individual by a fallen society. However, equally present throughout the Travels is a pervasive sense of the seemingly unlimited scope for degeneration brought about by travel and cross-cultural contact. In many ways engaging the Travels on questions such as travel and corruption forces us to shed modern presuppositions regarding both the universal benefit of travel and its open-ended application to all in all circumstances. Swift deliberately juxtaposes and problematizes both atomized liberal individualism and organic hierarchical society in order to demonstrate the seriousness of the imperial endeavor as both an opportunity to edify or degenerate British citizens who voyage into the unknown.

Name: chrysoula gitsoulis
Section: Political Theory
Professional Email: cgitsoulis@gradcenter.cuny.edu
Professional Status: Adjunct Professor
Institution: ccny/cuny
Scheduling Preference: No Preference
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Paper Title:  utilitarian vs rights-based ethics: degrees of separation
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The most glaring weakness of utilitarianism, according to many of its critics, is that it fails to respect individual rights. As a consequentialist moral theory, it holds that it is the consequences or ends of our actions (maximizing happiness) that determine whether particular means to them are justified. But this appears to entail that it’s ok, e.g., to poison your grandfather so you can donate his fortune to charity, or kill a healthy patient so you can use his organs for life-saving transplants, etc. My paper will be devoted to addressing this objection. I will try to show that it is best to think of the difference between utilitarianism and rights-based ethics not as a difference in kind, with no common ground, but as a difference in degree. Once we see that the difference between these theories is a matter of degree, it will become apparent that the rights-based theorist faces a similar type of objection, and hence is no better off than the utilitarian in terms of the stated objection. I will also discuss some of the advantages this strategy has over rule-utilitarianism in dealing with the stated objection.

Name: Fitore Hyseni
Section: Identity Politics
Professional Email: fhyseni@syr.edu
Professional Status: Graduate Student
Institution: Syracuse University
Scheduling Preference: Saturday Afternoon
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Paper Title: Disability, Personhood, and Justice
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Respecting the rights and legal capacity of people with disabilities is interrelated with their inclusion in theories of justice. While there has been movement towards expanding the concept of legal capacity such as The UN Convention on The Rights of People with Disabilities, such efforts have been limited and rarely adopted by all countries/states. The major frameworks of thought supported in Western states are those that derive or are in line with theories of human rights and justice. However, these theories are based on principles of autonomy and rationality that exclude people with disabilities. Therefore, a review of contemporary theories of justice and their basic assumptions is required to include people with disabilities and extend equal rights to this group. This paper will critique contemporary theories of justice, namely John Rawls’ Theory of Justice and Martha Nussbaum’s Capabilities Approach. Both theories are based on a notion of personhood that excludes people with disabilities. John Rawls’ Theory of Justice includes the concept of rationality and reason that exclude a group of people who are labeled as having intellectual disabilities from being considered persons. Martha Nussbaum, despite having tried to resolve these issues, by arguing that we should focus on a list of basic capabilities as necessary for a dignified human life excludes people with disabilities who will not be able to poses such capabilities. These definitions of personhood are troublesome as they leave out people with disabilities, especially those with severe cognitive disabilities, by not recognizing them as persons who have claims. This paper argues that contemporary theories of justice have failed to recognize people with disabilities as full persons with equal rights. In addition, it argues that people with disabilities should enjoy equal rights and be able to make decisions regarding their conception of the good, in their own terms. As such, theories of justice and rights should account for supportive decision making as a legitimate way to exercise one’s autonomy. To allow for that, theories of justice should be evaluated on or amended to include a conception of personhood that would see people with disabilities as equal humans by expanding the concept of autonomy to include relational autonomy. Relational autonomy in this paper is based on feminist theorists who suggest that autonomy should account for the social and relational nature of persons. This paper stresses the importance of considering that humans are related to one another, to institutions, and groups, and that their desires, interests, and decision can only be understood in relation to other people. Further, this paper suggests that relational autonomy should be viewed as a goal. It argues that theory and legislation should promote the development of relationships as necessary to enhance a persons’ ability to make decisions. Finally, this paper argues that theory and legislation should expand the criteria for determining personhood to include individual’s ability to enter relationships. This will enable people with disabilities to participate and be recognized in the society as equal citizens and make decisions regarding their life.

Name: Jordanco Jovanoski
Section: Political Theory
Professional Email: jovaj926@newschool.edu
Professional Status: Graduate Student
Institution: New school For Social Research
Scheduling Preference: Saturday Afternoon
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Paper Title: Resisting representation: the right of resistance as a right of the magistrates? 
Abstract:
The road to the modern form of constitutionalism was paved by the conviction that the right of resistance against tyrants was not inherently wicked. In this context, the “Monarchomachs” (i.e. “those who fight against the king”) as a group of 16th century thinkers who opposed the unchecked power of kingly authority, begun writing treatises that not only criticized tyrannical power but also called for its violent removal in the form of tyrannicide. Thus, not only was resistance justified, but a tyrant could be eliminated at any moment. A powerful and influential Protestant account of such a theory was formulated by the Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos, written in 1579, under the pseudonym Stephen Junius Brutus, several years after the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. The argument of Brutus’ Vindiciae effectively overturned the divine right of kings, asserting instead that the king was obliged (by the dictates of God) to serve the common interest instead of his own personal one and that any dereliction from this sacred duty would justify resistance. In a similar way, Francois Hotman, in his Francogalia, made the case for Huguenot resistance by calling for a revival of the power of public councils, courts, and customs, which, historically, held the legal right to check the power of kings. But disobedience in the form of resistance was not exclusive to Protestantism; seemingly endless religious wars and persecutions led Catholic theologians to problematize obedience to secular authority. Juan de Mariana, a Spanish Jesuit scholar led the effort to challenge unjust kings by arguing that earthly authority was sanctioned by god only insofar as it took to the common welfare of the community. Mariana openly advocated for tyrannicide against any king that disregarded the divine command of the common good. While these theories of the right of resistance posed a formidable challenge to tyrannical forms of power that rested on lawlessness, arbitrariness, and illegality; at the same time, they also explicitly restricted resistance as a right of the magistrates, those of elite standing who were below the king, but were already a part of the existing system of power, often as representatives of the people. Thus resistance to tyrannical authority was, at its very inception, already limited to the elite structures of representation. This paper will use the accounts of resistance provided by the Monarchomachs in order to discuss the possibilities and limitations posed by recent insurgent “resistance” movements that have sprung up across the US in the age of the Trump presidency. While these movements emerged in reaction to Trump on a grass-roots level, they have also been led, and in part organized and funded by key figures of the political and economic establishment that seek to co-opt the intensification of public outrage. If resistance becomes subsumed under the logic of elite influence, then it is highly likely that it will not be a form of resistance that challenges the fundamental assumptions of the status quo that produced the emergence of a Donald Trump.

Name: Geoffrey Kurtz
Section: Political Theory
Professional Email: gkurtz@bmcc.cuny.edu
Professional Status: Associate Professor
Institution: BMCC-CUNY
Scheduling Preference: Friday Morning
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Paper Title:  Social Democracy in a Lockean Culture: Michael Walzer’s Dilemma
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Social Democracy in a Lockean Culture: Michael Walzer’s Dilemma Michael Walzer, one of the chief intellectual voices of social democratic politics in the United States, is known in part for his model of interpretive and “connected” social criticism, in which the critic speaks as a participant in a shared moral culture. An older generation of social democrats like Daniel Bell and Irving Howe drew lessons from the faults they saw in American Marxism, aiming to orient a social democratic politics that could make itself at home within American political institutions and culture; Walzer’s model of social criticism continues their project. Given the political background of Walzer’s “connected criticism,” a problem arises: can a social democratic social critic be “connected” with America’s mostly Lockean political culture? Walzer has generally dealt with this problem by ruling out of bounds those topics on which Lockean thought is inhospitable to social democracy. Perhaps most fundamental of these topics is the theory of the human person. Lockean thought admits no role for public memberships in constituting the person: on the contrary, public life is seen as a function of the pre-political selves who consent to its establishment. Walzer elides this question, writing: “The central issue for political theory is not the constitution of the self but the connection of constituted selves.” In works from Spheres of Justice to Politics and Passion, this sort of elision has allowed him to assert social democratic ideas without directly challenging the Lockean anthropology that undergirds the American common sense. However, the social democratic tradition has at times presented a political anthropology of its own, quite different from Locke’s. Some of Walzer’s intellectual influences, such as the early-twentieth-century Anglican socialists J.N. Figgis and R.H. Tawney, for example, argued that public memberships are constitutive of personhood. Walzer acknowledges such influences only rarely and obliquely, but their traces remain in his work. Thus at some moments Walzer suggests a political anthropology opposed to Locke’s: a secular version of the Christian socialism of Figgis and Tawney. However, he holds back from developing that anthropology, and those moments coexist uneasily with his stance as an American connected critic—at least insofar as America’s political culture is Lockean. Walzer’s political thought thus hovers between two options. One is to hint at a radical dissent from Lockean anthropology without ever making that dissent explicit. This risks self-contradiction. The other is to be a connected critic who connects not with the Lockean mainstream of American political culture but with a sidestream not so distant from the cultural world of Figgis and Tawney—the religious and fraternal themes that Wilson Carey McWilliams called the “second voice” in American life. This risks a return to self-marginalization, albeit in a different mode from that which Bell and Howe warned against. Walzer’s dilemma is not his alone. It is, instead, an ambivalence built into the situation of the American democratic left.

Name: Matteo Laruffa
Section: Political Theory
Professional Email: mlaruffa@luiss.it
Professional Status: Graduate Student
Institution: Harvard University
Scheduling Preference: Saturday Morning
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Paper Title:  Reading the crisis of democracy under the lens of Giovanni Sartori: A new research agenda beyond the Alarmist Bubble
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This paper is dedicated to the memory of Giovanni Sartori (1924 - 2017) This paper poses the following question: how can political scientists substantially achieve an advancement in the quest for standards and criteria that allow us to better understand the crisis of democracy? In this sense, the problem is to place the challenge to figure out the crisis of democracy into a specific conceptual context, by going back to its foundations before the distraction of the alarmist proclaims on the collapse of democracies worldwide. Since the most famous writings on the topic in the Seventies, the use of the expression “crisis of democracy” has grown in a confused and improper manner both in political science and comparative politics. Even if the previous and current discussions on the issue have been valuable, because they represent a valiant attempt to push the boundaries of our knowledge, this debate needs to be challenged on a more conceptual level. The paper is organized as follows. First, it discusses the Alarmist bubble of democratic deconsolidation and its distraction from the real problem of this research issue. Second, it explains the significance of the main fallacies in our understanding the crisis of democracy. Third, it disentangles the main meanings of the expression crisis of democracy and proposes a refined research agenda for organizing the literature. It considers three research interests: the crisis of democracy as related to governance of democracy, participation in and opposition to democracy. Moreover, the paper provides a conceptual analysis of crisis of democracy based on the guidelines proposed by the Italian political scientist Giovanni Sartori. This conceptual analysis includes an assessment of a representative group of seven definitions, and selects one of them as the most promising theoretical base for explaining the phenomenon. Finally, it offers some proposals for further developing one of the concepts of crisis of democracy existing in the literature and guidelines for a more scientific approach to the debate on the issue. In short, the following pages argue for a radical recasting of the crisis of democracy debate. Keywords: crisis of democracy, conceptual analysis, defenseless democracy, powerless democracy

Name: Tatiana Llaguno
Section: Political Theory
Professional Email: llagt804@newschool.edu
Professional Status: Graduate Student
Institution: New School for Social Research
Scheduling Preference: No Preference
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Paper Title:  Thinking with Arendt and Rousseau: Between Plurality and Universality
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In 1963, Hannah Arendt published her book On Revolution, an insightful reflection on the nature of the revolutionary spirit, as well as a valuable analysis of both the similarities and differences between the American and French Revolutions. In it, Arendt deals with the tension to be found between the element of novelty, of beginning, inherent in all revolutionary processes; and the necessity of stability, of constitution, of foundation. Although many questions can be posited regarding the main theses presented by Arendt on this book -- probably the most flagrant and controversial one being the problem of “the social question” --, in this essay I will focus on her theoretical encounter with Rousseau. Arendt criticizes Rousseau on several grounds, from his general will to his notion of compassion. Here, I will problematize mainly the remarks that Arendt does regarding Rousseau´s "volonté générale". I hold that Arendt’s criticism to Rousseau is legitimate and valid, because it points out to an essential question: the question of human plurality. As the central feature of Arendt’s notion of action, plurality, “the fact that men, not Man, live on earth and inhabit the world” (Arendt, 1998: 7), is indeed in trouble when confronted with Rousseau’s "volonté générale". I believe that the problem that Arendt finds in Rousseau’s general will can be also framed as a problem regarding collective subjects and, ultimately, as a problem with universality. In order to develop this argument, I would like to think, with Arendt, contra Rousseau, but at the same time, with Rousseau, contra Arendt, by elucidating the limits of Arendt’s critique. The relationship between these two authors has been studied before (Canovan 1983), although with a different emphasis that the one I intend to make here. Finally, I will propose to solve the tension between the two --in other words, between plurality and universality-- in the potential political articulation and contingent solution that the theory of hegemony has to offer.

Name: Spiros Makris
Section: Political Theory
Professional Email: smakris@uom.gr
Professional Status: Assistant Professor
Institution: University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece
Scheduling Preference: Friday Morning
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Paper Title:  Republic as demos. The post-foundational ontology of Cornelius Castoriadis
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The contemporary Greek political and social philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis has formulated a post-foundational ontology of democracy in which ancient Greek demos dominates. In contrast with the political theories of modernity, where the epicenter of politics is the power of the state, Castoriadis advances a republican approach of politics, in which power is just a social imaginary without stable foundations. This post-foundational political and social ontology of imaginery brings to the fore both the creative and catastrophic powers of radical human imaginery. Demos is the locus classicus of a republic in the meaning of a public space, where the performance of politics is contingent, open and, to a great degree, unpredictable. This means that democracy would not be taken for granted. In doing so, Cornelius Castoriadis builds an agonistic approach of democracy, where demos is not the power of the state, but a fragile and constantly changed public sphere, where politics is the metonymy of human creativity and freedom. The ontological aspects of this democratic theory give Castoriadis's approach a philosophical and poetical dimension. Either Hesiod's chaos or Aeschylus's anthropology or Sofocle's self-creation of man reveal, according to Castoriadis, human tragedy in the ancient Greek meaning of the word, i.e. the titanic and chaotic the same time capabilities of humanity. Demos is the ontological and political scene of this human tragedy. So, democracy as a republic is not only about common good and public happiness. It concerns human openness towards evil. This the paradox of democracy. For Castoriadis, in a Freudian psychoanalytic way, citizens must always fight for the sake of democracy, having in mind that radical human imaginery is by definition the other ontological face of mythical Abyss.

Name: Jeff Miller
Section: Political Theory
Professional Email: millerj@newpaltz.edu
Professional Status: Associate Professor
Institution: State University of New York at New Paltz
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Paper Title:  Tragedy and Democratic Thought in Aeschylus' 'Persians'
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This paper is interested in considering how fifth century discourse regarding distinctions between Greeks and barbarians are deployed later civic discourse and helped shape later civic ideology in Athens. Specifically, I argue that many of the terms and concepts Aeschylus applies to the Persians, are redeployed in the Athenian conflicts with Macedonia later in the fourth century and that the deployment and use of these concepts tells us much about how the Greeks thought about democracy.

Name: Sydney Paluch
Section: Political Theory
Professional Email: sydney.m.paluch.gr@dartmouth.edu
Professional Status: Graduate Student
Institution: Dartmouth College
Scheduling Preference: No Preference
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Paper Title: The Ambiguity of Antony and Cleopatra : Interrupting Phallocentric Schemes of Objectification Through the Mutual Gaze
Abstract:
This paper proposes an alternative to the male gaze, using Simone de Beauvoir’s theory of ambiguity in order to understand the subversive sexual politics underlying Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra. The concept of the male gaze was first identified in feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey’s article “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” which explains how film is explicitly constructed around the male gaze. Since the publication of Mulvey’s article, feminist theorists such as Linda Williams and Mary Ann Doane have attempted to construct a feminine counterpart to the male gaze. Unfortunately, these theorists have typically concluded that such a gaze is possible by merely reversing the male gaze, substituting female desire for male. Although the female operating within such a theoretical scheme of male objectification gains prominence over the male, this is merely reversing the gender of power without reconstructing the system itself. I propose that there is an alternative, non-possessive gaze, which I define as the “mutual gaze”, and identify in William Shakespeare’s play The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra. My paper explicates this gaze by applying Beauvoir’s theory of ambiguity to Antony and Cleopatra, showing how the play enables the subject to become both spectacle and spectator. Although Shakespeare’s entire body of work provide opportunities for women to reclaim their ambiguity and freedom, Antony and Cleopatra has been chosen for this thesis as it provides a plethora of these opportunities. This is because the Greco-Roman couple in Shakespeare’s retelling are enacting what Beauvoir defines as an ideal relationship in her conclusion to The Second Sex. Since in original practice productions Cleopatra is able to be performed as one who “posits herself for herself” while “nonetheless continue[ing] to exist for him [Antony] as well”, both halves of the original power couple are able to “recognize each Other as subject [and] remain an Other for the other” (Beauvoir, The Second Sex 766).

Name: Aleksandar Savanović
Section: Political Theory
Professional Email: aleksandar.savanovic@fpn.unibl.org
Professional Status: Associate Professor
Institution: University of Banja Luka, Faculty of Political Sciences
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Paper Title:  The Logic of Rights
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As it well known, we have two main lines of philosophical approach to the problem of political obligation: legal positivism and the natural rights concept. [Dworkin] Legal positivism argues that our obligation comes from our decision to become a part of political society. [Raz, J.Buchanan etc] This means that we are creating some kind of agreement or contract with others, to create the political society. We are “tied” by our decision [Gilbert], by decision that has formally been shown in the contract. [Klosko] From this follows that we have obligation to do whatever our political society requires. The key point is: there is no any set of basic principles that must be accepted – any set of basic principles has »shallow foundations« [Rawls]. Second approach is a doctrine of the natural rights, that claims that there exist some natural or human rights that come before any social contract. In this paper we will try to defend »the proposition of the natural rights« from two standpoints: (i) the natural rights are a logical necessity for the politicial constitution: there is no possible to create political community, in logically correct sense, without acceptance of the natural rights - the term of »political community« is an absurd if that community has not been founded on the basis of the natural rights; (ii) the natural rights can be »proven« by using the »evolutionist« approach. The classical »historical« argument against the natural rights claims: through history we can saw infinite number of moral or legal systems and no one can be proven as superior one. [L.Strauss] The »sociological« argument against the natural rights claims: different societies (in same historical era) have different moral or legal systems and no one can be proven as superior. [Hart] Both objections can be defeated by the combination of the evolutionary approach and the utilitarian argument: societies that accept the natural rights (all other conditions equal) have superior efficiency in utilitarian sense and survived through history. Additionally: most important »historical jumps«, as industrial revolution, for example, happened in societies that protected these rights. On the basis of these argumentations we will try to defend hypothesis that the social contract with the preamble of the natural rights is superior model of political community.

Name: Jacob Segal
Section: Political Theory
Professional Email: jsegal@kbcc.cuny.edu
Professional Status: Associate Professor
Institution: Kingsborough Community College of the City University of New York
Scheduling Preference: Saturday Morning
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Paper Title:  Conservatism and the Conduct of Conduct
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I propose a paper for the New York State Political Science Conference entitled “Conservatism and the Conduct of Conduct” that relates conservative political theory to the poststructuralist model of governmentality in the work of F.A Hayek and Charles Murray. I demonstrate the similarity between neoliberalism in Hayek and the therapeutic model of Murray. I argue that both involve “subjectification” that is, how various social powers inform the creation of choice, or the “conduct of conduct.” This work elaborates on how apparently dissimilar fields of study, neo-liberalism and therapeutic culture, come together in how diverse powers gives shape to an entrepreneurial self that constantly works on itself to produce itself as “autonomous” and “responsible.” I also show the importance of social class in Hayek and Murray insofar as they identify different selves with different income or employment status. I develop these arguments in close reading of the two, demonstrating how the process of subjectification operates in conservative thought and the ambiguities therefore of the conservative critique of the interventionist state. This paper adds to the literature on contemporary conservatism, liberalism and poststructuralism, in particularly the scholarship of governmentality, which is not well in the United States academy.

Name: Dylan Kyle Zlotnik Shaul
Section: Political Theory
Professional Email: dylan.shaul@newschool.edu
Professional Status: Graduate Student
Institution: The New School for Social Research
Scheduling Preference: No Preference
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Paper Title:  Calculating the Incalculable: Kant and Derrida on the Death Penalty
Abstract:
This paper explicates Derrida’s argument for the abolition of the death penalty as an argument against the injustice of calculating the incalculable. The two volumes of Derrida’s Death Penalty seminars purport to provide (or at least lay the foundation for) a properly and uniquely philosophical justification for death penalty abolitionism. Above all, Derrida understands his task as that of undermining the argument in favour of the death penalty articulated by Kant in the Metaphysics of Morals, which Derrida takes to be the most philosophically rigorous of its kind. Kant argues in favour of the death penalty not on grounds of utility, deterrence, prevention, or any similar instrumental consideration, but rather as the pure talionic retribution demanded by the formal, non-instrumental justice of the categorical imperative. For Kant, criminal punishment in general is the application of lex talionis, wherein the punishment has a strict calculable equivalence to the crime. This need not mean that the punishment is qualitatively identical to the crime (e.g., a literal ‘eye for an eye’), but rather that a certain quantitative measure of value is preserved (e.g., monetary compensation equivalent to the value of an eye). However, in the case of the infinite value of human life (corresponding to the infinite dignity of the human person qua rational being, which absolutely transcends every ‘market price’), the only possible equivalent is another infinitely-valuable human life; thus, according to Kant, the only possible punishment for the crime of destroying a life is the destruction of the life of the criminal. But Derrida contends that this infinity is in truth the point at which the law of talion breaks down; if human life resists inclusion into the space of the finite, measurable equivalencies characterizing all punishments other than the death penalty, then we ought to conclude that the law of talion cannot be applied to the case of human life. To calculate with the incalculability of human dignity, even in the name of preserving it (as Kant’s death penalty claims to do), is to violate it. Derrida links this calculation of the incalculable with another such instance, whose significance is not immediately apparent: the death penalty imposes a calculable qua definite and knowable certainty (i.e., that one will be executed on such and such a day at such and such a time) on the otherwise incalculable qua indefinite and unknowable moment of one’s own death (as most powerfully articulated by Heidegger). For Derrida, the injustice here is not so much causing the death of another per se, but rather closing off the openness of human futurity while that other still lives. Now, Kant defines human rationality as the capacity to set ends – that is, the capacity to project oneself into the future in the pursuit of a goal or purpose. Sentencing someone to death, Derrida suggests, would therefore disrespect this defining human capacity, inasmuch as it artificially forecloses the open futural horizon of end-setting. Calculating the incalculable would again violate the very human dignity Kant is concerned with protecting.

Name: Dr.Veena Soni
Section: Political Theory
Professional Email: veenasony8@gmail.com
Professional Status: Assistant Professor
Institution: JAI NARAYAN VYAS UNIVERSITY ,JODHPUR (RAJ)
Scheduling Preference: Saturday Morning
Proposal Type: Paper
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Paper Title:  Narratives of statelessness and political belonging among Kurdish diaspora in Sweden and the UK
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This paper investigates the phenomenon of statelessness and political belonging in a world of unequal nation-states and citizenship regimes. In so doing it will examine the theoretical construction and conceptions of the stateless in contemporary social and political thought and assess their implications for the conceptions of shared identity and citizenship rights in the legal-political framework of the nation-state and international legal processes and practices. In the academic field statelessness has been largely viewed in relation to the ‘lack’ of citizenship and the acquisition of citizenship has therefore been presented as a solution to statelessness. Although citizenship rights and membership of an internationally recognized state are central to the human rights of political subjects in the contemporary world, the conditions and experiences of statelessness do not fade away through acquisition of formal citizenship as the persistent political, legal and military struggles of the stateless groups around the world show. It is therefore important to investigate how notions of political belonging underpinning political projects and collective action of the stateless peoples are constructed and how they inform and shape the evolution of national consciousness among them. Political belonging creates collective goals to sustain or transform political order. This study combines theoretical investigation of statelessness and citizenship with empirical field research on the subjective experiences of the phenomena among the Kurds. Through deploying a narrative inquiry and in-depth interviews, this project will use the narratives of Kurdish migrants in Sweden and the UK to analyze how national consciousness emerges in the absence of a nation-state but also the role of the nation-state in shaping discourses about statelessness and political belonging outside of the ‘original’ homelands.

Name: Matthew Stein
Section: Political Theory
Professional Email: tuf96836@temple.edu
Professional Status: Graduate Student
Institution: Temple University
Scheduling Preference: Friday Afternoon
Proposal Type: Paper
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Paper Title:  What is “the Political” in Political Philosophy?
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Since George Sabine asked, “What is a Political Theory?” in 1939, this meta-theoretical debate concerning the conceptual definition of political philosophy has persisted. Among the works produced on this question, two methodological approaches have been utilized. The first is an example based approach which involves accumulating works that have already been classified as political philosophy, and uncovering qualitative similarities to determine where there is sufficient overlap among the works. The example based approach fails on its own terms because it requires some omitted qualifications for the works’ inclusion in the study, which places the definitional burden not on the investigator, but on some prior condition. The second is a normative approach whereby a definition is first hypothesized, and then applied to various works in order to test the appropriateness of the crafted definition. While the normative approach is methodologically sound, it has not been appropriately utilized since the existing literature fails to adequately define the term “politics.” I analyze this debate in order to emphasize that meta-theoreticians ought to take seriously the philosophical challenge that is defining the political. It is crucial to be clear about our vernacular so that political philosophy can set the boundaries of inclusivity in the field.

Name: Timothy Waligore
Section: Political Theory
Professional Email: twaligore@pace.edu
Professional Status: Assistant Professor
Institution: Pace University
Scheduling Preference: Saturday Afternoon
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Paper Title: Grave Disrespect: Reparations for the Dead and Political Legitimacy
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Liberal theories of justice and political legitimacy are generally forward-looking, concerned with the claims, interests, well-being, or rights of living and future individuals. In non-ideal conditions of historical injustice, however, cultivating feelings of respect toward the dead is important for solidarity amongst the descendants of perpetrators and victims in society today. This paper generates reasons for us to think in some ways rather than others about wrongs that were committed in the past, and about their enduring consequences. I first examine two historical figures, Immanuel Kant and Johann Fichte, as models of approaching justice and the dead. This prepares the way for my own account, in which I argue that we should consider how our theory of justice and political legitimacy, if it had held in the past, would have treated then-living and then-future individuals. Would it have counted as wrong the wrongs suffered by the then-living? Would it have adequately discouraged injustice to the then-living by making them feel sufficient duties of reparation following the wrong? If not, I argue that we can disrespect the dead now by lacking sentiments of justice towards them. Here, the conditions of political legitimacy include the cultivation of sentiments toward the dead, not merely toward the living. I then project this model of political legitimacy forward, arguing that we the living should also be concerned with how citizens in the future will feel about us when we are dead. What sentiments will they develop towards us in the future and how can our actions today induce certain feelings of respect from them? If we care about how future citizens will view us when we are dead, we will anticipate how justice and views of rights will develop. This approach can motivate us to usher in forward-looking changes, rather than being captive to views of justice that are prevalent in our own time.

Name: Yidi Wu
Section: Political Theory
Professional Email: yidi.wu@bc.edu
Professional Status: Graduate Student
Institution: Boston College
Scheduling Preference: Saturday Afternoon
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Paper Title:  Socrates’ Daimonion
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Socrates’ daimonion [δαιμόνιον]is a very complicated issue. What the daimonion is and what roles it played in Socratic way of life are the two central and probably most difficult questions about this issue, since Plato and Xenophon provided different images of Socrates’ daimonion. Still, this paper tries to list and analyze all Plato’s and Xenophon’s accounts concerning the daimonion in order to examine both similarities and differences between them and offer a comprehensive image of Socrates’ daimonion that can answer the two central questions. In fact, these two questions are so important for Socrates’ daimonion, because they are intrinsically related to the two charges Socrates faced: his impiety to the city-gods and his corruption of Athenian youths. No matter how distinct Plato’s description of daimonion is from Xenophon, they both attempted to defend their teacher against the two charges. It is said that Socrates’ daimonion caused the charge of his impiety, as Socrates only acknowledged his daimonion but not the city-gods that his contemporary Athenians believed in. Therefore, both Plato and Xenophon put much effort in arguing Socrates’ daimonion proves his piety. Plato endeavored to demonstrate Socrates’ daimonion belongs to the divine system of city-gods, while Xenophon in order to undermine the particularity of the daimonion, claimed it, other than name, has no difference from the divination that Athenians resort to. Furthermore, the accounts of Socrates’ daimonion in the widely-accepted pseudo-Platonic dialogues Theages and Alcibiades I may offer a new reading of Socrates’ daimonion. The daimonion seems to select those who have potential to philosophize as Socrates’ interlocutors, but it cannot predict whether who will obtain benefit and when they will leave Socrates. Therefore, from a close reading of Theages and Alcibiades I, it can be shown that Alcibiades, the most notorious one of the youth whom Socrates was alleged to “corrupt”, went on to his own destructive path rather than under the guidance of Socrates.

Name: Asher Wycoff
Section: Political Theory
Professional Email: awycoff@gradcenter.cuny.edu
Professional Status: Graduate Student
Institution: The Graduate Center, CUNY
Scheduling Preference: Friday Afternoon
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Paper Title: Parties of Catastrophe: Keynes, Marxism, and Apocalypse
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Like many liberals of his time, John Maynard Keynes apprehended Marxism, particularly its Bolshevik variant, as a faith. This faith is chiefly eschatological, forecasting “the introduction of a New Order on Earth” and insisting on a singular set of methods in preparation (see Keynes's "Short View on Russia"). The inevitability of the New Order and the methods necessary to bring it into existence are, for sincere believers, beyond question. Such sincere believers exist not only in “Red Russia,” but all throughout Europe, even forming a faction of the British Labour Party – a faction Keynes names “the Party of Catastrophe." Certainly, there was much debate among Marxists with regard to the inevitability of general crisis, the necessity of revolution, and so forth. But the accuracy of Keynes’s characterization is less important than its preeminence in liberal thought throughout much of the twentieth century. Marxism first appeared as an eschatology in the wake of a global war, and again in the wake of a global financial crisis shortly thereafter. Keynesian policy formed the economic front of the bourgeoisie’s counteroffensive: a dynamic anti-eschatology in which a board of technocrats would, through fastidious monetary and fiscal adjustments, not only abate capitalist crisis, but eliminate its ontological possibility altogether. This paper aims to account for the apprehension of Marxism as an eschatological faith from the bourgeois standpoint, and articulate the anti-eschatological character of the Keynesian response. Methodological and conceptual cues are taken from Lukács and Benjamin, pertaining to the "reification" critique of social science epistemology and the messianic “kernel” of historical materialism, respectively. Part of a larger project on the role(s) of eschatology in the liberal tradition, this paper intervenes critically into the "messianic turn" in continental thought as well as the intellectual history of twentieth century political economy.

Name: Sukru Yurtsever
Section: Identity Politics
Professional Email: syurtsever@gtu.edu.tr
Professional Status: Assistant Professor
Institution: Gebze Technical University
Scheduling Preference: No Preference
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Paper Title:  Social Capital in the Creation of Inclusive Identities: The Case of European Identity
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dentity has become more influential than ever in explaining the problems of our world's new unpredictable social and political order. There is a large spectrum of conceptual definitions, theoretical approaches and causational relations developed by different academic disciplines which in turn extend the content of identity and increase the contention on it. In this paper, I will try to contribute to this dynamic nature of identity literature particularly collective identity formation, using social capital theory as an explanatory factor. The originality of my thesis relies on the idea that social capital dimensions like generalized trust, social networks and associational memberships can explain the inclusive/exclusive structure of one's identification. Toward this goal European identity constituted the focal point of my research. The complex relationship between highly politicized national identities and a still-developing European identity presents an appropriate case of analysis, and moreover social capital – which can be defined broadly as values created via social relationships and social groups, seems to be promising for its applicability to the operation of inclusive national vs. European identification structure. European level surveys have been used to confirm this relationship empirically, which can be summarized as identities, at least at the bottom-up social identification level, are not fixed but constantly fluctuate and change by the nature of social capital.

Name: Yichuan Zhou
Section: Political Theory
Professional Email: zhouy997@newschool.edu
Professional Status: Graduate Student
Institution: The New School for Social Research
Scheduling Preference: Saturday Morning
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Paper Title: The Disenchantment and Educative Role of Revolutionary Enthusiasm in Kant's and Marx's thinking
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The diffusion way of protest in modern China is particularly interesting. Because the reason for some peasants or workers to protest does not directly relate to their discontent with government’s policies but rather lies in the very simple fact that they are touched and encouraged by those people who protest in the first time. I wonder if we can explain this phenomenon in a new way which is grounded in Kant's and Marx's reflections on revolutionary enthusiasm? Referring to the texts of Kant and Marx seems to contradict to our common sense at the beginning. Because we tend to believe that Kant is the supporter of peaceful reform and he denies the right of revolution in any sense, it might be counter-intuitive for us to accept the fact that Kant ever valued revolutionary enthusiasm. Moreover, since we consider that Marx lays particular stress on political economic analysis of capitalist society and refuses to take part in any ethical debate through his life, it is also difficult for us to believe that Marx once pondered over revolutionary enthusiasm. However, some clues have clearly indicated that both Kant and Marx notice that how human’s collective memory of revolutionary enthusiasm could influence the contemporaneous or future observers.