Theoria

This edition of Theoria encompasses an examination of the character of historical enquiry, critical encounters with contemporary perspectives in political theory, reflections on religion and the state, an exploration of the implications of the commodification of time and work and an examination of the role of human rights in the contemporary international context. In this it extends discussion of themes that have come to define the coherence and unity of the journal as an editorial project.

The important paper that Pierre Bourdieu has submitted to us is extremely interesting.1 Indeed, while I hope that this paper will not create a precedent, the traditional method by which one or more of us introduce one or other candidate for a Chair, followed by an election in favour of a known colleague and/or a recognised personality, seems to me to be far from optimal. Nonetheless, Pierre Bourdieu, as a sociologist, having taken the effort to examine the field of the historian, and this effort having been extremely enriching for me, I can only be struck tautologically by the quality of his contribution: I wish to respond and to discuss it in detail, and follow our colleague’s and my own train of thought with regard to the introduction of candidates. Perhaps tomorrow at the Collège we shall have, not only, as in this case, history seen by a sociologist, but nuclear physics seen by a biologist or mathematics examined from the Chair of one of our colleagues in medicine. Let there be no doubt that then we would also have, as is the case here, something very exciting for us all. Even so, I must repeat that this method is not the one that I prefer for allocating Chairs and choosing new colleagues.

One of the more intractable questions in the history of political thought is still around today: how can humans collectively control and enhance the development and satisfaction of their needs? This is a question about the nature of contemporary needs, about which and whose needs are developed and satisfied, and about the extant evaluative control over the generation of needs. That is, it is a question about the mechanisms and institutions that constitute and legitimize the generation, interpretation and satisfaction of needs, in particular, states and markets. And it is also a question about the possibilities and means of transforming these mechanisms and institutions. In this paper, I suggest conceptual means of thinking about the different parts of the question and their relation to democratic sovereignty. The suggestions are based on an account of human need that overcomes the current framework of rights and (utilitarian) preferences tempered by paternalist attention to state-defined human needs.

In the ordinary way, we all know very well what a contract is. It is a mutual undertaking or promise by two or more parties to do or refrain from doing something or another. Such promises may be made verbally, by means of gestures, or expressed in writing, but they must be expressed or else the contract is not merely null and void, but nonexistent. There is no such thing as an inaudible and invisible contract. To think otherwise is to mistake metaphorical for literal language. Yet the history of political philosophy from the 17th century until the present day has been dominated by the idea of a contract to which no persons living or dead ever affixed a signature or so much as nodded assent; a promise binding on the whole of civilised humankind, on which are thought to rest the complementary edifices of civil society and the state.

The architects of what one might call ‘classical’ or ‘Enlightenment’ liberalism saw themselves as committed to refuting the claims to political sovereignty by organized religion.2 The arguments against the legitimacy of a state-supported religion, and in the extreme case, of a religious monopoly, are so integral a part of the Enlightenment’s effort to put politics on a stable and just foundation as to constitute one of the controlling themes of the period. Liberal politics requires toleration, or better, liberty of religious belief. And this in turn implies that religious institutions be privatized, as it were, and that just politics be secularized. Legitimate rule is to lie in the consent of the ruled rather than in the laws of God as interpreted by his ministers on earth. Differences in religious outlook are to be settled, as Jefferson tells us, by persuasion, not by force, and persuasion is a private matter. The state has no role to play except (to simplify somewhat) that of preventing the use of force by the parties involved. As Jefferson strikingly puts it: ‘The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg … Reason and persuasion are the only practicable instruments [against error in religion].’

At the beginning of the twenty-first century work has attained a new local and global quality. Localised and individualised efficiency deals are established where previously standards would have been set nationally and bargained for collectively. At the same time, work is negotiated in the context of a global labour market and global competition: the world, not nations, is the market where labour is traded and the fate of much future work sealed. Electronic communication, low transport costs and deregulated, unrestricted trade dissolved many of the boundaries that used to delimit the competition for work on the one hand, the negotiations over conditions on the other. Since the leading industrial nations have committed themselves to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the rules set out by the World Trade Organisation (WTO), it is difficult for any nation to extricate itself from the logic of the competitive global market. ‘At a world level’, as Hans-Peter Martin and Harald Schumann (1997: 7) point out, ‘more than 40,000 transnational corporations of varying shapes and sizes play off their own employees (as well as different nation states) against one another.’ There are always workers somewhere else able and willing to do the job cheaper than North Americans or North/West Europeans.

Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry, by Michael Ignatieff. Edited and introduced by Amy Gutmann, with comments by K. Anthony Appiah, David A. Hollinger, Thomas W. Laqueur and Diane F. Orentlicher, and a response by Ignatieff. Princeton University Press: Princeton and Oxford, 2001. ISBN: 0691114749.

Charles Taylor, by Ruth Abbey. Teddington, UK: Acumen, 2000. ISBN: 0691057141.

Charles Taylor: Meaning, Morals and Modernity, by Nicholas H. Smith. Cambridge: Polity, 2002. ISBN: 0742521273.

Charles Taylor: Thinking and Living Deep Diversity, by Mark Redhead. Lanham and Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002. ISBN: 0745645767.

Power and Terror: Post 9-11 Talks and Interviews, by Noam Chomsky, edited by John Junkerman and Takei Masakazu. Johannesburg: Jacana, 2003. ISBN: 1583225900. Reviewed by Derek Hook

Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals turn to Lenin, Mao and Che, by Richard Max Elbaum. New York: Verso, 2002. ISBN: 1859846173 Reviewed by Richard Pithouse

Society Must be Defended, by Michel Foucault, edited by Mauro Bertani and Alessandro Fontana. English Series Editor: Arnold I. Davidson. Translated by David Macey. New York: Allen Lane, 2003. ISBN: 0-713-99707-9. Reviewed by Derek Hook

Democracy, edited by Philip Green. New York: Humanity Books, 1999. ISBN: 1573925500. Reviewed by Laurence Piper

Power: A Reader, edited by Mark Haugaard. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2002. ISBN: 0719057299 Reviewed by Roger Deacon

John Rawls: Towards a Just World Order, by Patrick Hayden. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2002. ISBN 0708317294. Reviewed by Brian E. Butler

World Citizenship, by Derek Heater. London: Continuum, 2002. ISBN: 0826458920 Reviewed by Erin Kimball

The Ideas That Conquered the World, by Michael Mandelbaum. New York: Public Affairs, 2002. ISBN: 1586481347. Reviewed by Michael Herman

Desert Screen: War at the Speed of Light, by Paul Virilio. Translated by Michael Degener. New York & London: The Athlone Press (Continuum), 2002. ISBN: 0826458211. Reviewed by Clayton Crockett

Notes on the Contributors