By Ronald Olufemi Badru · Saturday, October 8, 2011 Ronald Olufemi Badru’s “The Ontology of Political Decisionism, Negative Statecraft, and the Nigerian State: Exploring Moral Altruism in Politics” appears in Telos 156 (Fall 2011). Read the full version online at the TELOS Online website, or purchase a print copy of the issue here.
 This exercise in political philosophy adopts the research methods of conceptual analysis, extensive argumentation, and historical account. Using the theoretical framework of political decisionism, espoused by the German political philosopher Carl Schmitt, the essay attempts to explain the operation of the main actors within Nigeria’s political space. There are two central claims. First, Nigeria’s political leadership has detached morality from the political sphere; political leaders have covertly eroded the authority of both legal and moral norms in satisfying their egoistic interests. Second, the political class regards one another as enemies, leading to numerous incidents of political assassinations and killings among them. These claims aptly instantiate and summarize the Schmittian political decisionism in Nigeria’s politics. However, the paper concludes that since politics in the ideal is service to the public, for an all-round development, and the egoism of political decisionism resists this objective, then there ought to be a new morality of altruism in Nigeria’s politics. Committing to the welfare of the other, rather than that of the self, moral altruism ensures that politics is rightly conducted in Nigeria to achieve the well being of the general other, leading to an all-inclusive social development in the final analysis.
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By Maria Piccone · Friday, October 7, 2011 On Tuesday, October 4, Telos Press hosted a book launch for A Journal of No Illusions: Telos, Paul Piccone, and the Americanization of Critical Theory at St. Mark’s Bookshop in New York City. Tim Luke (co-editor of the book), Russell Berman (editor of Telos), and publisher Mary Piccone (Telos Press) provided an engaging look at the history of a courageous and often controversial journal, its brilliant and volatile founder, Paul Piccone, and Telos‘s ongoing contributions to American intellectual life. We had an outstanding turnout—a testimonial to the past, present, and future of Telos, now celebrating its 43rd anniversary.
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By Franklin Hugh Adler · Wednesday, October 5, 2011 Franklin Hugh Adler’s “Israel’s Mizrahim: ‘Other’ Victims of Zionism or a Bridge to Regional Reconciliation?” appears in Telos 156 (Fall 2011). Read the full version online at the TELOS Online website, or purchase a print copy of the issue here.
Mizrahim, Jews who issued from Arab lands, comprise roughly half of Israel’s population. Most arrived after having been expelled from Arab states after 1948, and in number exceed those Palestinians who were displaced at Israel’s birth. They also possessed substantially greater property that was confiscated without compensation upon expulsion. Mizrahim have had a largely ignored and uneasy relation with Zionism, whose master narrative was based upon the return of European Jews to Palestine. An orientalist, anti-Arab blindness that became embedded in Zionism also encouraged a deracination of Mizrahim, as they, too, were Arabs and had been an enduring presence in the region predating by centuries the birth of Mohammad and the ascendance of Islam. In recent years there has been a reassertion of Mizrahi identity, often articulated by subsequent generations, which, at the same time, might become a source of regional reconciliation and help redeem the pluralism and cultural hybridity that once characterized Mediterranean-Levantine civilization. This essay attempts to explore these imaginative possibilities.
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By Telos Press · Saturday, October 1, 2011 Telos Press Publishing is proud to announce the newest addition to our book list: A Journal of No Illusions: Telos, Paul Piccone, and the Americanization of Critical Theory, edited by Timothy Luke and Ben Agger. Get your copy here.
 In 1968, a young SUNY-Buffalo philosophy graduate student named Paul Piccone started a journal called Telos. No one then could have reasonably expected for it to become an intellectual institution. Originally conceived as the self-consciousness of the American New Left, the journal soon ranged more widely as its authors introduced European social theory and philosophy to a largely American audience unaware of these traditions. Piccone forged a “journal of no illusions” that was iconoclastic, skeptical, and yet motivated by the hope that critique and engagement could become constitutive principles for politics and everyday practices. In this book, an array of authors, many of whom participated in the development of Telos, examine the ongoing legacy of the journal, and address the ways in which Telos formed a generation of young intellectuals, who asked for a “critical theory” to understand both the impasses and possibilities for a progressive politics.
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By Telos Press · Wednesday, September 28, 2011 For all fans of Telos in the New York City area, we will be holding a book launch for A Journal of No Illusions: Telos, Paul Piccone, and the Americanization of Critical Theory, edited by Timothy Luke and Ben Agger, on Tuesday, October 4, from 7pm to 9pm, at St. Mark’s Bookshop, 31 Third Avenue, New York, NY.
In 1968, when Paul Piccone started a journal called Telos, no one could have reasonably expected for it to become an intellectual institution. Originally conceived as the self-consciousness of the American New Left, the journal soon ranged more widely as its authors introduced European social theory and philosophy to a largely American audience unaware of these traditions. Piccone forged a “journal of no illusions” that was iconoclastic, skeptical, and yet motivated by the hope that critique and engagement could become constitutive principles for politics and everyday practices. In this book, an array of authors, many of whom participated in the development of Telos, examine the ongoing legacy of the journal, and address the ways in which Telos formed a generation of young intellectuals, who asked for a “critical theory” to understand both the impasses and possibilities for a progressive politics.
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By Russell A. Berman · Monday, September 19, 2011 Telos 156 (Fall 2011) is now available for purchase here.
Will Europe be able to master its debt crisis and prevent the spread of economic instability throughout the eurozone? Will the political leadership in the United States be able to manage the challenge of the debt limit and, more broadly, the ongoing problems with the federal budget? As this issue of Telos goes to press, each of these dramas is still playing out, and the conclusion to neither is predictable. Will the euro crumble, will Washington grind to a halt? Probably not. Yet if Europe’s contagion is ultimately contained, and if the United States dodges the bullet and avoids default, it will only have been in the nick of time. Perhaps some tired observers will heave a sigh of relief and reassure themselves that the system has worked. Of course, escaping catastrophe is better than the alternative, and no one should be wishing for the worst. But this is not a matter of wishful thinking at all. Magic will not save us. On the contrary, this is about contemporary politics and the apparent inability of existing political institutions to address vital matters in an effective manner.
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