By Rahul Govind · Tuesday, April 19, 2011 Rahul Govind’s “Equality, Right, and Identity: Rethinking the Contract through Hobbes and Marx” appears in Telos 154 (Spring 2011). Read the full version at TELOS Online website.
 The following essay is an investigation into the nature of the contract, the way in which the contract indexes “right” and equality, and the textual and historical expressions—as well as echoes—that this has taken from Thomas Hobbes to Karl Marx. The opening set of conceptual remarks lead to a reading of Hobbes’s Leviathan and Marx’s “On the Jewish Question,” arguing that both texts were concerned with theoretically explicating the relationship between right and equality, germane to which was the problematic of the “nation”/community, which was itself conceived via the “Jewish question.” The essay argues that only an attention to Marx’s reformulation of the older problematic, as found in Hobbes, will help us understand the significance of his critique of the (post–)French Revolutionary theory of abstract right, and thereby the need for the development and critique of the field of political economy. Through this exposition of the thread between the conceptualization of the political and political economy, it seeks to reconfigure the canonical texts of Hobbes and Marx in rethinking the interrelations between right, equality, and community within a historico-philosophical horizon.
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By David Randall · Friday, April 15, 2011 David Randall’s “Empiricism, the New Rhetoric, and the Public Sphere” appears in Telos 154 (Spring 2011). Read the full version at TELOS Online website.
Jürgen Habermas’s conception of the early modern public sphere derived in good part from a Kantian epistemology and the corollary Kantian theory of communication. Yet we can, and should, instead conceive of the public sphere as rhetorical in nature, and therefore substitute a rhetorical epistemology and theory of communication for the Kantian equivalents that underpin Habermas’s account. But if rhetoric is to be substituted for Kantian reason in an account of the early modern public sphere, one must argue the existence of an intellectual tradition of rhetorical philosophy concurrent with and parallel to that of Habermas’s Kantian tradition, and equally able to claim itself both representative of the thought of the age and indicative of the thought and practice of the multitude. This historically situated rhetorical philosophy did exist. The empirical tradition itself, from Locke through Hume, preserved an astonishing amount of rhetorical thought. Secondly, the tradition of New Rhetoric, as exemplified by figures such as Adam Smith, George Campbell, and Hugh Blair, reconceived rhetoric around empirical epistemology. The intellectual tradition that leads from Locke, through Hume, to George Campbell has as much claim as the Kantian tradition to articulate, and represent, the practice of the early modern public sphere.
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By Alexandre Lefebvre · Wednesday, April 13, 2011 Alexandre Lefebvre’s “Law and the Ordinary: Hart, Wittgenstein, Jurisprudence” appears in Telos 154 (Spring 2011). Read the full version at TELOS Online website.
This essay argues that H. L. A. Hart’s concept of jurisprudence in the first chapter of The Concept of Law is strongly influenced by the relationship that Wittgenstein establishes between ordinary and metaphysical language. The article is divided into three sections. The first section shows how jurisprudence emerges as a denial of ordinary language in its pursuit of a definition of law. The second section traces Hart’s use of ordinary language to identify idleness or emptiness in jurisprudence. The third section presents Hart’s conception of his work as therapeutic in its attempt to lead jurisprudence back to the everyday.
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By Telos Press · Tuesday, April 12, 2011 From the Sharjah Call for Action website:
International and local art community condemns unwarranted dismissal of Sharjah Art Foundation Director Jack Persekian and the censorship of artworks in the Sharjah Biennial.
On April 6th, 2011, Jack Persekian, Director of the Sharjah Art Foundation since 2005, was dismissed without notice by the ruler of Sharjah, HH. Sheikh Sultan Bin Mohammad Al Qasimi. The sudden termination of Persekian’s post came after a public outcry over the perceived offensive content in an artwork exhibited in the 10th edition of the Sharjah Biennial by Algerian artist, journalist and activist Mustapha Benfodil.
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By Grant Havers · Friday, April 8, 2011 Grant Havers’s “James Burnham’s Elite Theory and the Postwar American Right ” appears in Telos 154 (Spring 2011). Read the full version at TELOS Online website.
This article discusses the reasons for the postwar American Right’s inattention to elite theory, or the study of the relation between elites and the masses. James Burnham, the most influential elite theorist of the postwar Right, has attracted the greatest interest in his work from the Left rather than the Right. His historicist appraisal of Machiavelli’s analysis of the elitist use of ethics failed to attract “value conservatives” on the Right who believed that the preservation of “timeless” values was unrelated to elite power. While his usage of Machiavelli’s realpolitik might have attracted populists on the Right who were suspicious of elites, Burnham rejected the populist belief in the people’s “virtue.” Yet Burnham’s theory of elite power deserves two cheers from conservatives for understanding both the historic relativity of values as well as the willingness of the masses to obey the elites. Burnham’s historicism and anti-populism might have saved conservatives from pinning their hopes in either the power of values or the people to effect change. Nevertheless, Burnham’s lack of interest in the power of mass religious belief compromises the value of his understanding of power, since, unlike Machiavelli, he underestimated the degree to which popular religion can threaten the power of elites.
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By Samuel Tadros · Tuesday, March 29, 2011 A couple of days ago I was asked about the chances of liberal forces in Egypt after the referendum results. My response was in the negative. The young activists that are often described in the Western media as liberal, democrat, or secular stand no chance in the next parliamentary elections scheduled for next September. My judgment is not only based on the existence, or lack thereof, of those forces or their strength, but also on the nature of the elections system in Egypt and the way the districts are drawn. The overrepresentation of the countryside and the two-candidate district design means that the “liberal” forces only stand a chance in competing in 21 districts out of 222. Even if they win all of those seats, they will represent less than 10% of the members of parliament. Of course some traditional opposition politicians will win elsewhere, but they will totally depend on their family connections in those districts and will run as traditional patriarchal candidates.
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