Chamada: Harvard Graduate Conference in Political Theory

A prestigiosa Kennedy School of Government organiza todos os anos no mês de outubro uma conferência voltada para trabalhos de alunos de pós-graduação em teoria e filosofia política. A conferencista convidada deste ano será Danielle Allen. Inscrições e trabalhos serão aceitos até 1 de agosto. 

Harvard Graduate Conference in Political Theory 

(October 31-November 1, 2014)

The Department of Government (FAS) at Harvard University will host its annual conference for graduate students in political theory and political philosophy on October 31–November 1, 2014. Papers on any theme or topic within political theory — from the history of political thought to contemporary normative theory — will be considered.  Between six and eight papers will be accepted.Submissions are due via email in PDF form by August 1, 2014.Papers will be refereed by current Harvard graduate students, and acceptance notices will be sent by early September. Please limit each submission to 7,500 words (about 20 double-spaced pages). Essays longer than 10,000 words will not be considered. Each submission should include two PDF files: one with the paper formatted for blind review (free of personal and institutional information), and the other including a cover page with the title of the paper, an abstract (250 words max.), and your name, email address, and institutional affiliation. The keynote speaker will be Danielle Allen, UPS Foundation Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study. Conference presentations should last no longer than 10 minutes. Each presentation will be accompanied by comments from a Harvard graduate student. Presenters will have a chance to answer questions during a general discussion period after the presentation. Food and housing will be provided by the Government Department and its graduate students. Unfortunately, Harvard will not be able to provide funds for transportation. 

Questions, comments, and submissions should be sent to < politicaltheory.harvard@gmail.com > 

For more information, please visit the conference website at < http://tinyurl.com/harvardtheory >

Bolsa Pós-Doutorado (IESP/RJ)

O Instituto de Estudos Sociais e Políticos (IESP) no Rio de Janeiro abriu edital para o preenchimento de duas bolsas de pós-doutorado no regime PNPD-CAPES nas áreas de ciência política e sociologia. Candidatos devem enviar currículo acadêmico para a secretaria de pós-graduação do IESP pelo email louise@iesp.uerj.br até o dia 2 de julho. 

As linhas de pesquisa do Instituto podem ser conferidas aqui. 

Conferência: Piketty e O Capital no Século XXI

Em abril, o think tank progressista Economic Policy Institute  convidou o "economista-celebridade" Thomas Piketty (Paris School of Economics) para o lançamento do seu livro O Capital no Século XXI. No evento Piketty apresentou os principais resultados de sua pesquisa sobre os padrões de acúmulo de renda e riqueza nos últimos dois séculos em 20 países. Instigado pelos organizadores, o economista explorou última parte de sua obra na qual oferece a sua visão sobre como podemos diminuir o crescimento da desigualdade social. Os "anos dourados" do crescimento equitativo do pós-guerra são passíveis de serem repetidos? Políticas públicas de crescimento econômico com equidade devem privilegiar a proteção social dos menos favorecidos, ou diminuir a desigualdade entre os extremos? 

- Piketty: pela esquerda e pela direita (post)

Thomas Piketty on Wealth, Income and Inequality (Economic Policy Institute)

O Hume do século XX

Samuel Freeman (Pennsylvania) resenhou para a NY Review o livro Essays and Reviews: 1959 - 2002  (editado por Michael Wood) que reúne os ensaios e resenhas publicadas pelo filósofo inglês Bernard Williams ao longo de sua longa carreira (ver mais sobre o livro no nosso post!). Freeman ressalta a dimensão crítica dos escritos de Williams que procurou contrapor a construção de grandes teorias morais por filósofos profissionais, com a irredutibilidade da experiência moral humana. Mais do que esclarecimento, a tentativa de resolver nossos problemas existenciais por meio de teorias seria a principal fonte do "moralismo" contemporâneo. A resenha de Freeman é uma excelente oportunidade para nos familiarizarmos com o trabalho daquele que talvez seja o filósofo mais brilhante do século XX. 

The Case Against Moralism
by Samuel Freeman

Since Plato, philosophers have offered accounts of the ethical values and moral principles we should pursue individually and as a society. Although nearly moribund for most of the last century, ethical theory was revived in the 1970s, because of the influence of John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice (1971), a systematic treatment of political and economic justice in the liberal social contract tradition. Robert Nozick’s libertarian reply to Rawls in Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974) was followed by a stream of new works in political philosophy, continuing to the present day.

In moral philosophy, theories of our personal moral duties were developed by Thomas Nagel, T.M. Scanlon, the utilitarians R.M. Hare and Derek Parfit, and others. And in legal philosophy, Ronald Dworkin revived the natural law doctrine that moral principles are implicit in legal systems. All of these philosophers made claims to an ethical objectivity that goes beyond our subjective attitudes or cultural practices. Some of them made claims of universal moral truth as well.

Bernard Williams was among the major moral philosophers of this extraordinarily fruitful era. He occupied a distinctive position: far from believing that the aim of moral and political philosophy was the construction of theories, much of his work was critical of such theories.1 But Williams was more than a brilliant critic of others’ positions. He sought to revise ethical thinking, offering deeply original and subtle correctives to what he considered to be misguided ideas about moral responsibility, free will, duty, blame, guilt, and right and wrong that underpin Western morality.

Williams, who died in 2003, was a professor of philosophy at London, Cambridge, and Oxford for most of his career; in his later years, he joined the Department of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. In addition to his many contributions on ethics, he wrote important essays on personal identity, free will, and science and evolution; books on Plato and Descartes; and many works on the history of philosophy.2 His essays on opera were published posthumously (in 2006) by his wife, Patricia Williams. Williams served on several British government committees and commissions, chairing the 1979 Committee on Obscenity and Film Censorship.

The work reviewed here is the fifth volume of Williams’s collected papers (includingOn Opera) to appear since 2005. The seventy-one reviews and essays in the new collection extend over forty years, from 1959 to 2002. Thirteen of the works initially appeared in these pages. The reviews discuss many of the period’s main books on ethics as well as writings on other significant philosophical, academic, and literary topics. Williams succinctly summarizes each work and then critically assesses the issues, often brilliantly.3 There are also thirteen essays on wide-ranging topics, including God, existentialism, Richard Wagner, abortion, the importance of the humanities, and the need to be skeptical.

Williams’s work is characterized by elegant prose and subtle (sometimes elusive) arguments, humor, irony, and occasionally acerbic wit. In these and in more substantive ways he resembles Friedrich Nietzsche, one of his favorite thinkers. In this collection, it is in reference to Nietzsche that Williams often evokes one of the most salient themes in his own work, his criticism of “the peculiar institution” of morality: “Nietzsche was the greatest moral philosopher of the past century…. He saw how totally problematical morality, as understood over many centuries, has become.”

R. G. Collingwood

Na última edição da London Review of Books o filósofo inglês Jonathan Reé publicou um ensaio sobre a obra mais famosa do historiador e filósofo R. G. Collingwood intitulada Uma Autobiografia (publicado em 1939). As teses de Collingwood são fundamentais para entendermos a retomada da metodologia interpretativista nas ciências sociais de lingua inglesa (Geertz, Skinner, Rorty, etc.) a partir dos anos 60. O ensaio de Reé nos mostra os principais argumentos de Collingwood, seu desenvolvimento intelectual e sua defesa controversa do historicismo como única forma coerente de se fazer filosofia.

A Few Home Truths

Jonathan Rée

• R.G. Collingwood: ‘An Autobiography’ and Other Writings, with Essays on Collingwood’s Life and Work edited by David Boucher and Teresa Smith
  Oxford, 581 pp, £65.00, December 2013, ISBN 978 0 19 958603 5

‘An Autobiography’ by R.G. Collingwood must be one of the most popular philosophical books in the English language, but when it was published in 1939, it was not expected to do well. Collingwood warned Oxford University Press that it was ‘destitute of all that makes autobiography saleable’. It was going to be a ‘dead loss’, he said, and in a preface he offered a pre-emptive apology: he was a philosopher by vocation – had been as long as he could remember – so the story of his life could not be anything more than a compendium of abstract ideas. But the remark was not as self-deprecating as it looks. It was among other things an allusion to John Stuart Mill, who had opened his own very celebrated Autobiography with a similar disclaimer: he had nothing to offer, he said, apart from an account of the origin and growth of his philosophical convictions, and ‘the reader whom these things do not interest, has only himself to blame if he reads further.’

Having given fair warning, Mill proceeded to a matter-of-fact description of a London childhood at the beginning of the 19th century, watched over by a ‘most impatient’ father who ignored his wife and ‘vigorously acted up to the principle of losing no time’. As a friend and admirer of Jeremy Bentham, Mill senior was determined to instruct his son in the rigours of Benthamite radicalism before he could be corrupted by religion, sentimentality or frivolity of any kind. The boy started Greek at the age of three, and was soon studying Plato’s dialogues in the original, along with arithmetic and ancient history, before moving on to Latin and logic and spending a year in Montpellier as a student of natural science. By that time he had started calling himself a utilitarian – apparently the first person to do so – and making active propaganda for the cause. At 16 he embarked on a career as a clerk at the East India Company and started compiling several large volumes of legal theory from Bentham’s chaotic manuscripts. Many years later, as he looked back on his extraordinary output in philosophy, logic and radical polemic, he attributed all his achievements to the early training provided by his revered father.

In outline the story sounds insipid, but when it was published – shortly after Mill’s death in 1873 – it revealed its extraordinary emotional power. ‘Everyone talks of Mill’sAutobiography,’ George Eliot noted, and marvelled at the ‘delight’ the book was giving her. Mill had managed to translate a life of relentless philosophising into an engrossing narrative of doubts, hopes and discouragements – a tale of passion and persistence rather than a catalogue raisonné of doctrines and theories. The logical perfection of Mill’s prose betrayed an enormous simple grief, and readers had the pleasure of guessing that filial loyalty cost him more dearly than he knew, and feeling sorry for him as he had never felt sorry for himself.

It would not be an easy act to follow, but Collingwood began An Autobiography with an account of precocious home-schooling to rival Mill’s: he recalled being introduced to Latin at the age of four and Greek two years later, before becoming fluent in French and German, immersing himself in history, science and philosophy and starting to read Kant when he was eight. If he was not quite such a prodigy as Mill, he certainly had the advantage in terms of happiness. His childhood was spent in a kind of bohemian paradise garden in the Lake District in the last decade of the 19th century, with parents who loved their life and their children and each other. Both were professional painters, and like their friend and near neighbour John Ruskin they regarded art not as a quest for aesthetic perfection but a joyful inquiry into the inexhaustible variety of the world, closely allied with history, natural science and the arguments of everyday life.

The children picked up the family habit of sketching and painting, and learned music by listening to their mother at the piano before breakfast. They would then get a lesson or two from their father, carefully structured but not especially cerebral: history and geography, for example, involved boiling up old newspapers to make relief maps out of papier-mâché. For the rest of the day they were ‘left to their own devices’, doing the sorts of thing that would later be re-created by their friend Arthur Ransome inSwallows and Amazons. Collingwood remembered exploring the countryside on foot or by bike or in a little boat called Swallow, learning to recognise plants, rocks, wildlife and stars. He would also accompany his father on increasingly ambitious excavations of nearby Roman settlements, and back home he might pick up one of the books he found lying around – Kant for example – or join in adult discussions of paintings in progress. Or he could settle to playing the piano, or write illustrated tales of imaginary countries for the family’s monthly manuscript magazine.

Artigo: O Golpe de 64 e o Voto Popular

O historiador Luiz Felipe de Alencastro (Sorbonne/FGV) publicou ensaio sobre o papel do voto na redemocratização brasileira na última edição da revista Novos Estudos Cebrap. Alencastro sustenta que a competição eleitoral entre Arena e MDB - e em especial a surpreendente eleição para o senado de 1974 - marcou o início da resistência democrática ao regime, que ruiria dez anos depois. 

[...]

Constatou‐se que já existiam centenas de artigos e mais de uma cetena de livros dedicados em parte ou inteiramente à ditadura. Hoje, os números aumentaram bastante. 

Singularmente, a análise dos resultados das eleições durante a ditadura pouco avançou desde os estudos dos anos 1970 e 1980 já mencionados. 

Resta que, de qualquer ângulo que se enfocarem os eventos, de todo modo que se ponderar sobre os fatos, do jeito que se alinharem as estatísticas, não há como evitar a constatação: foi graças ao voto popular que a ditadura foi acuada, batida e, por fim, derrubada. 

- Alencastro: "O Golpe de 64 e o Voto Popular" 

Artigo: A Hedgehog's Unity of Value

Joseph Raz (Columbia) postou o artigo A Hedgehog's Unity of Value na SSRN. No trabalho, Raz analisa a tese da "unidade dos valores" apresentada e defendida no último grande trabalho de Ronald Dworkin (Justice for Hedgehogs). Segundo a tese assomadamente de inspiração platônica, as diferentes demandas da justiça, da moralidade e da ética individual são passíveis de conciliação racional. Isto é, uma vida justa ou correta é equivalente a uma vida feliz no plano individual (ainda que, por vezes, tenhamos que pagar um preço alto por ações virtuosas) visto que ambos os valores formam uma unidade intrínseca. Na célebre formulação de Gregory Vlastos: "justice pays at the end"...  

- Raz: "A Hedgehog's Unity of Value" 

Abstract:

Dworkin was nothing if not an inventive and innovative theorist. While like all of us deeply embedded in his time and the ideas of his time, he was carving his views out of his own imaginative resources, to an ever growing degree free from the need to grapple, in his own contributions, with the conventional paradigms set by others, and at the same time, in his critical commentaries on events and ideas, dissecting the presuppositions, ideas and writings and exposing the fallacies of opponents. As is to be expected, some ideas, or perhaps it is better to call them intellectual tendencies, marked, often dominated, the movement of thought in much of his writings. One dominant trend is the striving towards unity. And Unity is my topic today, or more specifically the unity of value in Dworkin’s Justice for Hedgehogs. I will reflect on some of the many things he writes when dealing with that theme. My main aim is to clarify his view about the unity of value. In doing that I will meander in different directions, trying out some interpretations before turning to others. In other words, I will try to interpret his views in ways that will turn out not to fit them. In part to show that the interpretations do not fit, and in part to see how closely his views resemble them even so. I hope that by the end of this journey we will better understand his view about the unity of value.

One general caveat before we start: While drawing distinctions between values, virtues, reasons, rights, duties, etc. where appropriate, Dworkin also uses ‘value’ in a more indiscriminate, all encompassing way. Its scope is similar to what other writers regard as the domain of the evaluative or normative or their combination. The unity of value is about value in that broad sense, and I will use it in that sense in this paper, namely use the term to refer to reasons, norms, virtues etc. as well as to values in the narrower sense. 

Contra a Copa?

Thiago Silva (DCP/Texas A&M) e Diego von Vacano (Texas A&M) procuram explicar, em artigo publicado no Washington Post , a lógica por trás dos protestos contra a Copa do Mundo no Brasil. Segundo os autores, quando comparamos o aumento expressivo dos gastos sociais e os baixos índices de desemprego no país com os gastos da FIFA, teríamos boas razões para afirmar que o descontentamento popular é mais relacionado à visibilidade global trazida pela Copa do que contra o evento em si. 

- Silva & Vacano: "Brazil's Protest Paradox" (Washington Post)

Brazil’s protest paradox

• BY DIEGO VON VACANO AND THIAGO SILVA

• June 10 at 4:35 pm

Graffiti outside the Maracana stadium in Rio de Janeiro stating “Maracana is ours” (photo by Diego von Vacano).

For over a year now, many Brazilians have been protesting the country’s hosting of the 2014 World Cup. This is understandable as Brazil entered a recession last year and inequality remains widespread. However, viewed in a broader context, the protests are paradoxical, because Brazil has enjoyed very significant social and economic improvements since the country bid for the event in 2003. The principal reason for the protests has more to do with the fact that this global event is a unique opportunity to air domestic policy disagreements in a way that will receive wide media attention rather than the expenditures on the World Cup itself.

 As one of the authors of this article arrived in Sao Paulo on June 5, metro workers carried out a paralyzing strike.  Sometimes these protests have been violent and have often blamed the government for hosting the 2014 World Cup instead of focusing on social services. Yet, as we see in Figure 1 below, the government has never spent as much on social welfare as in the past decade. 

Note: The values are adjusted for monthly inflation in the country by the IPCA (National Consumer Price Index). The values, originally in Reais (Brazilian currency), were converted to US dollars according to the exchange rate on May 30 2014 (R$1.00 = $0.44).
Source: Developed by the authors based on Institute of Applied Economic Research data (IPEA, 2012).

One can see from Figure 1 that the two social program areas with the highest levels of expenditure by the federal government in 2010 were health and education ($30.3 billion and $20 billion respectively). The total social program expenditures in 2010 in the four areas analyzed reached $84.3 billion (the overall social program spending by the Brazilian government in the same year was $280.9 billion).

At the same time, as we can see in Figure 2 below, the Brazilian unemployment rate reached its lowest level last year according to the analysis we carried out (for the period 1995-2014).

* The information for 2014 represents the average value of the first three months of 2014.
Source: Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE, 2014).

Moreover, poverty has been reduced very significantly since 2003 (the year that Luis Inácio Lula da Silva of the Workers’ Party became president). There is a downward trend in both general poverty and extreme poverty rates in Brazil, with the lowest rates in the last year considered in this study (15.96 and 5.3 percent respectively).

* There is no information for the years 2000 and 2010. The values in the chart for these years are the mean between the previous and following year.
Notes: The extreme poverty line considered here is an estimate of the value of a food basket with minimum calories required to adequately support a person, based on recommendations by the International Labor Organization (ILO). The poverty line, in turn, is an estimate of the value of two food baskets with minimum calories required to adequately support a person, based on the recommendations of the ILO.
Source: Developed by the authors from IBGE data.

Chamada: I Congresso Internacional de Direito Constitucional e Filosofia Política

Entre os dias 4 e 7 de novembro acontecerá o I Congresso Internacional de Direito Constitucional e Filosofia Política na UFMG. O tema do encontro é "O futuro do Constitucionalismo". Entre os conferencistas do evento estão Luis Roberto Barroso (ministro do STF), Richard Bellamy (UCL), Ronaldo Porto de Macedo (USP) e Conrado Hübner (USP). Serão aceitos resumos entre os dias 5 de junho e 5 de outubro (ver aqui mais informações sobre o processo de submissão). Agradeço a Ronaldo de Souza pela informação. 

I CONGRESSO INTERNACIONAL DE DIREITO CONSTITUCIONAL E FILOSOFIA POLÍTICA

O Futuro do Constitucionalismo: Perspectivas para a Democratização do Direito Constitucional

O I Congresso Internacional em Direito Constitucional e Filosofia Política, promovido pelo Programa de Pós-Graduação em Direito da UFMG, traz como tema “O Futuro do Constitucionalismo e a Democratização do Direito Constitucional”.

O evento se insere no contexto de internacionalização do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Direito da UFMG, buscando refletir criticamente sobre os sistemas de jurisdição constitucional existentes no direito comparado e analisar os fundamentos políticos e morais do controle de constitucionalidade.

Adotam-se como pano de fundo as críticas à jurisdição constitucional recentemente desenvolvidas por filósofos do direito e filósofos políticos como Jeremy Waldron, Mark Tushnet e Richard Bellamy, que colocam em xeque a legitimidade das cortes constitucionais por desconfiar da premissa liberal de que elas constituiriam um “foro privilegiado” para deliberação sobre questões morais e argumentos fundados em princípios.

Pretende-se examinar, no Congresso ora proposto, os argumentos encontrados na filosofia política e jurídica contemporânea para se estabelecer uma ética deliberativa para as cortes constitucionais e para o desenvolvimento de reformas políticas-institucionais para redefinir a função e a configuração das cortes constitucionais. Nesta última seara, as contribuições dos Plenary Speakers convidados buscarão definir uma espécie de modelo ideal de equilíbrio e cooperação entre os poderes, em busca da legitimação do discurso sobre os direitos fundamentais.

Serão analisados, ainda, alguns modelos recentemente adotados por sistemas jurídicos estrangeiros, cuja experiência pode ser um indicador razoável para avaliar recentes propostas de “enfraquecimento” do sistema brasileiro de controle de constitucionalidade, com o fito de estabelecer um “diálogo institucional” com o poder legislativo.

Finalmente, serão expostos também os argumentos em defesa da jurisdição constitucional e os elementos políticos, morais e institucionais capazes de fortalecer a função representativa e deliberativa das Cortes Constitucionais e, em particular, do Supremo Tribunal Federal Brasileiro.

Envie seu trabalho e participe. Esperamos vê-lo em breve!

A Comissão Organizadora.

Crise na USP

A Universidade de São Paulo iniciou o ano com uma série crise orçamentária deixada pela gestão passada (veja aqui a entrevista com o atual reitor da universidade) agravada no último mês por uma greve declarada pelo sindicato dos professores e dos funcionários (e apoiada por uma parte dos estudantes). Os eventos colocaram novamente em pauta os rumos e a finalidade da universidade pública no Brasil. Por um lado, espera-se que instituições de elite como a USP façam justiça aos elevados aportes de dinheiro público e atendam aos exigentes critérios de competitividade global. Por outro, a natureza e o passado das instituições públicas brasileiras exigem a universalização do ensino superior de qualidade, atualmente inacessível para a maioria dos jovens brasileiros. Como equacionar essa dupla  demanda e, ao mesmo tempo, impedir a dupla privatização do espaço público, ora pelas agências privadas ora pelos grupos sindicais-partidários?

Alguns professores e ex-professores dessas instituições publicaram suas perspectivas nas últimas semanas. Vejam algumas delas a seguir:

- Martins (USP): "Sem Acabativa"

- Gianotti (USP): "Por que não vender a USP?"

- Tessler (Unicamp): "Uma questão de princípio"

Entrevista: Norman Daniels

O filósofo Norman Daniels (Harvard) concedeu uma rápida entrevista ao blog Philosophy Bites sobre sua carreira e seus interesses profissionais. Daniels teve um papel importante na divulgação e no debate das ideias de John Rawls e é célebre por ter desenvolvido uma abordagem da justiça  social direcionada especificamente ao acesso à saúde e ao tratamento médico. A entrevista é uma ótima oportunidade para quem quer ter uma primeira visão da trajetória e dos argumentos do autor.

- Daniels: The Philosophy of Healthcare (PhilBites)

Bolsa de Pós-Doutorado (McGill University)

O Centro de Estudos Constitucionais da Universidade McGill (RGCS) abriu uma vaga de pós-doutorado para pesquisadores de teoria política ou com perfil semelhante de pesquisa. O período de vigência da bolsa é de um ano renovável por mais um (2014-2016).  O prazo final para a inscrição é dia 20 de junho. 

2014/2015 Postdoctoral Fellowship (McGill)

The Research Group on Constitutional Studies at McGill University invites applications for a postdoctoral fellowship for academic year 2014-15, renewable for 2015-16. The Fellow will receive a stipend of $C 50,000 per year as well as a research fund and benefits. 

The Fellow will be expected to be in residence at McGill throughout the academic year, and to take an active part in workshops, conferences, and the intellectual life of RGCS and appropriate related research groups and centres (for political theorists, the Groupe de Recherche Interuniversitaire en Philosophie Politique, GRIPP). The Fellow will also be expected to teach one course per year, most likely an upper-level undergraduate course on “Philosophy, Economics, and Society,” though other matches between curricular needs and the Fellow’s interests are possible.

The competition has a preference for political theorists, but is also open to those whose research in comparative politics or the public law field of political science falls within the theme of constitutional studies: constitutional design, constitutional law, and the operation of constitutional-level political institutions.

Applicants should send a cover letter, CV, research statement (including a plan of the work to be pursued in the next two years), one writing sample of no more than 10,000 words, to RGCS.McGill@gmail.com by June 20, 2014, and should arrange for 2-3 letters of recommendation to be sent to the same address. It is helpful and welcome if the cover letter specifies one or more political science members of RGCS’ faculty roster ( http://www.mcgill.ca/rgcs/faculty ) who might be most appropriate as a research advisor, but the final match with an advisor or advisors may differ.

The competition is open with respect to nationality; knowledge of French is an advantage but not required. Other information on postdoctoral fellowships at McGill is available at http://www.mcgill.ca/gps/postdocs/fellows , including information on obtaining a Canadian work permit if necessary. Ph.D. must have been awarded between January 1, 2010 and the date of application, or else the dissertation must have been successfully defended and all requirements for the degree completed by the date of application (i.e. with formal awarding of the degree still pending).

All e-mailed parts of an application including letters of recommendation should include the applicant’s name in the subject line. Applications submitted as one complete interfolio file are welcome.