[I.] Given that the thinkers we will consider are (as we all are) historical beings, how far do the points they make have a general relevance, rather than just a limited historical bearing? This is a more complex issue than may appear.

We must not assume that everyone who talks of ‘the nature of political authority’ will be raising the same issue. The question must be understood in the context within which it is being asked. No doubt this is true of any question whatever, but it may be more urgent that we keep it in mind in some cases than in others. It is particularly urgent when philosophy is in the air, since a large part of the puzzlement generated by many philosophical questions arises from the fact that they are treated as if they had a sense independent of any particular context. [I.A.] One important consideration in this connection may be brought out by considering the following reflections by Wittgenstein on the peculiar cast of Frank Ramsey's thinking:

Introduction

From 1850 onwards, diverse styles of Hindu modernity were actively con¬figured by intellectuals, gurus, and social activists along crisscrossing transnational circuits between India and Europe. In regions centred around the presidencies of Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay, Hindu visions were increas¬ingly projected as rooted in the spiritual depths of the human person and charged with the liberative power to transcend various types of ‘Western’ dualities that are said to generate insularity, hatred, and violence. These visions, forged in crucibles of colonial modernity, were recalibrated from various scriptural templates such as the Upaniṣads (800 BCE–200 BCE) and the Bhagavad-gītā (c. 200 CE). During the premodern centuries, these mul¬tiple templates had already been systematised by some influential Vedāntic traditions such as the trans-theistic non-duality of Śaṃkara (c. 800 CE), the theistic non-duality of Rāmānuja (c. 1100 CE), and so on. Reworked itera¬tions of these traditions would be articulated by influential figures such as Swami Vivekananda, Mahatma Gandhi, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, and others. In recent decades, a significant body of literature has explored how they received and reworked European ideas in the process of translating ancient Indic wisdom into contemporary vocabularies. In this chapter, we will explore these East-West trajectories in the reverse direction – we will examine how three pioneering Roman Catholic theologians engaged with Vedāntic visions in their attempts to translate Christianity, a religious world¬view often perceived as inalienably ‘western’, into Indic idioms. As we will see, Bede Griffiths (1906–1993), Henri Le Saux (Swami Abhishiktananda) (1910–1973), and Sara Grant (1922–2000) argued that Vedāntic worldviews can provide Christians with some vital resources to articulate key doctrinal statements without postulating or reinforcing a radical bifurcation between God and humanity or between humanity and the natural world.

Scholars like Asani, Boivin, Mukherjee, Purohit, and Shodhan have exten¬sively discussed the identity formation of Satpanthi (followers of the true path) Ismaili groups over the last 150–170 years. Many accounts begin with the arrival of the Ismaili Imām, Āgā Khān I, in Mumbai in the late 1840s. Most scholars view the Aga Khan Case (1866) as the start of Satpanthi Ismailis acquiring a new ‘Islamic identity’, which, many claim, further solidified with the Hāji Bibi Case (1905–1908), marking the emergence of a Shi`a Imāmi Ismaili Nizārī identity.

This chapter questions the above-stated assumptions and raises some criti¬cal questions. What did it mean to be Satpanthi Shia in the early modern period? How appropriate is it to claim that the newly initiated (‘converts’) were not aware of their ‘Islamic’ affiliation before the nineteenth-century/modern period? Can communities like the Satpanthis be categorised as ‘syn¬cretistic’ or ‘standing on the threshold’? The chapter argues that though the newly initiated community was aware of the Islamic affiliation of some of their practices, beliefs, and vocabulary for centuries before the court cases of the nineteenth century, this awareness did not imply identifying with a specific religion called ‘Islam’ or not identifying with ‘Hinduism’ as these cat¬egories did not exist. I argue that the ‘British colonial rule compelled’ or colo¬nial apparatus like a census and administrative systems ‘forced’ Satpanthis to rethink/re-articulate their identities, expediting the process of identity forma¬tion. The chapter attempts to construct an alternate narrative of the process of identity formation over multiple centuries.

This book deals with the morality, honour, prestige and self-conception of states, all of which goes well beyond the narrow, rationalist defence of national interests, which dominates most International Relations (IR) studies. The honour of states – which is most clearly seen in situations of war – rests on the idealised conception of ‘all of us’, which includes all citizens, all classes and all generations, set against their opposite numbers outside of ‘our’ imme¬diate sphere of domination. This state-based image of itself and its existential teleology constitutes its very essence, notwithstanding that it is often seen as a deviation (‘exception’) from the normal state of affairs, where the state is ‘just’ there to serve and support the economy and its principal actors.

The volume, which is particularly topical given the current belligerent state of Europe and the global struggle for hegemony, pursues this line of thinking along three different but interconnected routes. The first chapter delves into the morality question itself, tackling the complex relationship between poli¬tics, law and morals and between states and citizens. The universe of moral judgements feeds off rigid distinctions between good and bad, I/we and the Other, liberty and restraint. Political actors support it, law legitimates it and citizens enact it.

The second chapter deals with the question of the honour and prestige of states, historically and conceptually. This is a question that has mostly been ignored, downplayed or misconceived by international relations theories, but which has now shown its renewed relevance and cries out for an explanation.

1. Introduction

• A. Different kinds of question

  • 1. The problem of how to discriminate

  • 2. Wording not infallible guide

  • 3. Look at how people look for the answer and what implications they see in that answer.

    • (a) This works O.K. in some cases.

      • 1. Examples.

    • (b) But not in others.

      • 1. People may have been confused about what they are asking.

        • a. Examples

  • 4. There is no formula: judgement necessary. But one can be self-conscious about one's own inquiry.

  • 5. Such inquiries not necessarily trivial, peripheral or merely preliminary; they may uncover quite substantive issues.

    • (a) Examples.

• B. Application to ‘what is political authority’?

  • 1. Consider Hume's ‘Of the First Principles of Government’, which opens with the well-known observation:

  • Nothing appears more surprising to those who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few and the implicit submission with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers.

  • 2. This may be understood

    • a. Sociologically

    • b. Morally [?]

    • c. Philosophically [conceptually]

  • 3. These (and other) aspects may be combined.

    • a. Such combinations may be symptom of, or lead to, confusion

    • b. But we should not assume this must be so in all cases.

  • 4. Example: their combination in Hume

• C. Conceptual questions

  • 1. Their relation to philosophical puzzlement

  • 2. ‘Grammar’

    • a. Wittgenstein's use of this term

    • b. Don't assume it's trivial

      • 1. Cf. Guess's irritation about my speaking thus of St. John in the SW book.

      • 2. N.B. the mingling with ‘ethics’

There is little doubt that urban planning has failed women (Pojani et al. 2018). A series of feminist planners, architects, and human geographers have elucidated the ways in which contemporary cities favour the male gender. Recent books on this topic include What If Women Designed the City (East 2024), She City (Kalms 2024), Gendered City (Bassam 2023), Trophy Cities (Pojani 2021), Feminist City (Kern 2020), Engendering Cities (Sánchez de Madariaga and Neuman 2020), and Where Are the Women Architects? (Stratigakos 2016), not to mention a myriad of articles, reports, special issues, and blogs. Similar literature has been produced since the 1970s, as the second wave of the feminist movement gained momentum, and some classic readings have been featured in Gender and Planning (Fainstein and Servon 2005).

However, sexism in urban planning was cemented much earlier than sec¬ond-wave feminism. The urban environments we experience today have been shaped by long-standing systems of gender inequality. In fact, patriarchy has accompanied human civilisation all along, and as such, it has likely affected city planning since antiquity. But during the so-called Second Industrial Revolution – which stretches from the mid- to late 1800s, through the interwar period – patriarchal regimes fused with industrial capitalism to produce a particularly pernicious version of urbanism.

The patriarchy is defined as a social system in which men hold primary power and dominance, systematically oppressing and marginalising women and feminised “others.” Meanwhile, industrial capitalism is an economic system where private individuals or corporations own and control the means of production and distribution of goods, driven by the goal of profit. This system became widespread throughout the North Atlantic during the Second Industrial Revolution. It was characterised by large-scale industrial produc¬tion, technological innovation, and the accumulation of capital through investments and market competition.

Introduction

The triumphalist argument of a sweeping project of modernity, anchored in a predominantly Enlightenment-driven European imagination seen almost exclusively as Europe's very own hallmark accomplishment, did not always go entirely unnoticed or uncritiqued in parts of the non-West. Indeed, in recent times, it has been critically interrogated even in scholarship on the European experience, resulting, at times, in a rebuttal of the very thesis of modernity and the Weberian discourse of disenchantment (Entzauberung). Bruno Latour thus sees the thesis of disenchantment emanating from certain Western arrogance as well as a sense of despair that came to the fore through the recurrent and myriad juxtapositions of the Western superior ‘self’ contra the non-Western infantile ‘other’.1 As we shall see, in the process, Latour inspired a whole generation of scholars who have come to revisit the very epistemic bases of modernity in Europe vis-à-vis developments elsewhere in the world. Indeed, in large parts of the nineteenth and twentieth-century colonial world, scholars, religious figures, and public intellectuals – it is conventionally understood – were typically torn between the two ends of this spectrum. At one level, there would be a tacit acceptance of the hegemony of Eurocentric agendas and aspirations or even striving in some cases to emulate them in the name of a ‘modernity’ that they thought held a key to their progress. At another level, they often went to the other end of the pole by turning to an indigenist discourse, inward-looking at best but frequently dubbed as an enterprise tantamount to unqualified ‘traditionalism’.

Climate, Priorities, and Responses

With cities and towns in the process of developing strategies in response to current and future urban environmental and cultural issues, the potential responses, at best, would provide outcomes for positive livability in the con¬text of climate change, including livability and equitable access in future urban contexts. This focus began with the first phase of current responses to climate change generally appearing after the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015. Cities and towns continued to produce key initiatives in response to climate change and the need for equitable access, with an emphasis on climate mitigation, urban greening, walkability, and access. The results are potential planning and design approaches needed to advance the prospects of climate mitigation and equity as influences for viable livability in future urban contexts, including connections and urban landscapes. A prime chal¬lenge is the need for communities to produce resources derived from public and private entities for the current and future community adaptation to cli¬mate change mitigation. Ultimately, the potential quality of urban livability relative to climate and equity management will depend on the availability of such resources as cities respond to current and future climate issues.

Urban livability can be influenced by a range of factors, including walk¬ability. Conditions that influence walkability include connection qualities in the hierarchy of connections and places along boulevards, avenues, and local streets. The hierarchy of the streets is a common feature in most urban and suburban contexts due to the efficiency required for optimal pedestrian and vehicular function. The use of the urban grid in cities has furnished a logi¬cal pattern of urban connections in urban contexts for many centuries. The hierarchical street function continues to contribute to pedestrian experience in urban landscape contexts, with positive effects on the livability of cities and towns.

Lecture 17

We were discussing Locke's views on ‘natural rights’. – The force of calling them ‘natural’ etc. and some comments on liberty and equality.

Property

Connected with 1688 revolution. – Whig land-owning aristocracy the most important political class: protection of their economic interests.

But it is paradoxical that the form of argument which Locke used to justify this protection was later taken over by Marx precisely to attack the interests of seated property.

What sort of an undertaking is a ‘justification of property’?

Suppose you see me in possession of a motorcar which you thought to be the property of the Principal: you might require me to ‘justify’ my possession of it. I might do so by telling you that the Principal had given it to me. This, if true, would be a perfectly good justification. But what sort of justification is it? It is not a ‘justification of property’ (in general), but a justification of my possession of a particular object by pointing out the fact that it is my property, and this is done by referring to certain procedures, which we use as criteria for deciding what is my property and what isn’t.

Most of us are trying to forget COVID-19 and its trail of devastation.

We seem to have a collective amnesia that has set in, and yet, as the essays in this book edited by Ananta Kumar Giri and Saji Verghese remind us, we are only at the beginning of a series of profound traumas waiting to happen. The immense waves of heat washing over the planet in the 2020s can only mean disaster and destruction, at least in the near term. The very real possibility of another new pandemic seems closer and closer: H5N1, aka the “Bird Flu,” is spreading and appears about to erupt catastrophically, just as mystery diseases have begun appearing in Africa and elsewhere as well.

What shall we make of the world in this first quarter of the twenty-first century?

Just as these traumas are upon us, beginning with the Great Black Swan of COVID-19, the possibility of real transformations are also beckoning. Massive technological innovations spell the end of the fossil fuel economy and even a possible de-growth movement. Already, young people around the planet are less likely to follow the path of rampant consumerism, explicitly rejecting ownership of cars, homes, and appliances. Well, maybe not some appliances. The ubiquitous presence of Smart Phones, at our bedsides and in our hands morning to night make for potential manipulations at a grand scale, as we have witnessed in recent elections in developed countries. “So-called developed” is perhaps the more apt term for these countries. The scale of savagery inflicted by these “developed” nations on others, especially by the United States and its allies and including their own citizens, has been normalized in a world that has shifted to being even more transactional, chasing the almighty profit over personal relationships. For what ends, we have to ask ourselves? COVID-19 and its aftermath exposed the fault lines of upheavals to come, as the chapters in this book so well document in their deep explorations.

The Context

The first COVID-19 death in Brazil occurred on March 12, 2020. More than 275,000 people have officially died in one year. The slope of the curve has since then increased until it stabilized at the current figure of 700,000 deaths. We are the second country in the total number of deaths, just behind the United States. Brazilian pandemic management has been considered the worst worldwide and has produced terrible economic and social results. It is still worth considering why and how Brazilians have chosen such a strange destiny and why this situation has not triggered any more genuine astonishment in this society.

In truth, texts from philosophers like Giorgio Agamben, Slavoj Zizek, Franco Berardi, Judith Butler, Byung-Chul Han, and Paul Preciado have circulated in Brazil very promptly. Some were pessimistic. Others flirted with a kind of turning point in the history of techno-capitalism. Brazilian scholars like Andre Duarte, Pedro Duarte, Vladimir Safatle, Eduardo Jardim, Márcia Cavalcanti, Maria Cristina Franco Ferraz, and Tito Palmeiro have also written valuable papers and books about the issue. Yet, even recognizing the importance of producing more immediate interpretations of the pandemic events, we decided not to follow this path or hurry up to meet such demands. We have kept instead, since 2021, insisting on a challenging effort to address a phenomenology of breathing.

The reason for this approach is the insight that this pandemic is not an isolated phenomenon and demands a new perspective of analysis, to the point of reconsidering our present civilizational basis in its roots.