Every theory of liberal multiculturalism is premised on some account of the nature of culture, cultural difference and social reality, or what I call “the conditions of multiculturality”. In this dissertation, I offer a revised account of the conditions and challenge of multiculturality. Beginning with the widely accepted idea that individuals depend on both culture and community as social preconditions for choice, freedom and autonomy, and informing this idea with collectivist and individualist lessons from Tyler Burge’s famous externalist thought-experiment, my analysis shows that social contexts are multicultural when they are characterized by a plurality of social communities offering distinct sets of cultural norms, and individuals are multicultural to the extent that they are capable of using cultural norms from various social communities. The depth, pervasiveness, and complexity of multiculturality raises important normative questions about fair and just terms for protecting and promoting social communities under conditions of internal and external cultural contestation, and these questions are not only restricted to cases involving internal minorities. As a theory of cultural justice, liberal multiculturalism must respond to the challenge of multiculturality generated by cultural difference per se, but it cannot do so adequately in all cases armed with only the traditional tools of toleration, freedom of association and exit, fundamental rights and freedoms, and internal political autonomy. My analysis demonstrates that, upon the revised conception of multiculturality, liberal theories of tolerationism, egalitarianism and nationalism leave significant cultural remainders, or unaccounted for cultural interests. What is needed is a different liberal multiculturalism, which respects the individual’s fundamental rights and freedoms, is committed to the equal and just treatment of individuals, tolerates voluntary cultural groups and practices in the social sphere, recognizes an individual right to culture, and provides some measure of state assistance to individuals seeking to protect and promote their cultural communities in the private sphere. This is a recipe for liberal cultural justice, and for a defensible liberal multiculturalism without nationalism. / Thesis (Ph.D, Philosophy) -- Queen's University, 2012-12-14 19:00:46.433

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The concept of human nature profoundly shapes our understanding of how political and social life ought to be organised. This thesis examines the concept of human nature developed by the Green political perspective and its impact on the Green understanding of economy, society and technology. By comparing the Green and Liberal concepts of human nature (and by extension their respective conceptualisation of society, economy and technology), it is argued that the roots of present day environmental crisis could be traced to the Liberal concept of human nature and the Liberal conceptualisation of the relationship between humanity and nature.

In this study in political theory I challenge the way in which national identity and liberalism are traditionally counterposed, by arguing that this opposition does not of existence rooted in time and space. On the proposed understanding, Locke’s position is a reaction to Hobbes’s demand for the complete surrender of individual particularity in exchange for an immutable state of perfect stability. It is argued that Locke appreciates the requirement of stability for generating future-oriented motivations in individuals, but exhibits a more humble approach to the human capacity to rule its own existence. The unbound autonomy to take charge of reality that Hobbes grants to humanity is replaced by a constrained ability to administer its existence within the corporeal confines of time and space. It is argued that the timespace constraints that Locke insists are metaphysically inherent to humankind, conflict with the boundary-free assumptions of cosmopolitanism. Conversely, it is maintained, Hobbes’s radical argument for dislodging humankind from spatiotemporal constraints serves as a platform for a cosmopolitan outlook, albeit a markedly authoritarian one. obtain in the work of one of the key figures in liberal thought, John Locke. This controversial assertion is supported by arguing that the conventional reading of Locke is tainted by Hobbesean preconceptions. Rejecting the view that Locke builds upon, or enhances, Hobbes’s position, this thesis instead maintains that Locke is replying to, and moreover divorcing himself from Hobbes. Thus Locke’s stance is portrayed as a distinctive and far more substantial contribution to political theory than he has traditionally been credited with. Furthermore, the distancing of Locke from Hobbes serves to expose the roots of the misconception of Locke’s political thought as a precursor of, and foundation for, a boundary-free cosmopolitanism. It is argued here that Locke’s political theory has become entangled with Hobbes’s due to a lack of attention to the formative relation between metaphysics and politics in their thought. This has obscured the metaphysical foundation of the social problem they are attempting to resolve, reducing it to the language of a clash of conflicting interests, so that the difference between their political prescriptions is presumed merely to echo the different degrees of potential conflict they observe, rather than being a substantive difference. The conventional framing of such conflict as a security problem, a concern for the harm of one’s person and possessions, is replaced here with that of an insecurity problem: an anxiety about the inability to identify regular rules that attach attributes, including possessions, to persons. In social terms, the future having not been secured, it cannot be trusted to connect with the past and present in a continuum. On the interpretation proposed here, Locke and Hobbes offer radically different measures for the artificial generation of this ‘continuum’. Their divergence concerns the degree of control they assume political solutions can exert over the social parallel of the metaphysical ‘continuum’ problem. It is maintained that Hobbes proposes to reverse the causes of anxiety about the future by artificially generating a constant environment, detached from the fluctuations inherent to a mode.

The purpose of this essay is to find out if the political parties have embraced each other's ideologies. The comprehensive question of the essay is: Have the Social Democratic Party and the Moderate Party ideologies viewpoint on man and society changed? Have their economic ideals changed? This essay will use a qualitative ideal type study on the political parties program from 1990, 2001 and 2013. The result of this essay shows that while both parties have approached liberalism, only the Moderate Party have kept their ideological view through the years in the study. While the Social Democratic Party still hold democratic socialism viewpoint on society and the states relationship with the market. They have adopted a liberal viewpoint on man. Antagonism is still pertinent between the two political parties.

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The main aim of this thesis is to analyse and explore the philosophical justifications for freedom of speech during the nineteenth century and their application as political praxis. In this work, specific types of free speech argument are identified and examined in the light of the ideological stance of those who sought to argue for freedom of speech, primarily from key ideological perspectives of the nineteenth century, utilitarianism, liberalism and socialism. Initially three types of free speech argument are identified: the accountability argument, the liberty argument and the truth argument. However, on an inspection of socialist arguments for freedom of speech, the author suggests that a fourth sufficiently distinct type of free speech argument is present, particularly within the more mature works of socialist radicals and agitators. Though the arguments for freedom of speech overlap within different ideological and historical contexts, a case is made for a relatively distinct type of free speech argument within the socialist political praxis of free speech. Furthermore, in examining key political and philosophical texts, and an analysis of the free speech arguments in nineteenth century political pamphlets and newspapers, the argument is made that in order to gain a thorough understanding of political history and philosophy a holistic approach should be adopted, one which looks at ideas, context, history, artefact, and political praxis.

This study aims to theory tentatively, with the basis taken from liberalism and realism, analyze and compare the factors underlying contemporary Swedish security policy, to work in political alliances while Sweden choose to be military non-aligned. The period in the study covers the years 2009-2016. The selected theories, through their differences and drivers, has been operationalized into indicators that have been used in the processing of empirical data and aimed at trying to clarify the theory that has the clearest explanation power to the selected security stance. The survey results show that the explanatory power of Swedish security policy can not be directly attributed to an isolated theory, but an interaction occurs. The liberal theory models are more dominant in the selected empirical data and has the clearest explanation power that Sweden is in political alliances and at the same time choose to be military non-aligned. The realistic theory model and its ideological roots are still in, that Sweden and our national interests, our history and tradition are important, which directly and indirectly affect us in our choices and our actions.

Thesis advisor: Christopher J. Kelly / In an effort to shed light on recent doubts about the future of liberal democracy, this dissertation compares the political thought of Montesquieu and Rousseau – two eighteenth-century philosophers who, beginning from strikingly similar premises, diverged radically in their prescriptions. Whereas Montesquieu sought to rationalize political life by nudging religion to the periphery of public consciousness, by attenuating patriotism, and by shifting legislative and judicial power to educated professionals, Rousseau sought to shore up religion’s popular influence, to instigate revivals of patriotism, and to defend popular self-government. I first take up their views of “the state of nature.” My account differs from those of the previous interpreters who have read the state of nature as a hypothetical construct, but it differs also from those of the previous interpreters who have read the state of nature as historical, inasmuch as I show that neither Montesquieu nor Rousseau made implausible assumptions about the naturalness of asociality or peacefulness. Next, I focus on the issue popular enlightenment. Whereas commentators have tended to cast Montesquieu simply as a proponent of the pacifying effects of enlightenment and Rousseau as a critic of its morally corrupting effects, I argue that they were both primarily interested in the relation between the dwindling of religious faith and the maintenance of the psychological qualities that underlie resistance to foreign and domestic threats to liberty. I then turn to the question of cosmopolitanism, suggesting that Montesquieu embraced it not because of any extreme idealism but because of his horror at the repressiveness and belligerence of actual patriotic republics. Likewise, I maintain that Rousseau’s embrace of patriotic “intoxication” was not a product of any romanticism; instead, it was a product of his thoroughly rationalistic inquiry into the phenomena of law and government. Finally, I argue that the divergence between them on the question of popular self-government followed from their divergent understandings of freedom. This divergence cannot be reduced either to “negative liberty” versus “positive liberty” or to “liberty as non-interference” versus “liberty as non-domination,” two paradigms that have long dominated Anglo-American political theorists’ thinking about freedom. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science.

Thesis advisor: Lisa Cahill / This dissertation investigates the relationship between religious aesthetics and justice in the pursuit of the societal common good. The orienting problem of the work is the tensive relationship between maintaining political stability and meaningful engagement with religious particularity in order to foster robust democratic participation, especially among communities that have been historically marginalized in American public life. This project interrogates the relationship between religion in public life through the specific locus of religious aesthetics: what role ought religious symbols—including images, narratives, music, liturgical practices—play in cultivating justice, or the minimum level of solidarity required for promoting basic human dignity in society? Each chapter illuminates the significance of a particular discourse in support this project. Chapter one exposes the relevance of Guadalupe as a religious symbol in public life. Chapter two forges a dialogue with John Rawls’s political philosophy, reiterating the necessity of an adequate framework for religion in public life that prohibits the ascent of particular comprehensive doctrines to inordinate influence over society’s basic structure while critiquing his framework for religion in public life as lacking adequate viability in a public context where limitation on religion in democratic speech about the most salient societal issues hinders participation of ethno-racially marginalized groups. Chapter three engages Martha Nussbaum’s response to these issues, highlighting her arguments pertaining to political emotions and aesthetics as crucial contributions to this framework. Nussbaum argues persuasively for a central relationship between emotions and cognition and, further, makes a convincing statement of the significance of aesthetics—primarily literature—in the cultivation of political emotion. Yet, Nussbaum’s work makes an unnecessary demand on religion in public life: that it be viewed as “civic poetry.” While this framework is less restrictive than Rawls’s framework, it does not yet articulate a robust appreciation of the positive meanings of religious pluralism, especially among individuals and communities for whom religious and public arguments are intertwined. Chapter four offers Alejandro García-Rivera’s theological aesthetics as a crucial component to an adequate framework for forming community across difference. García-Rivera offers the basis for a more inclusive framework for religion in public life, however, his lack of substantive engagement with ethical issues pertaining to justice demands attention. With these pieces in place, the fifth chapter knits together this set of insights toward a more adequate framework for engaging religious pluralism in liberal context: aesthetic solidarity. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.