Public Philosophy in a New Key: Volume 2, Imperialism and Civic Freedom

Ideas in Context

by James H. Tully

These two ambitious volumes from one of the world's most celebrated political philosophers present a new kind of political and legal theory that James Tully calls a public philosophy, and a complementary new way of thinking about active citizenship, called civic freedom. Professor Tully takes the reader step-by-step through the principal debates in political theory and the major types of political struggle today. These volumes represent a genuine landmark in political theory. In this second volume, Professor Tully studies networks and civic struggles over global or imperial relations of inequality, dependency, exploitation and environmental degradation beyond the state. The final chapter brings all of the author's resonant themes together in a new way of thinking about global and local citizenship, and of political theory in relation to it. This forms a powerful conclusion to a major intervention from a vital and distinctive voice in contemporary thought.

Genres: Philosophy

384 pages, Paperback

First published December 18, 2008

Reviews

[Tony · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this volume, Tully continues to argue for the value of overlooked, subordinate political ideologies, or "subaltern" languages and practices that have been steamrolled by the dominant, law-centered paradigm; indeed, alternative ways of doing politics are often plain invisible to the constitutionalist paradigm, with its decided position of hegemony. The argument builds to a kind of crescendo in the last chapter (of this second volume) with the "civicising revolution" (p.307) based on the conclusion that, against the odds, it is still possible—both domestically and internationally—to "civicise" politics. Possibly his own neologism, to civicise means something like 'to make more civic-oriented', to paraphrase him loosely (presumably he wouldn't mind if the Americanized spelling to "civicize" were used, alternatively). This word and concept is traced clearly over the more familiar, but loaded—and often pejorative—imperial project to "civilise" indigenous peoples. (As an aside, it's odd that there is no entry in the index specific to the word "civicise" that appears repeatedly, e.g. pp.281, 284, 287, 280-81, 293, 295-6, 298, 300, 302-5, 308, etc. There is also the related term "citizenisation" pp.99-100, 119, 255, 257, 290-2, etc.) The concept of citizenizing or civicizing does a lot of work here, as it is also more or less equivalent to "de-subalternisation" of subjects/citizens. In a kind of minimalist programme, what's involved here is resistance in anarchist fashion, in the "interstices" left available (with notable defences of the role to be played by cooperatives, and by non-governmental organizations, e.g. Doctors without Borders gets a mention). But the two volumes lay out a maximalist position, and that's why the books are considered ambitious; there is an attempt at providing a counter-modernity, on behalf of all those who could be said to have been relegated to the sidelines of colonial modernity, or those pushing back against the state.

full disclosure: The author, Jim Tully, was a mentor of mine in undergraduate days, and I continue to hear echoes of his lectures in this volume, as well as see parallels with his other publications, demonstrating a remarkable consistency in his political thought, over the decades. This text refers explicitly to other books by the author, such as Strange Multiplicity: Constitutionalism in an Age of Diversity (1995), and An Approach To Political Philosophy: Locke In Contexts (1993); but there are clearly also echoes to the earlier 'Governing Conduct' (1988), being the first chapter in Conscience and Casuistry in Early Modern Europe. In some respects, the argument of Public Philosophy in a New Key also continues in the later, lengthy introduction Tully provides to his 2018 edition of The Power of Nonviolence by Richard B. Gregg.