Sheldon Wolin

Political Theory is the study of the ideas, concepts, and arguments that historical political figures have used to make sense of and influence their social, political, and cultural worlds. Studying these ideas, concepts, and arguments (many of which might sound quite foreign to our ears) allows us to, as Hannah Arendt puts it, “think what we are doing” politically – that is, to shed light on and suggest solutions to some of the biggest political problems facing the world today. In this course, students will gain a familiarity and fluency with the main traditions, themes, and debates that shape how we think about and participate in politics. Students will be challenged to reconsider their political preconceptions and commitments in light of reading, discussing, and writing about authors from diverse historical backgrounds and ideological perspectives. In this way, students will themselves participate in the tradition of Political Theory.

This writing-intensive course proceeds in four roughly chronological thematic units. In Unit 1, “Virtue vs. Virtù,” we read works by Plato and Machiavelli that question the role of knowledge and morality in political life. Unit 2, “The Social Contract and its Critics” turns to John Locke, Carole Pateman, and Charles Mills to explore the foundations and limitations of the modern liberal state. In Unit 3, “Freedom, Colonialism, Violence,” we read the work of John Stuart Mill and Frantz Fanon to determine the meaning and value of individual freedom in a world marked by colonial and racial violence. Unit 4, “Power, Identity, Resistance” turns to Friedrich Nietzsche and Judith Butler to investigate how power operates to create modern political subjectivities, particularly the sexed and gendered subject.

Çağdaş siyaset felsefesinin asli tartışmalarından biri “demokrasi” kavramı etrafında şekillenmiştir. Bilhassa 1980’lerden sonra “katılımcı demokrasi” ve “radikal demokrasi” tartışmalarıyla birlikte bu kavram adeta hem sorunun hem çözümün kaynağı gibi görülmeye başlanmıştır. Bu nedenle pek çok düşünür demokrasiyi farklı bağlamlarda tanımlamaya çalışmış ve yeni kavramsallaştırmalar önermiştir. Bu isimlerden biri de, Türkçe felsefe literatüründe fazla değinilmemiş olan Sheldon S. Wolin’dir. Bu çalışmada Wolin’in demokrasi üzerine düşünceleri ve bu bağlamda önerdiği “firari demokrasi” kavramı incelenecektir. Bunun için öncelikle “siyaset” ile “siyasal” kavramları arasında yaptığı ayrım ortaya konacak; sonra da “demokrasi” kavramının “anayasal demokrasi” ve “temsili demokrasi”ye indirgenmemesi gerektiği şeklindeki eleştirisinin altı çizilecektir. Ardından Wolin’in “firari demokrasi” kavramı incelenerek, bu yaklaşımın demos’u harekete geçiren geçici bir uğrak olarak anlaşılması gerektiği ifade edilecektir. Makalenin son kısmındaysa Wolin’in “firari demokrasi” anlayışına getirilen eleştiriler özetlenecektir. Böylelikle Wolin’in kavramsallaştırmasının ve demokrasi anlayışının detaylı bir değerlendirmesi yapılacaktır.

Desde una perspectiva popular, el maquiavelismo es entendido generalmente como indiferencia hacia la moral. Además, muchos académicos han considerado a Nicolás Maquiavelo como un teórico político que solo presto atención a las reglas de obtención del poder. En contraste con esto, existen numerosos y variopintos testimonios del interés de Maquiavelo por la moral. El principal objetivo de este artículo es tratar de ofrecer una perspectiva unificada sobre este asunto.

From a popular point of view, Machiavellianism is mainly understood as indifference to morality. Moreover, many scholars have conceived Niccolò Machiavelli as a political theorist who only paid attention to the rules of obtaining power. Contrasting with this interpretation, there are many diverse testimonies of the Machiavelli’s concern about morals. The main object of this article is to try to offer a unity perspective around this topic.

In a society that is increasingly marked by apathy, division, and moral incompetence, how might Christians set about working with others in such a way as to begin to address those challenges that seem to overwhelm our capacity to respond? In Radical Friendship, Ryan Newson argues that the often-neglected practice of communal discernment provides a path to faithful political engagement that is worthy of reconsideration, especially given its ability to create authentic friendships both within and beyond the church. Such friendships, Newson maintains, are capable of fostering a type of competence in people who engage the practice that can counteract those social, political forces that are antithetical to competence’s formation.

Uniquely, Newson explores the contours of communal discernment as a practice that is especially relevant to Christians seeking radical democratic alternatives to political liberalism. Communal discernment is shown to be capable of generating conscientious participation in grassroots politics; additionally, this practice enables Christians to enjoy reciprocal, discerning relationships with people of differing convictional communities. Indeed, communal discernment turns out to be capable of preparing Christians to recognize and celebrate analogues to the practice in the world at large.

This essay attempts to demonstrate the limits of American social science by examining the tension between method and theory and, in particular, how this tension plays out in The Authoritarian Personality as well as in contemporary works of political psychology informed by Adorno et al.’s 1950 study. What I find is a persistent and unbridgeable gulf between method and theory where the former offers seemingly knowable, objective, repeatable, and actionable knowledge about the world, and the latter offers unverifiable particularity, nuance, and contingency. Method seeks to analyze the world as it is screening out complicating questions about base assumptions at work in the existing power structure and the enterprise of “normal science.” Theory seeks to apprehend not only the dynamics of the present moment but also the forces that have shaped the present and to develop new horizons of our political imagination.

Radical democrats such as Sheldon Wolin and Jason Frank often frame radical democracy and liberal constitutionalism as mutually opposed. I argue that they are mutually constitutive. Liberal constitutionalism entails a bundle of normative commitments that support the free expression of radical democratic actors who revolt against one fundamental law in order to write another. Radical democracy enacts the spirit of revolution within the liberal constitutionalist imperative to critically interrogate the fundamental law and prepare oneself—if necessary—to overthrow it. Furthermore, liberal equality—the idea that everyone counts and that everyone counts “only as one”—underwrites the political initiative of the “deviants” and “outsiders” at the center of radical democrats’ concern. Popular sovereignty derives much of its appeal from the liberal individualist principle of self-determination, the idea that individuals should rule themselves. The personal and political rights of both democratic actors and their opponents are the invisible constitution of radical democracy. Anyone calling himself a democrat must treat that constitution as binding.

This essay challenges Sheldon Wolin’s critique of social acceleration in order to recuperate impatience for democracy and political theory. First, I argue that patience and impatience offer a more productive temporal framework of analysis. Second, I demonstrate that impatience is an implicit demotic virtue, which changes democracy’s relation to social acceleration. Third, I illustrate the continued viability of patient theorizing by showing how Wolin revises an initially rash understanding of political time due to critical interlocutors. Finally, I flesh out a positive impatience within Wolin’s approach to political theory. Impatient theorizing results from and is commensurate with demotic impatience.

Al calor de la crisis de 2008, en esta obra se busca articular una propuesta que desde la retórica clásica y humanista sea capaz de enriquecer las teorías de la democracia radical contemporáneas.
En sus capítulos iniciales se aborda una defensa de la teoría política a partir de su compleja inserción en la ciencia política contemporánea, cuyo surgimiento en Estados Unidos desde fines del siglo XIX se narra históricamente.
El estudio posterior de las obras de Isócrates, Quintiliano y Giambattista Vico muestra una tradición retórica mediterránea que se ha venido erigiendo como contraparte, primero de la visión platónica dominante y más tarde de la cartesiana. Con su concepción amplia y compleja de la ciudadanía, donde junto al logos se toma en cuenta el pathos, la phantasia o el ethos, y gracias su visión general de la política como un modo no bélico de llegar a acuerdos mediante el cultivo de la palabra y la atención a los silencios, esta tradición es capaz de conectar con la teoría política que desde mediados del siglo XX se erige como contraparte postpositivista frente a la ciencia política tradicional.
Asimismo, se resaltarán las similitudes y trasvases que puedan darse con los aspectos esenciales de la propuesta democrática contenida en las obras de Hannah Arendt y Sheldon S. Wolin, a quienes se dedican los capítulos finales.

Acceso al libro completo en el repositorio Docta de la UCM: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/95820

Çağdaş siyaset felsefesinin temel tartışma alanlarından biri “radikal demokrasi” kavramıdır. Bu yaklaşımın temsilcisi sayılan isimler arasında belli müştereklikler olmasına karşın ciddi farklılıklar da vardır. Ne var ki, özellikle iki kuramcının düşünsel verimleri arasındaki benzerlikler bir hayli dikkat çekicidir: Jacques Rancière ve Sheldon S. Wolin. İki isim de, sahih siyasal ilişkinin mevcut siyaset düzenini sekteye uğratması gerektiğini; demokrasinin yalnızca hukuki-politik bir biçimden ibaret olmadığını ileri sürmüştür. Ayrıca her ikisi de siyasetin öznesini “demos” kavramı çerçevesinde tartışmaktadır. Düşünsel hatları oldukça benzeyen ama birbirinin çalışmalarına hiç referans vermemiş bu iki düşünür arasındaki benzerlikler hayli çarpıcıdır. Bu çalışmanın amacı, iki kuramcının görüşlerini özetleyerek paralelliklere dikkat çekmek ve nasıl benzer kavramsal tertibatlara yaslanarak düşündüklerini gözler önüne sermektir.

This article turns to Hobbes’s theory of laughter to determine the role collective laughter plays in democratic politics. After examining the political themes in Hobbes’s various accounts of laughter as well as the appearances laughter makes in his political philosophy, I argue that the Hobbesian body politic is a laughing body politic at the moment of its foundation. The individuals who contract with one another to establish a commonwealth perform the same sudden, “vainglorious,” and counter-sovereign political enactment as the laughing individual in Hobbes. This notion of a “laughing body politic” illuminates how Hobbes—the philosophical champion of sovereign power—provides resources for theorizing the counter-sovereign, democratic possibilities of collective laughter today.

In this article, I address a crucial distinction between a sanctuary city (or county or state) and religious-based sanctuary. While I believe both are important forms of resistance to the sovereign powers guiding migration policy and enforcement today, I argue that the latter is more radical. I examine what seems to be a conflation between the two types of sanctuary and the legal context for the necessity of radical, extra-institutional action, even if the latter is also significant. This latest version is probably better than the others ones I have posted--I still need to include more citations for some of my claims and provide more legal resources for others. If you are a researcher in this area and believe I should look at your work or someone else's, please message me. For students who have been assigned to read my work on sanctuary, this is the most current and cleanest version.

It is widely accepted that Sheldon Wolin has revitalized the tradition of radicalism in the context of modern political thought, as evidenced by his contribution to the debate on the so-called death of political philosophy and his forceful critique of Rawls and modern political liberalism. However, Wolin’s fugitive democracy has met with opposition. This paper investigates fugitive democracy from a Marxist perspective and questions whether fugitive democracy can actually confront crucial socio-political issues such as the lack of democracy for the masses in the production of social wealth. Moreover, Wolin’s misinterpretation and rejection of Marx’s theory of democracy and politics leads him to a misconceived view of the Marxian philosophy of history and the progress of political societies as a whole, a misconception that leads to inconsistencies within his own work. And finally, although Wolin seems to be a radical democrat and appears to hold a worldview close to that of socialists, he in fact, despite his criticisms, follows a liberal logic.

Este TFM busca ser un compendio de qué es la Teoría Política, trazando sus aristas principales desde una perspectiva histórica y comparada a raíz de las aportaciones de autores clásicos de este campo del saber. Todo ello por motivación de una situación actual de desorientación en la que se encuentra la disciplina en cuestión, pretendiendo que este escrito sirva tanto de recordatorio de la relevancia de esta materia, como de introducción para futuros teóricos políticos. La hipótesis que se pretende confrontar, de manera paralela al delineamiento de la profesión, es la idea de que sí es posible distinguir a la teoría política de la filosofía política, basando esta defensa en la contribución teorética de Hannah Arendt principalmente.

Political theorist Sheldon Wolin's ideas are a useful guide to thinking about the EU's "managed democracy" and Brexit as an instance of "fugitive democracy", a sporadic rebellion against elite control. This helps understand why Brexit is hard to achieve, but also provides lessons for the left on future organising. "Democracy didn't end after the referendum!" We often hear these words from steadfast Remainers who wish to reverse the UK's decision to leave the European Union. It is a refrain most commonly deployed as an argument for a second referendum, with the implicit belief that it would yield a different outcome. It has the air of a truism. And in one sense, of course, it is true: democracy as an institutional formation featuring periodic elections did not end with the Brexit vote. But what if democracy is understood differently, in more radical terms: not as a ritualised form of government by socioeconomic elites, but as an episodic phenomenon that is inherently disruptive and in which ordinary citizens become active political agents? This is the conception of democracy-known as "fugitive democracy"-advanced by the political theorist Sheldon Wolin (b.1922-d.2015). A renowned critic of American politics and economy, Wolin's political thought is instructive in helping us make sense of our current moment and the forces which led us here. In this article, I argue that the vote for Brexit can be understood as an instance of fugitive democracy, aimed at contesting the legitimacy of a status quo in which ordinary citizens are economically marginalised and excluded from political power. Wolin was primarily focused on the American case, but I want to suggest that we can extend his arguments to contemporary Britain as well.

This op ed piece in Huffington Post, adapted from the Educ.ation Week conversation with Deborah Meier, argues that the crucial task after the election is remembering the citizen-centered view of democracy which animated the country's founding and giving it democratic foundations in "free spaces." People-controlled schools which bring people together across partisan divides are one example.

Sheldon S. Wolin’s ‘fugitive democracy’ is arguably his most provocative contribution to political theory. Breaking with the understanding of democracy as a constitutional form whose origins he locates in the work of Aristotle, Wolin claims democracy is better understood not as a constitution, but as a ‘rebellious moment,’ making democracy dependent on cultural rather than institutional characteristics. This formulation poses a problem for democracy as a political phenomenon, as political power today tends to be concentrated within institutions. Without institutional expression, democracy is alienated from political power and hence a contradiction in terms. I reconstruct an understanding of Wolin’s fugitive democracy that can avoid such problems, while also being adequate to the current political juncture. I argue that Aristotle’s conception of the practice of justice, read through the lens of Wolin’s ‘fugitive democracy,’ becomes ‘fugitive justice,’ the cultivation of a democratic ethos that might support and sustain fortuitous democratic moments, connecting democratic culture to political institutions. In this way, Aristotle’s work is split: not simply the founder of constitutionalism, through ‘fugitive justice’ Aristotle becomes a resource for radical democrats, and a complement to Wolin’s concept of democracy.

İlki Kasım 2019'da, ikincisi Ocak 2021’de düzenlenen Politika Teorisi buluşmalarının üçüncüsünde Union Colllege’dan Doç. Dr. Çiğdem Çıdam ve Uşak Üniversitesi’nden Doç. Dr. Utku Özmakas konuşmacı olacak. Bu buluşma için seçilen metin, Sheldon Wolin’in “Firari Demokrasi”si. Atölyenin moderatörlüğünü ise Özyeğin Üniversitesi’nden Dr. Arda Güçler yürütecek.

13 Aralık Pazartesi günü saat 16:00’da çevrimiçi gerçekleşen etkinlik ilgilenen herkese açıktır. Katılım linkini edinmek için kayıt olmanız gerekmektedir:
https://www.ieu.edu.tr/tr/etkinlik-kayit

Despite drawing on different historical traditions and philosophical
sources, Sheldon Wolin and Étienne Balibar have come to see
citizenship and democracy in fundamentally similar ways. However,
the work of one has not been considered alongside that of the other. In
this paper, I examine some of their key texts and draw out three areas of
common concern: the historical specificity of the political, citizenship
as a dialectical process and dedemocratization. The significance of
Wolin and Balibar’s writing on citizenship and democracy lies in a set
of proposals for the eternal rebirth of the citizen as democratic agent
between action and institution, hierarchy and equality, individual
and community, difference and the universal. Their open-ended
frameworks can be seen as an antidote to contemporary pessimism
about the fate of democracy as either political order or normative
ideal. I conclude by suggesting that contemporary Ecuadorean and
Bolivian debates about how to combine relational ontologies and
liberalism has opened a fertile domain for re-imagining the I and We
of citizenship.

Paper ini merupakan review dari tulisan karya Sheldon Wolin yang berjudul, "What Revolutionary Action Means Today". Dengan menggunakan studi kasus pada Gun-Control Movement di Amerika, penulis ingin melihat lebih jauh apakah sebenarnya pergerakan tersebut dapat dikatakan sebagai gerakan sosial yang ideal, seperti yang dikatakan oleh Wolin dalam karyanya tersebut.

Desde los orígenes de la ciencia política norteamericana y la posición de la teoría política en ella, hasta la recuperación de la retórica clásica y humanista al hilo de las teorías de la democracia radical de autores como Hannah Arendt y Sheldon S. Wolin, este estudio se presenta como un modo de abrir perspectivas teóricas de cara a la crisis de la política actual.

Sheldon S. Wolin's theory of fugitive democracy has been both lauded and criticized for its radical departure from the mainstays of democratic theory: formal institutions, political offices and constitutional arrangements of power. For Wolin, democracy is correctly understood as an ephemeral event that appears unexpectedly when ordinary citizens, united by a shared grievance, collectively interrupt normal political proceedings and reject constitutionalism. This article critically analyzes Wolin's theory in light of a historical phenomenon in which citizens collectively interrupted politics: frontier vigilantism in the American West from 1850 to 1900. Critical of Wolin's wholesale rejection of constitutionalism, the article reveals the potentially legalistic patterns of extra-legal collective action, and it argues for de-fetishizing democratic practice that occurs outside of institutional channels.

“This is what democracy looks like!” has been a popular refrain in Trump-era political movements and protests such as the 2017 Women’s March and the 2018 March to Save Our Lives. But what exactly does democracy look like? Is democracy a practice of participatory government or a system of representation? Does democracy involve citizens rationally deliberating with one another about public policy or disruptively taking charge of social, political, and economic institutions? Is democracy best described as a revolutionary, reformist, tyrannical, liberal, or conservative form of government? What is the relationship between democracy and contemporary capitalism and racial and gender politics?

This speaking-intensive course investigates these and other questions by exploring classical and contemporary theories of democracy. The course proceeds in five thematic units. We begin in Unit 1 (“Democratic Theory – The Ancients”) by reading some of the foundational texts in classical political thought concerning democracy as a form of government. Unit 2 (“Liberalism and the Tyranny of the Majority”) explores the fraught relationship between modern liberal and democratic modes of government, paying particular attention to the issue of the “tyranny of the majority.” Unit 3 (“Representation vs. Participation”) investigates competing conceptions of democracy as an institutional arrangement or practice of political participation. Unit 4 (“Deliberative vs. Radical Democracy”) studies the tradition of deliberative democratic theory alongside critics who conceive of democracy in more radical terms. Unit 5 (“Neoliberalism, Race, and Democracy”) concludes by exploring the relationship between democracy, white supremacy, and neoliberal capitalism.

This essay sketches some ways of practicing historical contextualization, and of pursuing questions about authorial intention, that do not depend on the anti-presentist separation of the history of political theory from the critical study of contemporary politics, but actually help integrate them; and it proposes that these approaches, though dissimilar in style, have important affinities in spirit with Sheldon Wolin’s own way of doing political theory, and with the account of the relation of theory to politics he expressed in work from “Political Theory as a Vocation” to his contribution to the inaugural issue of this journal.