The Hedgehog Review articles from June 2005

The Hedgehog Review archives from June 2005

Commitments in a post-foundationalist world.
June 22, 2005... With the publication of our first special issue, some words of explanation are in order. Departing from our regular format, this issue presents an important conversation currently taking place within political theory. Why publish a set...

Weak ontology: genealogy and critical issues (1).(ESSAYS)
June 22, 2005... The concept of weak ontology does not so much name a doctrine as gesture toward a thicket of philosophical issues. If the concept has had any resonance, then it is because others have found themselves struggling as well with one difficult...

White Noise.(Book Review)
June 22, 2005... In Sustaining Affirmation, Stephen White distills the ontological orientations that inform several political theories, including mine. In doing so, he plays up the importance of language to ethics, identity, and politics. In the novel White...

The "weak ontology" thesis.
June 22, 2005... I agree with much of Stephen White's interesting reflections in Sustaining Affirmations. I would like to try to present my own version of the reasons for adopting a thesis very much like his. This will involve some changes in nomenclature and...

The idea of individual infinitude.
June 22, 2005... In his discussion of my work, Stephen White finds several "weaknesses." (1) One weakness is my treatment of two (out of four) constituent elements of human beings--language and human finitude--and another is my over-confident anti-theism....

The politics of avoidance: the limits of weak ontology (1).
June 22, 2005... Grand narratives and strong ontologies have a remarkable hold on contemporary life. Fundamentalist positions are ever more pervasive and intractable. In the United States, religious and market fundamentalisms impress themselves on global and...

Respect for persons.
June 22, 2005... The essence of political liberalism lies in the insistence that many of our deepest moral convictions, vital though they are in other areas of our lives, have no proper place in the political principles that define our relations as free and...

Ontology and narrative.
June 22, 2005... A specialist on the media once wrote: "The best way to control and manipulate an individual is not to tell them what to do; that always generates resistance, hostility and defiance. Instead, tell a person who and what they are. They will end...

Ontology: a useful category of analysis.
June 22, 2005... Does the identification of an "ontological turn" in political theory signal compelling new problems in the field, or perhaps for the field? I'd like to suggest three ways in which such an identification might be generative. First, if, as...

Afterword: notes on the bearable lightness of being.
June 22, 2005... In political inquiry, as in intellectual inquiry more generally, advances in understanding come in a variety of shapes and sizes, emerge from disparate routes, and occur through different strategies. As Thomas Kuhn has famously argued,...

An interview with Richard Flathman.(Interview)
June 22, 2005... In his book, Sustaining Affirmation, Stephen White charts the contours of a "weak ontological" turn in contemporary moral and political theory. According to White, as we are pressed to deepen and extend our moral and political commitments, we...

Weak ontology.(BIBLIOGRAPHIC REVIEW)(Critical Essay)
June 22, 2005... In his recent book, Sustaining Affirmation: The Strengths of Weak Ontology in Political Theory, Stephen White outlines the contours of an emerging "ontological turn" in contemporary political theory. Increasingly, White contends, political...