Jan Alnes

El propósito de este artículo es refutar las objeciones de Marc Ramsey a los principios de educación cívica del liberalismo político. Argumento que Ramsey malinterpreta la distinción entre la esfera pública y la esfera privada que emana del liberalismo político, y que su opinión de que, cuando es escrutado, el liberalismo político deriva en un liberalismo comprehensivo o de la «autonomía» carece de fundamento. La relevancia del tema es que la educación de acuerdo con el liberalismo político es más tolerante que la educación conforme al liberalismo comprehensivo. Aquellos padres razonablemente religiosos que no son liberales podrán aceptar un liberalismo político, pero no uno comprehensivo.

Frege’s conception of science includes three features: a science is applicable to other sciences, or even to itself, a science consists of a more or less rigid system of judgements and a science presupposes elucidations, illustrative examples and a “catch on” among scientists. Together, I label these three features “The scientific Picture”. Both logic and mathematics are included among the sciences and are covered by the scientific picture. As I understand Frege, this picture guides his logical and philosophical reflections. Here it is invoked in a treatment of two well-known and controversial Fregean topics: His claim, often repeated, that the axioms of Begriffsschrift and Grundgesetze are obvious and stand in no need of justification, and his use of a Kantian terminology in classifying judgements as analytic or synthetic, a priori or a posteriori. The most significant consequence of my reading is that it underscores the epistemological nature of Frege’s thinking and, at the same time, downplays a current, and in my mind unfortunate, trend of ascribing to Frege a rather “thick” metaphysics. Towards the end, I discuss different aspects of the notion of a judgment at play in Frege’s discussions: judgement as movement from thought to truth-value and judgement as represented by the judgement-stroke. These aspects point back to the distinction, so nicely illustrated by Frege’s own writings, between a scientist, engaged in scientific research, and a philosopher, explicating the scientific activity and its general presuppositions, respectively.

An emerging branch of political theory, ‘the politics of dissensus’, starts out from the premise that in order to understand the politics of constitutional democracies, one needs to focus on parliamentary politics, which compromises both institutional settings and debates. Politics takes place among adversaries, and dissensus and argumentation pro et contra is the rule. The focus on the conditions for consensus in contemporary democratic theory accordingly misses the essence of politics. The politics of dissensus tends to think that the political philosophy inaugurated by John Rawls, political liberalism in particular, is too idealistic and utopian to capture real parliamentary politics. I argue that this basic objection against political liberalism is misconceived. To the contrary, the politics of dissensus and political liberalism supplement each other. The impact of my argument is that research in these disparate fields of political studies ought to enlighten each of them.