Keith Breen

Defenders of academic freedom characteristically claim academics ought to be afforded freedoms not afforded those in other roles or occupations on account of the unique, knowledge-generating status of academic activity and its contribution to the public good. Challenging that claim, this paper argues instead that the capacity for all roles and occupations to benefit the public good of knowledge creation provides justification for granting all workers discretion over work performance, meaningful workplace voice, and the freedom to speak publicly, that the rights typically claimed by academics apply more generally. It advances its challenge by targeting the assumption common to many defenders of academic freedom that academic work’s exceptional nature stems from its ultimate “truth-telling function”, namely that only the academic role pursues the kind of rigorous truth-seeking activities for which worker control is necessary. In doing so, the paper aims both to cast critical light on uninterrogated assertions of academic exceptionalism and to bolster the literature on worker freedoms by offering an epistemic and public-good directed defence of worker rights to accompany defences of such rights from the perspective of justice or individual flourishing.

This chapter challenges the postwork critique of the work society and work ethic. The contention is that in responding to the problems posed by contemporary work we need to still insist on work's social centrality, not reject it. One error of the postwork stance is that, in its rejection of work's centrality, it targets an overly restricted notion and experience of work. A further problem is its failure to properly register the individual and social goods people can and do attain through work. This is compounded by a failure to realize that the movement towards a more free and just society in fact requires the endorsement of a work ethic, albeit one different from earlier forms and alive to the dangers of its being harnessed by regressive forces.

This chapter assesses the neo-republican critique of Hannah Arendt advanced by Philip Pettit. Contending that republicanism is primarily concerned with freedom as non-domination, Pettit criticizes Arendt for equating political freedom with political participation and for advancing a Rousseauian communitarian and populist viewpoint antithetical to republicanism, properly understood. These criticisms are mistaken, however. A sympathetic reading of Arendt’s work reveals her deep-seated concern with domination, which is central to her analysis of totalitarianism and her critique of ‘command’ conceptions of politics. Moreover, Arendt is in no way vulnerable to the charge of advancing either communitarianism or populism, given her stress on the rule of law, her commitment to plurality and the dispersal of power, and her understanding of politics as the ceaseless interplay of diverse opinions.

‘Labour republicanism’ harnesses the ideal of freedom as nondomination to explain and challenge the injustices marring current workplace relations. Central to its challenge is a call for institutionalizing worker voice, with some also calling for workplace democratization and reorganizing capitalist enterprises along cooperative lines. Labour republicanism, in turn, has been criticized, most notably by the ‘commercial republican’ Robert S. Taylor. Taylor contends that contrary to its intentions, labour republicanism, or, more particularly, ‘radical labour republicanism’, would perpetuate domination by undermining freedom of occupational choice; enabling tyrannical workplace majority rule; concentrating too much power in state agents; and encouraging revolutionary violence and violent reaction from capitalist interests. To counter workplace domination, we should not institutionalize worker voice, but instead augment workers’ exit options through instituting a market-friendly property-owning democracy. This paper argues that Taylor errs in his claims against radical labour republicanism on account of distorting its implications for occupational choice and obscuring how freedom-as-nondomination preserving principles are built into its conception of democratic workplaces and the cooperative economy. He also errs in thinking property-owning democracy would not itself be vulnerable to violent reaction from capitalist interests.

In this chapter, Keith Breen and Onni Hirvonen examine the case for democratic worker voice based on the republican ideal of freedom as non-domination. While not unconvincing, this case is primarily consequentialist in character and therefore open to significant empirical disagreement. Indeed, together with republican arguments for democratic worker voice, there are republican arguments for worker voice that reject workplace democracy, republican arguments that see state regulation plus a universal basic income (UBI) as sufficient for minimizing workplace domination, and republican arguments that focus exclusively on exit rights and are hostile to augmenting workers’ voice. Breen and Hirvonen claim this policy indeterminacy stems from a restriction by republicans of the ideal of freedom to the dimension of non-domination alone. If we expand our understanding of freedom to include worker autonomy—a dimension of freedom underpinning the ‘expressive egalitarianism’ definitive of republican citizenship, properly understood—we can arrive at a more robust freedom-based case for workplace democracy.

This book treats practical and political reasoning as an active engagement with the world and other people; it cannot be understood as exclusively cognitive and this is seen as a virtue rather than a deficiency. Informal, emotional, characterological, aesthetic and interactional aspects of thought can be constituents of reasonable arguing. The work examines key capacities connected with argumentation, in a variety of fields from professional and medical ethics to work organization and the practice of art.

Bringing together leading international scholars within the fields of social and political theory and philosophy, this book explores how we should understand work and its role in our lives and wider society. What challenges are posed by work in our changing economy and the new economic forms that are beginning to emerge, and how can we best address these challenges? In what ways do patterns of working, as well as work technologies, shape people's lives within and outside work, in particular their life opportunities and their social and natural environment? How might we organize-or seek to reorganize-workplaces so that the experience of work better reflects our shared ethical ideals and normative principles? This volume examines these vital questions in a comprehensive and systematic manner in order to provide much needed theoretical insight and practical guidance in reflecting on the nature, problems, and possibilities of work currently. This book will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students and established academics in the areas of contemporary political theory and philosophy, social theory, legal philosophy, labour studies, the sociology of work, practical ethics, critical theory, and political activism.

Bringing together leading international scholars within the fields of social and political theory and philosophy, this book explores how we should understand work and its role(s) in our lives and wider society. What challenges are posed by work in our changing economy and the new economic forms that are beginning to emerge, and how can we best address these challenges? In what ways do patterns of working, as well as work technologies, shape people’s lives within and outside work, in particular their life opportunities and their social and natural environment? How might we organize—or seek to reorganize—workplaces so that the experience of work better reflects our shared ethical ideals and normative principles? This volume examines these vital questions in a comprehensive and systematic manner in order to provide much needed theoretical insight and practical guidance in reflecting on the nature, problems, and possibilities of work currently. This book will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students and established academics in the areas of contemporary political theory and philosophy, social theory, legal philosophy, labour studies, the sociology of work, practical ethics, critical theory, and political activism.

Do philosophers have a responsibility to their society that is distinct from their responsibility to it as citizens? This edited volume explores both what type of contribution philosophy can make and what type of reasoning is appropriate when addressing public matters now. These questions are posed by leading international scholars working in the fields of moral and political philosophy. Each contribution also investigates the central issue of how to combine critical, rational analysis with a commitment to politically relevant public engagement. The contributions to this volume analyse issues raised in practical ethics, including abortion, embryology, and assisted suicide. They consider the role of ethical commitment in the philosophical analysis of contemporary political issues, and engage with matters of public policy such as poverty, the arts, meaningful work, as well as the evidence base for policy. They also examine the normative legitimacy of power, including the use of violence.

In his book, A Theory of Truces, Nir Eisikovits offers a perceptive and timely ethics of truces based on the claim that we need to reject the ‘false dichotomy between the ideas of war and peace’ underpinning much current thought about conflict and conflict resolution. In this article, I concur that truces and ‘truce thinking’ should be a focus of concern for any political theory wishing to address the realities of war. However, Eisikovits’s account, to be convincing, requires engagement with a tradition of thought figuring only marginally in his reflections on truces, that is, just war theory. I argue this for three reasons. Without incorporation of the just war principles that should inform the decisions to enter conflict, to maintain conflict, and to cease conflict, any theory of truces will be, first, normatively inadequate, failing to provide us with requisite direction, and, second, open to the charge of permitting intolerable injustices, a charge Eisikovits wishes to avoid. Third, engagement with just war theory is important for arriving at a nuanced understanding of peacemaking, one which grants truces their place in our deliberations and spurns simplistic ‘war versus peace’ binaries whilst keeping more ambitious ideals of peace firmly in sight.

Alasdair MacIntyre condemns modern politics, specifically liberalism and the institutions of the liberal state, as irredeemably fallen. His core argument is that the liberal state encourages a disempowering?compartmentalization? of people's everyday roles and activities that undermines the intersubjective conditions of human flourishing. MacIntyre's alternative is an Aristotelian politics centred on the notion of?practice.? Defined by justice and solidarity, this politics can only be realized, he claims, within local communities which oppose and resist the dictates of the administrative state and capitalist market. Here it is argued that MacIntyre's notion of?practice? represents a compelling ethical-political ideal. However, the belief that this ideal is best realized within local communities is rejected. In privileging local community, MacIntyre relies on a reductive view of modern states and overlooks the institutional conditions of a just polity. Against this, it is argued that a politics of human flourishing cannot succeed without an emancipatory transformation of large-scale, trans-communal institutions, in particular the state.

Introduction -- Modernity, politics and Max Weber -- One-sided rationalization: Habermas on modernity, discourse and emancipation -- Critiquing Habermas: intersubjectivity, ethics and norm-free sociality -- The burden of our times: Arendt on modern oblivion and the promise of politics -- Judging Arendt: citizenship, action and the scope of politics -- The new dark age: MacIntyre on bureaucratic individualism and the hope for an ethical polity -- Engaging MacIntyre: flourishing, modernity and political struggle -- Closing reflections: ethics, politics and strategy in the present.

In contrast to political realism's equation of the `political' with domination, Hannah Arendt understood the `political' as a relation of friendship utterly opposed to the use of violence. This article offers a critique of that understanding. It becomes clear that Arendt's challenge to realism, as exemplified by Max Weber, succeeds on account of a dubious redefinition of the `political' that is the reverse image of the one-sided vision of politics she had hoped to contest. Questioning this paradoxical turn leads to a critique of Arendt's separation of violence and power and, consequently, her attempt to insulate a politics of friendship from one of hostility and coercion. However, political realism is not thereby affirmed. What is required, instead, is a view of the `political' that accepts the interwoven-ness of violence and power but also emphasizes the normative ideals of moderation and care. Key Words: Hannah Arendt • enmity • friendship • moderation • the `political' • power • realism • violence • Max Weber.

This article argues that productive work represents a mode of human flourishing unfortunately neglected in much current political theorizing. Focusing on Habermasian critical theory, I contend that Habermas’s dualist theory of society, with its underpinning distinction between communicative and instrumental reason, excludes work and the economy from ethical reflection. To avoid this uncritical turn, we need a concept of work that retains a core emancipatory referent. This, I claim, is provided by Alasdair MacIntyre’s notion of ‹practice’. The notion of ‹practice’ is␣significant in suggesting an alternative conception of human productivity that is neither purely instrumental nor purely communicative, but rather both simultaneously: a form of activity which issues in material products and yet presumes a community of workers engaged in intersubjective self-transformation. However, we can endorse MacIntyre’s notion of ‹practice’ only if we reject his totalizing anti-modernism and insist on the emancipatory potentialities of modern institutions.