Dean Mathiowetz - Böcker

It has become a commonplace assumption in modern political debate that white and rural working- and middle-class citizens in the United States who have been rallied by Republicans in the “culture wars” to vote Republican have been voting “against their interests.” But what, exactly, are these “interests” that these voters are supposed to have been voting against? It reveals a lot about the role of the notion of interest in political debate today to realize that these “interests” are taken for granted to be the narrowly self-regarding, primarily economic “interests” of the individual. Exposing and contesting this view of interests, Dean Mathiowetz finds in the language of interest an already potent critique of neoliberal political, theoretical, and methodological imperatives—and shows how such a critique has long been active in the term’s rich history. Through an innovative historical investigation of the language of interest, Mathiowetz shows that appeals to interest are always politically contestable claims about “who” somebody is—and a provocation to action on behalf of that “who.” Appeals to Interest exposes the theoretical and political costs of our widespread denial of this crucial role of interest-talk in the constitution of political identity, in political theory and social science alike.

Hanna Fenichel Pitkin has made key contributions to the field of political philosophy, pushing forward and clarifying the ways that political theorists think about action as the exercise of political freedom. In so doing, she has offered insightful studies of the problems of modern politics that theorists are called to address, and has addressed them herself in a range of theoretical genres.. This collection of her works approaches each of these dimensions of Pitkin’s contributions in turn:The Modern Condition and the Impetus to Theorize: Pitkin has offered sustained reflection on what aspects of modern political life prompt the impulse to theorize politics. Highlighting the pitfalls that modern life and philosophy also present for that enterprise, she suggests an agenda for political theorizing that engages the dilemmas of modernity in ways that grasp the importance of paradox as a portal of insight into the modern condition, and eschews attempts at easy resolution.Moral Philosophy, Judgment, Justice: Pitkin has turned at several points in her career to the concept of justice as one that particularly brings together questions of agency and responsibility, the insights of moral philosophy, and judgment. Drawing upon a variety of methodological resources and theoretical inspirations, her work engages ordinary language philosophy, pedagogical practice, and textual study, to yield a complex and subtle set of observations, all of which open moral philosophy and matters of judgment to questions of action and responsibility in the exercise of political freedom.Action: Political agency and its obstacles are a key theme in Pitkin’s work and a main area of her theoretical innovation. She has examined the appeal of autonomy as a picture of political agency, explored the ways that the institutional arrangements of modern liberal societies attempt to link of individual and political agency and offered a picture of political freedom as maintaining the tension between individual "parts" and collective "wholes," Finally, Pitkin has meditated on the political and social conditions that most impede our ability to grasp agency as a practice of political freedom, and gestured to paths that may lead forward.