Moved by the State: Forced Relocation and Making a Good Life in Postwar Canada by Tina Loo

The article focuses on the subaltern system of micro appropriations or Jugaads used by young Kashmiris to survive within precarious situations inflicted due to armed conflict. More particularly, it argues that such Jugaads are invoked by the subaltern consciousness of Tehreeq-e-Azadi, which offers space for not just the negotiation with the state but also the creative improvisation of daily political actions. It is illustrated that young people’s political participation is entangled with the attempts to overcome the uncertainty around their lives, thereby offering them pragmatic solutions in advancing their interests. It is further elaborated that the existing polarization between separatism and mainstream is obscure at the experiential level, living within precarious situations has taught young people to silently craft possibilities of a good life without looking confrontational to either side. The article argues that localized forms of engagement are crucial for a comprehensive understanding of how modern states operate.

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Eudaimonia

Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy ◽

10.4324/9780415249126-a125-1 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

C.C.W. Taylor

Keyword(s):

Good Life ◽

The State ◽

Moral Life ◽

Modern Concept ◽

The Good Life ◽

Philosophical Theory ◽

Literal Sense ◽

Human Good ◽

External Goods ◽

Satisfactory Life

The literal sense of the Greek word eudaimonia is ‘having a good guardian spirit’: that is, the state of having an objectively desirable life, universally agreed by ancient philosophical theory and popular thought to be the supreme human good. This objective character distinguishes it from the modern concept of happiness: a subjectively satisfactory life. Much ancient theory concerns the question of what constitutes the good life: for example, whether virtue is sufficient for it, as Socrates and the Stoics held, or whether external goods are also necessary, as Aristotle maintained. Immoralists such as Thrasymachus (in Plato’s Republic) sought to discredit morality by arguing that it prevents the achievement of eudaimonia, while its defenders (including Plato) argued that it is necessary and/or sufficient for eudaimonia. The primacy of eudaimonia does not, however, imply either egoism (since altruism may itself be a constituent of the good life), or consequentialism (since the good life need not be specifiable independently of the moral life). The gulf between ‘eudaimonistic’ and ‘Kantian’ theories is therefore narrower than is generally thought.

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Recognition

Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy ◽

10.4324/9780415249126-l081-1 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Axel Honneth

Keyword(s):

Good Life ◽

The State ◽

Practical Philosophy ◽

The Good Life ◽

Ancient Times ◽

Different Levels

The concept of recognition has played an important role in philosophy since ancient times, when the good life was thought to depend partly on being held in regard by others. Only Hegel, however, made recognition fundamental to his practical philosophy. He claimed that human self-consciousness depends on recognition, and that there are different levels of recognition: legal or moral recognition, and the forms of recognition constituted by love and the state. A similar tripartite distinction can be used to ground a plausible modern account of ethics.

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Home Truths: Property TV, Financialization, and the Housing Crisis in Contemporary Ireland

Television & New Media ◽

10.1177/1527476420975755 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 22 (1) ◽

pp. 65-82

Author(s):

Anthony P. McIntyre

Keyword(s):

Financial Market ◽

Good Life ◽

Home Ownership ◽

Specific Form ◽

The State ◽

The Good Life ◽

Income Disparity ◽

Housing Crisis ◽

Commercial Property ◽

Ideological Commitment

This article examines how a specific form of lifestyle programming indexes both national concerns and transnational financial trends as well as diffuse social fissures in Irish life. Emerging in the late 1990s amid a construction boom, Irish property television adapted and thrived through the subsequent post-2008 crash, the concomitant implementation of austerity policies and an ensuing housing crisis. This boom-to-bust cycle was precipitated by the financialization of property within Ireland, a process whereby housing and commercial property became embedded in transnational financial market cycles. Through an analysis of three key examples of the genre, this article argues that for the most part, Irish property television seeks to hold at bay anxieties generated by a growing wealth and income disparity in the state. While this programming displays an ideological commitment to the “investor subjects” of home-ownership, increasingly the concerns of those excluded from this version of the good life are evident.

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Who Gets Power and Why

World Politics ◽

10.2307/2009111 ◽

1949 ◽

Vol 2 (1) ◽

pp. 120-134 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Ithiel de Sola Pool

Keyword(s):

Political Science ◽

Power Relations ◽

Good Life ◽

Max Weber ◽

The State ◽

Social Goals ◽

The Good Life ◽

The Unconscious ◽

Substantive Rationality ◽

The Government

A Feature of Western ideology, particularly its American variant, is consciousness of tension between ideals and reality. One source of this tension is a propensity to seek social goals by way of adventitious motives. Education seeks marks not knowledge; business seeks profits not products; politics seeks power not the good life. To protest this lack of what Max Weber called substantive rationality, and to demand that first things be put first is labelled “idealism,” while acceptance of the immediate incentive and disregard for the final end is labelled “realism.”Thus in political science the name “realistic” has been largely applied to that tradition which concentrates on power relations and assumes that its subjects behave as “political men,” that is, that they strive to maximize power. The “realist” assumes that all men in politics share the same drive. So deeply ingrained is this identification of politics and power that it appears even in the unconscious where the state is a father symbol. It appears also in everyday idioms where to be in the government is “to be in power” and to go into politics means not to pave streets but to enter a game of hierarchical advancement. It appears also in scholarly thought. Unlike Aristotle, who defined the polis as that association formed for the highest good and which comprehends the rest, most modern scholars find in a monopoly of coercion the distinctive attribute of the state.

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Neutrality as a Twofold Concept

Les ateliers de l éthique ◽

10.7202/1044460ar ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 4 (2) ◽

pp. 159-174

Author(s):

Alexa Zellentin

Keyword(s):

Good Life ◽

Equality Of Opportunity ◽

The State ◽

Equal Treatment ◽

The Good Life ◽

Common Elements ◽

State Regulations

Under the circumstances of pluralism people often claim that the state ought to be neutral towards its citizens’ conceptions of the good life. However, what it means for the state to be neutral is often unclear. This is partly because there are different conceptions of neutrality and partly because what neutrality entails depends largely on the context in which neutrality is demanded. This paper discusses three different conceptions of neutrality – neutrality of impact, neutrality as equality of opportunity and justificatory neutrality – and analyses the strengths and weaknesses of the different conceptions in different contexts. It suggests that there are two common elements of neutrality in all its exemplifications: a) an element of “hands-off” and b) an element of equal treatment. It therefore argues that while justificatory neutrality is necessary for the state to be neutral it is not sufficient and claims that while conceptions of the good must not enter the justification of state regulations, they must be taken into consideration when deliberating the implementation of these regulations.

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