Published:
This paper tracks the development of judicial understanding of labor unions’ status under Section 9 of the National Labor Relations Act as the “exclusive representative” of employees for the purposes of bargaining with the employer, focusing on the how the Supreme Court case Emporium Capwell v. Western Community Addition has led to a gradual restriction of the scope of protected concerted activity by workers suffering discrimination. This ossification reveals how rigid, overly theoretical understanding of the law that is divorced from practical contexts often leads to reinforcing racial disparities in a capitalist mode of production. I further argue Emporium Capwell provides a rich common ground for radical legal theories, including both Marxist and Realist-descended theories such as Critical Race Theory (CRT) and the Law & Political Economy (LPE) movement. LPE’s framework allows for CRT and Marxist theories to engage each other over the contradictions in post-war liberalism that Emporium Capwell laid bare. Specifically, CRT and Marxist analyses of Emporium Capwell can serve as a basis for introducing Cedric Robinson’s idea of “racial capitalism” in a legal context. Derrick Bell’s critique of liberal Warren Court-era civil rights discourse, when combined with Marxist critiques of labor unions in a capitalist mode of production, can show how non-realistic legal analysis shores up racial capitalism.
The traditional view interprets Aristotle as thinking of histories as only a laundry list of facts. Such a view of history would, as de Ste Croix points out, suggest a profound ignorance of major historians, most of all Thucydides. Aristotle even appears to explicitly denigrate the epistemic value of human history compared to “more philosophic and serious” works such as philosophy or poetry. The traditional interpretation is that Aristotle’s view of histories is so impoverished it becomes difficult to imagine how he even could have a philosophy about something so banal and uninteresting. I push back against this view and argue that Aristotle has a richer notion of what a history is, or rather what an “investigation” (historia) is, since he thinks human history is just giving a historia of human actions. A historia is able to give causal accounts, but it is unable to discern whether a given cause is essential to the substances involved or accidental. Put simply: a historia is able to give “unscientific” causal explanations.
“The Modal Definition of Being in Plato’s Sophist” – Melita Classica vol. 8, University of Malta Press
One of the more understudied elements of Plato’s Sophist is the definition of being which the Eleatic Stranger offers to the Giants and Gods at 247d8-e4 during the gigantomachia. This “modal definition” states that something is if and only if it is able to either affect something or be affected by something. The traditional view is that it disappears from the dialogue entirely after the Friends reject it at 248c1-2. Against this, I will argue that the modal definition is still present in the dialogue as his other metaphysical commitments make the definition apply to every being.
This relies on establishing the following points. First, the “metaphysical” model of communion (as opposed to a linguistic account as advanced by Ackrill) is the most sustainable way to interpret the Stranger’s engagement with the Late Learners. Second, the possibility of knowledge is a fundamental concern of the later Plato (249b6-8, c10), so much so that he tailors his ontology to it. Indeed, the Stranger thinks communion is justified because communing with the Form of Being would be a necessary condition for knowability. Thus, communion in at least one case has to be admitted if the possibility of knowledge of the Forms is necessary. Finally, the Sophist affirms that to be knowable is to possess the capacity to impart knowledge and in this way affect something else. Since soul is a being capable of learning (248a10-13, e7-249a10), this means the Forms could affect the soul. However, because these are the only two entities admitted as “beings” in the Sophist, by exhaustion the modal definition’s disjunctive claim holds for all beings.
“Sleepless in Syracuse: Plato and the Nocturnal Council,” Plato at Syracuse: Essays on Plato in Western Greece, with a new translation of the Seventh Letter by Jonah Radding, (ed. Heather Reid & Mark Ralkowski), Parnassos Press, pp. 215-230, 2019.
I defend the coherence of Plato’s later political philosophy by arguing that Plato never gave up seeing a philosopher-ruler as the ideal constitution. Some such as Michael Frede have argued that Plato’s seventh epistle is spurious because it apparently conflicts with the political views of the Laws. In the Seventh Letter (written contemporaneously with the Laws), Plato appears as committed as he was in the Republic to establishing a society ruled by philosophers. However, in the Laws, he makes no mention of a philosopher-king and instead makes use of a powerful Nocturnal Council to govern the ideal state of the Laws. I argue that the Laws seeks to construct an ideal state that merely proceeds from the presumption that nobody capable of serving as a philosopher-king can be found. It does not abandon the philosopher-king as the ideal hypothetical ruler. Indeed, I argue that the Nocturnal Council (on the basis of their legal purview and educational requirements) can be seen as a council of people who are philosophers in all but name. They may not have direct knowledge of the Forms, but the still possess immense knowledge and virtue. The Seventh Letter represents Plato’s hopes and dreams about what could be accomplished in Syracuse and not a project proceeding from a set of assumptions. Plato thus still believed in the desirability of a philosopher-king, but he was also prepared to imagine ideal societies where such a person does not exist, resolving the tension between the Letters and the Laws.
Forthoming:
In Preparation:
“The Wrong Side of Town: Aristotle’s Urban Planning and the Ethical Importance of Space”
Aristotle’s social ontology has long had a recognized inuence on critical and Marxist theories of society. GEM de Ste. Croix (1981: 69-80), for instance, showed how much Aristotle’s theory of history anticipates historical materialism. Pike (1999) as well traces Aristotelian social ontology from Aristotle to Hegel through the Young Hegelians, Marx himself, Ernst Bloch, and György Lukács. Lastly, classicists since Stocks (1936: 185; cf. Pol. V.9 1309b38-10a2) have made comparisons between the analysis of parts of the polis and Marxist class analysis (esp. III.8 1279b34-80a3; IV.4 1290a40-b3, 17-20). However, I would like to focus on one aspect which has received little theoretical attention: Aristotle’s urbanism. To describe some basic topographical elements of the ideal polis of Politics VII-VIII, the streets must be orthogonal around political and educational areas, while residential areas are permitted to be organic and bunched together like grape clusters (VII.11 1330b21-32). He meanwhile bans all trade from the center political agora and relegates the commercial, “lower” agora to the border of the city (1331b1-3). I put his recommend poleis design, and his general conception of place [ topos ], in conversation with Henri Lefebvre’s work The Production of Space .This work also contains numerous
observations on Greco-Roman urbanisms and how they politicize space. In particular, Lefebvre describes the prevailing conception of space (including urban space) for the Greeks as a pure, empty extension to be molded and explored. However, I argue that this is not the complete picture of Greek views of space, and in particular I think it is an insufficient account of Aristotle’s own views. I argue that Aristotle’s Politics , already praised by the authors mentioned above proto-materialist social analysis, has at least one more political insight that was far ahead of its time: the political nature of space itself.
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