Freedom and Democracy in an Imperial Context: Dialogues with James Tully gathers leading thinkers from across the humanities and social sciences in a celebration of, and critical engagement with, the recent work of Canadian political philosopher James Tully. Over the past thirty years, James Tully has made key contributions to some of the most pressing questions of our time: including interventions in the history of moral and political thought, contemporary political philosophy, democracy, citizenship, imperialism, recognition and cultural diversity. In 2008, he published Public Philosophy in a New Key – a two-volume work that promises to be one of the most influential and important statements of legal and political thought in recent history. This work, along with numerous other books and articles, is foundational to a distinctive school of political thought, influencing thinkers in fields as diverse as Anthropology, History, Indigenous Studies, Law, Philosophy and Political Science. Critically engaging with James Tully’s thought, the essays in this volume take up what is his central, and ever more pressing, question: how to enact democratic practices of freedom within and against historically sedimented and actually existing relationships of imperialism?

Contents

1. Editor’s Introduction, Robert Nichols & Jakeet Singh; PART I: Recasting Public Philosophy: 2. Engagement, Proposals and the Key of Reasoning, Anthony Simon Laden; 3. Freedom as practice and Civic genius: On James Tully’s Public Philosophy, Eduardo Mendieta; 4. Power, Freedom, and Political Forms, Antonio Vásquez-Arroyo; 5. ‘[Un]Dazzled by the Ideal?’: Tully’s Politics and Humanism in Tragic Perspective, Bonnie Honig; PART II: In Dialogue with the Past: 6. Vattel, Imperialism, and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Antony Anghie; 7. On the Moral Justification of Reparation for New World Slavery, David Scott; 8. Postnational Constellations? Political Citizenship and the Modern hristian Emden; PART III: Re-Imagining Civic Freedom Today: 9. New Constitutional orders and decolonizing the state: South Africa and Bolivia, Eunice N. Sahle; 10. ‘Becoming Black’: Acting Otherwise and Re-imagining Community, Aletta J. Norval; 11. Accessing Tully: Political Philosophy for the Everyday and the Everyone, Val Napoleon and Hadley Friedland; PART IV: Response: 12. James Tully

Author Bio

Robert Nichols is Assistant Professor of Political Science and Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at the University of Alberta.

Jakeet Singh is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Illinois State University.