The weekly report on new and revised entries at online philosophy resources and new reviews of philosophy books…

If your journal publishes open-access book reviews or short open-access articles, please send in links to them for inclusion in future weekly updates.

SEP

New:

1. Heritability by Stephen M. Downes and Lucas Matthews.

Revised:

1. Supererogation by David Heyd.
2. Social Ontology by Brian Epstein.
3. Charles Hartshorne by Dan Dombrowski.
4. Recursive Functions by Walter Dean and Alberto Naibo.
5. Otto Neurath by Jordi Cat.
6. Quantum Theory and Mathematical Rigor by Fred Kronz and Tracy Lupher.
7. Qualia: The Knowledge Argument by Martine Nida-Rümelin and Donnchadh O Conaill.
8. Disagreement by Bryan Frances and Jonathan Matheson.
9. Identity and Individuality in Quantum Theory by Steven French and Tomasz Bigaj.
10. Progress by Agnes Tam and Margaret Meek Lange.
11. Lucrezia Marinella by Marguerite Deslauriers.
12. Logic-Based Artificial Intelligence by Richmond Thomason.
13. Quantum Gravity by Steven Weinstein and Dean Rickles

IEP    ∅

NDPR

1. Splitsville USA: A Democratic Argument for Breaking Up the United States by Christopher F. Zurn is reviewed by Peter Stone.

1000-Word Philosophy     ∅

Project Vox     ∅

BJPS Short Reads    ∅

Open-Access Book Reviews in Academic Philosophy Journals

1. A Plea for Natural Philosophy by Penelope Maddy is reviewed by Michael Liston at The British Society for Philosophy of Science.

Recent Philosophy Book Reviews in Non-Academic Media

1. Spinoza: Freedom’s Messiah by Ian Buruma is reviewed by Marissa Moss at New York Journal of Books.
2. The Rigor of Angels: Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality by William Egginton is reviewed by Meghan O’Gieblyn at The New York Review of Books.
3. Moral Feelings, Moral Reality, and Moral Progress by Thomas Nagel, and Analytic Philosophy and Human Life by Thomas Nagel are together reviewed by Jessie Munton at The Times Literary Supplement.
4. Unshrinking: How to Fight Fatphobia by Kate Manne is reviewed by Dil Bar Irshad at Breaking News Network.
5. Liberty and Equality by Raymond Aron is reviewed by Paul T. Wilford and Ethan Cutler at City Journal.

Compiled by Michael Glawson

Previous Edition

BONUS: Rules for robots

The post Online Philosophy Resources Weekly Update first appeared on Daily Nous.

In Egypt Under El-Sisi: A Nation on the Edge, Maged Mandour challenges simplistic views of the aftermath of the Egyptian revolution in 2011, when mass protests against the government forced then-president Ḥosnī Mubārak to step down. Mandour examines power shifts and the military’s consolidation of authority over the past decade of Abdel Fattah El-Sisi’s presidency, offering a nuanced intervention on post-revolutionary Egypt’s socio-political dynamics, writes Hesham Shafick.

Egypt Under El-Sisi: A Nation on the Edge. Maged Mandour. Bloomsbury. 2024.

It takes me by surprise that we have already passed the 13th anniversary of Egypt’s revolution on January 25th 2011. Many theories and scholarly prints have been produced that try to make sense of how things unfolded after that day. The rise and fall of a structural “revolutionary situation”, the interplay between key local power centres,  changing global dynamics, the or simply the work of talented tricksters are some of the many explanations proffered. Notwithstanding their differences, they all have one thing in common: singling out an external villain, a counterrevolutionary force(s), which mustered enough authority to override a once hopeful revolution.

In Egypt Under El-Sisi: A Nation on the Edge, Maged Mandour refutes such a presumption of a dramatic distinction between victims and villains, revolutionaries and counterrevolutionaries. In doing so, he joins a cluster of critical thinkers, led by Gramscian political economists Brecht de Smet and Roberto Roccu, who stress the analytical necessity of understanding revolutions as “war(s) of positions” in which multiple actors exchange seats – be these ideologies, cultural codes, or political power – to formulate a new hegemonic, or “semi-hegemonic”, order. This reading paves the way for an understanding of the “post-revolution” collapse as a product of the revolutionary repertoire itself.

Mandour joins a cluster of critical thinkers […] who stress the analytical necessity of understanding revolutions as ‘war(s) of positions’ in which multiple actors exchange seats […] to formulate a new hegemonic, or ‘semi-hegemonic’, order.

In my own work, I took a cue from such thinking to co-author a series of articles that reconceived of the January 25th movement as a moment that brought together a working class motivated by their socioeconomic grievances, a middle class motivated by liberal aspirations, and a military elite motivated by their greed (see “A fascist history of the Egyptian revolution” I, II, & III). These were all temporarily assembled to push back against a malignantly growing police state. The first day of protests was thus selectively chosen to be the policy holiday – January 25th.

After three days of street fighting, the police were forced to retreat. And since then, Tahrir and other protest squares turned into physical assemblies of the three participating sections of society. But it did not take long for the middle class and military to override the working class. The workers’ demands were sidelined, even vilified, as “fractional” and “divisive”, facilitating a popularly backed military crackdown on factory protests. That was in the very early days of the revolution, a few months after the police retreat. Immersed in the utopian moment of overthrowing the police state, the middle class failed to observe the emergence of an even more dangerous armed regime, one which is far more powerful and, ironically because of their backing of the revolution, or more precisely its middle-class pillar, more popular.

Immersed in the utopian moment of overthrowing the police state, the middle class failed to observe the emergence of an even more dangerous armed regime

This re-conception of the post-revolution military regime – led by former minister of defence and head of military intelligence President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi – as a product of the revolutionary repertoire, rather than an independent counterforce, is, we argued, a game changer to analysts and activists alike. For if Sisi’s regime is a counterrevolutionary junta that overthrew the revolutionary movement by force, then the revolutionary response should be straightforward: keep pushing! It is therefore crucial to understand the nature of such a regime in relation to the revolution, not only to make sense of the startling concurrence of seemingly contradictory popular chants like “ya geshna enzel ehmina” [Oh our Army, rise and protect us] and “Yasqot Yasqot hom el ‘askar” [down, down with the military regime] in the same protest, but also to determine the strategies that can produce revolutionary outcomes in such a peculiar context.

Mandour does not focus on the January 25th revolution, but rather Sisi’s regime as a product of a prolonged of which January 25th and its ensuing coup regimes of 2011 and 2013 were mere symptoms.

It is from this lens that I welcomed Mandour’s account with excitement. Mandour does not focus on the January 25th revolution, but rather Sisi’s regime as a product of a prolonged of which January 25th and its ensuing coup regimes of 2011 and 2013 were mere symptoms. Passive revolution refers to an ongoing sociopolitical process where dominant elites keep maintaining their control through selective and temporary co-optations with variant classes, each of which eventually wind up pacified and sidelined. In this account, the revolution, the military regime, and their temporary coalition under Sisi’s rule, were a continuity of social reshuffles that attempted to constitute a political order in the vacuum created after the collapse . (For more on post-Nasser hegemonic vacuum, see Sarah Salem’s Anticolonial Afterlives in Egypt, reviewed here.)

In 1967, Mandour explains, Nasser not only lost his war with Israel on the Sinai Peninsula; he lost the package of ideological promises of Pan-Arabism, Arab-Socialism and postcolonialism that built his mandate. However, some of this regime’s structural legacies remained intact: military supremacy, a police-hijacked state, and a de-politicised middle class. Emptied of their ideological enablers, three social clusters found themselves in a power scramble, in which “soldiers, spies, and statesmen” – as Hazem Kandil eloquently puts it – would every now and then “solicit mass popular support” to leverage one of the three actors over the others (85).

Fast-forward to Egypt Under El-Sisi: the same actors remain at play, now producing a different type of regime. In 2013, Sisi rose to the fore with a promise to bring back the “unity” of the Egyptian middle class, popularly perceived to be disrupted by the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in the aftermath of January revolution. Here, “unity” is conceived of as “sameness” and hence disrupted by the appearance of that was for so long forcefully kept at the margins, even officially abandoned from political participation – the Muslim Brotherhood (55). Utilising the popular frustration caused by this disruption, Sisi garnered the support of the middle class through a very simple promise: returning the national identity; in other words, getting rid of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The first post-coup regime was headed by middle-class technocrats with the military pulling strings behind the scenes.

The first post-coup regime was headed by middle-class technocrats with the military pulling strings behind the scenes. This arrangement was, however, far from stable. As Niccolo Machiavelli has stated: “there is nothing proportional between the armed and the unarmed; and it is not reasonable that he who is armed should yield obedience willingly to him who is unarmed.” Realising that, the military apparatus, spearheaded by Sisi himself, administrated a crackdown on its middle-class power-sharers, crushing contenders and allies alike. It did so through multiple means, articulately described in Egypt under El-Sisi, which fall under three mutually reinforcing policy categories – legalisation of repression, displays of bloodshed, and the military capture of the economy. Repressive laws were passed with a violent state crackdown on any public dissent. This facilitated further violence by granting it a legalised status. In turn, this dynamic granted the military both the legal and the armed control over the most lucrative markets within the Egyptian economy, which further enhanced the officers’ loyalty to the regime, facilitating further violence. Such a vicious cycle eventually led to the middle-class becoming, once again, sidelined; this time with no other significant regime actors at play, and hence no need for co-opting any social class whatsoever. The result was, Mandour describes, a first of its kind military dictatorship that feels no political obligation towards any other actor; neither security partners nor any social class – no spies, no statesmen, just soldiers.

Egypt Under El-Sisi claims to be a narrative of the rise of a military dictatorship and the demise of the traditional post-Nasserist liberal autocracy. But the book’s relevance goes far beyond that, especially to students of Gramsci and post-Marxist critical thought.

Egypt Under El-Sisi claims to be a narrative of the rise of a military dictatorship and the demise of the traditional post-Nasserist liberal autocracy. But the book’s relevance goes far beyond that, especially to students of Gramsci and post-Marxist critical thought. The book’s analysis of post-January 25th politics in Egypt points to an exceptional form of “passive revolution” which has no class of beneficiaries other than the military itself. Its structural arrangement looks like a product of a typical military coup, except that it is not. In fact, the regime outset, always relied on popular mobilisation, despite the absence of the mobilised class and its agenda from all aspects of policymaking.

That is the main question the book leaves us with, one that encourages further empirical research, but also conceptual enquiry into the possibility of a semi-hegemonic arrangement that lacks not only ideological underpinnings, but even structural foundations. No doubt, the starting point for such an analysis would be Gramsci’s “passive revolution”, but how could this revolution be possible without a class of beneficiaries? Perhaps the answer lies beyond the structural analysis Gramscian paradigms proffer, and one should rather look into superstructural instruments by which the masses could be deceived to recurrently act against their best interest.

This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Image Credit: mehmet ali poyraz on Shutterstock.

Jonathan White‘s In the Long Run: The Future as a Political Idea examines how changing political conceptions of the future have impacted democracy, arguing that contemporary challenges like economic slowdown and climate change have led to reactive politics and short-termism. Though the book proposes ways to revitalise democracy, Aveek Bhattacharya suggests we may need to seek beyond our political institutions for strategies to build a more open future.

You can read an interview with Jonathan White about the book here. On Monday 11 March at 6.30pm White will speak at an LSE panel event, The politics of the future – find details and register here.

In the Long Run: The Future as a Political Idea. Jonathan White. Profile Books. 2024.

In the Long Run: The Future as a Political Idea is a book about the history of the future, and what it means for the present. More precisely, it describes how the way people think about the future has evolved over time, and the impact of these changes on democracy. Jonathan White’s central argument is that while optimism for the future once helped build democracy, economic slowdown, climate change, new technology and geopolitical tension mean that “the future no longer seems its [democracy’s] friend”.

For democracy to function, White observes, it is critical that people believe an “open future” is possible: that there are alternatives to the status quo, that society can evolve in a range of different ways, and that the people can choose between them. One of the key defining characteristics of democracy – the peaceful handover of power – is premised on changeability of the future: election losers believe that they will get their chance to achieve their vision of society again.

For democracy to function, White observes, it is critical that people believe an ‘open future’ is possible

In the present, White says, it is harder to maintain that patience and faith. The future is regarded with fear and claustrophobia. At various points he describes the future, far from being open, as “closing in”. Catastrophe – societal decay, conflict, environmental collapse – feels hard to avert. Insofar as there are options, they involve deferring to technocrats. There is a “now or never” urgency about politics, and a fear that waiting your turn means leaving it too late because the other side will destroy everything.

Via a tour of historical political thinkers, White sketches the ideas of the future that make for the most vibrant democratic system. Political and social outcomes must seem open, but not in such a destabilising manner as to trigger counter-revolution from those attached to the present. A strand of utopianism can be energising but must be linked to near-term political tactics to be practicable. Efforts to limit uncertainty, to render the future predictable, through calculation and technocracy risk squeezing out the necessary imagination and mass participation of vibrant democracy. At the same time, chaotic impulsiveness and pure disregard for expertise risks descending into fascism. Trying to control the future by keeping it secret is likely to generate conspiracy theories and discontent. Consumerism individualises the future and means we no longer share in it – we move from valorising Victorian steam trains to wanting our own personal cars.

Our perpetual state of emergency, while creating unpredictability, produces reactive politics, designed mainly to return things to the way they were.

The conception of the future we have arrived at today is not, in White’s opinion, sufficiently conducive to democracy. Our perpetual state of emergency, while creating unpredictability, produces reactive politics, designed mainly to return things to the way they were. Short-termism dominates – most notably, through the election cycle, but even longer-term threats like climate change are tractable only by converting them to benchmarks and deadlines. Managerialism and secrecy dominate, empowering organisations like the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund and triggering impulsive populist backlashes.

White’s proposals for rebuilding a more positive conception of the future and revitalising democracy are somewhat surprising. He is sceptical of direct democracy – while more referendums might give ordinary citizens more chance to shape the future, they raise the stakes and perpetuate the “all-or-nothing” politics he thinks is so baleful. Small-scale councils are too small-scale to create significant change, citizens’ assemblies too short-lived to pursue a persistent vision.

White calls for ‘radical representative democracy’, with mass participation in the development of party policy and party members having greater opportunity to recall politicians who fail to deliver on those agreed goals.

Instead, he puts his chips on political parties as the crucibles of a more inclusive, compelling and hopeful vision of the future. He calls for “radical representative democracy”, with mass participation in the development of party policy and party members having greater opportunity to recall politicians who fail to deliver on those agreed goals. It’s an argument with echoes of Peter Mair’s Ruling the Void, which also claimed that the disengagement of ordinary members and politicians from their political parties had led to “the hollowing of Western democracy”.

White’s rebooted party system sounds good in theory, but invites scepticism about its practicality. His central assumption is that citizens’ disempowerment is the root cause of our current democratic malaise, and that the opportunity for greater influence will suffice to tempt enough people to give up their evenings and weekends to political causes. It is not encouraging that the existing parties that have done most to engage with mass movements and improve participation with things like online platforms – Podemos in Spain and the Five Star Movement in Italy – do not seem to have restored democratic confidence in their countries.

The Victorian capitalists who built the factories and railroads may not have been personally attractive, but they inspired progressives and socialists to dream about how their innovations could be used to benefit all.

White is oddly dismissive of the pockets of optimism that do exist outside the political system – most notably Silicon Valley, where ideas like “Effective accelerationism”, the view that technological progress is likely to obviate many of our deepest societal challenges, has taken root. For White, they display the wrong sort of optimism: too consumerist and individualistic, too inclined towards anti-system chaotic thinking, tendencies encapsulated in the figure of Elon Musk, presented as fascistoid, if not fascist. Setting aside whether that is a fair characterisation of Musk, the question it raises is why the confidence of tech companies seems so divorced from the sentiments of wider society. The Victorian capitalists who built the factories and railroads may not have been personally attractive, but they inspired progressives and socialists to dream about how their innovations could be used to benefit all. There are some – figures like Aaron Bastani on the far left and Derek Thompson on the centre left – that are trying to do something similar today, but White does not recognise them as such.

White assumes that the problems of democracy are endogenous: that they are caused by political institutions and must be resolved by them.

Most fundamentally, White assumes that the problems of democracy are endogenous: that they are caused by political institutions and must be resolved by them. But there are more straightforward explanations for the modern morosity. Stagnant economic growth, and the failure of new technologies to demonstrably improve living standards, would naturally be expected to undermine confidence that things will improve. The demographic shift to an older population in rich countries may also have contributed to a lack of vitality and enthusiasm, and a tendency to look back with nostalgia rather than forward with hope. Even among the young, we should not necessarily take perceptions at face value. Phenomena like “climate anxiety” seem to reflect anxiety at least as much as they reflect the climate, and as such will often be psychological, not just political in nature.

That’s not necessarily a comforting thought. Maybe technological abundance is around the corner, maybe the economy will turn around, maybe the mental health crisis will abate – whether by sheer luck or unusually effective action – and people will start to feel better about the future. But In the Long Run suggests that fixing democracy’s problems, renewing our faith in the open future, is a much bigger task than tweaking its institutions.

This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Image credit: Ryan Rodrick Beiler on Shutterstock

In Sexuality and the Rise of China, sociologist Travis Kong examines the experiences of post-1990s gay men in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Through interviews and historical analysis, Kong explores the societal values, familial pressures and political influences shaping LGBTQ+ identity in modern China, making a unique contribution to Asian queer studies. writes Linqiu Li .

Sexuality and the Rise of China: The Post-1990s Gay Generation in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Mainland China. Travis S. K. Kong. Duke University Press. 2023.

Travis Kong’s latest book, Sexuality and the Rise of China continues his longstanding research focus on “generational sexualities.” Unlike his previous works that shed light on the life experience of East Asian elderly gay men (Chinese Male Homosexualities, 2012 and Oral Histories of Older Gay Men in Hong Kong, 2019), this book examines the post-90s generation of gay men within three distinct Chinese societies: mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Since 2017, Kong has interviewed 90 young gay men in Shanghai (mainland China), Hong Kong and Taipei (Taiwan). The book begins by providing a brief characterisation of this demographic in the three regions, in the context of The People’s Republic of China (PRC)’s political and economic rise in mainland China, young gay men exhibit confidence and pragmatism, yet “still struggle with their sexual identity.” In Hong Kong, most post-90s gay men express a collective desire to distance themselves to varying degrees from the influence of the Beijing government and “are generally comfortable with their sexual identity,” whereas the participants in Taiwan “are strongly Taiwanese nationalistic and “are generally accepting of their sexual identity and engage with gay communities and gay activism to different degrees” (3).

In Hong Kong’s case, British colonisation influenced the progression of its tongzhi culture.

In the first chapter, Kong adopts a historical perspective, elucidating how factors such as the decriminalisation of homosexual relations in 1991, the pink economy (which refers to the consumer economy of the LGBTQ+ community), the impact of colonisation, religious influence, and government surveillance have shaped the formation of tongzhi (a local parlance for LGBTQ+, which translates as “people who share the common will”) identity in the three regions to varying degrees. In Hong Kong’s case, British colonisation influenced the progression of its tongzhi culture. The rise of LGBTQ+ social groups and the boom of the pink economy have characterised homosexuality in Hong Kong with inclusive and diverse features. In Taiwan, as a consequence of Japanese colonisation and support from the US, the government has skilfully presented Taiwanese society as an open and pro-LGBTQ+ community (in contrast to the PRC government’s perceived human rights abuses) and aimed at gaining international recognition for its independence from China. Mainland China, on the other hand, experienced a void in gay culture from the Maoist era to the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976. Trailing its two counterparts, the tongzhi identity began to develop gradually in the 1990s, but under Xi Jinping’s regime, regulations and restrictions have intensified, leading to the constant constriction of tongzhi population in recent years.

Kong further highlights the differences between Asian LGBTQ+ communities and Western gay societies […] underscoring the imperative for de-Westernisation in Asian queer studies.

Kong further highlights the differences between Asian LGBTQ+ communities and Western gay societies in Chapter Two, underscoring the imperative for de-Westernisation in Asian queer studies. The application of neoliberalism differs across the three regions: Mainland China promotes the idea that families should support the elderly to alleviate economic burdens for the government, Hong Kong advocates intra-familial assistance over government aid, and Taiwan emphasises familial responsibility for the elderly to address its ageing population. However, these diverse approaches have collectively resulted in the family unit becoming a central regulator for individuals’ private lives in all three places. Thus, in addressing the matters of tongzhi identity and coming out, Kong highlights the perpetual existence of a “double closet” in Chinese tongzhi identity (65). That is to say, in addition to the societal aspect of coming out, unlike in Western societies, gay men in PRC also confront the challenge of being either a good (filial) or bad (unfilial) child within the family.

Kong applies Berlant’s discussion of ‘cruel optimism’ to each of the three societies, pointing out that while one-on-one exclusivity remains the aspiration in gay men’s intimate relationships, most respondents failed to achieve this.

Following the exploration of tongzhi identity, Kong delves into the dynamics of engagement within the tongzhi community in Chapter Three. Here, Kong elaborates on the emergence of a new masculinity hierarchy among young gay men across the three locales. Kong argues the Chinese tongzhi community is characterised by a combination of homonormativity and hegemonic masculinity (91). Gay men who are young and have athletic bodies, practice exclusive one-on-one intimacy, and enjoy a consumerist urban lifestyle are admired within the community. Kong continues the discussion of homonormative masculinity in the Chapter Four, offering insights from the perspective of love and sex. Kong applies Berlant’s discussion of “cruel optimism” to each of the three societies, pointing out that while one-on-one exclusivity remains the aspiration in gay men’s intimate relationships, most respondents failed to achieve this. The possible reasons for this varied across the three societies. The high cost of private space presented a hurdle in Hong Kong, the immense pressure to marry in mainland China, and the flexible gay environment and easy access to online dating in Taiwan all contributed to the difficulty of maintaining monogamous relationships.

The varying degrees of presentation of homonationalism in the three regions is what Kong focuses on in the final chapter. Based on the definition of homonationalism by Puar (2007), that homonationalism is a political ploy by the government to gain support and co-opt LGBTQ+ people. Kong argues that the Taiwanese government exhibit an incorporative form of homonationalism, but with the premise to only recognise gay men who conform to the archetype of the “good citizen”(133). The situation differs in Hong Kong, whose government has a closer relationship with the PRC government compared to Taiwan. Due to the avoidance of addressing homosexuality as a prominent social issue, coupled with an emphasis on traditional Chinese family values, Kong sees Hong Kong’s homonationalism as deficient (141). In the context of mainland China, Kong proposes that PRC’s homonationalism exhibits “Chinese characteristics” or a “pragmatic homonationalism,” which accrued through negotiations with LGBTQ+ nongovernmental organisations, leveraging them as a platform to underscore public health concerns, or emphasising Confucian values such as parental love, and downplaying the sexual aspect in the topic of homosexuality (150).

Kong’s book is a significant contribution as the first study that discusses all three societies together and presents the lives of gay men from a variety of perspectives, including historical, cultural and political contexts.

Although there has been, and continues to be, a growing body of research literature addressing the life experience of LGBTQ+ (or Tongzhi) in the three locales, many of them have concentrated on either one single society or two. Kong’s book is a significant contribution as the first study that discusses all three societies together and presents the lives of gay men from a variety of perspectives, including historical, cultural and political contexts. In addition, acknowledging the intricate historical and political interrelations among the three societies, Kong proposes a new theoretical approach: a transnational queer sociology. This approach allows for a cross-national comparison of LGBTQ+ issues and discourse, combining sociology and cultural studies, and contributes to the de-Westernisation of queer studies in the Asian context. Whether for a general reader who wants to learn more about queer life in Asia or an academic scholar with a research interest in Asian queer studies, this book is definitely worth reading.

This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Image Credit: Q Wang on Shutterstock.