The purpose of this paper is to examine the relation of the judging public to the despotic government, which is to be reformed, in Kantian social thought. Instead of revolution, which he rejects as a way of changing a constitution, Kant proposes gradual reform of the despotic government with a view to establishing a republic, where freedom and equality under the law are guaranteed. This process of gradual reform is known as Kantian “republicanism”.

  The concept of gradual reform has several aspects. First, the reform of the government of the monarch is required to separate legislative and executive power and establish a division of powers. Kant considered the monarchical government of his age especially problematic, because it could easily become despotic and paternalistic. Second, the reform of hereditary nobility as a class in political society is to be pursued so as to achieve equality before the law. Third, the reforms of social institutions such as the knighthood and the church should be carried out when the public needs them.

  These aspects of gradual reform are interrelated and guided by the ideal of the original contract. In the Kantian concept of reform, the ideal of the original contract shows not only how the monarch should pursue the reforms, but also the principles of legislation, according to which only the general will of the people can legitimately make law. The public should discuss and judge the laws and institutions in political society according to these principles and the monarch should respect the judgments of the public. At this point in his argument Kant resorts to a rhetorical strategy to guarantee the freedom of speech. Kant maintains that to deprive the people of this freedom would be to deprive a monarch of all knowledge of what he would himself reform if he only knew it, and it would then put him into contradiction with himself. A monarch should always be better informed by the judging public (a rege male informato ad regem melius informandum). It is in the praxis of judging the social institutions in the light of the original contract that the public develops its patriotic and republican way of thinking.

  The purpose of this paper is to rethink Marx’s concept of “Eigentum”(property). The theory of property has been one of the most important subjects in the study of Marx for a long time. Nevertheless, previous studies did not understand it correctly, for they also did not grasp properly the theory of “Versachlichung”(reification) and that of community. Therefore, this paper focuses on the relationship between the theory of property and these two other theories.

  The concept of “Versachlichung” means that private individuals, who carry out their work independently of each other, must exchange products of their labor as things which possess a social power, that is, as commodities, because their private work does not directly have the social character. Here, the individuals exist for each other merely as representatives of, and, therefore, as owners of, commodities. So, they relate each other as the personification of the economic relations to which they belong. This is “Personifikation der Sache”.

  The concept of property must be understood in terms of “Personifikation der Sache”, because the property is established by the mutual recognition of persons as representatives of commodities. The property of commodity is therefore nothing but a recognized possession of commodities. In other words, the modern right of property is based on the social power of commodities.

  Contrary to the modern one, the pre-modern right of property was grounded upon personal relations. It is because the pre-modern right of property was established by the mutual recognition of persons as members of a community in the pre-modern society.

  This difference concerning the right of property emerges from that of conditions of production. In the pre-modern society, the condition of production was tied to the producer based on personal relations. The producer was originally recognized as one of those in the community who have the right of property based on the condition of production. However, in the modern society the producer is deprived of the means of production. One can be linked to the condition of production only by selling one’s own labor power. Yet, this link is not guaranteed, because the sale of labor power depends on accidental conditions. This is the reason why Marx called wageworkers the potential pauper.

  Marx never accepted the modern freedom. In the chapter of “Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation” he praised “the free individuality”, which is not modern, but pre-modern or post-modern. The free individuality, which Marx estimated highly, depends on the premodern petty industry or the association of producers. Therefore, the “individual property” does not belong to the modernity. This concept means that the development of the free individuality is possible only in the original unity of the means of production and the producer.

  This paper examines the thought of Harold Laski, who bitterly criticized monistic conception of sovereignty and was the passionate advocate for democracy with liberal egalitarian thought. Laski has been regarded as the inconsistent thinker who failed to articulate his own ideas, especially criticized for arbitrary adoption of quasi-Marxist theory after 1930’s. Thus, Laski’s egalitarianism has been neglected for long because it was identified with crude egalitarianism which was hardly worth to scrutinize. However, I argue the Laski’s criticism against sovereignty has strong connection with his egalitarian and pluralistic theory of state and he has certain consistency in pursuing for global democracy by actualizing domestic democracy through realization of equality within existing boundaries of states.

  Firstly, I describe Laski’s egalitarian and pluralistic theory of state and its philosophical foundation. Laski promotes self-realization of citizens through the state intervention such as social security or the idea of “civic minimum”, although under influence of philosophical pluralism by W. James he denies the religious foundation of T. H. Green’s conception of “common good” and insists on “the interest of humanity”.

  Secondly, I analyze Laski’s institutional design for pluralistic state. He proposes reformation of the parliament, pragmatic management and socialization of fundamental industries, and establishment of diverse consultative councils which are composed of consumers, producers, and various stake-holders, in order to reflect existing plurality and diversity of society into governance by state. Laski thinks basis for pluralistic social integration is vocational bodies of various industries, while the solidarity by trade union is also important for social reform when society has the serious social cleavage derived from inequality.

  Thirdly, Laski proposes scheme for global democracy without sovereignty through the gradual reformation of the League of Nations, while after 1930’s he realizes the necessity of actualizing domestic democracy through realizing economic equality in order to actualize it in global scale. Laski’s design for international organization presents federal model for world state which contains political, social, and economic functions which deal with global problems. In addition, after 1930’s, from the examination of the influence brought by imperialism in both domestic and global order, Laski realizes that domestic democracy with equality is the key to actualization of global democratic order, which leads him to conception of “Revolution by Consent”.

  In conclusion, I briefly summarize the paper, and emphasize some actual and academic importance of examining theories of state at early 20th century from the perspective related to the on-going reformation of welfare states in this globalizing 21st century.

  This article deals with the question as to what was at the motif of Levinas’ thought, when he requires the ethics as the first philosophy and situates the politics “after” the ethics. To begin with, we will argue that an ambiguity of the levinasian view of the political we find at the midst of Totality and infinity – exigency of the universality of the politics on the one hand and critique of the politics as “another tyranny” on the other – can be understood in the light of his article of 1953, “Liberty and commandment”. Our analysis of this article shows that it’s a constant reading of the political philosophy of Plato, particularly an interpretation of the notion of commandment/rule (archein), that allows Levinas to formulate the cleavage between ethics and politics as well as to develop his own ethical thought in the 1950s, which prepares his first major work Totality and infinity and the severe critique of the political. In the article of 1953, through the lecture of The Republic of Plato, Levinas formulates his conception of “another tyranny”, which seems firstly to designate the rule of a rational, universal but exterior order of the law. But this conception does not aim at what Plato called the rule of law as such. Further analysis makes it clear that Levinas’ conception of “tyranny” refers to the process of the interiorization of the exterior, accomplished by the political order, the same process that he highlights, in his philosophical works, as the assimilation of the Other to the Same. Whereas other contemporary thinkers, like Hannah Arendt, reject the platonic political philosophy in order to propose some more original concept of the political, Levinas’ reading of Plato is motivated by the aim of making explicit the contrast between the relation based on the political, but “tyrannical”, principle and the ethical and “peaceful” relation with the “face (visage)”. The constant dialogue Levinas undertakes with Plato shows accordingly that the development of his ethical thought can be characterized as a search for “another principle (arché)”, that is to say, commandment as speech at the discursive relation with the Other. Far from denying any attempt of the political thought, Levinas proposed, always in company with Plato, an ethical arché that should precede a political one.

  John Rawls labels his political philosophy as a “realistic utopia.” This label consists of two factors: first, the reality of the society where we live, and second, the ideal of justice that we should realize yet have not. The seemingly contradictory idea of realistic utopia means to unite these two factors in a coherent manner.

  Rawls’ proposal poses a big question to the very activity of normative theorizing: how ideal should a normative theory be given the reality it seeks to address? On the one hand, when caught in the current state of society, then a normative theory would become too conservative and fail to play the role of presenting values and ideas that should be pursued. On the other, when dragged into the ideal without considering various restrictions of the real world, then a normative theory would describe the mere empty wish that can hardly be achieved. Therefore, the balance problem that Rawls deals with between the ideal and the real is the question that can be faced by anyone interested in normative theorizing.

  Now, a long standing controversy has erupted especially in the journal Philosophy and Public Affairs in relation to the above-mentioned question since the latter half of the 1990s. This dispute took roots in analytical Marxist G. A. Cohen’s critique of Rawls, and can be reconstituted as one of the problems over the balance between the ideal and the real in normative theory. This article aims at showing an answer to this problem with reexamination of the hypothetically reconstructed Rawls-Cohen controversy.

  This article proceeds as follows: first, it introduces the distinction of ideal/nonideal theories that Rawls presents as varieties of normative theorizing, and next, it summarizes Cohen’s critique of Rawls with the viewpoint of their conflicting interpretations of the Difference Principle. Third, it makes clear the nature of the controversy by introducing a further distinction of basic structure/individual action as a Rawlsian response to Cohen. Finally, it points out that we can find a way out of this controversy by moving the focus of normative theorizing from the ideal state of affairs to the nonideal ones.