Mathias Thaler
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 1109963 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Mathias Thaler |
| NOMBRES | Mathias |
| APELLIDO | Thaler |
| FIRMA | THALER M |
| AFILIACIONES | University of Edinburgh |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7045-6159 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 36 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 187 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 34 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 2 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2010 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 8 |
Introduction
Failure is often perceived as negative, destructive, and demoralising to all things utopian. Indeed, charges of failure routinely confront utopian experiments in living. But whilst failure is a key part of utopian thinking and projects, we still lack a sufficiently nuanced and focused account of its different purposes and affordances. This introduction highlights how the Special Issue on Utopia and Failure addresses this lacuna by interrogating t…
For a Fearless, Stirring, and Loving Climate Pessimism
Pessimism about climate change need not result in resignation and apathy. As with the threat of nuclear annihilation, realistic concern about existential peril can galvanize action
Repetition in Action
One of the most perplexing aspects of life on a climate-changed planet concerns the status of human action. As Donna Haraway observes, we appear to be stuck between a rock and a hard place: On the one hand, there is the “position that the game is over, it’s too late, there’s no sense trying to make anything any better,” and on the other side, we encounter “the comic faith in technofixes.” In this paper, my goal is to investigate how we might over…
Transition or Interregnum? Two Ways of Understanding Politics in the Anthropocene
In our times, talk of ‘transitioning’ to a world without fossil fuels has become pervasive. Despite its prevalence in environmental politics, this article argues that it is counterproductive to envisage the current conjuncture through the prism of a transition. I defend this claim by first outlining three respects in which the transition paradigm falls short: political corruptibility, historical inadequacy and conceptual confusion. Rather than re…
Acting Otherwise in the Face of Ecological Collapse
Social dreaming and world building in the Anthropocene
In a climate-changed world, utopian social dreaming promises to educate our desires for alternative ways of being and living. This Forum Exchange examines the possibilities and limitations of the anti-perfectionist utopianism advocated by Mathias Thaler in his book No Other Planet, which he develops by combining theory-building and storytelling. Considering the three functions of utopianism that Thaler identifies (to estrange, galvanize or cautio…
Eco-Miserabilism and Radical Hope
Eco-miserabilism-the thought that it is already too late to avert the collapse of human civilization-is gaining traction in contemporary environmentalism. This paper offers a "reparative" reading of this post-apocalyptic approach by defending it against those who associate it with defeatism and fatalism. My argument is that authors like Roy Scranton and the members of the Dark Mountain collective, while rejecting mainstream activism, remain inves…
Environmental commemoration
Addressing the political implications of the ever-accumulating destruction of ecosystems and more-than-human life, this paper asks whether and in what ways environmental losses should be publicly commemorated. Our answer is two-pronged. First, we hold that a politics of environmental commemoration would enfranchise those who are already grieving, by lending legitimacy to their experiences. Moreover, commemorative practices might prompt much-neede…
Utopia, Breakdown, Repair
A common charge against utopianism is that any attempt to create blueprints for a better future disregards a basic fact: humans' proclivity for failure. In response, defenders of social dreaming have argued that failure can become generative, once we abandon the perfectionism that ostensibly inheres in utopian visions. Building on this revaluation, the paper applies a crucial lesson from engineering and design studies-that often artificial failur…
No Other Planet
Visions of utopia – some hopeful, others fearful – have become increasingly prevalent in recent times. This groundbreaking, timely book examines expressions of the utopian imagination with a focus on the pressing challenge of how to inhabit a climate-changed world. Forms of social dreaming are tracked across two domains: political theory and speculative fiction. The analysis aims to both uncover the key utopian and dystopian tendencies in contemp…
Warning through Extrapolation
This article contributes to a better understanding of dystopia’s practical aims by offering a critical defense of what Gregory Claeys calls the “Atwood Principle.” Derived from the writings of Canadian author Margaret Atwood, it establishes a yardstick for separating speculative fiction from science fiction. I argue that, rather than elevating it to the status of a genre definer, the Atwood Principle should be vindicated in terms of a heuristic d…
What If
One way of understanding calls for 'multispecies justice' is to interpret them as utopian demands for a desirable future in which the structural anthropocentrism of conventional forms of morality, including environmental ethics, has been thoroughly abolished. I hope to clarify what kind of utopia multispecies justice might specifically entail. Mobilizing a conceptual framework developed by the science fiction author Octavia Butler, three potentia…
Multispecies justice
This essay seeks to open a conversation about multispecies justice in environmental politics. It sets out some of the theoretical approaches, key areas of exploration, and obvious challenges that come with rethinking a core plank of liberal theory and politics. First, we discuss some of the diverse scholarly fields that have influenced the emergence of multispecies justice. We then discuss core concerns at the centre of this reconfiguration of ju…
Political Violence and the Imagination
Multispecies justice
In 2019, the climate emergency entered mainstream debates. The normative frame of climate justice as conceived in academia, policy arenas, and grassroots action, although imperative and growing in popularity across climate movements, is no longer adequate to address this emergency. This is for two reasons: first, as a framing for the problem, current notions of climate justice are insufficient to overcome the persistent silencing of voices belong…
Political violence and the imagination
Grappling with political violence is a complex task, involving several operations, from examining the social macro-structures within which actors engage in violence, to investigating their concrete
Peace as a Minor, Grounded Utopia
A common complaint about pacifism holds that it is utopian, in a pejorative sense. The worry can take various forms and directions, but when it is couched in terms of just war theory it usually includes accusations of pacifism’s immorality, inconsistency and impracticality. Contemporary defenders of pacifism have responded to this complaint by delineating a highly sophisticated, empirically informed account of pacifism that foregrounds its real-w…
Bleak dreams, not nightmares
What kind of stories are most effective for envisioning a hopeful future when alternatives to the status quo are sorely needed?Few would turn to dystopian fiction for this specific purpose.Despite their current resurgence across different media, dystopias are often suspected of undermining progressive action, due to their militant pessimism and their all-too frequent succumbing to despair.In this paper, I respond to this charge by focusing on a t…
Naming Violence
Mathias Thaler articulates a novel perspective on the study of violence that demonstrates why the imagination matters for political theory. He explores how narrative art, thought experiments, and historical events can challenge and enlarge our existing ways of thinking about violence
Reconciliation through Estrangement
While it is often assumed that reconciliation culminates in the comprehensive resolution of conflict between deeply alienated parties, the article argues that reconciliation can only be achieved through complex mechanisms of estrangement that reveal alternative vistas or collective renewal. Art performs an important role in this process. The article theorizes estrangement as both an artistic and a political technique that can have world-disclosin…
Unhinged Frames
This article develops a framework for assessing thought experiments in normative political theory. It argues that we should distinguish between relevant and irrelevant hypotheticals according to a criterion of modality. Relevant hypotheticals, while far-fetched, construct imaginary cases that are possible for us, here and now. Irrelevant hypotheticals conjure up imaginary cases that are barely conceivable at all. To establish this claim, the arti…
A dialectical view of Prague
Democracy, critique and the ontological turn
Hope Abjuring Hope
This essay reconstructs the place of utopia in realist political theory, by examining the ways in which the literary genre of critical utopias can productively unsettle ongoing discussions about "how to do political theory." I start by analyzing two prominent accounts of the relationship between realism and utopia: "real utopia" (Erik Olin Wright et al.) and "dystopic liberalism" (Judith Shklar et al.). Elaborating on Raymond Geuss's recent refle…
Staged
Multispecies justice
In 2019, the climate emergency entered mainstream debates. The normative frame of climate justice as conceived in academia, policy arenas, and grassroots action, although imperative and growing in popularity across climate movements, is no longer adequate to address this emergency. This is for two reasons: first, as a framing for the problem, current notions of climate justice are insufficient to overcome the persistent silencing of voices belong…
Hope Abjuring Hope
This essay reconstructs the place of utopia in realist political theory, by examining the ways in which the literary genre of critical utopias can productively unsettle ongoing discussions about "how to do political theory." I start by analyzing two prominent accounts of the relationship between realism and utopia: "real utopia" (Erik Olin Wright et al.) and "dystopic liberalism" (Judith Shklar et al.). Elaborating on Raymond Geuss's recent refle…
Eco-Miserabilism and Radical Hope
Eco-miserabilism-the thought that it is already too late to avert the collapse of human civilization-is gaining traction in contemporary environmentalism. This paper offers a "reparative" reading of this post-apocalyptic approach by defending it against those who associate it with defeatism and fatalism. My argument is that authors like Roy Scranton and the members of the Dark Mountain collective, while rejecting mainstream activism, remain inves…
Peace as a Minor, Grounded Utopia
A common complaint about pacifism holds that it is utopian, in a pejorative sense. The worry can take various forms and directions, but when it is couched in terms of just war theory it usually includes accusations of pacifism’s immorality, inconsistency and impracticality. Contemporary defenders of pacifism have responded to this complaint by delineating a highly sophisticated, empirically informed account of pacifism that foregrounds its real-w…
What If
One way of understanding calls for 'multispecies justice' is to interpret them as utopian demands for a desirable future in which the structural anthropocentrism of conventional forms of morality, including environmental ethics, has been thoroughly abolished. I hope to clarify what kind of utopia multispecies justice might specifically entail. Mobilizing a conceptual framework developed by the science fiction author Octavia Butler, three potentia…
Bleak dreams, not nightmares
What kind of stories are most effective for envisioning a hopeful future when alternatives to the status quo are sorely needed?Few would turn to dystopian fiction for this specific purpose.Despite their current resurgence across different media, dystopias are often suspected of undermining progressive action, due to their militant pessimism and their all-too frequent succumbing to despair.In this paper, I respond to this charge by focusing on a t…
Democracy, critique and the ontological turn
Environmental commemoration
Addressing the political implications of the ever-accumulating destruction of ecosystems and more-than-human life, this paper asks whether and in what ways environmental losses should be publicly commemorated. Our answer is two-pronged. First, we hold that a politics of environmental commemoration would enfranchise those who are already grieving, by lending legitimacy to their experiences. Moreover, commemorative practices might prompt much-neede…
Utopia, Breakdown, Repair
A common charge against utopianism is that any attempt to create blueprints for a better future disregards a basic fact: humans' proclivity for failure. In response, defenders of social dreaming have argued that failure can become generative, once we abandon the perfectionism that ostensibly inheres in utopian visions. Building on this revaluation, the paper applies a crucial lesson from engineering and design studies-that often artificial failur…
Political imagination and the crime of crimes
On Time in Just War Theory
This article examines the role of time in Just War theory. It maintains that contemporary Just War theory's legalist focus on rules and principles, rather than judgment and interpretation, makes a serious engagement with timing appear quite irrelevant. To deal with this shortcoming, the article clarifies the dual nature of political time as both chronos and kairos, and argues that a cogent account of the justice of warfare needs to incorporate th…
Just pretending
Should we be concerned with, or alarmed or outraged by, the insincerity and hypocrisy of politicians who apologize for historical injustice? This paper argues that the correct reply to this question is: sometimes, but not always. In order to establish what types of insincerity must be avoided, Judith Shklar’s hierarchy of ordinary vices is critically revisited. Against Shklar’s overly benign account of hypocrisy, the paper then tries to demonstra…
Reconciliation through Estrangement
While it is often assumed that reconciliation culminates in the comprehensive resolution of conflict between deeply alienated parties, the article argues that reconciliation can only be achieved through complex mechanisms of estrangement that reveal alternative vistas or collective renewal. Art performs an important role in this process. The article theorizes estrangement as both an artistic and a political technique that can have world-disclosin…
Unhinged Frames
This article develops a framework for assessing thought experiments in normative political theory. It argues that we should distinguish between relevant and irrelevant hypotheticals according to a criterion of modality. Relevant hypotheticals, while far-fetched, construct imaginary cases that are possible for us, here and now. Irrelevant hypotheticals conjure up imaginary cases that are barely conceivable at all. To establish this claim, the arti…
The illusion of purity
Over the last 20 years, cosmopolitan theories have been benefiting greatly from the dialogue between defenders and critics of world citizenship. Yet, the decidedly polemic aspect of this debate, while allowing for intellectual progress, is also responsible for overdrawn generalizations. Instead of entering into the debate directly, this article attempts to refute a specific anti-cosmopolitan claim raised by Chantal Mouffe. Her realist objection t…
Political violence and the imagination
Grappling with political violence is a complex task, involving several operations, from examining the social macro-structures within which actors engage in violence, to investigating their concrete
A Pragmatist Defence of the Ban on Torture
This article seeks to contribute to the growing literature on pragmatism in political theory by revisiting the role of moral absolutes in politics. More specifically, it proposes the idea that pragmatism can support a particular defence of the ban on torture. In contradistinction with deontological accounts, it will be argued that the principles underlying the ban on torture should not be construed as transcendental values that impose external co…
The illusion of purity
Over the last 20 years, cosmopolitan theories have been benefiting greatly from the dialogue between defenders and critics of world citizenship. Yet, the decidedly polemic aspect of this debate, while allowing for intellectual progress, is also responsible for overdrawn generalizations. Instead of entering into the debate directly, this article attempts to refute a specific anti-cosmopolitan claim raised by Chantal Mouffe. Her realist objection t…
How (not What) Shall We Think about Human Rights and Religious Arguments? Public Reasoning and Beyond
This paper addresses the question of how (not what) we should think about human rights and religious arguments. Thinking about this relationship is today particularly important, because conflicts over human rights in practice often turn around their theoretical problems. Should religious arguments be used to justify human rights? Or do we want human rights to be free from any partisan endorsement so as to avoid divisive interpretations of univers…
Nobles, Melissa, The Politics of Official Apologies
Desculpe parece ser a palavra mais dificil", como nos lembrou Elton John. Como bem de mais sabemos, isto e verdade para as relacoes interpessoais. E no que se refere as tentativas colectivas de pedir desculpas? Por motivos obvios, os grupos enfrentam problemas ainda maiores quando procuram expressar arrependimento pelas suas accoes: quem e que esta em posicao de pedir desculpas em nome do colectivo? Pode alguem pedir desculpas por alguma coisa qu…
Comment on Wilfried Hinsch. Ideal Justice and Rational Dissent
Article Comment on Wilfried Hinsch. Ideal Justice and Rational Dissent: A Critique of Amartya Sen’s The Idea of Justice was published on November 1, 2011 in the journal Analyse & Kritik (volume 33, issue 2).
Introdução
Political judgment beyond paralysis and heroism
This paper seeks to contribute to the literature on political judgment by proposing that the faculty of judgment is essential for responsibly coping with the undeniable fact of distant suffering and the controversial duty of humanitarian intervention. To achieve this end, Mahmood Mamdani’s text ‘The Politics of Naming: Genocide, Civil War, Insurgency’ will be mobilized for a constructive dialogue about which specific conception of political judgm…
Just pretending
Should we be concerned with, or alarmed or outraged by, the insincerity and hypocrisy of politicians who apologize for historical injustice? This paper argues that the correct reply to this question is: sometimes, but not always. In order to establish what types of insincerity must be avoided, Judith Shklar’s hierarchy of ordinary vices is critically revisited. Against Shklar’s overly benign account of hypocrisy, the paper then tries to demonstra…
On the Uses and Abuses of Political Apologies
On Time in Just War Theory
This article examines the role of time in Just War theory. It maintains that contemporary Just War theory's legalist focus on rules and principles, rather than judgment and interpretation, makes a serious engagement with timing appear quite irrelevant. To deal with this shortcoming, the article clarifies the dual nature of political time as both chronos and kairos, and argues that a cogent account of the justice of warfare needs to incorporate th…
Political imagination and the crime of crimes
A Pragmatist Defence of the Ban on Torture
This article seeks to contribute to the growing literature on pragmatism in political theory by revisiting the role of moral absolutes in politics. More specifically, it proposes the idea that pragmatism can support a particular defence of the ban on torture. In contradistinction with deontological accounts, it will be argued that the principles underlying the ban on torture should not be construed as transcendental values that impose external co…
A dialectical view of Prague
Democracy, critique and the ontological turn
Hope Abjuring Hope
This essay reconstructs the place of utopia in realist political theory, by examining the ways in which the literary genre of critical utopias can productively unsettle ongoing discussions about "how to do political theory." I start by analyzing two prominent accounts of the relationship between realism and utopia: "real utopia" (Erik Olin Wright et al.) and "dystopic liberalism" (Judith Shklar et al.). Elaborating on Raymond Geuss's recent refle…
Naming Violence
Mathias Thaler articulates a novel perspective on the study of violence that demonstrates why the imagination matters for political theory. He explores how narrative art, thought experiments, and historical events can challenge and enlarge our existing ways of thinking about violence
Reconciliation through Estrangement
While it is often assumed that reconciliation culminates in the comprehensive resolution of conflict between deeply alienated parties, the article argues that reconciliation can only be achieved through complex mechanisms of estrangement that reveal alternative vistas or collective renewal. Art performs an important role in this process. The article theorizes estrangement as both an artistic and a political technique that can have world-disclosin…
Unhinged Frames
This article develops a framework for assessing thought experiments in normative political theory. It argues that we should distinguish between relevant and irrelevant hypotheticals according to a criterion of modality. Relevant hypotheticals, while far-fetched, construct imaginary cases that are possible for us, here and now. Irrelevant hypotheticals conjure up imaginary cases that are barely conceivable at all. To establish this claim, the arti…
Political violence and the imagination
Grappling with political violence is a complex task, involving several operations, from examining the social macro-structures within which actors engage in violence, to investigating their concrete
Peace as a Minor, Grounded Utopia
A common complaint about pacifism holds that it is utopian, in a pejorative sense. The worry can take various forms and directions, but when it is couched in terms of just war theory it usually includes accusations of pacifism’s immorality, inconsistency and impracticality. Contemporary defenders of pacifism have responded to this complaint by delineating a highly sophisticated, empirically informed account of pacifism that foregrounds its real-w…
Bleak dreams, not nightmares
What kind of stories are most effective for envisioning a hopeful future when alternatives to the status quo are sorely needed?Few would turn to dystopian fiction for this specific purpose.Despite their current resurgence across different media, dystopias are often suspected of undermining progressive action, due to their militant pessimism and their all-too frequent succumbing to despair.In this paper, I respond to this charge by focusing on a t…
Political Violence and the Imagination
Multispecies justice
In 2019, the climate emergency entered mainstream debates. The normative frame of climate justice as conceived in academia, policy arenas, and grassroots action, although imperative and growing in popularity across climate movements, is no longer adequate to address this emergency. This is for two reasons: first, as a framing for the problem, current notions of climate justice are insufficient to overcome the persistent silencing of voices belong…
Multispecies justice
This essay seeks to open a conversation about multispecies justice in environmental politics. It sets out some of the theoretical approaches, key areas of exploration, and obvious challenges that come with rethinking a core plank of liberal theory and politics. First, we discuss some of the diverse scholarly fields that have influenced the emergence of multispecies justice. We then discuss core concerns at the centre of this reconfiguration of ju…
No Other Planet
Visions of utopia – some hopeful, others fearful – have become increasingly prevalent in recent times. This groundbreaking, timely book examines expressions of the utopian imagination with a focus on the pressing challenge of how to inhabit a climate-changed world. Forms of social dreaming are tracked across two domains: political theory and speculative fiction. The analysis aims to both uncover the key utopian and dystopian tendencies in contemp…
Warning through Extrapolation
This article contributes to a better understanding of dystopia’s practical aims by offering a critical defense of what Gregory Claeys calls the “Atwood Principle.” Derived from the writings of Canadian author Margaret Atwood, it establishes a yardstick for separating speculative fiction from science fiction. I argue that, rather than elevating it to the status of a genre definer, the Atwood Principle should be vindicated in terms of a heuristic d…
Sociology (26 obras) · Political science (24 obras) · Politics (23 obras) · Epistemology (21 obras) · Law (21 obras) · Philosophy (21 obras) · Law (16 obras) · Philosophy (16 obras) · Environmental ethics (8 obras) · Psychology (8 obras)