Jason Blakely

Last updated
Jason Blakely
Born (1980-10-09) October 9, 1980 (age 43)
Fort Collins, Colorado, United States
Alma mater
Institutions

Jason Blakely is an American political philosopher. He is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Pepperdine University and was educated at University of California, Berkeley and Vassar College. At Berkeley, he studied with Mark Bevir and John Searle. [1]

Contents

Critique of Social Science

Blakely's work is part of the wider hermeneutic and phenomenological traditions of philosophy. Specifically, he has extended on arguments by Hans-Georg Gadamer and Charles Taylor (philosopher), that claim the human sciences should not be modeled on the paradigm of the natural sciences, but treated as interpretive and narrative disciplines closer to the humanistic study of literature, art, philosophy, and history. [2]

Interpretive Social Science (2018) written with Mark Bevir, offered a systematic defense of interpretivism as the philosophical framework appropriate to guiding research across the human sciences, including in the fields of political science, sociology, economics, and psychology. Blakely then turned in We Built Reality (2020) to arguing that mainstream social science was often pseudoscientific and included repressed world-making or double-hermeneutic features (what Blakely dubs "Double-H effects") that help create and reinforce various political and social realities. [3]

Interpretive Theory of Ideology

In Lost in Ideology (2024), Blakely applied hermeneutics to the study of ideology. He drew on the interpretive anthropology of Clifford Geertz which defines ideology as cultural maps. [4] Blakely innovated on Geertz's conception by adding to it both the world-making features developed in We Built Reality as well as making the theory critical and not merely descriptive, by assessing ideologies as objectively false whenever they attempted to deny their cultural features and present themselves as scientific, commonsensical, or otherwise natural. Against the Marxist tradition, Blakely sees ideologies as not reducible to false beliefs or consciousness but as a form of what Charles Taylor calls "strong evaluation" and Blakely refers to as "ethically magnetic" features. [5]

Public Debates

Blakely also maintains a significant public presence centered on debating major ideological trends in U.S. politics. He was an early participant in the "fascism debate", arguing in August of 2016 in The Atlantic that Donald Trump's political movement hybridized neoliberal and authoritarian forms of politics. [6] Blakely has been a vocal critic of neoliberal "marketization" of the public school system as justified by neoclassical economic principles. [7] He has also been involved in debates with the New Right and Catholic Integralism, writing long-form criticisms of Adrian Vermeule and Patrick Deneen. [8] [9] [10]

In 2023, Blakely argued in the cover story of Harper's Magazine, "Doctor's Orders: COVID-19 and the new science wars," that the politics of the pandemic had created a vicious cycle between technocratic overreach by progressives governing in the name of "science" and anti-scientific sentiment by conservatives. [11]

Books

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Literary theory</span> Systematic study of the nature of literature

Literary theory is the systematic study of the nature of literature and of the methods for literary analysis. Since the 19th century, literary scholarship includes literary theory and considerations of intellectual history, moral philosophy, social philosophy, and interdisciplinary themes relevant to how people interpret meaning. In the humanities in modern academia, the latter style of literary scholarship is an offshoot of post-structuralism. Consequently, the word theory became an umbrella term for scholarly approaches to reading texts, some of which are informed by strands of semiotics, cultural studies, philosophy of language, and continental philosophy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hermeneutics</span> Theory and methodology of text interpretation

Hermeneutics is the theory and methodology of interpretation, especially the interpretation of biblical texts, wisdom literature, and philosophical texts. As necessary, hermeneutics may include the art of understanding and communication.

An ideology is a set of beliefs or philosophies attributed to a person or group of persons, especially those held for reasons that are not purely epistemic, in which "practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones". Formerly applied primarily to economic, political, or religious theories and policies, in a tradition going back to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, more recent use treats the term as mainly condemnatory.

Neoliberalism, also neo-liberalism, is a term used to signify the late-20th-century political reappearance of 19th-century ideas associated with free-market capitalism. The term has multiple, competing definitions, and is often used pejoratively. In scholarly use, the term is frequently undefined or used to characterize a vast variety of phenomena, but is primarily used to describe the transformation of society due to market-based reforms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Taylor (philosopher)</span> Canadian philosopher (born 1931)

Charles Margrave Taylor is a Canadian philosopher from Montreal, Quebec, and professor emeritus at McGill University best known for his contributions to political philosophy, the philosophy of social science, the history of philosophy, and intellectual history. His work has earned him the Kyoto Prize, the Templeton Prize, the Berggruen Prize for Philosophy, and the John W. Kluge Prize.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Constructivism (philosophy of science)</span> Branch in philosophy of science

Constructivism is a view in the philosophy of science that maintains that scientific knowledge is constructed by the scientific community, which seeks to measure and construct models of the natural world. According to constructivists, natural science consists of mental constructs that aim to explain sensory experiences and measurements, and that there is no single valid methodology in science but rather a diversity of useful methods. They also hold that the world is independent of human minds, but knowledge of the world is always a human and social construction. Constructivism opposes the philosophy of objectivism, embracing the belief that human beings can come to know the truth about the natural world not mediated by scientific approximations with different degrees of validity and accuracy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clifford Geertz</span> American anthropologist (1926–2006)

Clifford James Geertz was an American anthropologist who is remembered mostly for his strong support for and influence on the practice of symbolic anthropology and who was considered "for three decades... the single most influential cultural anthropologist in the United States." He served until his death as professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.

In the social sciences and related fields, a thick description is a description of human social action that describes not just physical behaviors, but their context as interpreted by the actors as well, so that it can be better understood by an outsider. A thick description typically adds a record of subjective explanations and meanings provided by the people engaged in the behaviors, making the collected data of greater value for studies by other social scientists.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Antipositivism</span> Theoretical stance in social science

In social science, antipositivism is a theoretical stance which proposes that the social realm cannot be studied with the methods of investigation utilized within the natural sciences, and that investigation of the social realm requires a different epistemology. Fundamental to that antipositivist epistemology is the belief that the concepts and language researchers use in their research shape their perceptions of the social world they are investigating and seeking to define.

Philosophy in this sense means how social science integrates with other related scientific disciplines, which implies a rigorous, systematic endeavor to build and organize knowledge relevant to the interaction between individual people and their wider social involvement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Positivism</span> Empiricist philosophical theory

Positivism is a philosophical school that holds that all genuine knowledge is either true by definition or positive—meaning a posteriori facts derived by reason and logic from sensory experience. Other ways of knowing, such as intuition, introspection, or religious faith, are rejected or considered meaningless.

In science studies, boundary-work comprises instances in which boundaries, demarcations, or other divisions between fields of knowledge are created, advocated, attacked, or reinforced. Such delineations often have high stakes involved for the participants, and carries with it the implication that such boundaries are flexible and socially constructed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adrian Vermeule</span> American legal scholar

Cornelius Adrian Comstock Vermeule is an American legal scholar who is currently the Ralph S. Tyler Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School. He is an expert on constitutional and administrative law, and, since 2016, has voiced support for Catholic integralism. He has articulated this into his theory of common-good constitutionalism.

Walter Benn Michaels is an American literary theorist and author whose areas of research include American literature, critical theory, identity politics, and visual arts.

Mark Bevir is a British philosopher of history. He is a professor of political science and the Director of the Center for British Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, where he currently teaches courses on political theory and philosophy, public policy and organisation, and methodology. He is also a Professor in the Graduate School of Governance, United Nations University (MERIT) and a Distinguished Research Professor in the College of Arts and Humanities, Swansea University.

Political naturalism is a political ideology and legal system positing that there is a natural law, just and obvious to all, which crosses ideologies, faiths, and personal thinking, and that naturally guaranties justice. It is first explicitly mentioned in Aristotle's Politics. It is inspired by sociological naturalism, and methodological naturalism's belief that the precision of natural sciences can be applied to social sciences, and hence to practical social activities like politics and law. It may be seen as a natural law-based version of legalism and constitutionalism, especially of prescriptive constitutionalism in the way it tries to make a constitution how it should justly be. It also bears relation with many constitutional monarchies, which believe in rule of the law and in certain things who are naturally correct like monarchy and monarchic institutions and traditions.

Systems theory in anthropology is an interdisciplinary, non-representative, non-referential, and non-Cartesian approach that brings together natural and social sciences to understand society in its complexity. The basic idea of a system theory in social science is to solve the classical problem of duality; mind-body, subject-object, form-content, signifier-signified, and structure-agency. Systems theory suggests that instead of creating closed categories into binaries (subject-object), the system should stay open so as to allow free flow of process and interactions. In this way the binaries are dissolved.

The Liberation of Theology (1976) is a book on theology written by Juan Luis Segundo, S.J., translated by John Drury, and published by Orbis Books.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">R. A. W. Rhodes</span> British political scientist (born 1944)

Roderick Arthur William Rhodes, usually cited as R. A. W. Rhodes, is a British professor of political science.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Common good constitutionalism</span> Conservative legal philosophy created by Adrian Vermeule

Common good constitutionalism is a legal theory formulated by Harvard law professor Adrian Vermeule that asserts that "the central aim of the constitutional order is to promote good rule, not to 'protect liberty' as an end in itself". Vermeule describes it as an attempt to revive and develop the classical legal tradition by understanding enacted law as a positive application of background natural law principles. Within this tradition, he claims law is defined as "an ordinance of reason promulgated by political authorities for the common good." Vermeule states that law in this sense is "not tethered to particular written instruments of civil law or the will of the legislators who created them" but instead embody rational determinations of the common good, and it is those determinations, as well as the natural law background against which they are made, which constitute the law. Vermeule says that these principles include "a candid willingness to "legislate morality."

References

  1. ↑ "Jason Blakely". Pepperdine University - Seaver College Faculty Profiles. Retrieved July 6, 2024.
  2. ↑ East, Brad (2021), "Statistics as Storytelling", The New Atlantis, 66: 111–122, retrieved 6 July 2024.
  3. ↑ Lombardo, William (August 10, 2020). "Interview: Jason Blakely". Athwart. Retrieved July 8, 2024.
  4. ↑ Geertz, Clifford (1973). The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books. pp. 211–251.
  5. ↑ Powell, Aaron Ross (June 16, 2024). "Why Do Our Ideologies Divide Us?: A Conversation with Political Scientist Jason Blakely". The UnPopulist. Retrieved July 6, 2024.
  6. ↑ Blakely, Jason (August 31, 2016). "Teaching Trump to College Students". The Atlantic. Retrieved July 6, 2024.
  7. ↑ Blakely, Jason (April 17, 2017). "How School Choice Turns Education Into a Commodity". The Atlantic. Retrieved July 8, 2024.
  8. ↑ Blakely, Jason (October 5, 2020). "The Integralism of Adrian Vermeule: Not Catholic Enough". Commonweal. pp. 34–47. Retrieved July 8, 2024.
  9. ↑ Blakely, Jason (February 1, 2021). "Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule's Technocratic Despotism". The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved July 8, 2024.
  10. ↑ Blakely, Jason (August 2, 2023). "The Thin Line Between 'Postliberalism' and Theocracy". The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved July 8, 2024.
  11. ↑ Blakely, Jason (2023), "Doctor's Orders", Harper's Magazine, 347: 25–30, retrieved 6 July 2024.
  12. ↑ McLemee, Scott (March 1, 2024). "Lost in Ideology: Scott McLemee reviews Jason Blakely's Lost in Ideology". Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved July 6, 2024.
  13. ↑ Gunnell, John (March 2021), "We Built Reality", Perspectives on Politics, 19: 248–249.
  14. ↑ Gibbons, Michael (Fall 2018), "Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, and the Demise of Naturalism", The Review of Politics, 80: 709–711
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.