Having shown how conflict belongs to the goodness of creaturely life and can be generative of human social flourishing, this chapter revisits the question of political community. “Agonistic community,” as I delineate it, incorporates the creative use of conflict in order to forge collectivity across difference, thereby reconceptualizing political community and difference in mutually constitutive terms. I begin the chapter by considering two neglected figures in the history of Christian political thought: the early modern Calvinist Johannes Althusius and the twentieth-century Catholic social philosopher Yves Simon. Both Althusius and Simon, I show, approach politics by theorizing the distinct features of creaturely action and relation, and so center the work of politics on the activities of shared judgment and action. The remainder of the chapter takes up the subject of democratic judgment, showing how agonistic democracy generates shared judgment and action without transcending or effacing conflict and difference. I conclude by examining the community organizing practices of the Industrial Areas Foundation as an instance of agonistic democratic community.

The Cambridge History of the Papacy is organized to provide readers with a critical–historical survey of the structural development of the papacy as an institution and as an actor in Church history, and in world history. It is hard to imagine a sphere of human activity over the past two millennia that has not been influenced by, and influenced in turn by, papal action – be it in the domains of religious belief and practice; social, cultural, and political thought; art, science, medicine, ethics, diplomacy, and international relations. Four questions – each addressed throughout the three volumes of the present work – have framed that vision across vast chronological and geographical expanses: the pope’s centrality within the Catholic Church, the primacy of papal power as an instrument of governance, the papacy’s cultural influence in society and culture, and the implications of secularity for its place in the lives of believers and non-believers alike. Each question – and the search for answers – converges around the fundamental question of papal authority: its original claims; the ebbs and flows of its effective reach; and the numerous ways in which claims, and expressions of papal authority and supremacy, have been contested within the Catholic tradition, and from without.

The Cambridge History of the Papacy is organized to provide readers with a critical–historical survey of the structural development of the papacy as an institution and as an actor in Church history, and in world history. It is hard to imagine a sphere of human activity over the past two millennia that has not been influenced by, and influenced in turn by, papal action – be it in the domains of religious belief and practice; social, cultural, and political thought; art, science, medicine, ethics, diplomacy, and international relations. Four questions – each addressed throughout the three volumes of the present work – have framed that vision across vast chronological and geographical expanses: the pope’s centrality within the Catholic Church, the primacy of papal power as an instrument of governance, the papacy’s cultural influence in society and culture, and the implications of secularity for its place in the lives of believers and non-believers alike. Each question – and the search for answers – converges around the fundamental question of papal authority: its original claims; the ebbs and flows of its effective reach; and the numerous ways in which claims, and expressions of papal authority and supremacy, have been contested within the Catholic tradition, and from without.

The Cambridge History of the Papacy is organized to provide readers with a critical–historical survey of the structural development of the papacy as an institution and as an actor in Church history, and in world history. It is hard to imagine a sphere of human activity over the past two millennia that has not been influenced by, and influenced in turn by, papal action – be it in the domains of religious belief and practice; social, cultural, and political thought; art, science, medicine, ethics, diplomacy, and international relations. Four questions – each addressed throughout the three volumes of the present work – have framed that vision across vast chronological and geographical expanses: the pope’s centrality within the Catholic Church, the primacy of papal power as an instrument of governance, the papacy’s cultural influence in society and culture, and the implications of secularity for its place in the lives of believers and non-believers alike. Each question – and the search for answers – converges around the fundamental question of papal authority: its original claims; the ebbs and flows of its effective reach; and the numerous ways in which claims, and expressions of papal authority and supremacy, have been contested within the Catholic tradition, and from without.

The chapter focuses on five disparate exercises of power spanning the global empire: the rebellions of the Araucanians, the Sangleys of Manila in the Philippines, the peasants of Córdoba in Andalusia, the Indians of Oaxaca in New Spain, and the expulsion of the moriscos from the Iberian Peninsula. Different scenarios of opposition to royal authority and their concomitant repression are analyzed to contrast how officials acted and thought, incorporating and rejecting subjects, and to study how the same official could perform in two very distinct circumstances and locales. More importantly, close attention is paid to the circulation of political ideas. Practices of government were transmitted worldwide, as well as the tropes and stereotypes on which royal officials relied for assessing imperial subjects and imposing royal authority on them.

The figure of the madman has been invoked in Russian literature from the medieval period to the present day. This chapter investigates the evolution of that tradition with an emphasis on the period from Joseph Stalin’s death in 1953 to the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991. It identifies four strains of literary madness: the divine madman, exemplified by the holy fool who tests society’s virtue and speaks truth to power; the creative madman, whose irrational behaviour stems from poetic inspiration and the generative power of the word; the rational madman, who follows a logical system to pathological extremes or inverts that paradigm by revolting against reason; and the political madman, whose sanity is often pathologised by a society that itself has lost its mind. Together, these paradigms of madness constitute an intertextual web of allusions and character types that have been embodied and amended over time.

I consider how Gulf Arabs evaluate their government’s behavior relative to the circulation of wealth. On the basis of roughly 350 interviews in the four countries with scholars, economists, dissidents, bankers, members of government, representatives of public and private foundations and NGOs and official and independent ‘ulama, I summarize their views, quoting from their responses to a set of questions and sharing the evidence they provide. I note the extent to which my interlocutors criticize their rulers in ethical terms, especially insofar as their commitment to social justice, equity and inclusion is concerned. In short, they confirm that there is no genuine concern for equity in the distribution of resources, and no indication that religious norms are integrated into this domain of governance. Rather, fairly narrow political and material interests prevail. Then, I briefly describe episodes of resistance to Gulf rulers from religious forces in society. The aim is twofold: to demonstrate how they too instrumentalize Islam for political capital and how rulers respond to the challenge they face from the religious field.

Chapter Six looks at the role of international law in the Trump administration State Department. Former policymakers gave their opinion on the extent of the effect of the Trump administration on State Department policymaking and discussed potential long-term effects. The Trump administration generally displayed a negative view toward international law, institutions, and agreements, as evidenced by its words and in its actions, a view at odds with the prevailing State Department culture. More significantly, the Trump administration took unusual steps to stifle dissent within the State Department. Former officials expressed a range of perceptions regarding the Trump administration’s effect on the State Department. A minority believed that the administration’s views and actions significantly affected attitudes and practices within the Department regarding international law and institutions. The majority believed that effects on attitudes were more likely to be felt at the policy-decision level, rather than at the lower, policy development level. That is, attitudes among rank-and-file and career State Department officials probably remained unchanged and were likely to “bounce back” after the 2020 election. Nevertheless, a reprise of the Trump administration, or a similar administration, could ultimately affect not only practices at the State Department but attitudes among officials as well.

This chapter offers an investigation of what Socrates may have meant when, in his infamous appearance before a jury at Athens in 399 BCE, he referred to himself as a myōps – typically translated as a gadfly. The chapter illustrates that the natural world does not just serve to naturalize (and thus normalize) collective political systems that are already firmly in place. As in the case of Socrates, it can also serve as a potent strategy to seek to naturalize (and thus normalize) the individual political stance outside of the collective. The chapter shows that, by carving out a space for dissent, Socrates defined a form of citizenship that resonates far beyond the ancient world. It, for example, helps to explain the ambivalence surrounding modern dissenting voices (such as those of Julian Assange, Michael Moore, and Edward Snowden). The chapter ultimately traces the buzzing of the Socratic gadfly into Hannah Arendt’s political philosophy and illustrates the important tole that this peculiar ancient creature plays in her critique of the perils of modernity.

The UK languishes under a political economic orthodoxy at the height of its structural power, but built on a demonstrably mistaken blueprint that can no longer command broad social support. This chapter argues that, so long as the UK’s parliamentary parties remain committed to this materialist utopia, the country will continue to suffer the decadent politics characteristic of the late Soviet era: a fate examined with reference to the dissident literature of that period. The Soviet system was ended by revolutions for democracy, albeit fatally timed at the height of neoliberalism. Innes closes by suggesting that the UK now stands at a critical juncture with highly uncertain outcomes. She suggests that if the UK's political parties relinquished their failing paradigm they could find renewed social, moral and economic purpose in the resolution of the ecological emergency. This paradigm shift to empiricism and new social purpose is urgent. Like Soviet communism, neoliberalism is a materialist utopia: a politics for the end of time. But in the era of the intensifying ecological emergency, its perpetuation has the capacity to hasten the end of human history, for all time, for real.

This essay aims to shed light on Sebald the polemicist and provocateur, draw attention to a central component of his literary criticism that is often ignored from an anglophone perspective. The essay first deals with the two academic monographs in which Sebald violently attacks the German-Jewish writers Alfred Döblin and Carl Sternheim, disparaging them as trailblazers for the Nazis. The consistently negative academic reviews Sebald writes from 1970 onwards as a junior academic are discussed as his personal way of participating in the political upheavals of the 1960s. After the rather quiet decade of the 1980s, Sebald’s polemical impetus flares up again, parallel to his emergence as a literary author. Jurek Becker, another German-Jewish author (and Holocaust survivor) once more serves as target of his polemics. What emerges from an examination of his polemical writings are two major findings: first, Sebald tried to learn lessons from the writers he attacked, avoiding what he saw as their flaws in his own writing. Second, Sebald’s lifelong urge to polemicize was closely tied to the issue of upward social mobility, the aggression arising from feeling to be a perpetual outsider in the social environment of academia.

Chapter 1 defines the concepts of “protest” and “dissent.” It defends public protest on marketplace, self-government, autonomy, and tolerance grounds. The chapter explores the communicative and other characteristics of public protests and demonstrations. It examines public attitudes toward protest and protest movements and the state’s typically violent and negative responses to public protest. The chapter examines the typical purposes or goals of public protests. Finally, it responds to several arguments about protest “fatigue” and the continued efficacy of public protest as a means of democratic change.

The Introduction discusses the importance of public protest even in a digital era. It uses the mass demonstrations that followed George Floyd’s murder to highlight both a desire to participate in public dissent and the challenges that restrict that participation. Those challenges include police aggression and violence, enforcement of vague public order laws, restrictions on the place where protests can occur, and attitudes about public contention. The idea of a body of protest law and the concept of “managed dissent” are introduced and explained.

As he developed his own faith, working it out as he lived and wrote, Tolstoy responded to varieties of religious experience and expression, including English ones. From early on, Tolstoy found in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, and the novels of Thackeray, Dickens, George Eliot, and others, information about English religious life and examples of how to novelize religious experience. In turn, when Tolstoy emerged, later in life, as a religious seeker and moral authority, English readers responded to Tolstoy both as a novelist and as a thinker.

Responding to imagined threats about chemical weapons delivered aerially, the British government intensified its efforts to create gas masks for everyone, testing fit and designs for those who might be unable to wear standard equipment. It did so in an atmosphere where popular culture continued to offer dire imaginings about poison gas’s potential for widespread destruction and where questions about anti-gas protection in the empire continued to emerge. By the start of 1938, the government’s air raid precautions department had developed extensive plans for how to distribute gas masks in case of an emergency across the United Kingdom. However, as it began to unveil such plans further, it encountered resistance from pacifists and antimilitarists as well as some grudging acceptance. The first significant test of these schemes came amid the Czechoslovakian or Munich Crisis in September 1938. On what became known as “Gas Mask Sunday,” the government asked its civilian inhabitants to line up across the nation to be fitted for gas masks. Although the outbreak of war was avoided, the limitations of anti-gas protection and the lack of suitable gas masks for all would propel this aspect of civil defense to the forefront as Britain’s entry into war seemed more likely than ever.