| Now available!
Telos 210 (Spring 2025): Rethinking State Power is now available for purchase in our store. Individual subscriptions to Telos are also available in both print and online formats.
Dear Telos community,
I remember years ago hearing someone disparage Telos as merely a debating society, engaging in self-absorbed intellectual debates with little real-world import. Yet, in today’s divided world, where there doesn’t seem to be much debate across the major political and conceptual divisions, perhaps a debating society is just what we need. While social media has sectioned off people into their separate discursive bubbles, Telos can still provide the kind of debate that illuminates the issues at stake and creates new ideas. Sometimes, this debate can lead to a conceptual clarity that helps more people to reject one set of ideas in favor of another. Other times, the debate can result in a new conceptualization that creates an unexpected consensus or a reshuffling of previously presumed alliances.
Some of the major turning points of Telos history provide examples of this dynamic. A major one was the way in which the debates about the 1980s European peace movements (Telos 51, 52, 56, 57) led to a general move away from a Habermasian approach to political conflict (Telos 39 and 49). The subsequent Telos analysis of Carl Schmitt’s work in that era (Telos 71 and 72) led to both a left-wing appropriation of his political theory and Paul Piccone’s and Gary Ulmen’s development of the idea of a federal populism (Telos 83, 85, 89, 91, 100), grounded in Schmitt’s idea of concrete orders. Another key turn in the 1990s was the move toward an appreciation of tradition (Telos 94) and of religion (Telos 58, 107, 113, 119) that resulted from the interest in populism (Telos 87, 103, 104).
Here, I remember particularly well a spirited debate in a restaurant in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, during a Telos conference on populism at Elizabethtown College (Telos 88), in which editor David Ost, a left liberal, and Paul Gottfried, a paleoconservative, ended up, much to their chagrin, on the same side. They both held to a fundamentally liberal conception of culture that is sanctioned from above, as opposed to Paul Piccone’s defense of local traditions—even when they become “irrational”—as long as they are professed and practiced openly. In Elizabethtown, the traditions of the Amish were the most immediate examples. While we suspected that leftists believe more in state institutions than local control, it was surprising that, when push came to shove, paleoconservatives turned out to be statist liberals as well.
Our new issue, Telos 210, which appeared online yesterday, focuses on state power as well as the Trump presidency and presents the latest version of this debate about local autonomy and the critique of bureaucracy. State power can be benign or malevolent to the extent that it can either create a space for the development of local culture on the level of the people or try to administer culture through a bureaucratic apparatus that attempts to preserve the power of the bureaucrats based on their claim to rationality. The essays in this issue think through these different possibilities for the structuring of state power.
Even in this issue’s debate about the Trump presidency, where we have a set of diverging views that reflect the polarization in the United States, we can still identify a general consensus that the primary danger is the increase in administrative power. The main disagreement is about whether Trump represents a further solidification of such power or a first step in its dismantling. The consensus that is emerging across the divide is about the importance of removing legislative power from the administration and placing it back with Congress. The disagreement lies in the best means to implement this idea.
Our Telos-Paul Piccone Institute conference on China Keywords this past weekend was similarly successful in drawing out opposing perspectives and forcing them to confront each other. The organizers, Eric Hendriks and Institute Director Mark Weiner, brought together a group that included both geographic diversity, with scholars from China, Taiwan, the United States, and Europe, and viewpoint diversity, with thinkers from both universities and think tanks. The discussions revealed a diversity of views in present-day China, which include debates not just between party supporters, nationalists, and liberals, but also between right-wingers, left-wingers, and Christians within the liberal camp, as well as between Neo-Confucians, Schmittians, and Straussians amongst party supporters. The vibrancy of the Chinese discussions was an interesting contrast to the United States, in which the conference participants identified a relative underestimation of the importance of ideology and culture in today’s major political conflicts.
The difficult situation of censorship within China made this conference in New York into an excellent forum for a wide-ranging discussion, with no holds barred. The result was intellectually exciting and eye-opening for everyone involved, and we commend Eric Hendriks in particular for bringing us together to create this latest, most successful installment of the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute’s China Initiative. Watch for the essays from the conference to appear in Telos in the coming months.
Regards,
David Pan
Editor, Telos |
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