James Tully (philosopher)
James Hamilton Tully FRSC (/ˈtʌli/; born 1946) is a Canadian philosopher who is the Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Law, Indigenous Governance and Philosophy at the University of Victoria, Canada.
His research and teaching comprise a public philosophy that is grounded in place (Canada) yet reaches out to the world of civic engagement with the problems of our time.
Jackman Distinguished Professor in Philosophical Studies at the University of Toronto in the departments of Philosophy and Political Science, and in the Faculty of Law.
It is an attempt to renew and transform the tradition of public philosophy so it can effectively address the pressing political problems of our age in a genuinely democratic way.
While they may always strive to determine their own identities and relations, pursuant to "self rule, the oldest political good in the world,"[13] the solution is not to crack down on diversity or to impose one cultural model over others.
[21] To the extent that governance relations restrict this basic freedom, "they constitute a structure of domination, the members are not self-determining, and the society is unfree.
Against violence and tyranny, Tully argues, practices of civic freedom make the best "strategies of confrontation,"[24] because they generate conditions for transformative change.
[28] Tully summarizes the approach and its potential: 'Practices of civic freedom' comprise the vast repertoire of ways of citizens acting together on the field of governance relationships and against the oppressive and unjust dimensions of them.
The general aim of these diverse civic activities is to bring oppressive and unjust governance relationships under the on-going shared authority of the citizenry subject to them; namely, to civicise and democratize them from below.
"[31] However, this is no utopian vision, according to Tully, referring to the "thousands" and "millions of examples of civic"[32] practices everyday that make another world not only possible but "actual.
"[33] To clarify and reinforce this approach, Tully argues for an expanded conception of the term citizenship to encompass all forms of governance-related conduct, with an emphasis on "negotiated practices.
[38] Where civic denotes practice and pluralism, civil citizenship singularly refers to "a status given by the institutions of the modern constitutional state in international law.
"This [civic and global] mode of citizenship," he argues, "has the capacity to overcome the imperialism of the present age and bring a democratic world into being.
"[43] More recently, Tully has emphasized the importance of "coordinating" the different ways that civil (deliberative) and civic (cooperative) citizens address the same political problems, such as social and ecological justice.
[47] For example, he writes, the alternative of a politics of reasonable nonviolent cooperation and agonistics (Satyagraha) was discovered in the twentieth century by William James, Gandhi, Abdul Gaffar Khan, Einstein, Ashley Montagu, Bertrand Russell, Martin Luther King Junior, Thomas Merton, Thich Nhat Hanh, Gene Sharp, Petra Kelly, Johan Galtung and Barbara Deming.
"For cooperative citizens," Tully writes, "means and ends are internally related, like a seed to the full-grown plant, as Gandhi put it.
"[52] He rejects the idea, prevalent across the spectrum of Western political thought, from revolutionaries to reactionaries (the "reigning dogma of the left and right"[53]) that peaceful and democratic societies can be brought about by coercive and violent means.
"[49] For these reasons, Tully extends his civics-based public philosophy to "practitioners and social scientists [who] are beginning to appreciate the transformative power of participatory non-violence and the futility of war in comparison.
For example, pointing to the work of ecological scientists from Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, and Barry Commoner to the Intergovernmental Panels on Climate Change, Tully links the unsustainability crisis of the Anthropocene to his own critique of "modern civil" modes of governmentality (as violent, exploitative, and destructive).
[58] The famous Indigenous artwork Spirit of Haida Gwaii remains exemplary of democratic and pluralistic ways of thinking and acting – between humans and the natural environments on which they depend.
