en
de
Co-hosted with Integral Politics Switzerland and Integral Politics International
Integral political philosophy - Understanding the current crisis of legitimacy in liberal democracies
In this salon, Dr. Jim Cowan (UK) will present his new book project (in preparation), which includes Integral theory and practice.
Together with his co-author Tom Meek, they are offering considerations on about understanding the current crisis of legitimacy in liberal democracies, based on their current state of writing, as well as their understanding of politics in the UK.
They write: "We do not think liberal democracy is the end of the history of how we human beings continued to learn how to govern ourselves, our societies and our environment. We know what lies of the other side of dictatorship: totalitarianism. We don’t yet know what lies on the other side of liberal democracy: could it be democracy in which integral plays a leading role? While acknowledging the monumental achievements of liberal democracy in human history, we think a bolder strategy is called for than just patching up the liberal democratic framework: one of aiming for what lies on the other side of liberal democracy.
While our focus is on the UK we feel there will be an international audience in liberal democracies who will be able to translate what we are saying into their own country contexts.”
We plan to do three things in this session.
Firstly, we will orientate ourselves to the notion that liberal democracy may well not be the endgame: if so what are our thoughts about what could come after it?
Secondly, having got ourselves into `After Liberal Democracy` territory, does Integral theory and practice give us indications about how we should govern ourselves (see note below)?
The third step is to appreciate what Tom and I have come up with to give expression to all this. We can share the book`s outline, noting that we have now written good drafts of over half the projected 24 chapters. We hope this will seguay into how what have just shared together relates to the outline.
Note: If you are coming on the call but are not involved in the Integral movement, in this second step in the evening, we would ask you to project forward from your own values and what they say to you about how we should govern ourselves.
Dr Jim Cowan has over 40 years’ experience in political and social change in Britain, both academically and in community work on housing estates, with family support, disability communities, and institutional racism. After studying politics and philosophy, he moved into social action and community development, which taught him “how the UK actually works”. He later added 5 social science degrees alongside his career in social work, as well as a PhD reflecting his experiences of how people in communities and organisations use language to shape what gets done. As a long-term socially engaged Buddhist, he explores a shared consciousness which creates a foundation for a new future. In his retirement he discovered integral and is active in the Integral movement, hosting the monthly meetings of the Integral UK group. His research since 2012 led to the book The Britain Potential (2019), highlighting the UK civil society’s creativity. Since then, he and Tom Meek have collaborated on analysing UK politics, culminating in their current project and Substack, After Liberal Democracy.