Katarzyna Eliasz | Jagiellonian University (original) (raw)

Papers by Katarzyna Eliasz

Research Handbook on Legal Evolution, Editors: W. Załuski, S. Bourgeois-Gironde, A. Dyrda, 2024

This chapter examines the evolution of a particular variety of political freedom labeled by Benja... more This chapter examines the evolution of a particular variety of political freedom labeled by Benjamin Constant as the freedom of the ancients. Ancient freedom was a two-element phenomenon comprising of individual political influence combined with the unconstrained competencies of the collective political body. Due to its second element, ancient (political) freedom is incompatible with modern (personal) freedom. The chapter discusses factors that contributed to the emergence of this particular (two-element) variety of political freedom, addresses the causes of its disappearance in later times, and tackles implicit and explicit attempts to revive it in Modernity during the later stages of the French Revolution. Constant’s association of the revolutionary terror with the irresponsible cult of Antiquity prompted him to provide a modern reformulation of political freedom that would be compatible with the distinguished position that personal freedom occupies in the modern mind.

Studia Iuridica, 2021

The concept of reverse discrimination refers to a variety of strategies that entail giving strong... more The concept of reverse discrimination refers to a variety of strategies that entail giving strong preferential treatment in employment or education to the groups in a society that have been institutionally discriminated against. "Giving strong preferential treatment" means that candidates with lower qualifications are given priority over better qualified members of the groups that have not been discriminated against in the past. Reverse discrimination can be justified with reference to two strategies: backward-looking and forward-looking. On the backward-looking justification, reverse discrimination is a means of compensating victims of past discrimination, while on the forward-looking justification, reverse discrimination is a means of creating more diverse and egalitarian society. The aim of this paper is to challenge both justifications. First, against backwardlooking justification, I shall claim that reverse discrimination is not a proper method of compensating for past wrongs of discrimination. Second, I shall challenge the forwardlooking argument by pointing at the risks inherent in perceiving reverse discrimination as the means of creating more egalitarian society. Importantly, the objections presented in this paper refer only to reverse discrimination, and they do not undermine other methods used within the affirmative action (including tie-breaker provisions).

Philosophical Papers, 2022

Liberal democracy is often considered to be unstable, consisting of two markedly different ideals... more Liberal democracy is often considered to be unstable, consisting of two markedly different ideals (i.e., liberalism and democracy) that remain in tension. Yet the thesis regarding the alleged instability of liberal democracy is itself ambiguous, for it may refer to two senses of instability: empirical or conceptual. After introducing this, in our view, important distinction, (though overlooked in the relevant literature where both senses of 'stability' are usually mixed up) we argue that while liberal democracy is indeed empirically unstable it is, contrary to the implicitly assumed dominant opinion, conceptually stable. In the first part of the paper, we introduce several arguments supporting the thesis about the conceptual stability of liberal democracy; the arguments appeal to the ideas of the (constitutional) precommitment, intrinsic equality, and liberty. In the second part, we provide arguments for the claim about the empirical instability of liberal democracy, identifying its main causes, viz. several anthropological-psychological propensities, in particular the weakness of the propensity for freedom, hierarchical proclivities, and inclinations to adopt extreme normative convictions.

Teoria i filozofia prawa, 2021

Prawo do dobrego samorządu w perspektywie konstytucyjno-instytucjonalnej, red. M. Stec, K. Małysa-Sulińska, 2021

Archiv für Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie – Beihefte (ARSP-B), Populism: Perspectives from Legal Philosophy, S. Kirste, N. Paulo (eds.), 2021

Chantal Mouffe’s theory of left populism represents an attempt to reinvigorate democratic politic... more Chantal Mouffe’s theory of left populism represents an attempt to reinvigorate democratic politics by strengthening popular sovereignty, which has been undermined by the domination of undemocratic liberalism or post-democracy. Unfortunately, left populism’s undeniable theoretical advantages, which are apparent when it is compared to its right-wing opponent, translate into practical shortcomings. First, its anti-essentialist and inclusive method of constructing the people entails a threat of a strategic myopia, which impedes its reformatory ambitions. Second, its insistence on sustaining a radically open and agonistic public sphere translates into an inconsistent strategy of dealing with right-wing populism. Mouffe appears to accept right-wing populism as a legitimate political opponent, which is at odds with the adversarial model of political conflict that she espouses.

Revus Journal for Constitutional Theory and Philosophy of Law, 2020

Avant, 2019

This paper is devoted to clarifying Hannah Arendt's concept of political freedom (which, at certa... more This paper is devoted to clarifying Hannah Arendt's concept of political freedom (which, at certain points, is markedly obscure) by the means of analysing its structure. My analysis proceeds in three steps. Firstly, I distinguish a pre-political concept of freedom as exercising spontaneity, which is at the root of Arendt's understanding of political freedom. Secondly, I analyse her account of freedom as exercising action and indicate its relationship to the elementary freedom of spontaneity. Arendt endowed action with a distinguished importance, since she assumed that it is the only activity within the vita activa (the other two being labour and work), which has a special anthropological and axiological significance. According to Arendt, only action allows one to truly experience the fundamental aspect of the human condition , which is the fact of human plurality; it is also the only activity which allows one to exercise specifically public principles, such as solidarity, equality, or justice. Thirdly, I indicate how these two accounts of freedom translate into Arendt's concept of political freedom. This analysis reveals that the Arendtian concept of political freedom is markedly original. She did not define it in a usual manner, i.e. through indicating bundles of legal and political rights which determine the accepted scope of participation in the public affairs. The inherent part of her concept of political freedom is a specific account of how it must be exercised (i.e. through action). Political freedom understood as the participation in governance exercised through action is not merely an activity of instrumental, but also anthropological and axio-logical importance, which is due to the special anthropological and axiological meaning of action. In the final section, I discuss the practical dimension of Arendt's theory. She doubted whether the traditional representative democracy is capable of accommodating her 'rich' 1 The following article was prepared as part of the research grant "The Place of Political Freedom in the Hierarchy of Democratic Values", founded by the National Science Centre, Poland, on the basis of the decision DEC-2016/23/D/HS5/01814. Katarzyna Eliasz 30 ideal of political freedom, therefore she proposed an alternative account of political system based on councils. I formulate objections against this proposition and demonstrate that councils would presumably fail to accommodate Arendt's exacting account of political freedom.

Celem artykułu jest rekonstrukcja i krytyka koncepcji wolności politycznej przedstawionej na grun... more Celem artykułu jest rekonstrukcja i krytyka koncepcji wolności politycznej przedstawionej na gruncie współczesnego instrumentalnego republikanizmu reprezentowanego przede wszystkim w pracach Philipa Pettita. Instrumentalny republikanizm zakłada, że wolność polityczna jest wartością instrumentalną, służącą realizowaniu naczelnej wartości, jaką jest wolność rozumiana jako nieobecność dominacji. Uznanie nie-dominacji za naczelną wartość pociąga za sobą postulat ograniczenia wolności politycznej, która -jak wskazuje Pettit -może być jednym ze źródeł dominacji (w związku z groźbą tyranii większości). W artykule wskazuję, że argumenty Pettita narażone są na dwa podstawowe zarzuty. Po pierwsze, w wyznaczonym przez niego (zbyt wąskim) zakresie, wolność polityczna nie sprzyja niedominacji. Po drugie, skupiając się wyłącznie na instrumentalnej roli wolności politycznej, Pettit pomija jej głębszy wymiar jako wartości demokratycznej.

The problem of the social realm is probably one of the most obscure aspects of Hannah Arendt’s po... more The problem of the social realm is probably one of the most obscure aspects of Hannah Arendt’s political theory. One of the reasons for the ambiguity is certainly the strong distinction between what Arendt calls the public realm of politics and the social sphere. The explicit separation of these two realms translates into a significant gap between political action and socio-economic activities. As I will indicate, this separation leads to certain paradoxical conclusions as to where to draw the limits for legislation.

Among various modes of the vita activa considered by Hannah Arendt, the ability for action and pa... more Among various modes of the vita activa considered by Hannah Arendt, the ability for action and particularly political action is the crucial one as it endows life with meaning and constitutes human freedom. The question I address in this essay is whether it is possible – according to Arendt – to create active citizenship by means of democratic education. In order to answer this question I consider three models of democratic education, two of which should be rejected if one agrees with Arendt’s assumptions. The third model, aimed at developing abilities to think critically, is the only one that can support those values, which are essential for a healthy democracy.

The concept of legal validity is regarded within the dominant – legal-positivistic – account of l... more The concept of legal validity is regarded within the dominant – legal-positivistic – account of law as a non-gradable concept: a legal rule is either valid or non-valid. However, this account of validity is criticized by some scholars for being too strict and rigid. Apparently, an attractive alternative might be Alf Ross’s account of validity as a probabilistic concept. Ross assumed that the stronger predictions of judicial behavior a given rule generates, the higher probability can be assigned to its being valid. However, this account of legal validity is by no means uncontroversial. In the paper four objections against it are formulated: the objection of the apparent gradability, the objection of the problematic ascertainability, the objection of the normative insignificance of the probabilistic information, and the objection of neglecting the normativity of legal rules. These objections are treated in the paper as providing strong reasons for rejecting Ross’s claim that predictions of judicial behaviour formulated on the basis of rules are conceptually linked to their validity (i.e., they define their meaning); it is argued in the paper that they are merely a way of testing empirical hypotheses concerning the application (effectiveness) of legal rules.

Conference Presentations by Katarzyna Eliasz

The question of freedom is certainly a pervasive problem in political theory. Its importance was ... more The question of freedom is certainly a pervasive problem in political theory. Its importance was famously stated by Hannah Arendt who claimed that “the raison d'être of politics is freedom”. Even if one finds this claim too strong, it is undeniable that politics is closely related to the notion of freedom. The task of the proposed workshop will be to investigate into and discuss these relations and try to answer questions as: is freedom really a raison d’etre of politics? Is promoting freedom a proper aim of politics? If ‘yes’ than what kind of freedom is politics to promote? Or perhaps politics is an obtrusive limitation of freedom? These questions certainly open up a wide spectrum of more precise problems, as for instance the possible methods of promoting political freedom by institutional design, the question of legal and social implications of various notions of political freedom etc.

Edited books by Katarzyna Eliasz