Luke P Plotica | Virginia Tech (original) (raw)

Papers by Luke P Plotica

Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society

Abstract:The individual stands at the center of the works of Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau... more Abstract:The individual stands at the center of the works of Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau. Prompted to their reflections by the changing social, economic, and political conditions of nineteenth century America, they articulate two rich and distinct visions of individuality and the conditions that foster and frustrate its development. Whitman’s poetry and prose depicts a porous, malleable, internally plural self who experiences the world in largely aesthetic terms and ecstatic terms, whereas Thoreau’s writings depict a bounded, willful self who experiences the world through the mediating force of her individual ethical principles. Thus, while both valorized individuality they present competing ideals: Whitman’s was expansive and centrifugal while Thoreau’s was integral and centripetal. Furthermore, their respective accounts of democracy—the former’s laudatory, the latter’s critical—are profoundly shaped by these antecedent accounts of the individual. In this essay I argue that not only do these distinct visions of individuality continue to speak to us today, they stand to inform analysis of and attachment to modern democratic institutions and practices.

Contemporary Pragmatism

In Conservatism and Pragmatism, Seth Vannatta posits and explores several major conceptual and pr... more In Conservatism and Pragmatism, Seth Vannatta posits and explores several major conceptual and practical affinities between classical (especially Peircean) pragmatism and conservatism. Characterizing both as essentially methods rather than ideologies, he argues that the two ought to be understood as mutually supportive and corrective, and that they conjointly supply an especially robust set of intellectual resources relevant to contemporary moral, political, and legal concerns. This essay critically examines Vannatta’s marriage of conservatism and pragmatism in the realm of legal theory. It argues that while Vannatta’s work provides a rigorous pragmatist alternative to the familiar legal formalism adopted by many American conservatives, its foundations may be narrower than Vannatta appreciates and the resulting theory may have little necessary connection to the dispositional, methodological conservatism upon which it is purportedly based.

American Political Thought

For much of the twentieth century the landscape of American federalism was characterized by accum... more For much of the twentieth century the landscape of American federalism was characterized by accumulation of power by the national government. In recent decades influential political and legal thinkers have called for devolution of governmental power to the states and localities, where, they argue, such powers properly belong and are more effectively exercised. One of the recurrent argumentative tropes in the devolutionary literature maintains that devolution is more desirable than centralization because it better protects and enhances individual liberty, and not merely the sovereignty of the states. The project of this essay is to challenge this alleged linkage by examining four of its most common and compelling manifestations. Utilizing Isaiah Berlin's distinction between negative and positive liberty, the essay offers critical analysis of claims that devolution serves individual liberty by (1) facilitating policy experimentation, (2) spurring interjurisdictional competition, (3) promoting local self-government, and (4) enforcing the limits of governmental power. A field that has been so often and sedulously plowed leaves few if any new facts to be gleaned; instead controversy revolves around interpretations of the available facts.

Nineteenth-Century Individualism and the Market Economy

This chapter turns from Ralph Waldo Emerson to his protege Henry David Thoreau, who arrives at a ... more This chapter turns from Ralph Waldo Emerson to his protege Henry David Thoreau, who arrives at a starkly different assessment of the individual vis-a-vis the market, despite beginning from many shared concepts and values. Like Emerson, Thoreau embraced an individualistic ideal of self-cultivation built upon a foundation of personal conscience. However, he unambiguously articulates a doctrine of deliberate living against the mentality, values, and practices of the market, which he believed instrumentalized individuals and left them without the tangible or intangible resources to pursue genuine self-culture. Thoreau sees no way to outsmart the market, to use it without coming to serve it. His individualism is thus ultimately styled to be as antagonistic to the market as he believed the market was antithetical to individuality.

Political Theory, 2015

Many regard Henry David Thoreau as an apolitical or even antipolitical thinker, concerned above a... more Many regard Henry David Thoreau as an apolitical or even antipolitical thinker, concerned above all with his personal moral purity, and thus unresponsive and irresponsible towards the society in which he lived. Contrary to this received interpretation, I argue that Thoreau’s life and work articulates a robust and complex doctrine of intersubjective responsibility and political agency. Although he denies individual responsibility to institutions and other persons, he soberly embraces individual responsibility for one’s role in shaping and maintaining the arrangements of society, including those that compromise the self and lend support to vicious practices and institutions. In respect of his understanding of responsibility, both his strident critique of modern society and his committed individualism appear as political postures especially apt for late modern times.

Contemporary Political Theory, 2015

The Review of Politics, 2013

Ludwig Wittgenstein and Michael Oakeshott are often labeled conservative thinkers, and taken to t... more Ludwig Wittgenstein and Michael Oakeshott are often labeled conservative thinkers, and taken to theorize rigid limits to individual agency and criticism. Tracing several modes of affinity between the work of Wittgenstein and Oakeshott, one can recognize the conventionality and rule-governed character of linguistic practices and yet affirm a deeply individualistic account of agency and action. Each thinker respectively characterizes the individual as located within a context of action that is richly structured by intersubjective rules and practices. Yet each also recognizes an ineluctable dimension of individuality and contingency to action that surpasses mere rule following or the reprise of conventional practice. The very situatedness of the individual agent within a framework of linguistic practices shared with others provides the friction that enables individual criticism and transgressive political action. Wittgenstein and Oakeshott thus present a perspective on political agency...

Polity, 2012

Abstract In recent years, scholars have begun to explore the democratic valences of Michael Oakes... more Abstract In recent years, scholars have begun to explore the democratic valences of Michael Oakeshott's political thought. Commentators generally present him either as a skeptical and reluctant democrat or as an advocate of deliberative democracy. This article contends that ...

Nineteenth-Century Individualism and the Market Economy

The Review of Politics, 2012

Polity, 2012

In recent years, scholars have begun to explore the democratic valences of Michael Oakeshott's po... more In recent years, scholars have begun to explore the democratic valences of Michael Oakeshott's political thought. Commentators generally present him either as a skeptical and reluctant democrat or as an advocate of deliberative democracy. This article contends that Oakeshott criticizes some epistemological and substantive commitments that are characteristic of deliberative theories, yet his vision of democracy is more robust than skeptical readers admit. Using the themes of consensus and epistemic politics as points for comparison with the ideas of Oakeshott and deliberative democrats, I consider how his theory of civil association, critique of rationalism, and characterization of conversation as "the gist and meaning of democracy" speak to contemporary democratic theory. I conclude that he offers a pluralistic ethos, rather than a self-contained model, for democratic politics that has affinities with agonistic theories of democracy.

The Review of Politics, 2013

Contemporary Pragmatism, 2018

In Conservatism and Pragmatism, Seth Vannatta posits and explores several major conceptual and pr... more In Conservatism and Pragmatism, Seth Vannatta posits and explores several major conceptual and practical affinities between classical (especially Peircean) pragmatism and conservatism. Characterizing both as essentially methods rather than ideologies, he argues that the two ought to be understood as mutually supportive and corrective, and that they conjointly supply an especially robust set of intellectual resources relevant to contemporary moral, political, and legal concerns. This essay critically examines Vannatta's marriage of conservatism and pragmatism in the realm of legal theory. It argues that while Vannatta's work provides a rigorous pragmatist alternative to the familiar legal formalism adopted by many American conservatives, its foundations may be narrower than Vannatta appreciates and the resulting theory may have little necessary connection to the dispositional, methodological conservatism upon which it is purportedly based.

Political Theory, 2016

Many regard Henry David Thoreau as an apolitical or even antipolitical thinker, concerned above a... more Many regard Henry David Thoreau as an apolitical or even antipolitical thinker, concerned above all with his personal moral purity, and thus unresponsive and irresponsible towards the society in which he lived. Contrary to this received interpretation, I argue that Thoreau's life and work articulates a robust and complex doctrine of intersubjective responsibility and political agency. Although he denies individual responsibility to institutions and other persons, he soberly embraces individual responsibility for one's role in shaping and maintaining the arrangements of society, including those that compromise the self and lend support to vicious practices and institutions. In respect of his understanding of responsibility, both his strident critique of modern society and his committed individualism appear as political postures especially apt for late modern times.

American Political Thought, 2017

For much of the twentieth century the landscape of American federalism was characterized by accum... more For much of the twentieth century the landscape of American federalism was characterized by accumulation of power by the national government. In recent decades influential political and legal thinkers have called for devolution of governmental power to the states and localities, where, they argue, such powers properly belong and are more effectively exercised. One of the recurrent argumentative tropes in the devolutionary literature maintains that devolution is more desirable than centralization because it better protects and enhances individual liberty, and not merely the sovereignty of the states. The project of this essay is to challenge this alleged linkage by examining four of its most common and compelling manifestations. Utilizing Isaiah Berlin’s distinction between negative and positive liberty, the essay offers critical analysis of claims that devolution serves individual liberty by (1) facilitating policy experimentation, (2) spurring interjurisdictional competition, (3) promoting local self-government, and (4) enforcing the limits of governmental power.

Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, 2018

The individual stands at the center of the works of Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau. Prompte... more The individual stands at the center of the works of Walt Whitman and Henry David
Thoreau. Prompted to their reflections by the changing social, economic, and political
conditions of nineteenth century America, they articulate two rich and distinct visions
of individuality and the conditions that foster and frustrate its development. Whitman’s
poetry and prose depicts a porous, malleable, internally plural self who experiences the
world in largely aesthetic terms and ecstatic terms, whereas Thoreau’s writings depict a bounded, willful self who experiences the world through the mediating force of her
individual ethical principles. Thus, while both valorized individuality they present competing ideals: Whitman’s was expansive and centrifugal while Thoreau’s was integral and centripetal. Furthermore, their respective accounts of democracy—the former’s laudatory, the latter’s critical—are profoundly shaped by these antecedent accounts of the individual. In this essay I argue that not only do these distinct visions of individuality continue to speak to us today, they stand to inform analysis of and attachment to modern democratic institutions and practices.

Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society

Contemporary Pragmatism

American Political Thought

Nineteenth-Century Individualism and the Market Economy

Political Theory, 2015

Contemporary Political Theory, 2015

The Review of Politics, 2013

Polity, 2012

Nineteenth-Century Individualism and the Market Economy

The Review of Politics, 2012

Polity, 2012

The Review of Politics, 2013

Contemporary Pragmatism, 2018

In Conservatism and Pragmatism, Seth Vannatta posits and explores several major conceptual and pr... more In Conservatism and Pragmatism, Seth Vannatta posits and explores several major conceptual and practical affinities between classical (especially Peircean) pragmatism and conservatism. Characterizing both as essentially methods rather than ideologies, he argues that the two ought to be understood as mutually supportive and corrective, and that they conjointly supply an especially robust set of intellectual resources relevant to contemporary moral, political, and legal concerns. This essay critically examines Vannatta's marriage of conservatism and pragmatism in the realm of legal theory. It argues that while Vannatta's work provides a rigorous pragmatist alternative to the familiar legal formalism adopted by many American conservatives, its foundations may be narrower than Vannatta appreciates and the resulting theory may have little necessary connection to the dispositional, methodological conservatism upon which it is purportedly based.

Political Theory, 2016

Many regard Henry David Thoreau as an apolitical or even antipolitical thinker, concerned above a... more Many regard Henry David Thoreau as an apolitical or even antipolitical thinker, concerned above all with his personal moral purity, and thus unresponsive and irresponsible towards the society in which he lived. Contrary to this received interpretation, I argue that Thoreau's life and work articulates a robust and complex doctrine of intersubjective responsibility and political agency. Although he denies individual responsibility to institutions and other persons, he soberly embraces individual responsibility for one's role in shaping and maintaining the arrangements of society, including those that compromise the self and lend support to vicious practices and institutions. In respect of his understanding of responsibility, both his strident critique of modern society and his committed individualism appear as political postures especially apt for late modern times.

American Political Thought, 2017

For much of the twentieth century the landscape of American federalism was characterized by accum... more For much of the twentieth century the landscape of American federalism was characterized by accumulation of power by the national government. In recent decades influential political and legal thinkers have called for devolution of governmental power to the states and localities, where, they argue, such powers properly belong and are more effectively exercised. One of the recurrent argumentative tropes in the devolutionary literature maintains that devolution is more desirable than centralization because it better protects and enhances individual liberty, and not merely the sovereignty of the states. The project of this essay is to challenge this alleged linkage by examining four of its most common and compelling manifestations. Utilizing Isaiah Berlin’s distinction between negative and positive liberty, the essay offers critical analysis of claims that devolution serves individual liberty by (1) facilitating policy experimentation, (2) spurring interjurisdictional competition, (3) promoting local self-government, and (4) enforcing the limits of governmental power.

Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, 2018

This book studies nineteenth-century American individualism and its relationship to the simultane... more This book studies nineteenth-century American individualism and its relationship to the simultaneous rise of the market economy as articulated in the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and William Graham Sumner. The argument of the book is that these thinkers offer distinct visions of individualism that reflect their respective understandings of the market, and provide thoughtful and insightful perspectives upon the promise and peril of this economic and social order. Looking back to Emerson, Thoreau, and Sumner furnishes valuable insights about the history of American political and social thought, as well as about the complexity of one of the most basic and prevalent relationships of modern life: that between the individual and the institutional complex of the market.

One of the seminal voices of twentieth-century political thought, Michael Oakeshott’s work has of... more One of the seminal voices of twentieth-century political thought, Michael Oakeshott’s work has often fallen prey to the ideological labels applied to it by his interpreters and commentators. In this book, Luke Philip Plotica argues that we stand to learn more by embracing Oakeshott’s own understanding of his work as contributions to an ever-evolving conversation of humanity. Building from Oakeshott’s concept of conversation as an engagement among a plurality of voices “without symposiarch or arbiter” to dictate its course, Plotica explores several fundamental and recurring themes of Oakeshott’s philosophical and political writings: individual agency, tradition, the state, and democracy. When viewed as interventions into an ongoing conversation of modern political thought, Oakeshott’s work transcends the limits of familiar ideological labels, and his thought opens into deeper engagement with some of the most significant thinkers of the twentieth century, including Ludwig Wittgenstein, Charles Taylor, Michel Foucault, and Hannah Arendt. Attending to these often unexpected or unrecognized affinities casts fresh light on some of Oakeshott’s most familiar ideas and their systematic relations, and facilitates a better understanding of the breadth and depth of his political thought.

William Graham Sumner (1840-1910) was widely read in his day as an advocate of classical, laissez... more William Graham Sumner (1840-1910) was widely read in his day as an advocate of classical, laissez-faire liberalism. His blend of naturalism and moralism led him to explain individual character and social order in terms continuous with evolutionary biology, characterizing individual economic success and the wellbeing of society as products of action in accordance with the cold imperatives of natural struggle and its social expression via market competition. This essay argues that Sumner’s thought captures the intellectual background of the United States Supreme Court’s Lochner-era economic and civil rights jurisprudence, and its general antipathy towards state interference in the workings of the market. Specifically, Sumner’s thought helps to contextualize and explain why the Lochner-era Court upheld some instances of economic regulation and social welfare policy (e.g., Munn v. Illinois and Muller v. Oregon) despite its predominantly anti-regulation, laissez-faire ideology.