Jacques Ellul

Just Policing: An Ellulian Critique

by Andy Alexis-Baker

Alexis-Baker, Andy. "Just Policing: An Ellulian Critique." The Ellul Forum 48 (Fall, 2011): 12–18.

In the past decade many pacifist-minded Christians have began to explore differences between policing and warfare with... more In the past decade many pacifist-minded Christians have began to explore differences between policing and warfare with the noble hope of limiting or even abolishing war as we know it. Jim Wallis claims that since 9/11 many Christians have re-read Jacques Ellul, “who explained his decision to support the resistance movement against Nazism by appealing to the ‘necessity of violence’ but wasn’t willing to call such recourse ‘Christian.’” Similarly, Christian pacifists might respond to terrorism, Wallis claimed, by advocating that the international community create a global police force to deal with violations of international law and human rights. Such a force, Wallis wrote, is “much more constrained, controlled, and circumscribed by the rule of law than is the violence of war, which knows few real boundaries.” Wallis’ suggestion that Ellul’s works may help to formulate a response to terrorism, and that such a response ought to be “policing” raises the question of what an Ellulian analysis of policing might look like.

In my paper, I will use Ellul—rather than summarize his views—to critique just policing. Those who advocate for just policing have not adequately tested whether police are less violent because of the rule of law, and they make ahistorical arguments that do not countenance the possibility that policing may in fact sustain or even worsen violence, not lessen it.

Contested Grounds: incommensurability and the paradigms of whiteness

by Colin Salter

in Barbara Baird & Damien Riggs, Eds. (2009) The Racial Politics of Bodies, Nations and Knowledges, Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Adorno on Science and Nihilism, Animals, and Jews

by Babette Babich

Original citation:  Babich, “Adorno on Science and Nihilism, Animals, and Jews.” Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy/Revue canadienne de philosophie continentale. Vol. 14, No. 1, (2011). 110-145.

Adorno’s readers are unsettled by the barest hint of anything that might be taken to be anti-science  Yet for... more Adorno’s readers are unsettled by the barest hint of anything that might be taken to be anti-science  Yet for Adorno, so-called “scientistic” tendencies are the very “conditions of society
and of scientific thought.” Yet his readers tend to refuse criticism of this kind. Scientific rationality cannot itself be problematic after all. Rather than science, it is scientism that is to be avoided. But is Adorno speaking of scientific rationality or scientistic rationality? 
Similar observations can be made with regard to animals (as Adorno saw them vs. his interpreters). And so on.  But overall, and in general, how are we to read Adorno?

Education and Exemplars: Learning to Doubt the Overman

by Babette Babich

Citation info:
Babette Babich, “Education and Exemplars: Learning to Doubt the Overman,” In: Paul Fairfield, ed., Education, Dialogue and Hermeneutics (London: Continuum, 2011), pp. 125-149.


This is only an uncorrected proof copy and certain infelicities remain. The print copy to be found in Fairfield's collection corrects these and includes a range of other essays.

This paper first considers Ivan Illich’s challenging book, <Deschooling Society> as a general prelude to a... more This paper first considers Ivan Illich’s challenging book, <Deschooling Society> as a general prelude to a discussion of Nietzsche’s philosophical engagement with his classical
philology, a profession which he argued to be essentially pedagogical. Illich argues that schooling is inherently an education in consumption and thus Illich echoes many of the observations of Jacques Ellul. Where Nietzsche argues that it is incumbent upon the individual to become, as it were, his own educator by his or her choice of an exemplar, I take this to a brief re-examination of Nietzsche's ironic use of the overman.