Patten, Alan

views updated

PATTEN, Alan

PERSONAL: Male. Education: Oxford University, Ph.D.

ADDRESSES: Office—McGill University, Department of Political Science, 855 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3A 2T7. E-mail—[email protected]

CAREER: Political scientist, philosopher, and writer. McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, associate professor of political science. University of Exeter, former lecturer in politics.

AWARDS, HONORS: American Political Science Association, Foundations of Political Theory Section, First Book Prize, 2000; Canadian Political Science Association, Macpherson Prize, 2000; Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Fellow to Princeton University Center for Human Values, 2001-02; SSHRC Grant.

WRITINGS:

Hegel's Idea of Freedom, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1999.

(Editor, with Will Kymlicka) Language Rights and Political Theory, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2003.

Contributor to periodicals, including Ethics, Political Theory, History of Political Thought, British Journal of Political Science, and Nations and Nationalism. Contributor to books, including The Demands of Citizenship, edited by Iain Hampsher-Monk and Catriona McKinnon, Continuum (London, England), 2000.

SIDELIGHTS: In Hegel's Idea of Freedom, political scientist and philosopher Alan Patten focuses on Hegel's concept of sittlichkeit, or ethical life, in offering "an extensive interpretation of Hegelian freedom as self-actualization rather than as the limited fulfillment of social and political roles," wrote Randolph C. Wheeler in Review of Metaphysics. The book "offers its readers a clear and penetrating analysis of the complex conception of freedom that underlies Hegel's vision of the rational, or good, social order," wrote Frederick Neuhouser in Times Literary Supplement.

"In pursuing the idea of self-actualization, much of what Patten says makes good sense," wrote Peter J. Steinberger in American Political Science Review. "For example, he shows that freedom, as Hegel understood it, is not so much a rejection of desire per se but a matter of acting from desires or feelings that are 'reasonable or appropriate in the circumstances'—for example, a husband's feeling of love for his wife. … One's desires are or ought to be self-legislated, so to speak. The point is an important one, and Patten makes it well."

The view of freedom that "being free involves more than the absence of coercion or being able to do as one pleases" is inherited from Kant, wrote Kirk Pillow in Ethics, as is the idea that behavior should be self-legislated. "Patten carefully analyzes Hegel," Pillow wrote, in order to show that Hegel holds a similar view as that of Kant's, but that Hegel's view "does not fall prey to the same problems as Kant's."

Neuhouser noted that "The distinctive contribution of Patten's book is in its thorough and incisive reconstruction of the argument that underlies the principal thesis of Hegel's social philosophy, namely that 'the ethical norms that should guide our everyday practical reasoning … consist in nothing other than the duties and virtues embedded in the central institutions of modern life.'"

To Neuhouser, "Patten does an exemplary job of reconstructing the philosophical questions that underlie Hegel's social and political theories, and his book contributes importantly to our ability to bring the resources of Hegel's thought to bear on the problems of contemporary social philosophy." However, unanswered questions and issues mar Patten's analysis, Neuhouser remarked. These questions and issues include lack of "consideration of Hegel's distinctive and disturbing view that, beyond promoting the freedom of its members, the rational society also realizes a kind of freedom that is ascribable to it only as a whole and not to its members individually," Neuhouser commented.

In spite of any omissions, Neuhouser wrote, "Patten succeeds in the important task of convincing his readers that Hegel's social and political thought continues to deserve our attention today, not least because it represents modern philosophy's most comprehensive attempt to do justice to the human need for community while preserving the freedom and dignity of individual social members."

In his review, Pillow called Patten's treatment of the issues surrounding Hegel's ideas of freedom "quite cogent." Wheeler concluded that "the social institutions of the family, state, and civil society represent the minimal self-sufficient form of social order hospitable to human subjectivity. In Patten's well-argued civic humanist reading, the subjective and objective elements of Hegel's concrete freedom are fostered and sustained by this social order in a stable, self-perpetuating way."