“Liberalisms and Anti-Liberalisms – Challenges and Alternatives”, International
Conference, ABSTRACTS
Nenad Dimitrijević (CEU, Budapest): Liberal Autonomy in a Troubled Context: towards
Second-Personal Thinking
Autonomy, understood as self-rule, is almost routinely accepted as one of the core
(meta)features of political liberalism. Still, a closer view reveals that both the status and meaning of autonomy are controversial. The presentation will depart from a short summary of the main theoretical disputes surrounding the concept. In the next step, the core question will be addressed. The question is context-specific, and it addresses the possibility and meaning of liberal autonomy in a society whose past is marked by mass regime-sponsored (and sometimes widely supported) crimes. The claim is that this historical context calls for revising our understanding of individual autonomy. If other persons are importantly defined by their ties to me (as persons who suffered harm inflicted by people connected to me in an ethically relevant way), then my autonomy concerns the nature of my relationship with victims. Or, the question for my liberal self-reflection might be as follows: given that the suffering of some persons was explained and justified in terms of my ethical good, what is that I ought to do? An introductory response might be that I am autonomous to the extent my attitude to those harmed in my name is morally right.
Nenad Dimitrijević teaches constitutional and political theory at Political Science
Department of Central European University, Hungary. His research focuses on constituent power, constitutional identity, transformative justice, and moral responsibility. Recent publications include: “Constitutional Theory in Times of Crises: Power, Law, and Morality”,
Philosophy and Social Criticism, 2015; “Always above the Law? Justification of Constitutional
Review Revisited”, in M. Jovanovic (ed.), Constitutional Review and Democracy (The Hague:
Eleven, 2015); Duty to Respond: Mass Crime, Denial, and Collective Responsibility (Budapest:
CEU Press, 2011)
Andres Moles (CEU, Budapest): Liberalism, Paternalism and the Distribution of
Autonomy
One of the questions that a theory of paternalism has to respond is related to the problem of balancing the effectiveness of paternalistic policies with the negative externalities they have on persons other than the intended beneficiaries of such policies.
Since paternalistic policies cannot be individually tailored they affect different groups of people in different ways. Sarah Conly’s recent defense of paternalism claims that there are conclusive reasons to prefer coercion to nudging given that the latter is less than 100% effective. In this paper I argue that sometimes we have principled reasons to sacrifice the efficiency of policies in order to reduce its externalities. One such a principle is based on the idea that those who have an opportunity to avoid a burden have a complaint weaker than those who who lack such an opportunity. In the case of paternalism the idea is those affected by coercive policies suffer a bigger harm than those who fail to respond to non-coercive forms of paternalism.

Andres Moles is an assistant professor of philosophy and political science at CEU. He did his PhD at Warwick. He published articles on free speech, freedom of association, and nudging.
Adriana Zaharijević (IFDT, Belgrade): Individual as a Non-Neutral, Non-Universal State of the Affairs
In this presentation I wish to offer a genealogical reading of the concept of an individual, presumably the most central category in liberal political theory. The core argument I want to uphold is that individual is not a neutral, egalitarian universally applicable category. Quite to the contrary, I claim that “being an individual” needs to be re-read as “having the entitlement to being an individual”. In order to support this strong claim, I will begin with defining liberalism and the concept of individual. Liberalism is understood as the product of the late 18 th and early
19 th centuries, postrevolutionary and industrial phenomenon, which revolves around utility, widening of citizenship and political economy, and is thus read more as the part of the
Benthamite than of the Lockean tradition. The individual, on the other hand, is understood as the real owner of his own life and affairs, where this ownership is based on his fundamental knowledge of his own interest, his agency and capacity for autonomous representation. This working definition is derived from the famous 19 th century socio-political tracts, such as
Bentham’s and J. S. Mill’s writings, but also from the forgotten juridical texts, medical manuals, reform narratives etc. In the latter part of the presentation I will focus on what it meant (and, in extension, what it means) to be the sole owner, to be able to represent oneself and to follow
one’s own interests. In doing so, I will present the conditions of possibility for an individual to be able to claim its being an individual. In sum, therefore, this presentation aims to question the tacit understanding that the concept of an individual refers to anybody and everybody.
Adriana Zaharijević is the Associate Researcher of the Institute for Philosophy and Social
Theory. Her areas of research include genealogies of sexuality; state, citizenship and political reform; and the histories of public and private.
Marjan Ivković (IFDT, Belgrade): Liberalism and the Strongly Intersubjectivist Conception of Autonomy
In this presentation, I aim to reconstruct the Hegelian, 'strongly-intersubjectivist' conception of personal autonomy, relying primarily on Antti Kauppinen's critique of Axel
Honneth's perspective on the universal preconditions of autonomy (emotional self-confidence, legal respect, and cultural esteem). According to Kauppinen, Honneth's perspective on autonomy is 'weakly' intersubjectivist, and perfectly compatible with what he terms 'generic' liberalism - the fundamental principles of liberal political philosophy shared by authors such as
Rawls, Dwarkin or Kymlicka. Kauppinen considers even his own, strongly intersubjectivist conception of autonomy, which could be summed up by the term 'being at home in the social world', as a form of 'Hegelian liberalism', i.e. as compatible with fundamental liberal principles.
In the presentation, I will try to expand the list of Kauppinen's intersubjectivist preconditions of
'being at home in the social world', focusing more on the role of the capitalist system of social

reproduction in restricting the exercise of personal autonomy understood in 'strongly intersubjectivist' terms. Finally, I will argue that there is, after all, a fundamental tension between 'generic' liberalism and this 'expanded' version of the intersubjectivist conception of autonomy.
Marjan Ivković (1985) has completed undergraduate and MPhil studies of sociology at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade. In February 2014 he defended his PhD thesis at the Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom. He has taken part in international academic conferences. Marjan’s primary area of research is contemporary social theory, particularly the social-theoretic aspects of Critical Theory.
Zoltán Pogátsa (University of Western Hungary): How Economic Liberalism has
Destroyed Post-Soviet Democracies
The absence of a political left, and the (neo)liberal orientation of middle class elites in the Central and Eastern European region has created socio-economic systems that lack a strong middle class in the sense of Gosta Esping-Andersen, the leading theoretician of the Nordic
Model. Esping-Andersen argues that you can only have a democracy if you have a strong enough middle class that is a) materially independent enough to withstand the pressures of clientalism and paternalism, and b.) educated enough to understand the highly complex public debates of our times. Only a redistributive welfare state is capable of creating such a strong middle class, reliance on the market alone makes the middle class weaker, as demonstrated by
Piketty and others. In CEE countries the middle classes were weak to begin with, and were made even weaker by neoliberalism. The consequence is a series of captured states, with high levels of corruption, empty democracies where the political elites cannot be controlled due to a distinct lack of adequate middle classes.
Zoltán Pogátsa is an international political economist working on questions related to development, public policy, the economics and politics of European integration, as well as issues related to Central Europe and the Balkans. His home institution is the Faculty of
Economics at the University of Western Hungary, where I am in charge of the MA Programme on International Economics and Business. He has lectured at various universities in Slovakia, the
Czech Republic, Austria, Germany, France, the UK, Italy and Ireland.
Alpar Losoncz (University of Novi Sad): Is Neo-Liberalism the Tragical, but Non-
Intentional Consequence of Liberalism?
Neoliberalism is a mutative Kampfbegriff inasmuch as it is exposed to the constant rearticulation it could be seen as the emerging intelligibility. It is without any doubt historically determined, therefore it bears the marks of historically conditioned contingencies: yet as the intellegibility that sanctions how we speak, act, and are related to the truth, it becomes necessity. Neoliberalism opens opportunity to account how the contingency is to be converted into the quasi-necessity within the frames of capitalism. I have in mind here only an undemanding and operational quasi-definition: neoliberalism is treated by its proponents as a crisis-ridden phenomenon, as an attempt to rethink and recompose the liberalism after the demonstrated weakness and impasse of classical liberalism during the XX century. Thus,

neoliberalism does not have its own substance, it is only a replica, and therefore it is necessarily undetermined. In addition, it is symptomatically the expression of the liberal fear: there is a strong anxiety during the previous century because classical liberalism is no longer adequate to resist to the “Furies” of dissatisfied masses and inclination to the “non-freedom”, - “socialism” as the “natural disease” (Lanjuinais, Tocqueville) is the meta-notion for the servility.
Neoliberalism appears to be an „as if” logic that is to be authorized and enforced: we are too behaved as if all man is throughoging competitive and enterpreneurial subjects. After these considerations we could turn to the issue of epistemology in the context of neoliberalism. Of importance is for our present purpose that we dont know anything about the entities in the world so we must construct our fictions. That means that neoliberalism as an authoritarian savior of civilization with the politics of visibility passes through the articulation of knowledge and non-knowledge, and knowledge and being. The nature of the market order or capitalism is understood as epistemological, and this order is prepackaged in relation to the knowledge and being. Not economy, not politics, but epistemology matters. We should trace the pointed epistemology of the tropes of seeing and blindness is it to be situated in this context of political visibility. After all, is neoliberalism heterogenous to liberalism? Is neoliberalism a nonintentional outcome of the inconclusiveness of the liberalism? Is neoliberalism the result of the
“shakiness” of liberalism?
Alpar Losoncz is professor of Humanistic and Social Sciences at the University of
Novi Sad, Serbia. Since 1991 he is also Lecturer at the Faculty of Philosophy in Szeged
University, Hungary. He was the director of Center of Multiculturalism in Novi Sad. His most important books are: Resistance and power, MBM, Novi Sad, 2012; Power as social event,
MBM, Novi Sad, 2009; Sovereignty, Crisis, and Power: Essays on European Thinking, Svetovi,
Novi Sad, 2006; Újvidék, 2002; Modernity at colone, Stubovi Kulture, Beograd, 1997. He published more than hundred articles and essays from the field of Economy, Political and Social
Philosophy.
Zoltán Miklósi (CEU, Budapest): Liberalism and Immigration
Abstract: The transnational movement of millions of migrants – refugees and labor migrants – is probably going to be a permanent feature of the contemporary, economically integrated world. However, there is no consensus among liberal political philosophers regarding the implications of liberal political morality for the problem of border controls and the extent of the right of states to exclude would-be migrants. Some argue that individuals’ right to freedom of movement and to be free from inhuman treatment and suffering implies that peaceful and wealthy societies have a (collective) obligation to permit almost all migrants to enter and settle in their territory. Others argue that the liberal principle of freedom of association supports the opposite position: citizens of a state have the right, exercised collectively, to exclude almost anyone from their territory. It might appear therefore that liberalism is incoherent as applied to one of the main issues of contemporary international life: its basic principles are in irresolvable conflict. This paper argues that the conflict is only apparent. This is so, first, because freedom of association is not the basis of political community and of the territorial rights of states, and second, because this freedom is properly exercised in connection with the goods and resources that persons rightfully possess, rather than in such a

manner to exclude some of them from what they have a rightful claim to. Therefore, an account of justice specifying what people across borders owe each other is theoretically prior to and normatively more basic than the right to freedom of association. No one can associate oneself out of the obligations of justice. The implication is that whether we have the right to exclude would-be immigrants depends on what liberal political morality implies for persons’ obligations of justice to each other across borders.
Zoltán Miklósi teaches political philosophy at the Central European University,
Department of Political Science. His areas of research include the theory of justice and democratic theory, with special focus on the problem of the scope of justice and the basis of equal moral status.
Aleksandar Matković (IFDT, Belgrade): The Twin Berlins of Europe: on the Paralel
Tendencies of Liberalism and Fascism
In a chapter of the „Age of Extremes: the short twentieth century“, aptly entitled „The
Fall of Liberalism“, Eric Hobsbawm posits the issue of the inherent failure of liberal institutions in pre-War Europe through the prism of the rising tide of a novel movement, unexpected and unpresedented, yet strongly tied to European political soil – fascism. According to Hobsbawm, this „anti-Liberal“ movement par excellence, upon securing international influence after its rise to power in Germany, left a significant effect on the parliamentary democracies of Europe, even on those who did not accept fascism in the first place. However, far from being a singular event, its effects continue to determine the dynamics of liberalism(s) in the XXI century. Hence we will argue that the contemporary self-understanding of European neoliberalism is mediated by fascism, far more than is usually admitted. From the history of privatizations to austerity to the very constitution of the EU and its current crisis, it is impossible to think the variants of liberalism without taking on the complex crux of fascism. By relying on different strands of
Marxist currents in analyzing the political economy of fascism (Pollock, Neumann, Sohn-Rethel,
Poulantzas, Reinhard-Kuhnl, Mattick and so on), this lecture aims at tracing the paralel
tendencies which have led liberalism and fascism (especially in its German variant), in their
„ideal average“, to the economic and social contradictions still felt in Europe today.
Aleksandar Matković (1988) is a philosopher from Novi Sad, Serbia, dealing mainly with contemporary Marxism, history of biopolitics and political economy. He is a member of the
French Association pour l’autogestion, the Gerusija Collective from Serbia and the editorial board of its journal "Stvar". Currently doing his PhD studies and working as a researcher at the
Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory in Belgrade.
Ádám Takács (ELTE Atelier, Budapest): Lukács's Criticism of Liberal Democracy
Bringing George Lukács into a discussion about liberalism may seem to be an odd idea.Indeed, his unbreakable commitment to the idea of communism, and his ultimate fidelity to Marxist philosophy and aesthetics make him an improbable figure within this context. Yet, in many of his texts written after 1945 Lukács addressed the question of liberal democracy criticizing this latter for its structurally and historically embedded political and social

shortcomings. The major aim of this paper is to reconstruct and assess Lukács's arguments against liberal democracy and his emphasis put on the anti-liberal character of socialism. But we also seek to demonstrate that his critical approach provides a perspective which allows to go beyond the scope of traditional Marxist analysis of liberalism, and which may help us to assess this question from a more up to date point of view.
Ádám Takács is assistant professor of philosophy and humanities at the Atelier
European Social Sciences and Historiography of the Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. His researches cover the areas of phenomenology, contemporary French thought, Marxism, and theory of history. His publications include Le fondement selon Husserl (Paris, 2014); Heidegger
en France et en Hongrie (ed. Paris, 2014), andL'actualité de Georg Lukács (ed. Paris, 2013).
Jovo Bakić (Department of Sociology, Belgrade): Liberal and/or Radical Democracy
The paper recognizes “democracy” as contested concept, and that is why it offers competing definitions of democracy. One can argue that “liberal democracy”, at best, is just a form of democracy, and at worst, it is an intentional liberal-conservative effort to represent as democracy an essentially oligarchic system by means of universal suffrage (democratic legitimation of oligarchic system). In other words, legal definition of liberal democracy is, as
Marxists have claimed since the second half of the XIXth century, too formal or just dressed up in democratic clothes. There is obvious lack of social content in liberal democracy, which has been created in such a way to serve interests of the rich (capitalists). That is why one can look for social content in a radical (direct, participatory and deliberative) democracy by means of referenda, people’s initiatives, social movements, appropriate public debates, responsible selfmanagement in local communities and economic enterprieses etc. Poor people and middle class should be included in political life not only in elections. In addition, various forms of property should be introduced, and rich capitalists should pay progressive taxes in a country where their firms operate and in a country where they live or otherwise, they will face social revolution (yes to taxation, if you want legitimation). Oligarchic tendencies, quite in accordance with capitalism and liberal (indirect or representative democracy), endanger even minimal democratic potentials of liberal democracy. Nevertheless, some liberal values (right to life, civil rights, rule of law and constitutional limitations and the separation of the powers of government, freedom of conscious and freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, etc.) are essentially important for protection of democracy in order not to be transformed into authoritarian forms of government (as it was in authoritarian socialism during the second half of the XXth century). To sum up, liberal values are necessary for protection of democracy from authoritarian tendencies, and radical democracy is necessary for protection of democracy from oligarchic tendencies. One should combine liberal and radical features in order to create a more viable democracy closer to democratic ideal.
Jovo Bakić has been dealing with the national conflicts in ex-Yugoslavia. He has especially focused on Serbian and Croatian nationalisms and the idea and ideologies of
Yugoslavism before the WWI, during the War, and between the two World Wars. Foreign press writing on dissolution of the Socialist Yugoslavia and the Wars of Its Succession has also been in the focus of his attention. In the context, the stereotypes of the Balkans, and particularly of the
Serbs, have always been a very important subject of his interest. He defended the Ph.D. thesis
Shifts in the Interpretations of the Death of Yugoslavia. To sum up, he is deeply interested in

political sociology and sociology of knowledge, different ideologies, ex-Yugoslavia, and its successor states, theories of ethnicity, nation and nationalism, national minorities, refugees, conflict and war studies.
Katarina Lončarević (Faculty of Political Sciences, Belgrade): “Feminists Can’t or
Shouldn’t Be Liberals”? The Curious Case of Liberal Feminism
Theories of liberalism gave an initial impetus for some of the earliest feminist ideas, but, however, from the very beginning of feminist movements and theories the relationship towards liberalism has been the one of questioning the liberal theoretical and political framework as the one that enables feminist claims. One of the dominant approaches in feminist theory today is not just a critical stance towards liberalism, but also its total rejection. However, the theoretical problems with this approach are: first, it sees liberalism as homogenous, so feminist critiques that are developed are aimed against “liberalism as such”; the second problem, which follows from the first, is that feminist critiques of liberalism are too general and underdeveloped, so they are easy to reject, especially because they see “liberalism as such” as a static phenomenon of the 19 th century, not recognizing different developments, theories and internal critiques characterized for the second half of the 20 th century and today. The third problem with such feminist approaches to liberalism is the meaning of the term “critique” that is identified with total rejection of the liberal theoretical framework. What is the status of liberal feminism? It is usually understood as a feminist “variant” of liberalism, and according to abovementioned
“critical” spirit, we can hear that liberal feminism is not feminism at all. However, feminist political philosophy since 1980s labeled as “liberal feminism” has have much complicated relationship towards liberalism than it is usually assumed. The relationship that includes critiques of different liberal theories and appropriation of some concepts and values that are redefined and adopted to feminist needs and claims. The work of Susan Moller Okin and
Martha C. Nussbaum is particularly important in this light, because they develop important feminist critiques of theories of liberalism, but at the same time they argue that some of its elements could be useful for feminist political philosophy and in building feminist theory of justice. In recent literature, their theories are called the “theories of feminist liberalism” and not any more the “theories of liberal feminism”. I will critically examine what “liberal feminism” and/or “feminism liberalism” mean in contemporary feminist political philosophy, and I will argue that feminist attachments have shaped feminist liberals’ critiques of liberalism, redefinition of the concepts such as the individual, the relation between the public and the private, the concept of the family as a unite of political analysis, the concept of justice, etc. In that way, the theories of feminist liberalism brings about new complexities in thinking about the relationship of different liberalisms and/or antiliberalisms.
Katarina Lončarević works at Faculty of Political Sciences (University of Belgrade). She holds a degree in Philosophy (Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade), MA degree in
Women’s and Gender Studies (Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, USA), and MPhil degree in Political Science (Faculty of Political Sciences, University of Belgrade). She published articles on epistemology, political philosophy and history of feminist philosophy. She is deputy editor-in-chief of Genero: the journal of feminist theory and cultural studies (2010-) and the president of the Council of the Center for Women’s Studies in Belgrade (2011-).

Mark Losoncz (IFDT, Belgrade): The Aporias of Secret in a Liberal Democracy
Are secrets and intelligence agencies simply incompatible with liberalism or there is a necessary link between them? On the one hand, the genealogy of liberalism is inseparable from the history of secret, given the fact that its early development was heavily determined by social phenomena such as the absolutist raison d'état and many kinds of secret societies. Surely, the same goes for the contemporary context: neither the critical diagnosis of today's liberal democracies, nor a strictly normative approach to contemporay theories can ignore the fact that the mere existence of intelligence agencies could undermine the ethical and political principles of liberal democracies (the right of access to documents, the right to privacy, democratic accountability, the separation of powers, the consent of the governed etc.). The aim of this paper is to sketch some possible aporias, with a special attention to the debate between freedom as non-interference and freedom as non-domination.
Mark Losoncz (1987) is a PhD candidate at the Department of Philosophy, University of
Novi Sad. He accomplished part of his doctoral research at École des hautes études en sciences
sociales (EHESS) in Paris. He became research trainee at the Institute for Philosophy and Social
Theory (Belgrade) and a member of the Group for Social Engagement Studies after being a project associate. His main research fields of interest are political philosophy, philosophy of law, ethics and contemporary philosophy. Apart from that, his current research focuses on the problem of time in the philosophy of Bergson and Husserl. He published his first book in 2013
(Bedazzling Machines. Philosophical Studies – in Hungarian).