Civic Rhetoric for the Social State : On Gerd van Istendael's Precarius

Abstract

The paper discusses the concept of the precariate as it occurs in Gerd van Istendael's essay The Perish of St Precarius. The goal of the paper is, on one hand, to show that Van Istendael's usage of the concept is a piece of civic rhetoric rather than of ideology of Marxist type; on the other hand, that this approach has its inner limits given firstly by a limited perspective and secondly by neglecting the core question of common good.

Keywords

• precariate
• social justice
• state
• social security
• civic rhetoric
• common good