Pub Date : 2001-01-01DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511521317.006
Angelo d'Orsi
{"title":"The History of Political Thought in National Context: One hundred years of the history of political thought in Italy","authors":"Angelo d'Orsi","doi":"10.1017/CBO9780511521317.006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511521317.006","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51773,"journal":{"name":"HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2001-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"57054852","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Why laughing mattered in the Renaissance: the second Henry Tudor memorial lecture.","authors":"Q Skinner","doi":"","DOIUrl":"","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51773,"journal":{"name":"HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT","volume":"22 3","pages":"418-47"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2001-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"27589166","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Kant's political thinking is predominantly evaluated in contractarian terms, though recent contributions have also emphasized the natural law influence on him. This paper argues that the assimilation of Kant into either tradition is problematic. An analysis of his account of political obligation cannot ignore the distinctiveness of Kant's general philosophical framework. Two recurrent Kantian themes are crucial to a reconstruction of his political argument. The first is the tension between freedom and causality, or nature. The second is the role of reflective judgment in practical reasoning. The paper analyses Kant's property argument, and his related account of political obligation, from the perspective of these Kantian themes. Kant's �antinomy of Right�, formulated in the context of his property argument, is interpreted as a conflict between freedom and nature, and in analogy with the third antinomy of the Critique of Pure Reason. Kant's obscure theorem, the lex permissiva, is central to his �solution� to the antinomy. The theorem is best understood as a reflective practical judgment, through which agents are brought to acknowledge that their obligations of justice towards one another are a direct entailment of their respective claims to property. The connection between property rights and political obligations is thus intrinsic, not extrinsic; the acknowledgement of that connection an act of reflective judgment, not contractual.
{"title":"Freedom and constraint in Kant's Metaphysical elements of justice","authors":"Katrin Flikschuh","doi":"10.4324/9781315252629-8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315252629-8","url":null,"abstract":"Kant's political thinking is predominantly evaluated in contractarian terms, though recent contributions have also emphasized the natural law influence on him. This paper argues that the assimilation of Kant into either tradition is problematic. An analysis of his account of political obligation cannot ignore the distinctiveness of Kant's general philosophical framework. Two recurrent Kantian themes are crucial to a reconstruction of his political argument. The first is the tension between freedom and causality, or nature. The second is the role of reflective judgment in practical reasoning. The paper analyses Kant's property argument, and his related account of political obligation, from the perspective of these Kantian themes. Kant's �antinomy of Right�, formulated in the context of his property argument, is interpreted as a conflict between freedom and nature, and in analogy with the third antinomy of the Critique of Pure Reason. Kant's obscure theorem, the lex permissiva, is central to his �solution� to the antinomy. The theorem is best understood as a reflective practical judgment, through which agents are brought to acknowledge that their obligations of justice towards one another are a direct entailment of their respective claims to property. The connection between property rights and political obligations is thus intrinsic, not extrinsic; the acknowledgement of that connection an act of reflective judgment, not contractual.","PeriodicalId":51773,"journal":{"name":"HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT","volume":"20 1","pages":"250-271"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"1999-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"70641215","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1999-01-01DOI: 10.23943/princeton/9780691147888.003.0008
R. Wokler
Contextualist interpretations of political thought need to be imaginatively constructed no less than the philosophically abstract readings they are often designed to supplant. Examples of recent scholarship on Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau, in particular, illustrate problems in establishing contextual meaning with precision. Manuscripts often embrace their authors' notions in an unrefined state, in their gestation and the immediacy of their first formulations. The study of manuscripts sometimes invites a free association of ideas across what, in a post-Enlightenment world, may be perceived as circumscribed disciplinary boundaries.
{"title":"The manuscript authority of political thoughts","authors":"R. Wokler","doi":"10.23943/princeton/9780691147888.003.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.23943/princeton/9780691147888.003.0008","url":null,"abstract":"Contextualist interpretations of political thought need to be imaginatively constructed no less than the philosophically abstract readings they are often designed to supplant. Examples of recent scholarship on Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau, in particular, illustrate problems in establishing contextual meaning with precision. Manuscripts often embrace their authors' notions in an unrefined state, in their gestation and the immediacy of their first formulations. The study of manuscripts sometimes invites a free association of ideas across what, in a post-Enlightenment world, may be perceived as circumscribed disciplinary boundaries.","PeriodicalId":51773,"journal":{"name":"HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT","volume":"20 1","pages":"107-123"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"1999-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68775334","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Sympathy with the poor: theories of punishment in Hugo Grotius and Adam Smith.","authors":"J Salter","doi":"","DOIUrl":"","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51773,"journal":{"name":"HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT","volume":"20 2","pages":"205-24"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"1999-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"29632624","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1997-01-01DOI: 10.4324/9781315187983-25
M. Rosenthal
In what follows, then, I will make four basic points. First, I will take what Spinoza says in the Ethics about an exemplar of human nature as a clear and basic indication of what the purpose of an exemplar is: to transform value from an individual and subjective utility to a universal and objective standard. Second, I will argue that the function of prophecy in the foundation of the state is essentially to fulfil the role of an exemplar, but on a political (not ethical) level; that is, to persuade the individual that his or her interest is only fulfilled through submission to the state's authority. Third, I will show how the history of the Hebrew state exemplifies the tension inherent in an exemplar between its particular imaginative origins and its universal pretensions. Fourth, I will claim that the narrative of the Hebrews' use and misuse of prophecy spoke directly to the Dutch of Spinoza's time and speaks indirectly to the political theorists of our own time.
{"title":"Why Spinoza chose the Hebrews: the exemplary function of prophecy in the Theological-political Treatise","authors":"M. Rosenthal","doi":"10.4324/9781315187983-25","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315187983-25","url":null,"abstract":"In what follows, then, I will make four basic points. First, I will take what Spinoza says in the Ethics about an exemplar of human nature as a clear and basic indication of what the purpose of an exemplar is: to transform value from an individual and subjective utility to a universal and objective standard. Second, I will argue that the function of prophecy in the foundation of the state is essentially to fulfil the role of an exemplar, but on a political (not ethical) level; that is, to persuade the individual that his or her interest is only fulfilled through submission to the state's authority. Third, I will show how the history of the Hebrew state exemplifies the tension inherent in an exemplar between its particular imaginative origins and its universal pretensions. Fourth, I will claim that the narrative of the Hebrews' use and misuse of prophecy spoke directly to the Dutch of Spinoza's time and speaks indirectly to the political theorists of our own time.","PeriodicalId":51773,"journal":{"name":"HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT","volume":"18 1","pages":"207-241"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"1997-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"70636240","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1995-01-01DOI: 10.4324/9781315254791-10
Alan Patten
ion from his given wants and desires? The same objection cannot, however, be made against Hegel's conception of free personality. Personality implies a sense of distance between oneself and one's ends and life situation. It involves the ability to evaluate and reflect on one's ends that is central to our everyday idea of individual autonomy. Unlike full Hegelian freedom, it need not imply that we subject our ends or situation to critical examination 'all the way down', nor that there is some set of rational ends to be discovered once we embark on this course of radical reflection. Thirdly, Hegel assumes that personality is a distinctively human capacity (it helps to distinguish human beings from animals), but not one which human beings necessarily have (in this sense, some human beings are merely ani mals).28 Personality involves a set of capacities and self-understandings which are acquired only through Bildung — a process of education and acculturation achieved through one's social experience. In certain types of social worlds the individual is able to develop the capacities and self-understandings that are integral to personality; in other types he cannot.29 The central claim of Hegel's account of property is that it is only in social worlds containing the institution of private property that an agent can become a person; it is only in such a world that he can 'become an actual will'.30
{"title":"Hegel’s Justification of Private Property","authors":"Alan Patten","doi":"10.4324/9781315254791-10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315254791-10","url":null,"abstract":"ion from his given wants and desires? The same objection cannot, however, be made against Hegel's conception of free personality. Personality implies a sense of distance between oneself and one's ends and life situation. It involves the ability to evaluate and reflect on one's ends that is central to our everyday idea of individual autonomy. Unlike full Hegelian freedom, it need not imply that we subject our ends or situation to critical examination 'all the way down', nor that there is some set of rational ends to be discovered once we embark on this course of radical reflection. Thirdly, Hegel assumes that personality is a distinctively human capacity (it helps to distinguish human beings from animals), but not one which human beings necessarily have (in this sense, some human beings are merely ani mals).28 Personality involves a set of capacities and self-understandings which are acquired only through Bildung — a process of education and acculturation achieved through one's social experience. In certain types of social worlds the individual is able to develop the capacities and self-understandings that are integral to personality; in other types he cannot.29 The central claim of Hegel's account of property is that it is only in social worlds containing the institution of private property that an agent can become a person; it is only in such a world that he can 'become an actual will'.30","PeriodicalId":51773,"journal":{"name":"HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT","volume":"16 1","pages":"576-600"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"1995-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"70642386","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1994-01-01DOI: 10.23943/princeton/9780691147888.003.0006
R. Wokler
have tried to sketch certain aspects of Rousseau's revolutionary significance on several occasions before, and I do not here mean to pursue that subject further. My aim, rather, will be to consider the political dimension of liberty, as he conceived it, in the light of a particular debate which to my mind has formed the most important contribution to the study of Rousseau's political thought in the twentieth century, around a theme which had received perhaps insufficient, and certainly less problematic, attention before. This debate has to do with the place of natural law in his philosophy, and with the extent to which, in his idea of the foundations of the state, he upheld or rejected principles of jurisprudence espoused by earlier thinkers. I will consider such principles in three rather different forms, which I here term superior, anterior and generative natural law, and in my final and longest section I will comment on Rousseau's idea of representation in the light of arguments drawn from a number of jurisprudential thinkers before him. In the course of my discussion, moreover, I mean to offer a new interpretation of his assessment of one figure in particular -- that is, Pufendorf -- whom I believe Rousseau came to confront in his writings as much as, if not more than, any other political thinker.
{"title":"Rousseau's Pufendorf: natural law and the foundations of commercial society","authors":"R. Wokler","doi":"10.23943/princeton/9780691147888.003.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.23943/princeton/9780691147888.003.0006","url":null,"abstract":"have tried to sketch certain aspects of Rousseau's revolutionary significance on several occasions before, and I do not here mean to pursue that subject further. My aim, rather, will be to consider the political dimension of liberty, as he conceived it, in the light of a particular debate which to my mind has formed the most important contribution to the study of Rousseau's political thought in the twentieth century, around a theme which had received perhaps insufficient, and certainly less problematic, attention before. This debate has to do with the place of natural law in his philosophy, and with the extent to which, in his idea of the foundations of the state, he upheld or rejected principles of jurisprudence espoused by earlier thinkers. I will consider such principles in three rather different forms, which I here term superior, anterior and generative natural law, and in my final and longest section I will comment on Rousseau's idea of representation in the light of arguments drawn from a number of jurisprudential thinkers before him. In the course of my discussion, moreover, I mean to offer a new interpretation of his assessment of one figure in particular -- that is, Pufendorf -- whom I believe Rousseau came to confront in his writings as much as, if not more than, any other political thinker.","PeriodicalId":51773,"journal":{"name":"HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT","volume":"15 1","pages":"373-402"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"1994-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68775326","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1994-01-01DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-24940-4_4
H. Williams
{"title":"Review article: democracy and right in Habermas's theory of facticity and value","authors":"H. Williams","doi":"10.1007/978-1-349-24940-4_4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24940-4_4","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51773,"journal":{"name":"HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT","volume":"11 8","pages":"269-282"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"1994-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50922161","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this paper I intend to concentrate on post-independence India, and to explore why a free and lively society with a rich tradition of philosophical inquiry has not thrown up much original political theory. The paper falls into three parts. In the first part I outline some of the fascinating problems thrown up by post-independence India, and in the second I show that they remain poorly theorized. In the final part I explore some of the likely explanations of this neglect. In order to avoid misunderstanding, four points of clarification are necessary. First, by Indian political theory I mean works on political theory written by Indian writers irrespective of whether they live in India or outside it, and exclude the works of non-Indian writers on India. Secondly, I am primarily concerned with Indian political theory rather than with Indian political theorists. Although political theory is generally practised by political theorists, it is not their monopoly. Sociologists, historians, economists, philosophers, jurists and others too ask theoretical questions about political life. I will therefore cast my net wider and look at the works of these writers as well. It is my contention that political theory is underdeveloped among not only Indian political theorists but also their cousins in allied disciplines. Thirdly, I define the term political theory in as culturally neutral a manner as possible. For a variety of reasons too complex to discuss here, political theory has a longer history and is more developed in the West than elsewhere. However it is not absent in most other civilizations. Minimally it is concerned to offer a coherent and systematic understanding of political life, and is three-dimensional. It is conceptual in the sense that it defines, analyses and distinguishes concepts, and develops a conceptual framework capable of comprehending political life. It is also explanatory in the sense that it seeks to make sense of political life, and to explain why it is constituted and conducted in a particular manner and how its different parts are related. Finally, it is normative in the sense that it either justifies the way a society is currently constituted, or criticizes and offers a well-considered alternative to it. Since political theory understood in these terms is to be found in most major traditions of thought including the Indian, albeit in different forms and degrees, our definition is not or only minimally open to the charge of ethnocentrism or universalizing its Western form.
{"title":"The poverty of Indian political theory","authors":"B. Parekh","doi":"10.4324/9780203702284-2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203702284-2","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper I intend to concentrate on post-independence India, and to explore why a free and lively society with a rich tradition of philosophical inquiry has not thrown up much original political theory. The paper falls into three parts. In the first part I outline some of the fascinating problems thrown up by post-independence India, and in the second I show that they remain poorly theorized. In the final part I explore some of the likely explanations of this neglect. In order to avoid misunderstanding, four points of clarification are necessary. First, by Indian political theory I mean works on political theory written by Indian writers irrespective of whether they live in India or outside it, and exclude the works of non-Indian writers on India. Secondly, I am primarily concerned with Indian political theory rather than with Indian political theorists. Although political theory is generally practised by political theorists, it is not their monopoly. Sociologists, historians, economists, philosophers, jurists and others too ask theoretical questions about political life. I will therefore cast my net wider and look at the works of these writers as well. It is my contention that political theory is underdeveloped among not only Indian political theorists but also their cousins in allied disciplines. Thirdly, I define the term political theory in as culturally neutral a manner as possible. For a variety of reasons too complex to discuss here, political theory has a longer history and is more developed in the West than elsewhere. However it is not absent in most other civilizations. Minimally it is concerned to offer a coherent and systematic understanding of political life, and is three-dimensional. It is conceptual in the sense that it defines, analyses and distinguishes concepts, and develops a conceptual framework capable of comprehending political life. It is also explanatory in the sense that it seeks to make sense of political life, and to explain why it is constituted and conducted in a particular manner and how its different parts are related. Finally, it is normative in the sense that it either justifies the way a society is currently constituted, or criticizes and offers a well-considered alternative to it. Since political theory understood in these terms is to be found in most major traditions of thought including the Indian, albeit in different forms and degrees, our definition is not or only minimally open to the charge of ethnocentrism or universalizing its Western form.","PeriodicalId":51773,"journal":{"name":"HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT","volume":"13 1","pages":"535-560"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"1992-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"70590634","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}