History of Political Philosophy

Moving away from received ideas and apologetic readings, this article deals with the notion of 'just war' in Islam as it appears in a series of different texts in order to demonstrate how thought on this subject has evolved from the birth of Islam in the seventh century through to the recent developments of the twenty-first century. Moving beyond a theoretical framework that analyses the criteria of just war according to Western definitions, this article traces its discursive presence throughout various (...) Islamic textual traditions. It thus problematizes a reading of warfare in Islam as necessarily imbued with sacred or holy dimensions, showing that it is impossible to systematically translate 'jihad' as 'holy war' or to conflate it with 'just war', as has been done in numerous contexts, both academic and otherwise. Indeed, this article explains how thought on war has been influenced not only by religion but also by ethics, law and politics. It demonstrates the validity of such a reading by analysing the thought of several authors who have shaped > the representation of the enemy as much as they have the conception of sovereignty and the rules of warfare. Such an illustration leads to the de-essentialization of 'jihad' in particular, and of war in Islam more generally, allowing us to establish comparisons with universalist conceptions which approached warfare in a realist manner or with Western traditions that viewed just war in terms of morals. (shrink)

This article challenges the claim that Friedrich Nietzsche is a good reader of the French moralist, Chamfort, when it comes to Chamfort's politics. Chamfort is a meritocrat rather than the bitter egalitarian Nietzsche protrays him to be. Moreover, the moralist's meritocratic beliefs, his hopes for a new social order and the emergence of a new aristocracy resemble many of Nietzsche's own values. Had Nietzsche read Chamfort as a meritocrat, he could have found much to stimulate and clarify his own thoughts (...) about the aristocracy of the future. (shrink)

The political unaccountability of ordinary citizens in classical Athens was originally raised as a challenge by ancient critics of democracy. In tension with that criticism, the authors argue that attention to the above challenge is consistent with a defence of Athenian democratic politics. In fact, ordinary citizens' function in the Assembly and courts implicitly included the burden of justifying their own political decisions to an imagined authority, as if they could be brought to account. Byeans of practices that encouraged this (...) self-scrutiny, Athenians marked the challenge of citizens' political unaccountability as an unavoidable but manageable aspect of their democracy. (shrink)

Rousseau initially attempts to secure freedom by grounding political rule in persuasion, rather than coercion. When the spectre of rhetoric undermines this strategy, he is led to ground the volonté générale in the silent and introspective disclosure of the solitary citizen’s inner conscience, which through a sentimentalist transformation of Descartes’s category of bon sens, is recast as an eminently public sentiment. But when rhetorical eloquence turns out to be indispensable to politics, Rousseau turns to republican virtue and the trope of (...) grounding the polity’s freedom in the patrie’s territory and, subsequently, in the citizen’s heart. (shrink)

This paper attempts to treat Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico Politicus in the context of recent work on 'political Hebraism'. First it examines the role of the ancient historian Flavius Josephus in the general context of political Hebraism, and then it discusses his place in Spinoza's writings more specifically. The argument attempts to show that a particular mode of reading Josephus emerged in the political Hebraist tradition, and that Spinoza may be seen as both the end of this tradition and a sophisticated (...) critic of it. The conclusion reached suggests that Spinoza's radical ideas about the method of political inquiry and the role of reason therein made him a natural and necessary opponent even of such relatively liberal thinkers as the 'Josephists'. (shrink)

The authors in this edited volume reflect on their experiences with culturally relevant pedagogy-as students, as teachers, as researchers-and how these experiences were often at odds with their backgrounds and/or expectations.

This article seeks to contribute to the history of the idea of 'middle class', an idea that was fundamental to Aristotle's philosophy but disappeared from the repertoire of political thinking for centuries, re-emerging shortly before the French Revolution to be developed by Diderot and other French liberals. The modern notion of 'middle class' is compared with that of Aristotle, and the similarities between the two contexts of emergence -- the crisis of Ancient Greek democracy and that of the French Ancien (...) Régime -- are explored to cast new light on the meaning and political function of that idea, and on the metaphorical operations it performs. (shrink)

Kropotkin's anarchism looked to a future defined by communalism. However, his understanding of this potential communal future has rarely been subject to analysis. Particularly important was his distinction between communalism and the tradition of communal experimentation in the US, which drew heavily on the ideas of Charles Fourier. Kropotkin was influenced by Fourier, but thought that attempts to found phalanstèries had been disastrous, vitiating the power of communalist propaganda. To defend the idea of a communal future, Kropotkin therefore advanced a (...) tripartite critique of the US model of utopian experimentation. The image of American utopianism he created consequently served as a useful rhetorical device, allowing him to advance a counter-image of the anarchist communal theory that lay at the heart of his political theory. (shrink)

Gramsci, An italian marxist intellectual politically active when fascism rose and later imprisoned by mussolini, Offers a sensitive and non-Stereotyped communist interpretation of fascism. He rejected the crude "fascism as last stage of capitalism thesis," the view that it was merely the "agent of the big bourgeoisie" and even the view that it reflected a particular set of class interests. He recognized that it was not merely reactionary, That it had complex internal divisions, That it exemplified the "relative autonomy of (...) politics," and that it was best understood as a response to a "hegemonic crisis.". (shrink)

This article explores the emergence of the American 'political scientist' around the turn of the twentieth century. It first recovers the network of beliefs that ordered the tradition of historico-politics -- an intellectual tradition that in the 1880s constituted a dominant field within newly professionalized American social inquiry. The article then charts the divergent responses of turn-of-the-century scholars to the declining persuasiveness of core organizing beliefs of this tradition, responses through which the earlier field split along now-familiar disciplinary divides, as (...) 'political scientists' emerged with a disciplinary identity distinct from that of 'historians'. (shrink)

This paper explores the political thought of Andrew Michael Ramsay with particular reference to his highly acclaimed book called A New Cyropaedia, or the Travels of Cyrus (1727). Dedicated to Prince Charles Edward Stuart, the Young Pretender, to whom he was tutor, this work has been hitherto viewed as a Jacobite imitation of the Telemachus, Son of Ulysses(1699) of his eminent teacher archbishop Fénelon of Cambrai. By tracing the dual legacy of the first Persian Emperor Cyrus in Western thought, I (...) demonstrate that Ramsay was as much indebted to Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet's Discourse on Universal History (1681)as he was to Fénelon's political romance. Ramsay took advantage of Xenophon's silence about the eponymous hero's adolescent education in his Cyropaedia, or the Education of Cyrus (c.380B.C.), but he was equally inspired by the Book of Daniel, where the same Persian prince was eulogised as the liberator of the Jewish people from their captivity in Babylon. The main thrust of Ramsay's adaptation was not only to revamp the Humanist- cum-Christian theory and practice of virtuous kingship for a restored Jacobite regime, but on a more fundamental level, to tie in secular history with biblical history. In this respect, Ramsay's New Cyropaedia, or the Travels of Cyrus, was not just another Fénelonian political novel but more essentially a work of universal history. In addition to his Jacobite model of aristocratic constitutional monarchy, it was this Bossuetian motive for universal history, which was first propounded by the German reformer Philipp Melanchthon in his Chronicon Carionis (1532), that most decisively separated Ramsay from Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, author of another famous advice book for princes of the period, The Idea of a Patriot King (written in late 1738 for the education of Frederick Lewis, Prince of Wales, but officially published in 1749). (shrink)

Oedipus the tyrant and the limits of political rationalism -- Blind faith and enlightened statesmanship in Oedipus at colonus -- The pious heroism of Antigone -- Conclusion: Nietzsche, Plato, and Aristotle on philosophy and tragedy.

There is a consensus that post-war British analytic philosophy was politically neutral. This view has been affirmed by the post-war analysts themselves, and by their critics. This paper argues that this consensus-view is false. Many central analytic philosophers claimed that their empirical philosophy had liberal outcomes, either through cultivating liberal habits of mind, or by revealing truths about the world that supported liberal conclusions. These beliefs were not subject to significant scrutiny or attempts at justification, but they do help us (...) to explain the otherwise puzzling disinclination to engage with questions of political philosophy on the part of these politically active individuals. (shrink)

This essay subjects to criticism the historical and philosophical attitudes to political thought found in the writings of John Dunn and Michael Oakeshott. The essay does not limit itself to criticism but attempts to elaborate what is indicated by criticism for the sake of the modern understanding of political thought. The argument is that history and philosophy as they have recently been practised suffer from limitations that can only be addressed by a recognition of something which is here called theology. (...) The significance of such a recognition is considered with regard to the history of political thought, political philosophy and finally to theology itself. The emphasis on theology makes it necessary to say that the essay is written for the benefit of historians and philosophers, not theologians. Although it is an argument for theology it is in no sense an argument from theology. Whether this is a contradictory position may require consideration elsewhere; but since the essay is a first step rather than a final step in an argument, it may gain more than it loses by such a contradiction, if there is one. (shrink)

This article attempts to make sense of Oakeshott's enigmatic comment in 'On Human Conduct' that it was perhaps injudicious of Hegel to use the word state in the Philosophy of Right for his conception of a bounded association. But the article does not confine itself to making sense of Oakeshott's meaning: it compares Oakeshott's conception of societas to Hegel's conception of der Staat, Oakeshott's conception of philosophy as an unconditional consideration of conditional objects with Hegel's conception of philosophy as a (...) reflexive consideration of the rationality immanent within unconditional objects, and Oakeshott's avoidance of divinity with Hegel's involvement in it. It is part of the purpose of this article to illustrate the suggestion that conceptions of God and conceptions of the state are closely related in the thought of both philosophers -- and possibly in all philosophy: and that the problem of the state is therefore a problem as much religious as secular. (shrink)

What is the identity of the best regime in Aristotle's Politics? Although there are a few references to the best regime in Book III, the obvious answer is the regime discussed in Books VII and VIII. Aristotle calls it the best regime on numerous occasions and discusses it at great length. Yet, this is not the complete answer. In Book IV Aristotle makes certain curious remarks on the best regime that, on examination, do not fit the best regime of Books (...) VII and VIII. They lead, instead, to the discovery of a systematic, though quiet, teaching on a very different best regime in Book III. The Politics actually contains a complicated yet coherent teaching on two best regimes. Grasping this teaching is key to arriving at a proper understanding of the distinctive character of Aristotle's political thought. (shrink)

The emphasis in contemporary democratic theory and in the history of political thought on the peculiarly abstract theory of popular sovereignty of Locke and his twentieth-century intellectual descendants obscures a crucial relationship between constitutional self-government and nationalism. Through a Hobbesian and Filmerian critique of Locke and an examination of the political writings of George Lawson , the article shows the necessary connections between popular sovereignty, constitutionalism and a form of national consciousness that renders concrete the otherwise abstract and airy notion (...) of the pre-political community to which government is to be held accountable, and, through amyth of national origin, memories of native traditions of self-government, and stories of heroic ancestors who successfully defended those traditions against usurpers and tyrants, gives substance to theories of constitutional government. (shrink)

Although T. H. Green is primarily remembered today as a moral and political philosopher, many of his philosophical concerns owe their origins to the Victorian crisis of faith in which a widespread belief in the literal truth of Scripture confronted seemingly incompatible scientific theories. Green attributed this crisis to the inability of science and religion to find accommodation in the popular version of empiricism widely accepted by educated men and women of his day. In his 371-page introduction to Hume’s Treatise, (...) Green argued that this philosophy was unacceptable, even on its own terms, and that it needed to be replaced with a new philosophy of life, one recognizing that both knowledge and human action are .. (shrink)

In a late discussion of Kant’s essay, “Was ist Aufklärung?,” Foucault credits Kant with posing “the question of his own present” and positions himself as an inheritor of this Kantian legacy.1 Foucault has high praise for the critical tradition that emerges from Kant’s historical-political reflections on the Enlightenment and the French Revolution; Kant’s concern in these writings with “an ontology of the present, an ontology of ourselves” is, he says, characteristic of “a form of philosophy, from Hegel, through Nietzsche and (...) Max Weber, to the Frankfurt School,” a form of philosophy in which Foucault, perhaps surprisingly, situates his own work. (shrink)

The objective of the text is to propose an interpretation of Hume's works that allows another way of refusing contractualism, different from the "official" refusal, and which is based (the new one) on the concept of artifice, which is extremely different from the artifice created by the contractualists, whose opposition the tradition of commentators of Humean political philosophy, generally, do not refer to, when it is the case of refusing contractualism.

this article, I discuss the Protestant contribution to the modern concept of autonomy on the basis of an analysis of John Calvin's moral theology. I show that Calvin affirms our incapacity to know and want what is morally good, as expressed by natural law. Such incapacity is compensated for by the biblical mandates that, according to Calvin, should be incorporated into the positive legislation of Christian republics. In view of all this, I conclude that Calvin is far from the Kantian (...) idea of autonomy which defines our Modernity. (shrink)