Political Theory and Miscellaneous - Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, edited by Edwin R. A. Seligman, Alvin Johnson, and others (The Macmillan Co., pp. xxi, 661; xxi, 652)

1933 ◽  
Vol 27 (6) ◽  
pp. 1018-1023
Author(s):  
A. C. Hanford
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
The Social

Bedrock or social construction? What Anthropocene science means for political theory

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 97-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manuel Arias-Maldonado
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Environmental Science ◽  
Scientific Concept ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Quest For Meaning ◽  
Natural Scientists

How should political thinkers deal with environmental science? The question has acquired a new urgency with the rise of the Anthropocene, a scientific concept rapidly assimilated by the social sciences and the humanities. In that respect, some critics have levelled against it the well-known objections that environmental political thinkers and philosophers have directed towards science at large in the past. Anthropocene science might lead towards planetary governmentality, imposing a reductive way of understanding both the planet and sustainability. This article will claim that a clear demarcation between scientific and sociopolitical enquiries is needed. Political thinkers should take the findings provided by natural scientists as the basis for normative exploration and the quest for meaning. Arendt’s reflections on truth and factfulness will help to make this point.

The Enlightenment and the French Revolutionary Birth Pangs of Modernity

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Wokler ◽  
Christopher Brooke
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
The Other ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Nation State ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One ◽  
Modern Nation State

This chapter's overriding objective is to explain how both the invention of our modern understanding of the social sciences, on the one hand, and the post-Enlightenment establishment of the modern nation-state, on the other, encapsulated doctrines which severed modernity from the Enlightenment philosophy which is presumed to have inspired it. It offers illustrations not so much of the unity of political theory and practice in the modern world as of their disengagement. In providing here some brief remarks on how post-Enlightenment justifications of modernity came to part company from their Enlightenment prefigurations, it hopes to sketch an account of certain links between principles and institutions which bears some relation to both Enlightenment and Hegelian conceptual history.

The Study of Political Unrest and Violence: The Middle East

1978 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 17-31
Author(s):  
Farhad Kazemi
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Unrest ◽  
The Sixties

The late Hannah Arendt once observed that “violence itself is incapable of speech, and not merely that speech is helpless when confronted with violence. Because of this speech-lessness political theory has little to say about the phenomenon of violence and must leave its discussion to the technicians;” (Arendt, 1963, p.9). This may have been true at the time of Arendt’s writing. The situation, however, dramatically changed when the violence of the sixties began in earnest. The academic market was soon lost in a maze of articles, books, and analyses of political violence from the perspective of not only political theory but practically every discipline in the social sciences and humanities. These new works supplemented the traditional and earlier studies of violence by the Marxist school and others. Thus by the turn of the decade, the student of political violence was faced with the difficult task of trying to evaluate and sift his way through an ever-expanding plethora of concepts, theories, definitions, explanations, and models of political violence which abounded in the field.

Individualisms

1994 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 107-131
Author(s):  
Andrew Levine
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Methodological Individualism ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Ontological Status ◽  
Social Facts ◽  
The Social ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
Individual Human ◽  
Normative Political Theory

Individualisms of various kinds are pervasive in the social sciences and in moral, social and political theory. Thus some social theorists maintain that individual human beings exist but that there is nothing distinctively social in their interactions that we must countenance ontologically (metaphysical individualism). Others argue that ‘social facts,’ whatever their ontological status, should be explained by facts about individuals (methodological individualism). And virtually all philosophers assume that the point of departure for addressing normative questions about social and political arrangements should be individuals and their interests. These are, of course, distinct claims. But they are sustained by similar intuitions. I believe that in general these intuitions are sound, but that the full-blown doctrines they suggest are importantly mistaken. In what follows, I shall focus on one aspect of this very general claim. I shall dispute the form of individualism that nowadays pervades (normative) political theory while endorsing the individualist intuitions that motivate it.

scholarly journals A Discourse on the Contemporary Relevance of the Educational Underpinning of Plato’s Political Philosophy

2021 ◽  
pp. 35-44
Author(s):  
Olaiya Olajumoke Olufunmilola
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Theories ◽  
Social Ordering ◽  
Plato's Political Philosophy ◽  
Better Than

The journey towards social ordering and the need to make life much better than it used to be is one of the principal motivations for political philosophy. Hence, there are as much political theories to this effect as there are political philosophers and scientists. Whereas the aim of the present research is to consider what kind of political theory can assist in social ordering, it does this, taking cognizance of the pedagogical postulates of the political scholar, Plato. In other words, this research reconsiders the educational underpinning of Plato’s political philosophy for use in the quest toward the agenda of attaining nationhood in Nigeria. This comes as a consequence of the urgency to correct the ugly trend(s) that have greeted the educational system of the country as well as the failure of the social sciences to provide the much sought succor. This approach is sacrosanct because of the undue but accentuated emphases that have been given to the social sciences as the domain from which development and nationhood can spring. Incidentally, the journey toward nationhood for Nigeria, continues to be one of the most disturbing dilemmas that continues to haunt the country. Via the method of critical analysis, this essay argues that Plato’s political philosophy has some educational ideals that present implications for contemporaneous nature or character of contemporary Nigeria. By giving emphasis on his reflections on the principle of specialization, this study is able to argue that the spirited application of this ideal for contemporary Nigeria via pedagogy will go a long way to birth the much sought nationhood. Political philosophy needs pedagogy to be able to realize its ideals. Unless this initiative is underscored, this essay submits, the quest for nationhood will continue to lament in the labyrinth of folly and backwardness.

We do not Live in an Age of Cosmopolitanism but in an Age of Cosmopolitisation: The ‘Global Other’ is in Our Midst

2011 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulrich Beck
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Social Inequalities ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Risk Society ◽  
Methodological Nationalism ◽  
Current State ◽  
The Social

As against the current state of the art, this article argues for a cosmopolitan vision in the social sciences and, more specifically, for a cosmopolitan turn in social and political theory and research. A critique of the prevailing methodological nationalism leads to a presentation of an agenda for researching really existing cosmopolitisation. The proposed paradigm shift is illustrated by graphic examples of drastically altered social relations and social inequalities drawn from around the globe, and its urgency is underscored by an analysis of the political dynamics and transformations characteristic of the world risk society. The development of a cosmopolitan vision in the social sciences demands not simply the token adoption of methodological cosmopolitanism, but the painful excision of deep-seated Western and Eurocentric biases.

The limits of power: Knowledge, ethics, and foreign policy in Hans J. Morgenthau’s international theory

2020 ◽  
pp. 004711782093562
Author(s):  
Lorenzo Zambernardi
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Action ◽  
International Theory ◽  
The Social ◽  
Limits Of Knowledge ◽  
Political Thinker

Hans J. Morgenthau’s contribution to international relations and political theory appears to have been fully recognized to date. However, his ideas have undergone surprisingly little comprehensive investigation: an attitude that made it possible to grasp only a few aspects of his reflections. The main argument of this article is that the main area of inquiry in Morgenthau’s scholarship – international politics and foreign policy – is based on general considerations regarding the role of reason in politics and the limits of knowledge of the social universe. Not only does the question of the possibility of such knowledge lie at the root of his considerations on political action, but it also forms the mainspring of his reflection on ethics. Through an inquiry into the red thread that tightly links his diverse body of thought on social sciences, ethics, and foreign policy, the article aims to show that Morgenthau was a systematic political thinker who set out from theoretical observations on the limits of knowledge to develop particular insights into ethics and, from there, a particular notion of how foreign policy should be conducted. In other words, Morgenthau established links of essential continuity between knowledge, ethics, and action.

John Dewey 1859–1952

1985 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 69-89
Author(s):  
H. S. Thayer
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
John Dewey ◽  
William James ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
The Other ◽  
Radical Empiricism ◽  
The Social ◽  
Long Lifetime ◽  
Heads Of State

It is generally agreed that the most influential philosophers in America are Charles S. Peirce, William James and John Dewey. James's fame came rather suddenly in the latter half of his life—roughly, from 1880 to 1910; it flourished with the appearance of his Principles of Psychology (1890) and shortly thereafter with his advocacy of pragmatism and radical empiricism. James was acclaimed in England and Europe as well as in America. Peirce, on the other hand, was almost entirely neglected; his work remained unknown to all but a few philosophers and his chief acknowledgment was as a scientist and logician. His importance began to be recognized and his immense researches and writings studied some twenty-five years after his death. It was otherwise with Dewey. During his long lifetime his ideas not only engaged the reflections and critical discussions of philosophers, he also had a profound and contagious influence on education, the social sciences, aesthetics, and political theory and practice. In this respect his thought has reached a wider audience in America than that of either Peirce or James. In his day lawyers, labour leaders, scientists and several heads of state attested to the vitality of his wisdom.

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