Calhoun and Popular Rule: The Political Theory of the Disquisition and Discourse By H. Lee Cheek, Jr. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2001. 202p. $29.95.

2002 ◽  
Vol 96 (3) ◽  
pp. 609-609
Author(s):  
Christopher M. Duncan
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The Political ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
University Of Missouri ◽  
Popular Rule

C. S. Lewis claimed that he was a democrat because he believed in the fall of man. He went on to suggest that it was not that some men did not deserve to be slaves, but that none deserved to be masters. While not exactly the sort of uplifting proclamation that many partisans of democracy would hope to rally their followers around, it does provide those among us who are persuaded that human beings are limited in their capacities to reject vice and sin with an avenue and persuasive rationale to join their ranks. It is with this sort of view in mind that H. Lee Cheek, Jr.'s provocative and cogently argued book on the political thought of John C. Calhoun ought to be read.

Entangling Plato: A Guide through the Political Theory Archive

2021 ◽  
pp. 009059172199807
Author(s):  
Liam Klein ◽  
Daniel Schillinger
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The Political ◽  
Athenian Democracy

Political theorists have increasingly sought to place Plato in active dialogue with democracy ancient and modern by examining what S. Sara Monoson calls “Plato’s democratic entanglements.” More precisely, Monoson, J. Peter Euben, Arlene Saxonhouse, Christina Tarnopolsky, and Jill Frank approach Plato as both an immanent critic of the Athenian democracy and a searching theorist of self-governance. In this guide through the Political Theory archive, we explore “entanglement approaches” to the study of Plato, outlining their contribution to our understanding of Plato’s political thought and to the discipline of political theory.

Heraclitus’ Political Thought

Apeiron ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 405-426 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Maximilian Robitzsch
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Traditional View ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Basic Principles ◽  
Political Thinking ◽  
Difficult Question ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
Political Realm

Abstract This paper deals with Heraclitus’ political thought. First, in discussing the conception of cosmic justice, it argues that it is a mistake to separate Heraclitus’ political thought from his cosmological thought. Second, the paper works out two basic principles of Heraclitean political thinking by offering a close analysis of fragment B 114 as well as related texts. According to Heraclitus, (1) there is a standard common and relevant to all human beings in the political realm, namely, the logos, and (2) ruling well is a matter of grasping the logos and using it as a guide in all things political. Finally, the paper tackles the notoriously difficult question of whether there are certain forms of political order towards which Heraclitean thought is more or less inclined. According to what may be called the traditional view, Heraclitus is seen as a supporter of an aristocratic political order, while according to what may be called the revisionist view, Heraclitus is classified as a supporter of a democratic political order. The paper concludes that while Heraclitean philosophy is compatible with a plethora of different forms of political order, including democratic ones, the two basic principles of Heraclitean politics that were distinguished above are more conducive to aristocratic forms of political order.

HOPE AND MEMORY IN THE THOUGHT OF JUDITH SHKLAR

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 591-620 ◽  
Author(s):  
KATRINA FORRESTER
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Harvard University ◽  
The Political ◽  
American Liberalism ◽  
Judith Shklar ◽  
Exclusive Focus

Current interpretations of the political theory of Judith Shklar focus to a disabling extent on her short, late article “The Liberalism of Fear” (1989); commentators take this late essay as representative of her work as a whole and thus characterize her as an anti-totalitarian, Cold War liberal. Other interpretations situate her political thought alongside followers of John Rawls and liberal political philosophy. Challenging the centrality of fear in Shklar's thought, this essay examines her writings on utopian and normative thought, the role of history in political thinking and her notions of ordinary cruelty and injustice. In particular, it shifts emphasis away from an exclusive focus on her late writings in order to consider works published throughout her long career at Harvard University, from 1950 until her death in 1992. By surveying the range of Shklar's critical standpoints and concerns, it suggests that postwar American liberalism was not as monolithic as many interpreters have assumed. Through an examination of her attitudes towards her forebears and contemporaries, it shows why the dominant interpretations of Shklar—as anti-totalitarian émigré thinker, or normative liberal theorist—are flawed. In fact, Shklar moved restlessly between these two categories, and drew from each tradition. By thinking about both hope and memory, she bridged the gap between two distinct strands of postwar American liberalism.

The Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt Edited by Dana Villa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. 320p. $55.00 cloth, $20.00 paper.

2002 ◽  
Vol 96 (3) ◽  
pp. 627-628
Author(s):  
Jeffrey C. Isaac
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
The Political ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Cambridge University

This is an excellent collection of essays about the political thought of Hannah Arendt. Its editor, Dana Villa, has assembled a first-rate group of scholars, many of whom are already well known for their contributions to Arendt studies. The volume is distinguished by the high quality of its contributions and by the effort of so many of its contributors to go beyond standard lines of exegesis to raise interesting questions and to press the boundaries of Arendt commentary. Arendt's work has received a great deal of attention from political theorists in recent years. The Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt makes clear the richness of her thinking, the range of her concerns, and the ability of her writings to inspire creative commentary and constructive political theory.

BEYOND UNITY

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 383-388 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristina Beltrán
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The Political ◽  
Du Bois ◽  
Race Politics

Lawrie Balfour and Robert Gooding-Williams have given us powerful new works of scholarship on the political thought of W. E. B. Du Bois. Not only do these publications enrich the field of Du Bois scholarship, they exemplify the exciting possibilities at the intersection of political theory and race politics.

WHAT “REALISTIC UTOPIAS” ARE — AND AREN’T

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 235-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
William A. Galston
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Just Society

Abstract:Political theory is not a purely theoretical enterprise; it is intended to be practical and action-guiding. To perform this role, the requirements of political theory must be possible, and the standard of possibility it employs must be appropriate to the political domain. Because human beings vary in their capacity for morality and justice, a reasonably just society, as Rawls understands it, must not be expected. Despite his concerns to the contrary, the possibility of a just polity is not needed to ward off resignation and cynicism. There is a principled path between a politics of complacency that thwarts feasible progress and a politics of utopian aspiration that ends by inflicting harm in the name of doing good.

A Political Theory of Decolonization

2019 ◽  
pp. 14-36
Author(s):  
Adom Getachew
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Black Atlantic ◽  
International Order ◽  
The Political ◽  
International Integration ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Anticolonial Nationalism

This chapter sketches a political theory of decolonization that rethinks how anticolonial nationalism posed the problem of empire to expand our sense of its aims and trajectories. Drawing on recent histories of international law as well as the political thought of Black Atlantic worldmakers, it reconceives empire as processes of unequal international integration that took an increasingly racialized form in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Confronted with a racialized international order, anticolonial nationalists turned to projects of worldmaking that would secure the conditions of international nondomination. It argues that attention to the specificity of political projects that emerged out of the legacy of imperialism provides a postcolonial approach to contemporary cosmopolitanism. A postcolonial cosmopolitanism entails a critical diagnosis of the persistence of empire and a normative orientation that retains the anti-imperial aspiration for a domination-free international order.

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