Corruption and Partisanship: Rousseau, Ferguson and Two Competing Models of Republican Revival

2016 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert A. Sparling
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Civic Virtue ◽  
Civic Life ◽  
Important Distinction ◽  
Individual Judgment ◽  
Competing Models ◽  
The Common

AbstractPartisanship inspires a degree of ambivalence. There is a widespread tendency—which has a long history in republican political thought—to decry division and partisanship as corrupting, undermining individual judgment, and promoting clientelism, dependencies and loyalties antithetical to the common good. Yet there is an equally widespread intuition that excessive unity is corrupting, undermining the vigour of civic life. Contemporary political theory remains divided on the normative implications of division and unity—witness the battles between agonistic and consensus-oriented schools of democratic theory. In this article I examine the thought of two eighteenth-century writers who, while often treated as contributing to a common intellectual project of reinvigorating classical civic virtue, took opposite positions on the desirability of division. Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Ferguson offered competing accounts of what corrupts civic virtue, one decrying party divisions and the other lauding them. The article examines the underlying philosophical presuppositions of Rousseau and Ferguson's competing claims and suggests, ultimately, that both positions suffer from neglecting to attend to an important distinction between salutary and harmful divisions.

Maṣlaḥa as Sovereignty: Fadlallah and Khomeini Compared

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-112
Author(s):  
Nachman Alexander
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Islamic History ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Islamic Political Thought ◽  
Popular Movement ◽  
The Common ◽  
Definition Of

This article examines how Fadlallah and Khomeini’s respective quests for sovereignty are reflected in their political thought, particularly vis-a-vis their notions of maṣlaḥa, which I define as the “common good.” I argue that if, to an extent, Islamic political thought seeks to maximise maṣlaḥa, then this can also constitute a claim to sovereignty, the definition of which remains multidimensional and contentious. By closely examining Fadlallah and Khomeini’s writings and pronouncements on governance, popular movement, and state, I attempt to reveal how discussions regarding Islamic governance demonstrate a broader claim to authority in Islamic history.

Calvinists, Arminians, Socinians: Popular Sovereignty and Natural Rights in Early Modern Political Thought

2019 ◽  
pp. 21-35
Author(s):  
James Moore
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
The Political ◽  
Reformed Church ◽  
Hugo Grotius

This chapter focuses upon natural rights in the writings of Hugo Grotius, the Levellers and John Locke and the manner in which their understanding of rights was informed by distinctive Protestant theologies: by Arminianism or the theology of the Remonstrant Church and by Socinianism. The chapter argues that their theological principles and the natural rights theories that followed from those principles were in conflict with the theology of Calvin and the theologians of the Reformed church. The political theory that marks the distinctive contribution of Calvin and the Reformed to political theory was the idea of popular sovereignty, an idea revived in the eighteenth century, in the political writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Saeculum–Ecclesia–Caliphate: An Eternal Golden Braid

2019 ◽  
pp. 94-107
Author(s):  
Paul J. Griffiths
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Common Good ◽  
The United States ◽  
Catholic Theology ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Church ◽  
Catholic Perspective ◽  
Secular State

The secular state, the church, and the caliphate are associations that each hold universal aspirations, at least implicitly. While the universal aspirations of the church and caliphate may be obvious enough, every state seeks dominion over the whole world. (“Secular” describes states that limit their vision to this world, as opposed to the transcendence to which both the church and caliphate appeal.) As an essay in Catholic speculative theology, Griffiths asks two questions: Whether Catholic theology supports or discourages the variety of political orders, and whether these orders could be ranked in terms of goodness from a Catholic perspective? In response to these questions, Griffiths appeals to two aspects of St. Augustine’s political thought: Political rivalries serve the common good; and the principal indicator of the degree to which a state serves the common good is its explicit service to the god of Abraham. The United States (a secular state) is compared with ISIS (an attempted caliphate).

Radical democracy

2019 ◽  
pp. 115-130
Author(s):  
Paul Spicker
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Civic Virtue ◽  
Radical Democracy ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Active Citizenship ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Civic Republicanism ◽  
Good Citizenship ◽  
The Common

The model of civic republicanism is associated with a range of principles: a concept of the common good, citizenship, a presumption of civic virtue and freedom. The idea of radical democracy is strongly associated with a sense of active citizenship, engagement in a political community and collective action. At times, however, it tips into populism, which claims to pit a virtuous people against a corrupt elite, but risks bringing radical democracy into disrepute.

REPUBLICANISM AND CIVIC VIRTUE IN TREATYITE POLITICAL THOUGHT, 1921–3

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (5) ◽  
pp. 1257-1280
Author(s):  
SEÁN DONNELLY
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Civic Virtue ◽  
Free State ◽  
Political Language ◽  
Sinn Fein ◽  
Irish History ◽  
Political Ideologies ◽  
Irish People ◽  
The Common ◽  
Revolutionary Period

AbstractRepublicanism has been one of the most influential political ideologies in modern Irish history; however, it remains conspicuously undertheorized by historians of the revolutionary period. While recent historiography has challenged representations of anti-Treaty Sinn Féin as a mindlessly destructive, anti-democratic force, the extent of ideological and rhetorical continuity linking the Provisional Government formed to assume control of the Free State on 7 January 1922 with the pre-Treaty republican tradition has not been understood. This article rejects the historiographical thesis that the Provisional Government abandoned republican ideas. Drawing from the Cambridge School's contextualist account of republicanism as a polysemic and contingent political language, it highlights the vigorously contested nature of republican thought in the intellectual firmament of revolutionary Sinn Féin and argues that the Free State leadership articulated its vision of politics and society through classical republican concepts of ‘civic virtue’ and the ‘common good’. It is suggested additionally that the colonial dynamics of the Anglo-Irish relationship helped to shape the vision of republican citizenship promoted by an administration possessed of a deep-seated determination to refute historical perceptions of the Irish people as congenitally ‘unfit’ for sovereignty.

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