Until Philosophers are Kings. A Study of the Political Theory of Plato and Aristotle in relation to the Modern State. By Roger Chance M.A., Ph.D. (University of London Press. 1928. Pp. xvi + 293. Price 10s. 6d.)

Philosophy ◽  
1929 ◽  
Vol 4 (14) ◽  
pp. 276-277
Author(s):  
C. Delisle Burns
2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 202-215
Author(s):  
Hamza Salih

This paper examines the political writings of the Moroccan nationalist Allal Al-Fassi (1910-1974). It argues that there exists a considerable political tendency in these writings with excessive utilisation of jargon related to liberalism and political theory. In his intellectual and political project, Al-Fassi theorises about the possibility of creating a modern state on solid democratic and liberal foundations. Yet, however legitimate and seemingly liberal his theorisation might seem, the paper argues that the formation of a liberal state and a democratic society appears to be a mere dream given the fact that Al-Fassi grounds his conceptions within the Salafist and revivalist intellectual systems. Reading between the lines of his political works, nevertheless, reveals the dominance of Salafist intellections which deem the past and Islam as restorative in attaining a modern renaissance, at the political, economic, and cultural levels.  This work, thus, problematizes three central points: the political tendency of Al-Fassi’s project, his religious and Salafist remnants and conceptions, and finally the possible ideological implications and interests that Al-Fassi seems to defend.  


2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 535-563 ◽  
Author(s):  
KARUNA MANTENA

Gandhi's critique of the modern state was central to his political thinking. It served as a pivotal hinge between Gandhi's anticolonialism and his theory of politics and was given striking institutional form in his vision of decentralized peasant democracy. This essay explores the origins and implications of Gandhian antistatism by situating it within a genealogy of early twentieth-century political pluralism, specifically British and Indian pluralist criticism of state sovereignty and centralization. This essay traces that critique from the imperial sociology of Henry Sumner Maine, through the political theory of Harold Laski and G. D. H. Cole, to Radhakamal Mukerjee's reworking of these strands into a normative–universal model of Eastern pluralism. The essay concludes with a consideration of Gandhi's ideal of a stateless, nonviolent polity as a culmination and overturning of the pluralist tradition and as integral to his distinctive understanding of political freedom, rule, and action.


Author(s):  
Lucy Cane

When Sheldon Wolin’s Politics and Vision was first published in 1960, the dominance of liberalism, democratic pluralism, and behavioralism had thrown the discipline of political theory into an existential crisis. Politics and Vision interpreted the history of political thought as a series of visions of commonality (of “the political”), ultimately arguing that modern liberalism had disavowed this dimension of experience in dangerous ways. In urging readers to offer new political visions, and particularly to re-imagine equality through the concept of citizenship, it galvanized theorists of the Left at a crucial moment. Indeed, the text continues to inspire newcomers to the field, exemplifying the power of historically engaged political thought to expose contemporary dilemmas. When the book was reissued with new chapters in 2004, however, Wolin had moved beyond his early appeal to citizenship to envision a theory of radical democracy at odds with corporate capitalism and the modern state.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Claus Offe

The “will of the (national) people” is the ubiquitously invoked reference unit of populist politics. The essay tries to demystify the notion that such will can be conceived of as a unique and unified substance deriving from collective ethnic identity. Arguably, all political theory is concerned with arguing for ways by which citizens can make e pluribus unum—for example, by coming to agree on procedures and institutions by which conflicts of interest and ideas can be settled according to standards of fairness. It is argued that populists in their political rhetoric and practice typically try to circumvent the burden of such argument and proof. Instead, they appeal to the notion of some preexisting existential unity of the people’s will, which they can redeem only through practices of repression and exclusion.


Author(s):  
Sara Brill

Aristotle on the Concept of Shared Life studies Aristotle’s understanding of the political character of human intimacy via an examination of the zoological frame informing his political theory. It argues that the concept of shared life, i.e. the forms of intimacy that arise from the possession of logos and the capacity for choice, is central to human political partnership, and serves to locate that life within the broader context of living beings as such, where it emerges as an intensification of animal sociality. As such it challenges a long-standing approach to the role of the animal in Aristotle’s thought, and to the recent reception of Aristotle’s thinking about the political valence of life and living beings.


2021 ◽  
pp. 009059172110278
Author(s):  
Colin Koopman

Despite widespread recognition of an emergent politics of data in our midst, we strikingly lack a political theory of data. We readily acknowledge the presence of data across our political lives, but we often do not know how to conceptualize the politics of all those data points—the forms of power they constitute and the kinds of political subjects they implicate. Recent work in numerous academic disciplines is evidence of the first steps toward a political theory of data. This article maps some limits of this emergent literature with an eye to enriching its theoretical range. The literature on data politics, both within political theory and elsewhere, has thus far focused almost exclusively on the algorithm. This article locates a further dimension of data politics in the work of formatting technology or, more simply, formats. Formats are simultaneously conceptual and technical in the ways they define what can even count as data, and by extension who can count as data and how they can count. A focus on formats is of theoretical value because it provides a bridge between work on the conceptual contours of categories and the technology-centric literature on algorithms that tends to ignore the more conceptual dimensions of data technology. The political insight enabled by format theory is shown in the context of an extended interrogation of the politics of racialized redlining.


2021 ◽  
pp. 009059172199807
Author(s):  
Liam Klein ◽  
Daniel Schillinger

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.


2021 ◽  
pp. 147892992110233
Author(s):  
Cristian Pérez-Muñoz

Political theorists affiliated with Latin American and Caribbean academic institutions rarely publish in flagship journals or other important outlets of the discipline. Similarly, they are not members of the editorial boards of high-ranking, generalist or subfield journals, and their research is not included in the political theory canon of what students from other regions study. The aim of this article is not to explain the origins of this silence—though some possibilities are considered—but to describe some of the ways in which it manifests and why it matters. I argue that the exclusion or omission of Latin American and Caribbean voices is a negative outcome not only for Latin American and Caribbean political theorist but for the political theory subfield at large. In response, I defend a context-sensitive approach to political theory, which has the potential to provide greater voice to Latin American and Caribbean scholars while improving theoretical analysis of Latin America and Caribbean.


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