Jefferson's Eclectic Political Thought - Garrett Ward Sheldon: The Political Philosophy of Thomas Jefferson. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. Pp. x, 174. $28.00.)

1992 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 694-696
Author(s):  
Daniel J. McCarthy
2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 100-108
Author(s):  
Sofie Møller

In Kant’s Politics in Context, Reidar Maliks offers a compelling account of Kant’s political philosophy as part of a public debate on rights, citizenship, and revolution in the wake of the French Revolution. Maliks argues that Kant’s political thought was developed as a moderate middle ground between radical and conservative political interpretations of his moral philosophy. The book’s central thesis is that the key to understanding Kant’s legal and political thought lies in the public debate among Kant’s followers and that in this debate we find the political challenges which Kant’s political philosophy is designed to solve. Kant’s Politics in Context raises crucial questions about how to understand political thinkers of the past and is proof that our understanding of the past will remain fragmented if we limit our studies to the great men of the established canon.


Author(s):  
Simon J. G. Burton

Samuel Rutherford’s Lex Rex remains a source of perennial fascination for historians of political thought. Written in 1644 in the heat of the Civil Wars it constitutes an intellectual and theological justification of the entire Covenanting movement and a landmark in the development of Protestant political theory. Rutherford’s argument in the Lex Rex was deeply indebted to scholastic and Conciliarist sources, and this chapter examines the way he deployed these, especially the political philosophy of John Mair and Jacques Almain, in order to construct a covenantal model of kingship undergirded by an interwoven framework of individual and communal rights. In doing so it shows the ongoing influence of the Conciliarist tradition on Scottish political discourse and also highlights unexpected connections between Rutherford’s Covenanting and his Augustinian and Scotistic theology of grace and freedom.


2017 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 92-112
Author(s):  
Benjamin A. Edsall

The present study explores the themes of persuasion and force in Greco-Roman political thought and their appropriation in 4 Maccabees. I argue that among Greco-Roman political writers, stretching from Plato to Plutarch, the problem of balancing persuasion and force and their relationship to civic virtues cut to the heart of the varied constitutional theories and proposals. While persuasion was preferred in ideal situations, force was recognized to be an important corollary for the masses (§1). Turning to 4 Maccabees, a good example of the Jewish appropriation of the dominant political philosophy, I demonstrate that the political persuasion/force dynamic is foundational both to the philosophical prologue and the martyr narrative (§2).


1993 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 522
Author(s):  
Michael P. Zuckert ◽  
Garrett Ward Sheldon

1995 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Minogue

LIKE MANY PEOPLE, I FIND KARL POPPER BOTH FASCINATING and irritating. His vigour and lucidity are irresistible, and no one could complain that he fails to engage with the big questions. The problems begin when we consider his political thought. Some think him one of the great liberal philosophers of the century. I on the other hand, while being fascinated by The Open Society and its Enemies, am repelled by the grossness of its caricaturing of most of the thinkers it touches. The Poverty of Historicism is a marvellous text in the philosophy of the social sciences, but the idea of historicism is a straw man. The paradox seems to be that while there is a lot that refers to the political questions of the day, there is virtually nothing which takes up issues of political philosophy directly. The result is that he seems to me always to be on the wrong foot, and my problem is to discover why.


2014 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Krzynówek-Arndt

AbstractThe paper proposes to examine the variety of ways political theorists understand the political importance of Wittgenstein’s thought. Any analysis of Wittgensteinian political philosophy start from different understanding of this philosophy of language and possible ends of philosophical activity. However, each attempt to interpret the significance of Wittgenstein’s work to political thought anticipates or is linked to a particular conception of the self, a particular conception of the human being that is not easy to reconcile with the Wittgenstein of Tractatus and the Wittgenstein of Philosophical Investigations. For that reasons any Wittgensteinian approach to political thought should make an attention to the way Wittgenstein discusses on the self, the “I”, the way we use the word “I”.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document