Kierkegaard's Socratic Alternative to Hegel in Fear and Trembling

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Matthew Dinan
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Fear And Trembling

Abstract Søren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling has traditionally attracted interest from scholars of political theory for its apparent hostility to political philosophy, and more recently for its compatibility with Marxism. This paper argues for a reconsideration of Kierkegaard's potential contributions to political theory by suggesting that the work's shortcomings belong to its pseudonymous author, Johannes de Silentio, and are in fact intended by Kierkegaard. Attentiveness to the literary development of the pseudonym allows us to see a Kierkegaard who is a deeper and more direct critic of Hegel's political philosophy than is usually presumed. By creating a pseudonym whose argument ultimately fails, Kierkegaard employs Socratic irony in order to point readers to the need to recover Socratic political philosophy as the appropriate adjunct to the faith of Abraham, and as an alternative to Hegelian, and post-Hegelian, political thought.

The Scholastic and Conciliar Roots of Samuel Rutherford’s Political Philosophy

2020 ◽  
pp. 208-226
Author(s):  
Simon J. G. Burton
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Way

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.

Political Theory and the Study of Politics: A Report of a Conference

1956 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 475-487 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harry Eckstein
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The Other ◽  
Sharp Distinction ◽  
Basic Issue ◽  
Political Inquiry ◽  
The One

The issues which arose during the discussions of the conference fall fairly conveniently into three compartments.First, we obviously had to settle, with reasonable clarity, what we were talking about: what “political philosophy” is, what “political science” is, and whether they are really distinguishable. The basic issue of the conference was to determine the relevance of the one to the study of the other, and if we had decided that they were really the same thing, there would simply have been no problems for us to discuss. On the whole, we felt that a valid, if not necessarily sharp, distinction was to be made between the “philosophical” and the “scientific” approaches to the study of politics and that we were not discussing absurd or tautological issues. We agreed, however, that all types of political inquiry involve the construction of theory, implicit or explicit, and that the title “political theory” has been unjustifiably appropriated by the historians of political thought.

Kant’s Political Philosophy as a Theory of Non-Ideal Normativity

Kant-Studien ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 107 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph Horn
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Categorical Imperative ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract:Kant’s political philosophy confronts its interpreters with a crucial difficulty: it is far from clear if (or how) Kant, in his political theory, makes use of the Categorical Imperative (CI). It is notoriously demanding to clarify the relationship that exists between his political thought on the one hand and the ethics of the

Jeremy Waldron and the Religious Turn in Locke Scholarship

2005 ◽  
Vol 67 (3) ◽  
pp. 407-418 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul E. Sigmund
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Religious Worldview ◽  
Theological Foundation

The title, God, Locke, and Equality, as well as its controversial thesis about the necessity of a theological foundation for equality are designed to startle and provoke. Yet those who have kept up with Locke scholarship (not an easy job since there are 5–10 new books on Locke each year, and over 9000 articles have been published about his work) will recognize that in recent years, its topic, the relation of Locke's religious beliefs to his politics, has become an important theme in the interpretation of Locke's political philosophy. This article will attempt to place the book in the context of this literature and evaluate its contribution to the growing number of studies.In the early years of what John Pocock once called “the Locke industry,” Locke's religious beliefs did not get much attention. The two most influential interpretations of his political thought portrayed him either as a crypto-Hobbesian hedonist, or an apologist for capitalist exploitation, ignoring or explaining away his commitment to Christianity. It is true that John Dunn in his book on Locke's political theory made much (perhaps too much) of Locke's Calvinist upbringing, only to dismiss his political thought as so dominated by a religious worldview that it is irrelevant today.

Classical Ethics and Postmodern Critique: Political Philosophy in Václav Havel and Jan Patočka

1999 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 403-438 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward F. Findlay
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The West ◽  
Vaclav Havel ◽  
Phenomenological Interpretation ◽  
Ethics And Politics

This article examines the ties between the work of Václav Havel and his dissident mentor Jan Patočka. Havel's political theory consists largely of an evocative, literary reformulation of a number of themes developed by Patočka, the student of Husserl and Heidegger generally recognized as the most significant Czech philosopher of the century. Insofar as Patočka's work continues to be ignored in the West, the intuitively appealing essays of Havel will themselves fail to be fully understood. This study offers an analysis of Havel's debt to Patočka, as well as an explication of the latter's political thought. With Patočka's phenomenological interpretation of ancient and contemporary thought, of Socrates and Heidegger, a bridge is built between the classical and the postmodern that seeks to ground ethics and politics without recourse to the foundationalism of metaphysical accounts of reality.

scholarly journals A Burmese tract on kingship: political theory in the 1782 manuscript of Manugye

2001 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
pp. 248-259 ◽  
Author(s):  
RYUJI OKUDAIRA ◽  
ANDREW HUXLEY
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought

In 1782, the year of King Badon's coronation, someone close to the Burmese palace wrote a legal manuscript. This paper gives a translation of and commentary on that section of the manuscript dealing with kingship. By tracing the sources of the material used, it contributes to the debate about the sources of Burmese political philosophy. Was precolonial Burmese political thought primarily Hindu, primarily Buddhist, primarily Indian or none of the above?

The Making of Modern Liberalism

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Ryan
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Social Identity ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Liberal Tradition ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
History Of

This book is a deep and wide-ranging exploration of the origins and nature of liberalism from the Enlightenment through its triumphs and setbacks in the twentieth century and beyond. The book is the fruit of more than four decades during which the author reflected on the past of the liberal tradition—and worried about its future. This is essential reading for anyone interested in political theory or the history of liberalism. The book consists of five parts. It covers subjects such as liberalism, freedom, the liberal community and the death penalty, Thomas Hobbes's political philosophy, individualism, human nature, John Locke on freedom, John Stuart Mill's political thought, utilitarianism and bureaucracy, pragmatism, social identity, patriotism, self-criticism, and more.

scholarly journals Pierre Clastres as comparative political theorist: The democratic potential of the new political anthropology

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-94
Author(s):  
Christopher Holman
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Alternative Model ◽  
Political Anthropology ◽  
The Political ◽  
Mutual Understanding ◽  
Comparative Political Theory ◽  
Intercultural Exchange ◽  
History Of

This article examines the political anthropological work of Pierre Clastres in light of the emergence of the subfield of comparative political theory. In particular, it argues that Clastres’ reconstruction of the political philosophy of various Amazonian societies offers an alternative model for the engagement with texts and traditions external to the history of so-called Western societies. Rejecting all impulses toward totalization – as represented, for example, in the assertion of a dialogical potential for establishing modes of intercultural exchange aimed at achieving mutual understanding – Clastres calls attention to the radical social-historical alterity of forms of society. Appreciation of this alterity not only enlarges the scope of comparative political thought to engage inherited traditions that resist assimilation into Western conversations, but also reveals an indeterminate democratic potential grounded in political creativity.

scholarly journals Alexander Dugin’s Heideggerianism

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Millerman
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The Political ◽  
Philosophical Significance ◽  
Broad Overview

This paper argues for the central role of Martin Heidegger’s thought in Alexander Dugin’s political philosophy or political theory. Part one is a broad overview of the place of Heidegger in Dugin’s political theory. Part two outlines how Dugin uses Heidegger to elaborate a specifically Russian political theory. Part three shows how apparently unphilosophical political concepts from Dugin’s political theory have a Heideggerian meaning for him. Because of what he regards as a homology between the philosophical and the political, his readers must always be aware of the philosophical significance of his political concepts and vice versa. Tracing Heidegger’s central role helps clarify Dugin’s political thought.

scholarly journals What is Ancient Political Thinking?

Problemos ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 96 ◽  
pp. 48-60
Author(s):  
Vilius Bartninkas
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Thinking

This paper examines the origins of ancient political thinking from (roughly) 750 to 348 B.C. The analysis of authors who had been discussing political questions over this period shows that ancient political thinking can be classified into three discourses: political thought, political theory, and political philosophy. The purpose of this paper is to define the characteristics of each discourse and to illustrate them with specific historical examples which show how these discourses interacted with the Greek political experiences and how political thought transformed into a theory and philosophy.

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