Politics and Interstate Relations in the World of Early GreekPoleis: Homer and Beyond

Antichthon ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 1-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kurt A. Raaflaub

This essay is part of a larger project concerned with determining how historians today can use the evidence of the Homeric epics in order to gain a better understanding of the evolution of early Greek society—but do so responsibly, that is, in ways that are adequate to the epics' nature as poetic and cultural documents surviving from a specific time and social context. Elsewhere I have discussed Homer and history, the role of thepolis, warfare and military organisation, and political thought in Homer, as well as ‘Homeric society’ in general and the problem of its historicity. Here I want to take a close look at interstate relations (sections I and III) and the political sphere (section II). I choose as my point of departure some of the views which M.I. Finley expressed inThe World of Odysseus—a book that is now more than forty years old, still illuminating and indispensable but partly outdated.

2021 ◽  

Historians of political thought and international lawyers have both expanded their interest in the formation of the present global order. History, Politics, Law is the first express encounter between the two disciplines, juxtaposing their perspectives on questions of method and substance. The essays throw light on their approaches to the role of politics and the political in the history of the world beyond the single polity. They discuss the contrast between practice and theory as well as the role of conceptual and contextual analyses in both fields. Specific themes raised for both disciplines include statehood, empires and the role of international institutions, as well as the roles of economics, innovation and gender. The result is a vibrant cross-section of contrasts and parallels between the methods and practices of the two disciplines, demonstrating the many ways in which both can learn from each other.


Author(s):  
Marina M. Lebedeva ◽  
Maxim V. Kharkevich

Having moved to the global level, capitalist political economy today is turning into a dominant way of governance in world politics, undermining the state-centrist model that has been developing since the time of the Westphalian peace treaties. As a result, we are witnessing a Schumpeterian phenomenon of “creative destruction” i.e., destruction of old accompanied by creation of new. The current world politics is dominated by the logic of destruction, and this destruction is not limited to changing interstate relations, as it is represented in most studies, but involves at the same time at least three levels of political organization of the world, forming a synergy effect: the level of the Westphalian world order; the level of interstate relations; the level of the national state. The Westphalian ststem is being blurred largely by transnational business activity. Entrepreneursinnovators form capitalism of co-participation. This capitalism rests not on interest, but on values and social ties that unite people in networks. Examples of such capitalism are various forms of sharing, peer-topeer networks, wiki-platforms, block-chain technology. Capitalism of sharing unites in- formational networks and human potential, the main resource of such capitalism is precisely human capital, human trust and social relations. The sharing is being transmitted to the international political sphere, supplementing the principle of the Westphalian sovereignty with the potential of eventually replacing it. At the same time, practices are being introduced into the political organization of the world from other projects of the political organization of the world, in particular Islamic (Islamic banks, hawala money transfer system, etc.). 


2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 246-260
Author(s):  
Sybille Reinke de Buitrago

Emotions, and linked national identity, play a significant role in how we make sense of the world and in knowledge production in international relations. How we understand international relations is also shaped by our emotions and identity through their role in sense and meaning making of visual representation, such as political cartoons. This article analyses how political cartoons with portrayals of interstate relations are interpreted, and which emotions and elements of national identity are evoked and give meaning to interpretations. Cartoons from US media were shown to US and German viewers. In a two-stage process, viewers addressed evoked emotions and then critically discussed emotions, identity and representations. Focusing on commonalities and differences in how viewers read and felt visual content, the article enables insights on how emotions and identity add to knowledge production in international relations and how they do so differently with viewers of different identity backgrounds.


2018 ◽  
Vol 55 ◽  
pp. 04003
Author(s):  
Marina Shirokova

The article discusses the place and role of A. S. Pushkin in the history of Russian culture and political thought. Such a feature of the Russian picture of the world as “literary-centrism”, which is the primacy of the word, confidence in the word. Like other Russian writers, Pushkin’s works present a moral ideal, but he does not try to teach something, does not construct an ideal model, but simply shows an ideal in the unity of form and content. Further, the article traces the main stages of the evolution of the great poet’s political views: the Lyceum-Petersburg period; the period of the southern exile; the period of exile in Mikhailovsky; and the period of creative maturity in the last decade of his life. The ideological evolution of Pushkin is a transition from liberalism and revolutionism to conservatism and monarchism, combined with the idea of personal freedom. The author concludes that the political worldview of Pushkin organically combined the phenomena of power and freedom. The poet managed to “remove” the dialectical contradiction between them, which later became one of the main problems of Russian literature and philosophy.


2017 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 175-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Bourke

ABSTRACTExamining the political thought of the Irish Revolution poses two distinct problems. First, we need to establish how we should date the Revolution for the purposes of intellectual history. There is no doubting that the 1916 Easter Rising was an event in British and Irish politics, but it was also an event in the world of ideas. Any serious consideration of this episode and its aftermath therefore needs to trace its origins to patterns of thought as well as shifts in affairs, and the two processes do not necessarily coincide. The second requirement for understanding the role of political thought in the Revolution is to reconstruct carefully the actual doctrines articulated and deployed. Irish historians have been reluctant to engage in this process of interpretation. Yet a more searching account of political ideas in the period has the potential to change our approach to the Revolution as a whole.


2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-259
Author(s):  
Joseph Acquisto

This essay examines a polemic between two Baudelaire critics of the 1930s, Jean Cassou and Benjamin Fondane, which centered on the relationship of poetry to progressive politics and metaphysics. I argue that a return to Baudelaire's poetry can yield insight into what seems like an impasse in Cassou and Fondane. Baudelaire provides the possibility of realigning metaphysics and politics so that poetry has the potential to become the space in which we can begin to think the two of them together, as opposed to seeing them in unresolvable tension. Or rather, the tension that Baudelaire animates between the two allows us a new way of thinking about the role of esthetics in moments of political crisis. We can in some ways see Baudelaire as responding, avant la lettre, to two of his early twentieth-century readers who correctly perceived his work as the space that breathes a new urgency into the questions of how modern poetry relates to the world from which it springs and in which it intervenes.


2019 ◽  
pp. 512-519
Author(s):  
Teymur Dzhalilov ◽  
Nikita Pivovarov

The published document is a part of the working record of The Secretariat of the CPSU Central Committee on May 5, 1969. The employees of The Common Department of the CPSU Central Committee started writing such working records from the end of 1965. In contrast to the protocols, the working notes include speeches of the secretaries of the Central Committee, that allow to deeper analyze the reactions of the top party leadership, to understand their position regarding the political agenda. The peculiarity of the published document is that the Secretariat of the Central Committee did not deal with the most important foreign policy issues. It was the responsibility of the Politburo. However, it was at a meeting of the Secretariat of the Central Committee when Brezhnev raised the question of inviting G. Husák to Moscow. The latter replaced A. Dubček as the first Secretary of the Communist party of Czechoslovakia in April 1969. As follows from the document, Leonid Brezhnev tried to solve this issue at a meeting of the Politburo, but failed. However, even at the Secretariat of the Central Committee the Leonid Brezhnev’s initiative at the invitation of G. Husák was not supported. The published document reveals to us not only new facets in the mechanisms of decision-making in the CPSU Central Committee, the role of the Secretary General in this process, but also reflects the acute discussions within the Soviet government about the future of the world socialist systems.


2021 ◽  
pp. 003232172110026
Author(s):  
Kurt Weyland

Responding to Rueda’s questions, this essay explains the political-strategic approach (PSA) to populism and highlights its analytical strengths, which have become even more important with the emergence of populist governments across the world. PSA identifies populism’s core by emphasizing the central role of personalistic leaders who tend to operate in opportunistic ways, rather than consistently pursuing programmatic or ideological orientations. PSA is especially useful nowadays, when scholars’ most urgent task is to elucidate the political strategies of populist chief executives and their problematic repercussions, especially populism’s threat to democracy.


2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hou Yuxin

Abstract The Wukan Incident attracted extensive attention both in China and around the world, and has been interpreted from many different perspectives. In both the media and academia, the focus has very much been on the temporal level of the Incident. The political and legal dimensions, as well as the implications of the Incident in terms of human rights have all been pored over. However, what all of these discussions have overlooked is the role played by religious force during the Incident. The village of Wukan has a history of over four hundred years, and is deeply influenced by the religious beliefs of its people. Within both the system of religious beliefs and in everyday life in the village, the divine immortal Zhenxiu Xianweng and the religious rite of casting shengbei have a powerful influence. In times of peace, Xianweng and casting shengbei work to bestow good fortune, wealth and longevity on both the village itself, and the individuals who live there. During the Wukan Incident, they had a harmonizing influence, and helped to unify and protect the people. Looking at the specific roles played by religion throughout the Wukan Incident will not only enable us to develop a more meaningful understanding of the cultural nature and the complexity of the Incident itself, it will also enrich our understanding, on a divine level, of innovations in social management.


2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evonne Levy

<P>This study in intellectual history places the art historical concept of the Baroque amidst world events, political thought, and the political views of art historians themselves. Exploring the political biographies and writings on the Baroque (primarily its architecture) of five prominent Germanophone figures, Levy gives a face to art history, showing its concepts arising in the world. From Jacob Burckhardt’s still debated "Jesuit style" to Hans Sedlmayr’s <I>Reichsstil</I>, the Baroque concepts of these German, Swiss and Austrian art historians, all politically conservative, and two of whom joined the Nazi party, were all took shape in reaction to immediate social and political circumstances. </P> <P>A central argument of the book is that basic terms of architectural history drew from a long established language of political thought. This vocabulary, applied in the formalisms of Wölfflin and Gurlitt, has endured as art history’s unacknowledged political substrate for generations. Classic works, like Wölfflin’s <I>Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe</I> are interpreted anew here, supported by new documents from the papers of each figure.</P>


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