The political theorist, Fujita Shōzō: between his sense of hope (kibō) and his sense of despair (zetsubō)

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 519-529 ◽  
Author(s):  
Takamichi Sakurai
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
High Speed ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Scientist ◽  
Intellectual Tradition ◽  
Political Thinking ◽  
Political Theorist ◽  
Practice Experience ◽  
Japanese Scholar ◽  
Psychological Transformation

AbstractIn this article, I describe an important aspect of the intellectual tradition of Japanese political theory while focusing on the Japanese scholar Fujita Shōzō’s political and scholarly activities. Not surprisingly, he has been chiefly considered a thinker or a historian of ideas, due to his being a pupil of Japan's brightest political scientist, Maruyama Masao. It must be stressed, however, that his scholarly works do not confine his academic scope to their ingredients; they are composed of theoretical requisites for the disciplinary activity of political theory, as can be seen particularly in his early contributions. He requires his theory to constitute integral aspects of practice, experience and perspective on the basis of his political concerns and practices in terms of detachment realism. From this perspective, I explore how Fujita changed his primary purpose from criticising Japan's ‘Tennō system’ (Tennōsei) to criticising its ‘high-speed growth’ (kōdo seichō) by highlighting the psychological transformation of his self-critical and self-reflective political thinking and acting according to his optimistic state of ‘hope’ (kibō) and his pessimistic state of ‘despair’ (zetsubō), especially in terms of his early work.

Some Thoughts on the Relation of Political Theory to Anthropology

1968 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 536-545 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carl J. Friedrich ◽  
Morton Horwitz
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Basic Problem ◽  
Historical Data ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Scientist ◽  
Human Relations ◽  
Political Theorist ◽  
Western Government

The study of developing areas has, in recent years, caused political science and theory to be increasingly aware of realities of non-Western government and politics. Comparative politics and its theory no longer, therefore, can avoid utilizing the results of the research of anthropologists and ethnologists in a way comparable to the use of historical data if they wish to be comprehensively empirical. Since the political theorist will not, as a rule, be able to become a practising anthropologist, the basic problem of such cooperation turns upon whether the investigating anthropologist asks the crucial, the basic questions in the first place. A broad survey of their reports and writings, such as the Human Relations Area Files afford, shows that this is by no means generally the case. Nor is this easy to achieve, for political scientists and anthropologists differ in their objectives. It has been suggested that the anthropologist is primarily interested in diversity, in how many ways something could be done, whereas for the political scientist and theorist such divergencies are important mainly as they lead to political insight and verifiable generalization.The utility of the writings of anthropologists for the political scientist is seriously impeded by the over-simplified and misleading understanding of the nature of power and authority held by many of them.

Political Emancipation

2019 ◽  
pp. 89-121
Author(s):  
Joan Wallach Scott
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Thinking ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Formal Equality ◽  
Political Emancipation ◽  
The Law ◽  
Women's Emancipation ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Liberal Political Theory

This chapter considers the contradictions of women's emancipation in light of the American (1776) and the French (1789) revolutions. It shows how the resistance to women's citizenship had less to do with the necessarily slow but inevitable progress of liberal democratic ideas than it did with a contradiction at the very heart of the political thinking that articulated them—a political thinking integral to the discourse of secularism. Liberal political theory postulated the sameness of all individuals as the key to their formal equality—abstracted from their circumstances there was no discernable difference among them, they stood as equals before the law. At the same time there were differences that were thought to refuse abstraction. These were people in a state of dependency, such as propertyless peasants, wage laborers, women, children, slaves. Therefore, they could not be counted as autonomous individuals—autonomy, after all, was at the heart of the very definition of individuality.

Einführung in die politische Theorie Eric Voegelins

2006 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-174
Author(s):  
Karol Gierdojć
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Social Scientist ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Scientist ◽  
Political Dimension ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Eric Voegelin ◽  
Religious Meaning ◽  
Politische Theorie

The paper offers an attempt at an introduction to the political theory of Eric Voegelin, the political scientist, philosopher and social scientist, whose thought has been increasingly recognized in both the USA and Europe ever since shortly after his death in 1985. It explores the political dimension of Voegelin’s thought from a purely secular point of view, but could also be helpful to those looking to find a religious meaning in politics.

Epilogue

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Loubna El Amine
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Recent Trend ◽  
The Political ◽  
Western Tradition ◽  
Intellectual Tradition ◽  
Academic Interest ◽  
Chinese Intellectual ◽  
Long Time

This concluding chapter reviews how the book reconstructed the political vision offered in the three Classical Confucian texts: the Analects, Mencius, and Xinzu. For a long time, the Chinese intellectual tradition did not receive academic interest in its own right similar to that received by the Western tradition. While the urgency of the renewed interest in it is both timely and welcome, it has meant that the Confucian texts are now mined with a view to contemporary concerns. Many of the political discussions in the early texts have thus been ignored for being irrelevant today. As a result, the book's interpretation of early Confucianism meshes with the recent trend in the discipline of political theory, which critiques the post-Kantian approach that takes ethics as a basis.

(Plebiscitary) leader democracy

Thesis Eleven ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 148 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Scott
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Scientist ◽  
Political Language ◽  
Political Theorist ◽  
Crisis Of Representation ◽  
Sceptical View ◽  
Academic Debate

There is a revival of notions of leader democracy (LD) and plebiscitary leader democracy (PLD) both at the level of politics (e.g. the rhetoric of strong leadership) and in academic debate. This paper focuses largely on the latter, with occasional reference to real-world political developments. The paper (i) sketches changes in the nature of contemporary governance; (ii) argues that Weber’s and Schumpeter’s account of (plebiscitary) leader democracy ((P)LD) as a means of addressing the crisis of representation has marked affinities with current debates; (iii) discusses the possible implications of the re-emergence of a political language of (P)LD. The paper takes a sceptical view, arguing that an appeal to leadership is a symptom of, and contributor towards, the problems it purports to address. Two contemporary defences of (P)LD are discussed: that of the political scientist András Körösényi and that of the political theorist Jeffery Green.

Sources of Conflict Between Church and State in Poland

1966 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 332-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Dinka
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Church And State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Crucial Question ◽  
National Community ◽  
Political Theorist ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Comparative Institutions ◽  
The Church

THE relations between the Church and State have been for many years the subject of interest to the political theorist, the student of contemporary totalitarian movements, and of particular concern to the student of comparative political institutions and systems. To the student of political theory it invokes the old conflict between the spiritual and the temporal authorities, between the papal authority and the claim of the emerging national states. For the student of modern totalitarianism it raises, without answering, the crucial question of the extent to which a totalitarian system can tolerate competing ideologies within the same national community. Finally, for the student of comparative institutions, in certain circumstances (for example, in Poland), it presents certain features of uniqueness that call for explanation.

OFFICE, POLITICAL THEORY, AND THE POLITICAL THEORIST

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-337 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID KEARNS ◽  
RYAN WALTER
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
The Political ◽  
Theoretical Argument ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
Political Theorist ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
The One

ABSTRACT‘Theory’ is taken for granted as an object of historical study, especially in relation to the history of political thought, and most historiography proceeds as if little were lost by construing authors such as Aristotle, Machiavelli, and Smith as ‘theorists’. This article argues that the costs are likely to be high, and that in consequence ‘theory’ ought not to be considered a generic category capable of neutrally describing a given piece of thinking from the past. On the one hand, ascribing theoretical argument can obscure the nature of rival idioms for making claims regarding political life, such as biblical criticism, the common law, and ‘office talk’. On the other hand, the evidence suggests that the ‘political theorist’, as an avowed identity, only emerged in Britain late in the eighteenth century, tentatively and under the force of peculiar pressures. It follows that it will rarely be appropriate to use the term before c. 1800, and considerable caution will still be necessary when using the label in the post-1800 period. Abiding by this discipline is likely to lead to new discoveries in what has been a flat terrain of ‘political theory’.

ON GANDHI'S CRITIQUE OF THE STATE: SOURCES, CONTEXTS, CONJUNCTURES

2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 535-563 ◽  
Author(s):  
KARUNA MANTENA
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Freedom ◽  
State Sovereignty ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Universal Model ◽  
Institutional Form ◽  
Political Thinking ◽  
Political Pluralism

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.

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