THE INTELLECTUAL ORIGINS OF TOCQUEVILLE'SL'ANCIEN RÉGIME ET LA RÉVOLUTION

2008 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
ANNELIEN DE DIJN
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
Central Core ◽  
Direct Influence ◽  
Old Regime ◽  
Intellectual Origins

This essay shows that the central core of Tocqueville's book, its condemnation of the centralist state of the Old Regime, can be placed in a specific tradition in French political thought—the legitimist critique of centralization. Long before the publication ofL'Ancien Régime et la Révolution, the legitimists had made the problem of centralization into one of their central themes, and they had come to attribute all of France's ills to the centralist legacy. As this essay illustrates, the particular vocabulary and arguments used by the legitimists to describe the nefarious effects of centralization on the French body politic showed a considerable resemblance to the language used by Tocqueville inL'Ancien Régime et la Révolution. Indeed, this resemblance is so striking that, while direct influence is difficult to pinpoint, the legitimist publicists and political thinkers discussed in this essay—many of whom were friends or acquaintances of Tocqueville's—contributed in an important way to shaping the linguistic universe in whichL'Ancien Régime et la Révolutionwas created.

The Political Thought of Montaigne

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Biancamaria Fontana
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Control Individual ◽  
Old Regime ◽  
Royal Authority ◽  
Degree Of Certainty ◽  
New Type ◽  
New Vision ◽  
Religious Dogma

Presenting Montaigne’s “political” thought is in itself a problematic exercise. While the Essays are relevant to our understanding of sixteenth-century political discourse, and to the broader reflection of political philosophy, Montaigne did not see politics as a separate domain of human activity; indeed, he questioned the possibility to predict with any degree of certainty, and to control individual and collective human behavior. In the Essays the author developed a full-scale critique of Old Regime society, a system built upon relations of personal dependence and servitude: his attack focused on contemporary social practices and on their founding principles: tradition, the law, royal authority, and religious dogma. Montaigne did not advocate the establishment of a new type of regime, as he was convinced that the form of political institutions was largely dependent on habit and custom. He did suggest the possibility of a new vision of community, one based upon greater equality, toleration, communication, and economic exchange.

Power, society, body: the anthropomorphous paradigm in political thought of medieval West Europe

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (12-1) ◽  
pp. 125-138
Author(s):  
Alexander Gladkov
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Intellectual Culture ◽  
John Of Salisbury ◽  
West European

The article based on the research of medieval West European political thought’s texts and mainly on the basic treatise “Policraticus” of John of Salisbury and works by other authors in XII century is devoted to analysis of concepts concerning power and society in light of “body politic” metaphor. The most representative and influential sources (and first of them is “Policraticus”) transmitting the idea of “body politic” in Latin intellectual culture are researched, the metaphor usage logic and ways of its usage in polemical tradition are identified. The “body hierarchy” considered in the article focuses in medieval authors opinion not only on mystical but real social and political arrangement, it underwent definite transformations connected with power and its welder’s figure reception through ages.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-31
Author(s):  
Daniel Lee
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Sovereign State ◽  
Public International Law ◽  
Absolute Power ◽  
Positive Law ◽  
Negative Function ◽  
Jean Bodin ◽  
Intellectual Origins ◽  
Common Future

What was sovereignty supposed to be, and what purpose might it serve for our common future? This study addresses these questions by examining the legal and political thought of Jean Bodin (1529/30–1596), widely regarded as the preeminent theorist of sovereignty in early modern political thought. This Introduction offers a preview of four principal themes and arguments to be explored in this book: (1) sovereignty as a permissive legal right; (2) Bodin’s concept of positive law as duty-creating command; (3) the negative function of absolute power; (4) the pluralistic structure of the Bodinian sovereign state. Special emphasis will be placed on Bodin’s outsized, though overlooked, influence on the intellectual origins of modern public international law, whose architecture is still anchored fundamentally in the notion of a state’s sovereign right.

Occupying the Marketplace

2019 ◽  
pp. 81-103
Author(s):  
Katie Jarvis
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
Public Domain ◽  
The Body ◽  
Public Utility ◽  
Old Regime ◽  
Private Company ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Right ◽  
National Domain

This chapter analyzes the economically crucial and conceptually volatile debates over public space in the marketplace. It traces how the king’s public domain became national domain and how this transformation affected the ways that citizens pursued particular interests in les Halles. During the Old Regime, the king had issued an edict that permitted some especially indigent Dames to secure market spots before other retailers. He had also granted one company the privilege of renting shelters to these qualified Dames before others. However, when the private company attempted to renew its royal contract during the Revolution, clashes arose over the right to and regulation of public domain. During the disputes, the Dames who were not advantaged by the king’s edict seized new practices of citizenship to claim shelters and trading places. They harnessed revolutionary discourses to mark the earth as national property, attack monopoly-holders as privileged leeches, and secure economic exemptions based on their work’s public utility. As they justified their personal profits on public space, the Dames staked out their place in the body politic.

‘In the name of humanity’: redefining socio-economic assistance in the revolutionary marketplace

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 520-536
Author(s):  
Katie Jarvis
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Economic Assistance ◽  
Old Regime ◽  
Economic Rights ◽  
National Assembly ◽  
Civic Duty ◽  
Market Women

Abstract Most studies of socio-economic rights in the French Revolution have focused on how officials and other deliverers of aid struggled to redefine assistance, rather than on how recipients themselves contributed to the idea. In contrast, this article centres on poor Parisian market women called the Dames des Halles to bring to light the voices, discourses, and actions of individuals demanding rights and assistance. The Dames had relied on charity and privilege to conduct their commerce during the Old Regime, but the Revolution upended their advantages. Balancing discourses of humanity and utility, the Dames sought to recalibrate their place in the body politic in order to maintain occupational exemptions, favourable commercial positions, and exceptional access to public space. Their battles reveal how everyday citizens and the National Assembly first struggled to reinterpret socio-economic assistance as corrupt privilege, as the state’s civic duty, or as exemptions earned by poor working citizens.

Fellow-regional Associations in the Ch'ing Dynasty: Organizations in Flux for Mobile People. A Preliminary Survey

1984 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 307-330 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Eve Armentrout
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Chinese History ◽  
Technological Advancement ◽  
Preliminary Survey ◽  
Examination System ◽  
Spatial Mobility ◽  
Agrarian Society ◽  
Regional Associations

As had been the case throughout much of Chinese history, government during the Ch'ing dynasty (1644–1911) was largely in the hands of a civil bureaucracy staffed by the Confucian literati. Prevailing political thought held that moral suasion and commonly held ideals were in a large way responsible for keeping both the society and the body politic running smoothly. For this and other reasons, the court assigned a rather small number of bureaucrats to manage a truly vast population. In addition, it was commonly assumed by rulers and the ruled that China's was and should be primarily an agrarian society of self-sufficient peasants. The only orthodox avenue of social, even spatial, mobility was the Confucian examination system which led successful candidates into the bureaucracy. This view denigrated the importance of commerce, of technological advancement, of learning outside the Confucian classics; and it acted as a brake on social, political, and economic development.

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