Prudence, or On Education

2020 ◽  
pp. 25-48
Author(s):  
Ryan Patrick Hanley
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Education ◽  
Political Thinker

Chapter 1 examines Fénelon’s contributions as an educator. It focuses on four texts indispensable to appreciating the methods and aims of his masterwork Telemachus. These include the book-length Dialogues on Eloquence and Education of Girls, and his shorter Letter to the Academy and “Advice on Education.” In interpreting these texts, it argues that fundamental to them—and indeed to Fénelon’s political philosophy as a whole—is Fénelon’s claim that the proper aim of moral and political education is not substituting pure love for self-love, but rather discouraging pernicious self-love and encouraging healthy self-love. Fénelon describes this as a shift from “false glory” to “true glory.” And this shift, it argues, is central to Fénelon’s political philosophy, and also reveals him to be an insightful moral psychologist as well as a moderate and subtle political thinker.

13. John Locke

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Waldron
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Civil Disobedience ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Limited Government ◽  
Short Biography ◽  
Political Thinker

This chapter examines and defends the relevance of John Locke's writings as political philosophy. Locke's political philosophy continues to have an enormous impact on the framing and the pursuit of liberal ideas in modern political thought — ideas about social contract, government by consent, natural law, equality, individual rights, civil disobedience, and private property. The discussion and application of Locke's arguments is thus an indispensable feature of political philosophy as it is practised today. After providing a short biography of Locke, the chapter considers his views on equality and natural law, property, economy, and disagreement, as well as limited government, toleration, and the rule of law. It concludes with an assessment of Locke's legacy as a political thinker.

Autobiography

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Stuart Mill
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Philosophy ◽  
John Stuart Mill ◽  
Substantial Contribution ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Jeremy Bentham ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Political Thinker ◽  
Ways Of Life

It may be useful that there should be some record of an education which was unusual and remarkable John Stuart Mill (1806-73), philosopher, economist, and political thinker, was the most prominent figure of nineteenth century English intellectual life and his work has continuing significance for contemporary debates about ethics, politics and economics. His father, James Mill, a close associate of the utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham, assumed responsibility for his eldest son's education, teaching him ancient Greek at the age of three and equipping him with a broad knowledge of the physical and moral sciences of the day. Mill’s Autobiography was written to give an account of the extraordinary education he received at the hands of his father and to express his gratitude to those he saw as influencing his thought, but it is also an exercise in self-analysis and an attempt to vindicate himself against claims that he was the product of hothousing. The Autobiography also acknowledges the substantial contribution made to Mill’s thinking and writings by Harriet Taylor, whom he met when he was twenty-four, and married twenty-one years later, after the death of her husband. The Autobiography helps us understand more fully some of the principal commitments that Mill’s political philosophy has become famous for, in particular his appreciation of the diversity, plurality, and complexity of ways of life and their possibilities. This edition of the Autobiography includes additional manuscript materials from earlier drafts which demonstrate the conflicting imperatives that influenced Mill’schoice of exactly what to say about some of the most significant episodes and relationships in his life. Mark Philps introduction explores the forces that led Mill to write the ‘life’ and points to the tensions in the text and in Mill's life.

scholarly journals CONSERVATISM, EDMUND BURKE, AND THE INVENTION OF A POLITICAL TRADITION, c. 1885–1914

2015 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 1115-1139 ◽  
Author(s):  
EMILY JONES
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Edmund Burke ◽  
Political Capital ◽  
Home Rule ◽  
Political Tradition ◽  
Political Traditions ◽  
Modern Conservatism ◽  
Political Thinker ◽  
The Impact

AbstractThis article addresses the reputation of Edmund Burke and his transformation into the ‘founder of modern conservatism’. It argues that this process occurred primarily between 1885 and 1914 in Britain. In doing so, this article challenges the existing orthodoxy which attributes this development to the work of Peter Stanlis, Russell Kirk, and other conservative American scholars. Moreover, this article historicizes one aspect of the construction of C/conservatism as both an intellectual (small-c) and political (capital-C) tradition. Indeed, though the late Victorian and Edwardian period saw the construction of political traditions of an entirely novel kind, the search for ‘New Conservatism’ has been neglected by comparison with New Liberalism. Thus, this study explores three main themes: the impact of British debates about Irish Home Rule on Burke's reputation and status; the academic systematization of Burke's work into a ‘political philosophy of conservatism’; and, finally, the appropriation of Burke by Conservative Unionists during the late Edwardian constitutional crisis. The result is to show that by 1914 Burke had been firmly established as a ‘conservative’ political thinker whose work was directly associated with British Conservatism.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-54
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Legal Philosophy ◽  
Moral Sentiments ◽  
Short Biography ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

This introduction to Sophie de Grouchy’s Letters on Sympathy is divided into three chapters. Chapter 1 covers Sophie de Grouchy’s life and times, with a short biography, a discussion of women in the French Revolution, and a study of the texts and concepts that were influences on her work, including a section devoted to the reception of Adam Smith in France. Chapter 2 discusses Grouchy’s work with a special emphasis on the’ relationship of the Letters to Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments—the work to which they are a response—, as well as a discussion of other writings by Grouchy. Chapter 3 touches on three main philosophical themes present in the Letters: political philosophy, with an emphasis on the republican aspect of Grouchy’s thought, her legal philosophy and political economy, and her aesthetics.

Enmity or Friendship?

2019 ◽  
pp. 11-36
Author(s):  
Gerald M. Mara
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Frame Of Reference ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
The Political ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
History Of

Chapter 1 interprets statements offered by two twentieth-century philosophers, Carl Schmitt, principally in The Concept of the Political, and Jacques Derrida, in his critique of Schmitt in The Politics of Friendship. Both works make the importance of political philosophy’s frame of reference explicit, though they offer opposed characterizations of its content. I argue that the substantive positions taken in the two works share more characteristics than initially apparent. Schmitt’s characterization of enmity as the essence of politics must accommodate a kind of mutuality. And Derrida’s political friendship eventually constructs its own distinctive enemy. Those complicating parallels diminish confidence in either author’s ability to settle the question of how political thought should be framed and prompt a reconsideration of how allegedly overarching imperatives of war and peace have been treated within the history of Western political philosophy.

Thinking through feeling: critical theory and the affective turn

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Mussell
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Critical Theory ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Affect Theory ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
New Materialisms

Chapter 1 sets out the theoretical terrain on which the wider project is based. It begins by revisiting some of the founding tenets of critical theory in the context of the establishment of the Institute for Social Research in the early twentieth century. The chapter then discusses contemporary theories of affect that have emerged in the past couple of decades as part of the so-called ‘new materialisms’. Taking on board some of the key findings of this recent work on affect, the author also highlights the potential political deficiencies that accompany such accounts, particularly within a growing ‘post-critical’ context. The chapter closes with suggestions as to how early critical theory – read through an affective lens – might provide the social and political grounding that affect theory often lacks, while at the same time noting how theories of affect are invaluable in shedding light on the efficacy of the pre- or extra-rational, so often sacrificed on the altar of political philosophy.

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