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.

Contra politanism

2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 162-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacob T Levy
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Moral Progress ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Sovereign State ◽  
Moral Personhood ◽  
Authority Structure ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
Political Form

This article diagnoses and critiques pervasive forms of teleological thought about basic structures of political organization in modern and contemporary political thought: arguments that the sovereign state, the nation-state, or some variant of a cosmopolis both represents the unfolding of history’s moral logic and offers us full moral personhood, agency, and maturity. Despite the received wisdom that modern political thought broke with teleology, I argue that early modern social contract theory was deeply teleological. The emergence of the normatively self-contained sovereign state from the state of nature represented both decisive historical-moral progress from the medieval European non-state polities and the possibility of true moral personhood, thanks to the unity of will and judgment created by a unified authority structure. The article then argues that this overattachment to unity, both as an historical culmination and as a prerequisite to full personhood, was carried over into subsequent nationalist and cosmopolitan thought, where we see over-moralizations of historical processes, excessive claims for the teleological causal force of moral progress, and critiques of the immaturity of those persons who do not live in the recommended political form. The article closes with a sustained critique of both historical and individual-moral teleologies of these sorts.

scholarly journals Defining the Rights of Sovereignty

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 115 ◽  
pp. 322-327
Author(s):  
Daniel Lee
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
International Law ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
Legal History ◽  
International Institutions ◽  
State Sovereignty ◽  
Public International Law ◽  
Jean Bodin ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Private Actors

In the recent theoretical scholarship on sovereignty, it has become commonplace to encounter the numerous ways in which state sovereignty has been quietly “outsourced” and “pooled” with other agents and institutions, especially international institutions aimed at promoting global governance and commerce. Frédéric Mégret's fascinating article, which contributes to this growing body of scholarship, adds an important twist to this literature, by focusing specifically on the privatization of state sovereignty—that is, how various sovereign functions, once thought to be essential or “inherent” to statehood, have now been outsourced and handed over to private actors. While Mégret's analysis concerns the consequences of privatized sovereignty on modern public international law, there is a rich pre-modern legal history anticipating the conceptual and normative problems explored in this piece. This essay focuses on some of those early modern sources, especially the theory of Jean Bodin (c.1530–1596), which bear a striking resemblance to Mégret's analysis. Like Mégret, Bodin, the preeminent theorist of state sovereignty, approached the concept of sovereignty by focusing on those qualities that were regarded to be exclusive.

Philosophic Pride

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Brooke
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Marcus Aurelius ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
History Of ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Modern Era

This is the first full-scale look at the essential place of Stoicism in the foundations of modern political thought. Spanning the period from Justus Lipsius's Politics in 1589 to Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Emile in 1762, and concentrating on arguments originating from England, France, and the Netherlands, the book considers how political writers of the period engaged with the ideas of the Roman and Greek Stoics that they found in works by Cicero, Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. The book examines key texts in their historical context, paying special attention to the history of classical scholarship and the historiography of philosophy. The book delves into the persisting tension between Stoicism and the tradition of Augustinian anti-Stoic criticism, which held Stoicism to be a philosophy for the proud who denied their fallen condition. Concentrating on arguments in moral psychology surrounding the foundations of human sociability and self-love, the book details how the engagement with Roman Stoicism shaped early modern political philosophy and offers significant new interpretations of Lipsius and Rousseau together with fresh perspectives on the political thought of Hugo Grotius and Thomas Hobbes. The book shows how the legacy of the Stoics played a vital role in European intellectual life in the early modern era.

scholarly journals François Fénelon: Modern philosopher or conservative theologian?

2021 ◽  
pp. 147488512110020
Author(s):  
Alexandra Oprea
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Education Of Women ◽  
Political Philosopher

Ryan Patrick Hanley makes two original claims about François Fénelon: (1) that he is best regarded as a political philosopher, and (2) that his political philosophy is best understood as “moderate and modern.” In what follows, I raise two concerns about Hanley’s revisionist turn. First, I argue that the role of philosophy in Fénelon’s account is rather as a handmaiden of theology than as an autonomous area of inquiry—with implications for both the theory and practice of politics. Second, I use Fénelon’s writings on the education of women as an illustration of the more radical and reactionary aspects of his thought. Despite these limits, the book makes a compelling case for recovering Fénelon and opens up new conversations about education, religion, political economy, and international relations in early modern political thought.

scholarly journals Speaking for the People in Early Modern England*

2019 ◽  
Vol 244 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Coast
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
Common People ◽  
Wide Audience ◽  
The People ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Voice

Abstract The voice of the people is assumed to have carried little authority in early modern England. Elites often caricatured the common people as an ignorant multitude and demanded their obedience, deference and silence. Hostility to the popular voice was an important element of contemporary political thought. However, evidence for a very different set of views can be found in numerous polemical tracts written between the Reformation and the English Civil War. These tracts claimed to speak for the people, and sought to represent their alleged grievances to the monarch or parliament. They subverted the rules of petitioning by speaking for ‘the people’ as a whole and appealing to a wide audience, making demands for the redress of grievances that left little room for the royal prerogative. In doing so, they contradicted stereotypes about the multitude, arguing that the people were rational, patriotic and potentially better informed about the threats to the kingdom than the monarch themselves. ‘Public opinion’ was used to confer legitimacy on political and religious demands long before the mass subscription petitioning campaigns of the 1640s.

scholarly journals Gender Alterations in English and French Modernist “Bluebeard” Fairytale

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 16
Author(s):  
Dmytriieva Valeriia
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modern Time ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Psychological Changes ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Early Modern Time ◽  
French And English

<p>The article is aimed at scrutinizing a variety of modernistic writings in a Bluebeard fairytale tradition. It is intended to show what is to be gained by studying texts in relation to the contexts in which they were produced. The period considered here is that of the late XIX and early XX centuries. This takes us into discussing patriarchal authority in the political thought of the early modern time in France and that of the Victorian England.The “Bluebeard” fairytale changes in the domain of gender as a response to certain historical and psychological changes are analyzed. A wide range of writings is investigated to reveal the contribution made by the French and English authors in the field of literature. The analysis implies that certain feministic ideas which grew out of social changes in the society of France and England have provoked some archetypal alterations in the texts of French and English modernists.</p>

scholarly journals Recognition in international law: The case of Kosovo and Metohija

2015 ◽  
pp. 289-306
Author(s):  
Tijana Surlan
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Constitutive Theory ◽  
Sovereign State ◽  
Public International Law ◽  
The Public ◽  
The North ◽  
Official Position ◽  
The Status ◽  
North Part ◽  
The Eu

Recognition is an instrument of the public international law founded in the classical international law. Still, it preserves its main characteristics formed in the period when states dominated as the only legal persons in international community. Nevertheless, the instrument of recognition is today as vibrant as ever. As long as it does not have a uniform legal definition and means of application, it leaves room to be applied to very specific cases. In this paper, the instrument of recognition is elaborated from two aspects - theoretical and practical. First (theoretical) part of the paper presents main characteristics of the notion of recognition, as presented in main international law theories - declaratory and constitutive theory. Other part of the paper is focused on the recognition in the case of Kosovo. Within this part, main constitutive elements of state are elaborated, with special attention to Kosovo as self-proclaimed state. Conclusion is that Kosovo does not fulfill main constitutive elements of state. It is not an independent and sovereign state. It is in the status of internationalized entity, with four international missions on the field with competencies in the major fields of state authority - police, judiciary system, prosecution system, army, human rights, etc. Main normative framework for the status of Kosovo is still the UN Resolution 1244. It is also the legal ground for international missions, confirming non-independent status of Kosovo. States that recognized Kosovo despite this deficiency promote the constitutive theory of recognition, while states not recognizing Kosovo promote declaratory theory. Brussels Agreement, signed by representatives of Serbia and Kosovo under the auspices of the EU, has also been elaborated through the notion of recognition - (1) whether it represents recognition; (2) from the perspective of consequences it provokes in relations between Belgrade and Pristina. Official position of Serbian Government is clear - Serbia does not recognize Kosovo as an independent and sovereign state. On the other hand, subject matter of Brussels Agreement creates new means of improvement for Kosovo authorities in the north part of Kosovo. Thus, Serbian position regarding the recognition is twofold - it does not recognize Kosovo in foro externo, and it completes its competences in foro domestico. What has been underlined through the paper and confirmed in the conclusion is that there is not a recognition which has the power to create a state and there is not a non-recognition which has the power to annul a state.

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