The Concept of Rights in Modern Japan

2019 ◽  
pp. 393-414
Author(s):  
Ōkubo Takeharu
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
East Asia ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Western World ◽  
The West ◽  
Comparative Political Theory ◽  
Legal Traditions ◽  
Political Traditions ◽  
Normative Issues ◽  
Imminent Threat

This chapter aims to investigate the acceptance of “rights” in nineteenth-century Japan by examining divergent interpretations of political concepts between the West, especially Europe, and East Asia. After the arrival of US warships in 1853, facing the imminent threat of Western power, Japanese scholars and statesmen raised fundamental normative issues concerning the legal and moral concepts shaping the Western world—essentially posing the question, “What is Western civilization?” They grappled both theoretically and practically with Western political thought, employing the vocabulary and concepts provided by their own East Asian legal, moral, and political traditions, such as Confucianism, in a variety of ways. Given the differences between Western and Asian legal traditions, especially, the idea of “rights” was one of the hardest to accept. This chapter examines how some key Japanese intellectuals and politicians, including Nishi Amane, Nakae Chomin, and Fukuzawa Yukichi, confronted the complex plurality of rights in jurisprudence and discourse of European thinkers such as Simon Vissering, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and John Stuart Mill and how they used it to reconsider specifically the legal culture of East Asia. In the course of this intellectual struggle with an alien culture, these Japanese thinkers sought to liberate European political theory from a closed historical identity and imbue it with new meaning in a new context. This is a history of comparative political theory concerned with the cross-cultural phenomenon of the nineteenth-century encounter of non-Western intellectuals with the ideal and the reality of “the West.”

US and Russian policies and strategies in the Middle East: Iraq and Syria as a model

2019 ◽  
pp. 220
Author(s):  
Esraa Aladdin Noori ◽  
Nasser Zain AlAbidine Ahmed
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
East Asia ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
Western World ◽  
International Conflicts ◽  
The South ◽  
The West ◽  
The North ◽  
East Region ◽  
Middle East Region

The Russian-American relations have undergone many stages of conflict and competition over cooperation that have left their mark on the international balance of power in the Middle East. The Iraqi and Syrian crises are a detailed development in the Middle East region. The Middle East region has allowed some regional and international conflicts to intensify, with the expansion of the geopolitical circle, which, if applied strategically to the Middle East region, covers the area between Afghanistan and East Asia, From the north to the Maghreb to the west and to the Sudan and the Greater Sahara to the south, its strategic importance will seem clear. It is the main lifeline of the Western world.

A Postcolonial Critique of Comparative Political Theory

2019 ◽  
pp. 620-637
Author(s):  
Sanjay Seth
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
The West ◽  
Comparative Political Theory ◽  
Or Practice

This chapter develops a postcolonial critique of comparative political theory by engaging with its theoretical and methodological reflections on its enterprise, including how it anticipates and refutes the postcolonial critique that this chapter offers. While efforts to deparochialize political theory are welcome, the means by which this laudable aim is pursued in comparative political theory undermines the end that is sought. If the idea that there is an activity or practice called “political theory” that has been cultivated for centuries, even millennia, in “the West” is an unhelpful and misleading fiction, to extend it to include the non-West is doubly so. It is to impose a modern, Western category on thinkers, texts, and modes of writing and reflecting that it does not fit and that distorts our understanding of such traditions.

Populism and Worldwide Turbulence

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 152-164
Author(s):  
Roland Robertson ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Global South ◽  
Mao Zedong ◽  
Al Qaeda ◽  
Western World ◽  
The West ◽  
Central Aspect ◽  
The World ◽  
Entire World

This contribution consists in an attempt to make sense of one central aspect of the present worldwide turbulence, one which might well be called the contemporary, perfect, global storm. A pivotal problem that will be interrogated is the issue of the circumstances that have produced this phenomenon in most parts of the world, although it should be emphasized that the term populism is, more often than not, applied to the Western world rather than the East or, for the most part, the global South. However, this reservation does not amount to a severe caveat, since all the contemporary signs are that what is here called populism is sweeping across the entire world as a whole, even though it is not necessarily given this name in non-Western regions. To this generalization it should be added that there are, rather obviously, parallels to what has become known as populism in the West. Examples of this are anarchism in nineteenth century Russia and the movement known as the Long March under the leadership of Mao Zedong in the years 1934 and 1935 particularly, as well as al Qaeda and its various offshoots.

scholarly journals Cosmopolitan Political Thought

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Farah Godrej
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
The West ◽  
Comparative Political Theory ◽  
Global Democracy ◽  
History Of ◽  
Methodological Reflection

Cosmopolitan political thought is an emerging subfield of political theory. It is motivated by a turn beyond studying the texts and ideas of the traditional Western canon and also by reflections on what kinds of approaches should characterize such study. It emerges from, yet distinguishes itself from, two other subfields: cosmopolitanism and comparative political theory. It acknowledges that theorizing beyond Western resources is crucial, but it suggests that the more important question is a methodological one. That is, it is not simply about the content of which ideas and texts are studied, but also about how they are studied and what assumptions are revealed by a given way of approaching non-Western resources. Cosmopolitanism traces the emergence of its ideas to the ancient Greek and Roman traditions of Stoicism, calling for recognizing the community of rational beings worldwide as the source of the most fundamental moral and social obligations. Contemporary cosmopolitanisms apply this idea to a diversity of themes and debates, ranging from questions of nationalism and global distributive justice to international law, human rights, global democracy, climate change, and just war theory. Comparative political theory, meanwhile, is a subfield of political theory that emerged to focus on the study of political thought from civilizations outside the West. These studies include, among others, histories of political thought within certain non-Western traditions (such as the Indic, Islamic, Chinese, African, or Latin American ones), the history of particular concepts within civilizations, conceptual comparison across civilizations, and the treatment of interpretive or commentarial debates pertaining to certain concepts or problems within certain traditions. Cosmopolitanism raises the question of broadening the scope of political questions to the global, but it privileges the West and suggests that its intellectual heritage contains resources for such theorizing. Comparative political theory addresses non-Western texts and ideas, but it remains silent on which approaches would constitute a more cosmopolitan evolution in political theory’s self-understanding. Cosmopolitan political thought moves beyond both these discourses, engaging in methodological reflection about how the tasks and purposes of political theorizing might be reconceived so that the very practices of theorizing might become more cosmopolitan. Among other things, it argues that any study of non-Western thought must proceed from within, from a perspective internal to the tradition and its central texts, preoccupations, ideas, and concerns. Thus, it emphasizes detailed study of, and immersion within, any important civilizational intellectual tradition as the prerequisite for any subsequent engagement with such ideas. The study of works within particular civilizations serves to further a more cosmopolitan mode of political theorizing rather than simply serving as an artifact of regionally specific interest.

East Asia and the West: The Impact of Confucianism on Anglo‐American Political Theory

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel A. Bell
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
East Asian ◽  
The Other ◽  
The West ◽  
The Family ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The Impact

This article explores the influence of Confucianism on Anglo-American political theory. It describes two recent developments in contemporary Anglo-American political theory which have allowed for substantial engagement with Confucian political theory and may set the stage for further interest in East Asian political theory more generally. One is the communitarian critique of liberal universalism and the other is the feminist emphasis on the politics of the family. This article discusses East Asian contributions to the debate on universalism versus particularism and to the debate on family and justice.

Orientalism and Comparative Political Theory

2010 ◽  
Vol 72 (4) ◽  
pp. 653-677 ◽  
Author(s):  
Megan C. Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
Comparative Political Theory ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
Classical Greece ◽  
Modern Europe

AbstractEighteenth- and nineteenth-century Orientalists such as Schlegel and Müller sought to broaden narrow European scholarly horizons by comparing ancient Indian ideas with those of classical Greece and Rome and modern Europe, and thus to transform the human sciences. These aims are similar to contemporary comparative political theory's concerns to remedy the Eurocentrism of the field of political theory and to identify valuable ideas in non-Western sources. These similarities suggest that we ought to revisit our understanding of Orientalism, reconsider how and when epistemological appropriation has political consequences, and recognize the limits of text-based approaches to political theory.

Changing Definitions of Sovereignty in Nineteenth-Century East Asia: Japan and Korea Between China and the West

2013 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 281-307 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seo-Hyun Park
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
East Asia ◽  
Hybrid System ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Regional Structure ◽  
The West ◽  
Process Of Change ◽  
Interstate Relations ◽  
Multiple Stages

The arrival of Westphalian sovereignty principles in nineteenth-century East Asia was not a uniformly transformative “shock” as commonly assumed. The Sino-centric order did not suddenly disappear; rather it lingered and evolved in a gradual and contested process of change. I argue that enduring domestic understandings of sovereign autonomy affected how Westphalian sovereignty was interpreted in Japan and Korea. Even as the regional structure shifted from regional hierarchy under China to a Western-led international state system, the lens of hierarchy—the long-standing sense of vulnerability and the need to attain autonomous status in a world of great powers—remained unchanged. In addition, each ruling regime in East Asia attempted to reconcile Westphalian sovereignty with existing diplomatic practices to protect its own interests within the Sino-centric order, which resulted in a new hybrid system of interstate relations encompassing notions of both equality and civilizational hierarchy. Within each country, contestation on sovereignty occurred in multiple stages, driven by existing security relationships and changing domestic politics debating the competing standards of civilization in the region.

Ecclesiastical History

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mayr-Harting Henry
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Early Church ◽  
The West ◽  
Ecclesiastical History ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Medieval Political Theory ◽  
The Middle Ages

This chapter examines the study of ecclesiastical history in Great Britain. It explains that the various departments of ecclesiastical history have tended to be under the umbrella of Theology rather than of History and that in Anglican terms the subject has tended to mean Early Church, Reformation and Nineteenth Century. Medieval ecclesiastical history, therefore, has no established position. Some of the most notable British works on medieval ecclesiastical history include Medieval Political Theory in the West by A.J. Carlyle and Westminster Abbey and Its Estates in the Middle Ages by Barbara Harvey.

Contents of Western Sociology of Religion as a Science and Educational Discipline

2002 ◽  
pp. 106-110
Author(s):  
Liudmyla O. Fylypovych
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
International Society ◽  
Sociology Of Religion ◽  
Scientific Study ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
The West ◽  
Late Nineteenth

Sociology of religion in the West is a field of knowledge with at least 100 years of history. As a science and as a discipline, the sociology of religion has been developing in most Western universities since the late nineteenth century, having established traditions, forming well-known schools, areas related to the names of famous scholars. The total number of researchers of religion abroad has never been counted, but there are more than a thousand different centers, universities, colleges where religion is taught and studied. If we assume that each of them has an average of 10 religious scholars, theologians, then the army of scholars of religion is amazing. Most of them are united in representative associations of researchers of religion, which have a clear sociological color. Among them are the most famous International Society for the Sociology of Religion (ISSR) and the Society for Scientific Study of Religion (SSSR).

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