Political Ideas and Languages

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Craig
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Precise Relationship ◽  
Political Actions

Both politicians and historians have circled nervously around the precise relationship between political ideas and political actions in the past 200 years. This chapter evaluates the different ways in which historians have considered the role of ideas within politics and, in particular, challenges the unhelpful dichotomy of framing politics as either an ‘ideological’ or a ‘pragmatic’ activity. It is concerned, therefore, with the interactions between ideas and action, or theory and practice, and the ways in which political ‘ideas’ may be historicized, reflecting too on the implications of this for framing political action as ‘high’ or ‘low’ (or ‘popular’). Attention is paid to the importance of language in shaping political thought and action.

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.

The Concept of the ‘Living Constitution’ in Russian Constitutional Theory and Practice

2021 ◽  
Vol 46 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 416-445
Author(s):  
Caroline von Gall
Keyword(s):  
Direct Effect ◽  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Constitutional Reform ◽  
Constitutional Theory ◽  
Constitutional Change ◽  
The Past ◽  
Margin Of Appreciation

Abstract In discussing the concept of the ‘living constitution’ in Russian constitutional theory and practice, this paper shows that the Russian concept of the living constitution differs from U.S. or European approaches to evolutive interpretation. The Russian concept has its roots in Soviet and pre-revolutionary Russian constitutional thinking. It reduces the normative power of the Constitution but allows an interpretation according to changing social conditions and gives the legislator a broad margin of appreciation. Whereas the 1993 Russian constitutional reform had been regarded as a paradigm shift with the intention to break with the past by declaring that the Constitution shall have supreme judicial force and direct effect, the paper also gives answers to the complexity of constitutional change and legal transplants and the role of constitutional theory and practice for the functioning of the current authoritarian regime in Russia.

The Eyewitnesses as Interpreters of the Past: Reflections on Richard Bauckham's, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses

2008 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-168
Author(s):  
Samuel Byrskog
Keyword(s):  
Gospel Of Mark ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
The Past ◽  
Present Essay ◽  
Precise Relationship ◽  
Form Criticism

AbstractRichard Bauckham's Jesus and the Eyewitnesses is a remarkable achievement which rightly places the role of eyewitnesses in early Christianity on the international scholarly agenda and points to its historical and theological significance. Just as Bauckham has previously challenged form criticism on its uncritical reference to Gospels communities, he has now decisively undermined the romantic idea of the existence of creative collectives determined by impersonal laws of how tradition originates and develops. The present essay questions his confident use of the names mentioned in the Gospels and asks for clarification as to the precise relationship between eyewitnesses and history and the nature of their recollection. It also points to and exemplifies the rhetorical character of the Gospel of Mark as an indication of how reports about the past were interpreted, rhetoricized, and narrativized and asks how precisely to account for the infl uence of eyewitnesses when they were not longer present in the transmitting groups and the Christian communities.

scholarly journals Political motivation: A referent evaluation mathematical model

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-23
Author(s):  
Francesco Rigoli
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Psychology ◽  
Political Psychology ◽  
Mathematical Modelling ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Central Concept ◽  
Communist Manifesto ◽  
The Past ◽  
Incentive Value ◽  
Political Motivation

Mathematical modelling is popular in cognitive psychology because it enables clear and formal descriptions of the processes at play; yet, this approach has rarely been applied to political psychology. Here we adopt mathematical modelling to develop a theory of political motivation, which is a central concept in political psychology. The theory assumes that, in certain contexts, individuals entertain a set of representations of society, for example of the past, present and future (but also of fictive societies such as utopias). To each representation of society, an incentive value is attached which is not absolute, but (following theories of motivation in cognitive psychology) reference-dependent; namely, dependent on the context, corresponding to the whole set of representations of society. In turn, the model proposes that these subjective values determine two central aspects: a motivation for performing an appropriate political action and the ensuing political mood. We discuss the model with respect to theoretical and empirical research (and we examine Marx and Engel’s communist manifesto as an example of the latter). In short, we offer a new mathematical perspective on political motivation which emphasises the role of multiple representations of society in determining political motivation and the ensuing political mood.

Save the Appearances! Toward an Arendtian Environmental Politics

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
LAURA EPHRAIM
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Environmental Politics ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Anthropogenic Contamination ◽  
Vulnerable Communities ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
Critical Resources

Drawing critical resources from Hannah Arendt, this article argues for a revaluation of the appearances of nature in environmental political theory and practice. At a time when pervasive anthropogenic contamination threatens the very survival of vulnerable communities and species, it would be wrong to revive the timeworn mythos of nature as an untrammeled beauty. Instead, with Arendt’s help, I advocate an environmental politics rooted in an alternative aesthetic of nature, one that respects and seeks to protect earth’s diverse lifeforms for the sake of their strange, disquieting appearances of otherness. Earth’s living displays of alterity are valuable, I argue, for their propensity to upset the destructive logic of mass production and consumption and spur political action. In an Arendtian frame, we can better recognize interdependence between biological and political life and appreciate the role of nonhuman lifeforms in constituting spaces of appearance where human freedom and plurality may flourish.

Consumption Cleavages and Welfare Politics

1986 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 592-606 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Taylor-Gooby
Keyword(s):  
Political Action ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Relative Advantage ◽  
Political Behaviour ◽  
Private Property Rights ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
The Social ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
A Minor

The rôle of consumption cleavages in influencing political behaviour has received a great deal of attention in recent years. This paper argues that some critics have misunderstood the approach as a theory about the direct influence of social circumstances on behaviour, rather than as a theory about the way in which people's perceptions of one another's positions in relation to the means of consumption are articulated by political parties to become bases for political action. Dunleavy has argued that ideas about self-interest in state and private consumption in relation to other people are of the greatest importance in this, while Saunders suggests that the security associated with private property rights has stronger influence. Both these claims are tested with data from a recent national survey. ‘Consumption sector’ is shown to play a minor but significant rôle in influencing ideas. Part of this influence appears to lie in the social meaning of private property, as Saunders claims. Comparisons of relative advantage across sectoral cleavages, however, contribute little to the explanation of political ideas.

American Political Thought and the Study of Politics

1957 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert G. McCloskey
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Matthew Arnold ◽  
American Political Thought ◽  
Institutional Facts ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
The World ◽  
The Common ◽  
Theory Lead

The title of this essay poses not one vexing issue but two, and each of them sharply challenges the student of American political thought. The first might be called the common problem of political theory—the question of its relevance to the institutional facts of life. How, it is asked, can the analysis of political ideas help to illuminate our understanding of political action? Can theory lead us to a surer knowledge of why governments and electorates behave as they do? Can it help us to diagnose and prescribe? Or is the study of theory, on the contrary, justified simply on the ground that the words of Plato and Hobbes and Locke are part of what Matthew Arnold called culture: “the best that has been thought or known in the world”? This is, I take it, a problem universal among students of political thought, whether they choose America, Europe, or China as their realm; and it lends itself to no easy answers.

scholarly journals Theology of Revolution: In Ali Shari’ati and Walter Benjamin’s Political Thought

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (10) ◽  
pp. 504
Author(s):  
Mina Khanlarzadeh
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Essential Role ◽  
Walter Benjamin ◽  
The Political ◽  
Present Moment ◽  
The Past ◽  
German Jewish

In this paper, I offer a comparative analysis of the political thoughts of twentieth century Iranian revolutionary thinker and sociologist Ali Shari’ati (1933–1977) and German-Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin (1892–1940). Despite their conspicuously independent historical-theoretical trajectories, both Shari’ati and Benjamin engaged with theology and Marxism to create theological–political conceptions of the revolution of the oppressed. Shari’ati re-interpreted and re-animated Shia history from the angle of contemporary concerns to theorize a revolution against all forms of domination. In comparison, Benjamin fused Marxism with Jewish theology in his call to seize the possibilities of past failed revolutions in the present. Both Shari’ati and Benjamin conceptualized an active messianism led by each generation, eliminating the wait for the return of a messiah. As a result, each present moment takes on a messianic potential; the present plays an essential role to both thinkers. Past was also essential to both, because theology (through remembrance) had made the past sufferings incomplete to them. Both thinkers viewed past sufferings as an integral part of present struggles for justice in the form of remembrance (or yād or zekr for Shari’ati, and Zekher for Benjamin). I explore the ways Shari’ati and Benjamin theorized the role of the past in the present, remembrance, and messianism to create a dialectical relation between theology and Marxism to reciprocally transform and compliment both of them.

scholarly journals Oude waarheden - Over de terugkeer van de klassieke oudheid in de verlichtingshistoriografie

2014 ◽  
Vol 127 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-246
Author(s):  
Wyger R.E. Velema
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Review Article ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
The Many

Since the publication of Peter Gay’s The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, scholarly interest in the classical presence in Enlightenment culture has waned. Over the past decade, however, this topic has returned to center stage. This review article discusses the ways in which recent research has contributed to the rediscovery of the classical past in the Enlightenment. It starts with an evaluation of the current reinterpretation of the Querelle des anciens et des modernes, continues with an overview of recent scholarship on the various intellectual and institutional environments in which knowledge of the classical past was acquired and transmitted, and ends with a discussion of the crucial role of the ancient world in eighteenth-century historiography and political thought. In its conclusion the article draws attention to the many ways in which recent scholarship on the eighteenth-century reception of the classics has broken new ground. It also argues that the ‘classical turn in Enlightenment studies’ is still unjustifiably neglected in general interpretations of the Enlightenment.

The centrality of politeia for Aristotle’s Politics: Part II – the marginalization of Aristotle’s politeia in modern political thought

2014 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 500-517 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clifford Angell Bates
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Social Nature ◽  
Global Concern ◽  
Political Actions

Political theorists today are addressing issues of global concern confronting state systems and in so doing are often forced to confront the concept of Homo sapiens as a ‘political animal’. This article continues the presentation of Aristotle’s treatment of politeia (initiated in ‘The centrality of politeia for Aristotle’s Politics: Aristotle’s continuing significance for social and political science’, in this journal) as the concept allowing us to understand the nature and workings of human political community in a way that lets us see how the fundamentally social nature of human beings manifests itself. I look at how Aristotle’s politeia became marginalized as a useful means to understand the shape and direction of human community. While the state has become the new frame for the human political community, the concept of the state rests on the fundamental a-social assumptions of early modern thinkers such as Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, etc., whose model of how the state emerges denies the fundamental social character of man and instead insists that political action consists merely of the rational calculations of willing agents for common utility and society. In doing so the model renders politics and political actions as merely another form of economics.

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