Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Liberalism

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Weinstein
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Value Pluralism ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
Linguistic Turn ◽  
Classical Utilitarianism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The Right

Anglo-American political theory, especially contemporary analytical liberalism, has become too self-referential and consequently insufficiently attentive to its own variegated past. Some analytical liberals fret about whether the good or the right should have priority, while others agonize about whether liberalism is compatible with value pluralism and with multiculturalism. Too many contemporary analytical liberals see liberalism as beginning with Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, as next reformulated classically by John Stuart Mill, and then as receding into the wilderness of mere history of political thought thanks to the linguistic turn and the vogue of emotivism before being resurrected so magnificently by John Rawls. The Rawlsian liberal tradition severely marginalizes new liberals and idealists such as T. H. Green, Bernard Bosanquet, L. T. Hobhouse, D. G. Ritchie, and J. A. Hobson. New liberals and idealists alike wrote highly original political philosophy, parts of which contemporary liberals have repeated inadvertently with false novelty. In Rawls's view, classical utilitarianism improved intuitionism by systematizing it but by sacrificing its liberal credentials.

Classical Liberalism and Rawlsian Revisionism

1977 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 95-119
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Rapaport
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Systematic Revision ◽  
Philosophical Foundations ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
The Past ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The Right ◽  
Competitive Economy

A certain view of Anglo-American liberal political theory has been commonplace for a couple of generations. It is said that the philosophical foundations of contractarian liberalism lie in the 17th century, chiefly in the formulations given to it by Hobbes and Locke. But for two distinct reasons these 17th century formulations fail to provide an adequate basis for contemporary political theory. First, the development of our political and economic institutions in the past two or three hundred years has made it impossible to accept a theory which assumes a minimal, laissez-faire state and a highly competitive economy. Second, the individualist psychological and moral assumptions of the theory are highly dubious if not clearly false.In A Theory of justice John Rawls attempts to provide the systematic revision which liberalism so clearly needs. The revisionist intent of Rawls’ work has not received the attention it deserves, except by critics of the right who deny that such revision is needed.

Environmental Political Theory and the Liberal Tradition

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Piers Stephens
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Environmental Concern ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Nature Protection ◽  
Liberal Tradition ◽  
Self Development ◽  
History Of

This chapter discusses the history of environmental concern within the liberal tradition from the latter’s roots onwards, moving from the private property orientated “old liberalism” of John Locke into the self-development orientated “new liberalism” of John Stuart Mill, then onwards into American pragmatism and the neutralist liberalism of John Rawls and his contemporary followers. This leads into an overview of the current debate, which started in the 1990s, over the possibilities of synthesizing environmentalist goals of sustainability and nature protection with some variant of liberalism. The chapter concludes with an argument that yokes the new liberal concern with self-development to the environmentalist emphasis on nature protection, arguing that the continued existence of relatively untransformed nonhuman nature is a vital precondition and assistance to human imaginative development and thus freedom.

The Kingdom’s Case: The Use of Casuistry as a Political Language 1640-1692

2002 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 557-583
Author(s):  
Edward Vallance
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
Linguistic Turn ◽  
Political Discourses ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Actions

It has now become orthodoxy for historians to write about political texts as being part of discourses or languages. This approach has much merit. At the very least, the work of Quentin Skinner, J. G. A. Pocock and John Dunn has encouraged historians to use a broader range of sources, and to ground their analysis of political thought in a firm historical context. Beyond this, discourse analysis offers a means of establishing a causal relationship between political thought and political action. To echo Richard Ashcraft’s definition, political theory is not merely a product of its social context. It supplies the criteria according to which the actions appropriate for changing that context are rendered intelligible. For Skinner and Pocock, the governing paradigms of political discourses, as much as concrete institutions and social structures, have an influence on political actions. However, this approach also has some limitations. Even after the “linguistic turn,” the history of political thought is still predominantly concerned with the accurate recovery of the meaning of texts, not with the reception or dissemination of ideas. To realize the full impact of political texts, we need to uncover not only the author’s intentions in writing, but also the ways in which these works were read and used by their audience.

A Virtue for Courageous Minds

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aurelian Craiutu
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Moral Virtue ◽  
Individual Liberty ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
Common Notion ◽  
History Of ◽  
Benjamin Constant ◽  
Intellectual Foundations

Political moderation is the touchstone of democracy, which could not function without compromise and bargaining, yet it is one of the most understudied concepts in political theory. How can we explain this striking paradox? Why do we often underestimate the virtue of moderation? Seeking to answer these questions, this book examines moderation in modern French political thought and sheds light on the French Revolution and its legacy. The book begins with classical thinkers who extolled the virtues of a moderate approach to politics, such as Aristotle and Cicero. It then shows how Montesquieu inaugurated the modern rebirth of this tradition by laying the intellectual foundations for moderate government. The book looks at important figures such as Jacques Necker, Germaine de Staël, and Benjamin Constant, not only in the context of revolutionary France but throughout Europe. It traces how moderation evolves from an individual moral virtue into a set of institutional arrangements calculated to protect individual liberty, and explores the deep affinity between political moderation and constitutional complexity. The book demonstrates how moderation navigates between political extremes, and it challenges the common notion that moderation is an essentially conservative virtue, stressing instead its eclectic nature. Drawing on a broad range of writings in political theory, the history of political thought, philosophy, and law, the book reveals how the virtue of political moderation can address the profound complexities of the world today.

scholarly journals How Should We Categorize Approaches to the History of Political Thought?

2020 ◽  
Vol 83 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-114
Author(s):  
Adrian Blau
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Analysis ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Two Dimensional ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
One Dimensional ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Framework

AbstractThis paper proposes a new framework for categorizing approaches to the history of political thought. Previous categorizations exclude much research; political theory, if included, is often caricatured. And previous categorizations are one-dimensional, presenting different approaches as alternatives. My framework is two-dimensional, distinguishing six kinds of end (two empirical, four theoretical) and six kinds of means. Importantly, these choices are not alternatives: studies may have more than one end and typically use several means. Studies with different ends often use some of the same means. And all studies straddle the supposed empirical/theoretical “divide.” Quentin Skinner himself expertly combines empirical and theoretical analysis—yet the latter is often overlooked, not least because of Skinner's own methodological pronouncements. This highlights a curious disjuncture in methodological writings, between what they say we do, and what we should do. What we should do is much broader than existing categorizations imply.

Jus Tempus in the Magna Carta: The Sovereignty of Time in Modern Politics and Citizenship

2010 ◽  
Vol 43 (03) ◽  
pp. 463-466 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth F. Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
The Political ◽  
Place Of Birth ◽  
Political Status ◽  
Modern Politics ◽  
American Tradition ◽  
History Of ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The Right ◽  
Constitutional Tradition

In the English constitutional tradition, subjecthood has been primarily derived from two circumstances: place of birth and time of birth. People not born in the right place and at the right time are not considered subjects. What political status they hold varies and depends largely on the political history of the territory in which they reside at the exact time of their birth. A genealogy of early modern British subjecthood reveals that law based on dates and temporal durations—what I will call collectivelyjus tempus—creates sovereign boundaries as powerful as territorial borders or bloodlines. This concept has myriad implications for how citizenship comes to be institutionalized in modern politics. In this article, I briefly outline one route through whichjus tempusbecame a constitutive principle within the Anglo-American tradition of citizenship and how this concept works with other principles of membership to create subtle gradations of semi-citizenship beyond the binary of subject and alien. I illustrate two main points aboutjus tempus: first, how specific dates create sovereign boundaries among people and second, how durational time takes on an abstract value in politics that allows certain kinds of attributes, actions, and relationships to be translated into rights-bearing political statuses. I conclude with some remarks about how, once established, the principle ofjus tempusis applied in a diverse array of political contexts.

Roger Boesche: The Strange Liberalism of Alexis de Tocqueville

1988 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 419-422
Author(s):  
James Schleifer
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Alexis De Tocqueville ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
History Of

Roger Boesche, Chair of the Department of Political Science at Occidental College in Los Angeles, lias already written several thoughtful articles about Tocqueville, each marked by clarity of thought and expression: ’The Prison: Tocqueville’s Model for Despotism,” Western Political Quarterly 33 (December 1980):550-63; “The Strange Liberalism of Alexis de Tocqueville,” History of Political Thought 2 (Winter 1981): 495-524; “Why Could Tocqueville Predict So Well?” Political Theory 11 (February 1983): 79-104; “Tocqueville and Le Commerce’. A Newspaper Expressing His Unusual Liberalism,” Journal of the History of Ideas 44 (April-June 1983): 277-92; and “Hedonism and Nihilism: The Predictions of Tocqueville and Nietzsche,” The Tocqueville Review 8 (1986/87): 165-84.

Two regimes of the symbolic: radical democracy between Romanticism and structuralism

2019 ◽  
pp. 77-88
Author(s):  
Warren Breckman
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Democratic Theory ◽  
Radical Democracy ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
German Romanticism ◽  
Linguistic Turn ◽  
Ernesto Laclau ◽  
Constructed Dialogue ◽  
History Of

The ‘symbolic’ has found its way into the heart of contemporary radical democratic theory. When one encounters this term in major theorists such as Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj Žižek, our first impulse is to trace its genealogy to the offspring of the linguistic turn, structuralism and poststructuralism. This paper seeks to expose the deeper history of the symbolic in the legacy of Romanticism. It argues that crucial to the concept of the symbolic is a polyvalence that was first theorized in German Romanticism. The linguistic turn that so marked the twentieth century tended to suppress this polyvalence, but it has returned as a crucial dimension of contemporary radical political theory and practice. At stake is more than a recovery of historical depth. Through a constructed dialogue between Romanticism and the thought of both Žižek and Laclau, the paper seeks to provide a sharper appreciation of the resources of the concept of the symbolic.

Do territorial rights include the right to exclude?

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 307-322 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cara Nine
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Property Right ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Public ◽  
Hard Time ◽  
Territorial Rights ◽  
The Right

Do territorial rights include the right to exclude? This claim is often assumed to be true in territorial rights theory. And if this claim is justified, a state may have a prima facie right to unilaterally exclude aliens from state territory. But is this claim justifiable? I examine the version of territorial rights that has the most compelling story to support the right to exclude: territorial rights as a kind of property right, where ‘territory’ refers to the public and common spaces included in the domain of state jurisdiction. I analyse the work of A. J. Simmons, who develops the political theory of John Locke into one of the most well-articulated and defended theories of territorial rights as a kind of property right. My main argument is that Simmons’ justification for rights of exclusion, which are derived from individual rights of self-government, does not apply to many kinds of public spaces. An upshot of this analysis is that most Lockean-based theories of territorial rights will have a hard time justifying the right to exclude as a prima facie right held by states against aliens.

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