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 Making of Modern Liberalism

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Ryan
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Social Identity ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Liberal Tradition ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
History Of

This book is a deep and wide-ranging exploration of the origins and nature of liberalism from the Enlightenment through its triumphs and setbacks in the twentieth century and beyond. The book is the fruit of more than four decades during which the author reflected on the past of the liberal tradition—and worried about its future. This is essential reading for anyone interested in political theory or the history of liberalism. The book consists of five parts. It covers subjects such as liberalism, freedom, the liberal community and the death penalty, Thomas Hobbes's political philosophy, individualism, human nature, John Locke on freedom, John Stuart Mill's political thought, utilitarianism and bureaucracy, pragmatism, social identity, patriotism, self-criticism, and more.

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.

Welfare Rights in the Liberal Tradition

1990 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-11
Author(s):  
Thomas A. Horne
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
Government Programs ◽  
The West ◽  
Welfare Rights ◽  
Liberal Tradition ◽  
Welfare Measures ◽  
The Relationship

It was hardly surprising that John Rawls' argument that a liberal political theory had to include a commitment to welfare rights was quickly countered by Robert Nozick's contention that welfare rights were incompatible with liberalism's devotion to freedom and private property. This controversy over the relationship between state funded welfare and liberty, especially the liberty to acquire property, has been and is still part of the politics of all advanced industrial nations, including America. As a matter of political fact, however, the welfare interpretation of liberalism has been triumphant. Government programs to alleviate suffering, to increase economic opportunities available to the poor, and to redistribute wealth go hand in hand with representation and civil liberties in virtually all of the advanced industrial nations of the West. That this has occurred, I want to argue here, is entirely consistent with the mainstream of the liberal tradition and ought to be presented that way to students.The distinction between classical or libertarian liberalism and welfare or the new liberalism emerged at the end of the nineteenth century in England. From the start this distinction was politically charged, meant to imply that the welfare measures enacted particularly during the second Gladstone administration represented a treasonous repudiation of the liberal tradition. Herbert Spencer's The Man Versus the State (1884), little read now but enormously influential then, was most important to spreading this view.

Natural Law Republicanism

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael C. Hawley
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
John Adams ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
The People ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Individual

By any metric, Cicero’s works are some of the most widely read in the history of Western thought. This book suggests that perhaps Cicero’s most lasting and significant contribution to philosophy lies in helping to inspire the development of liberalism. Individual rights, the protection of private property, and political legitimacy based on the consent of the governed are often taken to be among early modern liberalism’s unique innovations and part of its rebellion against classical thought. However, this book demonstrates that Cicero’s thought played a central role in shaping and inspiring the liberal republican project. Cicero argued that liberty for individuals could arise only in a res publica in which the claims of the people to be sovereign were somehow united with a commitment to universal moral law, which limits what the people can rightfully do. Figures such as Hugo Grotius, John Locke, and John Adams sought to work through the tensions in Cicero’s vision, laying the groundwork for a theory of politics in which the freedom of the individual and the people’s collective right to rule were mediated by natural law. This book traces the development of this intellectual tradition from Cicero’s original articulation through the American founding. It concludes by exploring how modern political ideas remain dependent on the conception of just politics first elaborated by Rome’s great philosopher-statesman.

Justice, Power, and Participatory Socialism: on Piketty’s Capital and Ideology

2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-124
Author(s):  
Martin O’Neill
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Private Property ◽  
First Century ◽  
Economic Power ◽  
Democratic Socialism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Important Idea ◽  
Ideational Change ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract Thomas Piketty’s Capital and Ideology constitutes a landmark achievement in furthering our understanding of the history of inequality, and presents valuable proposals for constructing a future economic system that would allow us to transcend and move beyond contemporary forms of capitalism. This article discusses Piketty’s conceptions of ideology, property, and ‘inequality regimes’, and analyses his approach to social justice and its relation to the work of John Rawls. I examine how Piketty’s proposals for ‘participatory socialism’ would function not only to redistribute income and wealth, but also to disperse economic power within society, and I discuss the complementary roles of redistribution and predistribution in his proposals, and Piketty’s place in a tradition of egalitarian political economy associated with James Meade and Anthony Atkinson. Having elaborated on Piketty’s account of the relationship between economic policy and ideational change, and his important idea of the ‘desacralization’ of private property, I develop ‘seven theses’ on his proposals for participatory socialism, examining areas in which his approach could be enhanced or extended, so as to create a viable twenty-first century version of democratic socialism.

Liberals II

Just Property ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 34-57
Author(s):  
Christopher Pierson
Keyword(s):  
John Rawls ◽  
John Dewey ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Social Institution ◽  
John Stuart Mill ◽  
Liberal Tradition ◽  
The Us

This chapter continues the evaluation of ideas about property within the modern liberal tradition. Much of this thinking has its origins in the later work of John Stuart Mill. I begin with some key ‘new’ liberals: T. H. Green, J. T. Hobhouse, and J. A. Hobson. These thinkers take a varyingly radical view of the provisionality of individual claims to private property. Following a short interlude on interwar liberalism, I turn to the development of liberal ideas on property in the US. My two key thinkers here are John Dewey and John Rawls. Both of these iconic liberal thinkers take a view of property which emphasizes its function as a social institution, one which has to be justified by its societal outcomes rather than its private and personal origins.

Ignes fatui or apt similitudes ?- the apparent denunciation of metaphor by Thomas Hobbes1

2005 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Musolff
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
Cognitive Metaphor ◽  
Scholarly Publications ◽  
Metaphor Theory ◽  
George Lakoff ◽  
History Of ◽  
Metaphor Use

AbstractThomas Hobbes's condemnation of metaphor as one of the chief "abuses of speech" in Leviathan occupies a famous (to some critics, infamous) place in the history of thinking about metaphor. From the viewpoint of cognitive metaphor theory, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1980,1981) have depicted Hobbes and John Locke as the founding fathers of a tradition in which "metaphor and other figurative devices [became] objects of scorn". Similar verdicts on Hobbes and on Locke as arch-detractors of metaphor can be found in many other accounts of the history of semantics. However, these indictments stand in marked contrast to a considerable number of scholarly publications that have shown that Hobbes's assessment of rhetoric and metaphor is far from a 'straightforward' denunciation of anything non-'literal'. In this paper I shall use results of this research in an analysis of key-passages from Leviathan to re-assess Hobbes's views on metaphor. I shall demonstrate that some critics of Hobbes have overlooked crucial differentiations (in particular, of different kinds of metaphor and similitude) in his concept of metaphor as a key-issue of public communication. Furthermore, I shall argue that Hobbes's foregrounding of the 'dangers' of metaphor use in political theory and practice should be interpreted as an acknowledgement rather than as a denial of its conceptual and cognitive force.

The Economic Dimension of Cicero's Political Thought: Property and State

1983 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 739-756 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neal Wood
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Private Property ◽  
The State ◽  
Economic Dimension ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Thinker

AbstractCicero's great reputation as a political thinker has sharply declined in the twentieth century. Commentators, if treating him at all, usually focus briefly on his ethical ideas and neglect the significant economic dimension of his thought. In view of the importance of the conception of property in the history of political theory. Cicero deserves to be taken more seriously today by political scientists. An “economic individualist” who recommended the enlightened pursuit of self-interest and defended property differentials, he was the first major political thinker to conceive of the protection of private property as the primary purpose of the state.

CAPITALISM IN THE CLASSICAL AND HIGH LIBERAL TRADITIONS

2011 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 19-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel Freeman
Keyword(s):  
Public Good ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Essential Role ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Price System ◽  
Classical Liberalism ◽  
The Public ◽  
Liberal Tradition ◽  
Equality Of Opportunities

AbstractLiberalism generally holds that legitimate political power is limited and is to be impartially exercised, only for the public good. Liberals accordingly assign political priority to maintaining certain basic liberties and equality of opportunities; they advocate an essential role for markets in economic activity, and they recognize government's crucial role in correcting market breakdowns and providing public goods. Classical liberalism and what I call “the high liberal tradition” are two main branches of liberalism. Classical liberalism evolved from the works of Adam Smith and the classical utilitarian economists; its major 20th century representatives include Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. The high liberal tradition developed from John Stuart Mill's works, and its major philosophical representatives in the 20th century are John Dewey and, later, John Rawls. This paper discusses the main distinguishing features of the classical and the high liberal traditions and their respective positions regarding capitalism as an economic and social system. Classical liberals, unlike high liberals, regard economic liberties and rights of private property in productive resources to be nearly as important as basic liberties. They conceive of equality of opportunity in more formal terms, and regard capitalist markets and the price system as essential not only to the allocation of production resources, but also as the fundamental criterion for the just distribution of income, wealth, and economic powers. High liberals, by contrast, regard the economic liberties as subordinate to the exercise of personal and civic liberties. They are prepared to regulate and restrict economic liberties to achieve greater equality of opportunities, reduce inequalities of economic powers, and promote a broader conception of the public good. And while high liberals endorse markets and the price system as essential to allocation of productive resources, they do not regard markets as the fundamental criterion for assessing just distributions of income, wealth, and economic powers and positions of responsibility. The paper concludes with some reflections upon the essential role that dissimilar conceptions of persons and society play in grounding the different positions on economic justice that classical and high liberals advocate.

scholarly journals John Rawls e a História da Filosofia Política/John Rawls and the history of political philosophy

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (10) ◽  
pp. 38
Author(s):  
Walter Valdevino Oliveira Silva
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
North American ◽  
The Political ◽  
The North ◽  
History Of

Meu objetivo neste trabalho é fazer uma breve apresentação da teoria política do filósofo norte-americano John Rawls (1921-2002) para, em seguida, comentar algumas críticas feitas por autores comunitaristas à sua obra e, então, apontar em que sentido defendo que Rawls é um autor que, ao contrário dessas críticas, leva a história a sério na elaboração de sua teoria. Abstract: My objective in this article is to briefly present the political theory developed by the North-American philosopher John Rawls (1921-2002) in order to contextualize some of the critiques presented by communitarian authors against his work, further stressing that nevertheless communitarian critiques, Rawls takes history seriously in the elaboration of his theory.

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