1776: The British Dimension

1977 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-199
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Public Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
American Political Thought ◽  
The Past ◽  
American Intellectual ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Revolutionary Period

When I was invited to speak here today and it was suggested that I talk on the political aspects of Anglo-American intellectual relations, especially in the Revolutionary period, I thought I would try to summarize the recent writings of American historians on the development of American political thought in the formative years of the eighteenth century—its branching off from a peculiar line of English radical thought and its realization in American political institutions in ways that have profoundly affected American public life. It is a subject on which American historians have lavished much thought and writing in the past fifteen years, and while its outlines are now quite clear, it is still a subject with unresolved problems in interpretation. It is that subject that I indicated in a few sentences in the programme notes that you received.

The Free and Open Press: The Founding of American Democratic Press Liberty, 1640–1800 By Robert W. T. Martin. New York: New York University Press, 2001. 288p. $40.00.

2002 ◽  
Vol 96 (3) ◽  
pp. 617-618 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark A. Graber
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Free Speech ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
New York University ◽  
Constitutional Development ◽  
American Political Thought ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Status

The Free and Open Press is an exceptionally satisfying first book. Robert W. T. Martin revitalizes a debate over the status of press rights in eighteenth-century America that had grown tiresome over the past 20 years. Challenging Leonard Levy, his critics, and the ongoing republic/liberalism divide in American political thought, Martin's work offers an interpretation of free speech thought that explains why early Americans sometimes fought for and sometimes fought against press rights. Though Martin claims too much for his thesis at times, all scholars of American political thought and constitutional development should read his book.

Teaching the Federalist Papers by Simulating a Constitutional Ratifying Convention

1989 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 6-7
Author(s):  
Donald K. Alper
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
The Political ◽  
American Political Thought ◽  
Federalist Papers ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Federalist ◽  
The Federalist Papers

For the past 12 years, I have regularly taught an upper-division course titled American Political Thought. This course typically enrolls between 30 and 40 students and provides the single opportunity for political science majors to focus intensively on the political thought of the Revolutionary and Constitutional eras. Like most courses on American political thought, this one includes a section on the Federalist Papers and a good deal of reading and discussion of the speeches and writings of the anti-federalists. And, like most instructors, I have often felt frustration in trying to get students excited about these “classics.”This year, inspired by the fanfare surrounding the Bicentennial of the writing of the Constitution, I developed a constitutional ratifying convention simulation as a major component of the course. Rather than simply reading and discussing the writings of federalists and anti-federalists, the students would have to roleplay particular writers and act-out the arguments that are found in anti-federalist documents and The Federalist Papers. The class was divided into two equal-sized teams of federalists and anti-federalists, and they were given nine topical areas with corresponding readings which would form the substance of the convention debates. The students were encouraged to play the role of particular characters, for example, Madison, Hamilton and Jay on the federalist side and Richard Henry Lee, Patrick Henry, and Melancton Smith on the anti-federalist side. To get students fully involved in their subject matter and to make the simulation fun, I made it clear that high sounding rhetoric, period costumes, and appropriate decor in the convention room would be most welcome.

Searching for Political Parties in the Past

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Piero Ignazi
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Party ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Common

Chapter 1 introduces the long and difficult process of the theoretical legitimation of the political party as such. The analysis of the meaning and acceptance of ‘parties’ as tools of expressing contrasting visions moves forward from ancient Greece and Rome where (democratic) politics had first become a matter of speculation and practice, and ends up with the first cautious acceptance of parties by eighteenth-century British thinkers. The chapter explores how parties or factions have been constantly considered tools of division of the ‘common wealth’ and the ‘good society’. The holist and monist vision of a harmonious and compounded society, stigmatized parties and factions as an ultimate danger for the political community. Only when a new way of thinking, that is liberalism, emerged, was room for the acceptance of parties set.

Testimonio at 50

2021 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 17-32
Author(s):  
Guadalupe Escobar
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Women Activists ◽  
Indigenous Women ◽  
The Political ◽  
Extractive Industry ◽  
The Past ◽  
Colonial Capitalism ◽  
Revolutionary Period

A reassessment of the testimonio genre over the past five decades reveals continuities of state-sponsored violence from the revolutionary period to the present. An analysis of Pamela Yates’s 500 Years: Life in Resistance (2017) and Katia Lara’s Berta vive (Berta Lives, 2016) shows Cold War reverberations, unfolding deeper histories of dispossession and legacies of resistance. The first uncovers entangled issues of Guatemalan genocide disavowal and extractive industry while the second denounces the political feminicide of the Honduran environmental activist Berta Cáceres. Both testimonial documentaries mobilize an “archive effect” to contest the optic of colonial capitalism through the ecofeminist perspectives of indigenous women activists. Una reevaluación del género del testimonial durante las últimas cinco décadas revela la continuidad de la violencia estatal desde el período revolucionario hasta el presente. Un análisis de 500 Years: Life in Resistance (2017) de Pamela Yates y Berta vive (2016) de Katia Lara da cuenta de las reverberaciones de la Guerra Fría, desplegando historias más profundas de desposesión y legados de resistencia. La primera obra muestra los intrincados hilos en torno a la negación del genocidio guatemalteco y la industria extractiva, mientras que el segundo denuncia el feminicidio político de la activista ambiental hondureña Berta Cáceres. Ambos documentales testimoniales utilizan un “efecto de archivo” para impugnar la óptica del capitalismo colonial a través de las perspectivas ecofeministas de las activistas indígenas.

Rethinking Kant as a public intellectual

2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 100-108
Author(s):  
Sofie Møller
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
The Political ◽  
Middle Ground ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past

In Kant’s Politics in Context, Reidar Maliks offers a compelling account of Kant’s political philosophy as part of a public debate on rights, citizenship, and revolution in the wake of the French Revolution. Maliks argues that Kant’s political thought was developed as a moderate middle ground between radical and conservative political interpretations of his moral philosophy. The book’s central thesis is that the key to understanding Kant’s legal and political thought lies in the public debate among Kant’s followers and that in this debate we find the political challenges which Kant’s political philosophy is designed to solve. Kant’s Politics in Context raises crucial questions about how to understand political thinkers of the past and is proof that our understanding of the past will remain fragmented if we limit our studies to the great men of the established canon.

Calvinists, Arminians, Socinians: Popular Sovereignty and Natural Rights in Early Modern Political Thought

2019 ◽  
pp. 21-35
Author(s):  
James Moore
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
The Political ◽  
Reformed Church ◽  
Hugo Grotius

This chapter focuses upon natural rights in the writings of Hugo Grotius, the Levellers and John Locke and the manner in which their understanding of rights was informed by distinctive Protestant theologies: by Arminianism or the theology of the Remonstrant Church and by Socinianism. The chapter argues that their theological principles and the natural rights theories that followed from those principles were in conflict with the theology of Calvin and the theologians of the Reformed church. The political theory that marks the distinctive contribution of Calvin and the Reformed to political theory was the idea of popular sovereignty, an idea revived in the eighteenth century, in the political writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Willie Jones

2019 ◽  
pp. 217-234
Author(s):  
Kyle Scott
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The Political ◽  
Individual Liberty ◽  
Political Status ◽  
The North ◽  
Widespread Belief ◽  
American Intellectual ◽  
American Intellectual History

This chapter examines the political thought of Anti-Federalist leader Willie Jones and attempts to situate him in the broader context of American intellectual history. A Virginia native from a prominent family, Jones established a plantation in Halifax County, which he represented in a series of colonial and state assemblies. After the colonies declared independence, Jones took charge of the radical faction in the North Carolina legislature. At the Hillsborough convention of 1788, Jones saw no need for North Carolina to ratify the Constitution immediately. He believed emotional and cultural ties united the thirteen states whatever their political status. North Carolina could join the Union whenever it wished. In the meantime, it could demand amendments to protect individual and states’ rights. Jones’s position reflected the long standing and widespread belief that small republics best protected individual liberty.

The Paradox of Partisanship

2020 ◽  
pp. 35-57
Author(s):  
Lee Drutman
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Party System ◽  
American Political Science Association ◽  
The Political ◽  
American Political Thought ◽  
The Right ◽  
American Political Science ◽  
Science Association

This chapter examines the paradox of partisanship. In 1950, the American Political Science Association put out a major report arguing for a “more responsible two-party system.” The two parties—the Democratic Party and the Republican Party—were then largely indistinguishable coalitions of parochial local parties, and the political scientists argued that too little, rather than too much polarization, was the problem. This sets up a paradox: Some party division is necessary, but too much can be deadly. Various traditions in American political thought have tried to resolve this paradox. Antipartisans have urged consensus above all. Responsible partisans have urged competition above all. Meanwhile, bipartisans have urged compromise above all. Consensus is impossible. However, both compromise and competition are essential to democracy. Only the neglected multiparty tradition can solve the paradox with the right balance of competition and compromise.

Characteristics of Latin American Political Thought

1966 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
John D. Martz
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Movements ◽  
American Political Thought ◽  
Intellectual Elite ◽  
The World ◽  
Public Responsibility

In few areas of the world are the role and contribution of the intellectual elite more significant than in Latin America. Its membership has historically been in the forefront of major political and social movements, and there has been somewhat less of the distaste for politics and public responsibility than is often found elsewhere. Leading intellectuals are widely respected and nationally prominent, enjoying a degree of prestige that is scarcely exceeded in any other region. The pensador—sometimes likened to the eighteenth-century philosophe— has been intimately involved in major political movements from colonial times to the present.

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