Is architecture relevant for political theory?

2021 ◽  
pp. 147488512110636
Author(s):  
Bart van Leeuwen
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Urban Design ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Review Article ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Common ◽  
Build Environment

Is architecture relevant for political theory? That is the key question that structures this excellent collection Political Theory and Architecture, although a number of essays fit a broader formulated theme better, namely, concerning the political relevance of the organization and design of our built environment more generally, including architecture but also spatial planning and urban design. The collection demonstrates that our build environment is not merely a passive backdrop to a political community, but actively shapes aspects of our common political life. This constitutive nature of our built environment figures in many different guises throughout this volume. In this review article, I discuss some of these and conclude that concerns about the ‘common good’ and hence about the discipline of political theory should take reflections on urban design, planning, and architecture into account.

The Politics of Planning

2012 ◽  
pp. 738-758
Author(s):  
J. Phillip Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Urban Planning ◽  
Built Environment ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Political Reform ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Aspect ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Common ◽  
The City

This article examines the political aspect of urban planning. It discusses Robert Beauregard's opinion that planning should not reject modernism entirely or unconditionally embrace postmodernism, and that planners should instead maintain a focus on the city and the built environment as a way of retaining relevancy and coherence, and should maintain modernism's commitment to political reform and to planning's meditative role within the state, labor, and capital. The article suggests that planners should also advocate utopian social justice visions for cities which are not so far-fetched as to be unrealizable so that planning can then attach itself to widespread values such as democracy, the common good, or equality.

Aristotle on the Conditions for and Limits of the Common Good

1999 ◽  
Vol 93 (3) ◽  
pp. 625-636 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas W. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Liberal Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Political Relationships ◽  
External Goods ◽  
Political Conditions ◽  
The Common ◽  
Liberal Political Theory

Contemporary debates over liberal political theory should encourage renewed investigation of the common good, and it is appropriate to begin by interrogating Aristotle's account. Aristotle argues that injustice stands in the way of the common good. Injustice is motivated by both overgrasping for scarce external goods, such as money, honor, and power, and by excessive desires. Aristotle argues that the common good requires a reorientation away from external goods to satisfying activities that do not diminish in the sharing. He sketches an analogical account of familial and political relationships that leads us to wonder what the political conditions are for the common good. Reflecting on these conditions not only points to the strict limits of the common good but also speaks to both sides in debates over liberal theory.

New Natural Law Theory and the Common Good of the Political Community

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 293-303
Author(s):  
Daniel Mark ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Group Membership ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Family ◽  
Natural Law Theory ◽  
The Common

Some critics question new natural law theorists’ conception of the common good of the political community, namely, their interpretation of St. Thomas Aquinas and the conclusion that the political common good is primarily instrumental rather than intrinsic and transcendent. Contrary to these objections, the common good of the political community is primarily instrumental. It aims chiefly at securing the conditions for human flourishing. Its unique ability to use the law to bring about justice and peace and promote virtue in individuals may make the common good of the political community critically important. Nevertheless, it is still not an intrinsic aspect of human flourishing. Unlike the family or a religious group, membership in a political community is not an end in itself.

Beyond the Nations: The Expansion of the Common Good in Catholic Social Thought

2001 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 723-754 ◽  
Author(s):  
William A Barbieri
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Social Thought ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Catholic Social Thought ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Common ◽  
Made In

In recent years it has become increasingly common to speak of the international or global common good. It remains unclear, however, what political content attaches to this expression, and how it relates to more traditional conceptions of the common good rooted in the context of the polis or the nation-state. This article examines the ramifications of extending this time-honored concept to a transnational framework, focusing in particular on the evolving rhetoric of the political common good in Catholic social thought. The first part traces the emergence of the transnational common good in Catholic thinkers such as Maritain, Murray, and Messner, as well as in the encyclical tradition. The second part addresses, from the standpoint of political theory, problems of scope, structure, and application attending the expansion of the common good. The concluding section proposes a multilayered, heuristic interpretation of the common good organized around the notion of a “plurality of pluralisms.”When one speaks of the common good, it always makes sense to inquire: The common good of whom? How the common good is demarcated is a matter of no small moment for any claims that are made in its name. name. For these claims stumble as soon as it becomes clear that the good referred to is in fact shared by only some members of the assumed collectivity and not the rest; and they likewise falter if they are revealed to rest on an inappropriate delimitation of the collectivity at the expense of others who, for the purposes at hand, should rightfully be included.

The Political Theory of Thomas More’s Epigrammata

Moreana ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 188-205
Author(s):  
Veronica Brooks
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Common Good ◽  
The Political ◽  
Alternative Theory ◽  
Popular Opinion ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Common

This essay argues that More’s Epigrammata contains a coherent political theory that is inspired by ancient Roman republicanism. More defines “liberty” as the people’s willing obedience to virtuous leaders who rule for the common good, and he claims that popular opinion is the source of legitimacy rather than divine sanction. In doing so, More critiques the Tudor regime and presents an alternative theory of kingship based on his understanding of liberty. However, More also criticizes hereditary monarchy as such and explicitly prefers a republican regime of elected men who share authority among equal peers. This republican regime more effectively promotes the common good, but it depends upon virtue in the rulers and in the citizens. More’s satirical epigrams on virtue and vice are part of his political teaching insofar as they establish his conception of citizen virtue, which supports his republicanism.

OFFICE, POLITICAL THEORY, AND THE POLITICAL THEORIST

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-337 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID KEARNS ◽  
RYAN WALTER
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
The Political ◽  
Theoretical Argument ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
Political Theorist ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
The One

ABSTRACT‘Theory’ is taken for granted as an object of historical study, especially in relation to the history of political thought, and most historiography proceeds as if little were lost by construing authors such as Aristotle, Machiavelli, and Smith as ‘theorists’. This article argues that the costs are likely to be high, and that in consequence ‘theory’ ought not to be considered a generic category capable of neutrally describing a given piece of thinking from the past. On the one hand, ascribing theoretical argument can obscure the nature of rival idioms for making claims regarding political life, such as biblical criticism, the common law, and ‘office talk’. On the other hand, the evidence suggests that the ‘political theorist’, as an avowed identity, only emerged in Britain late in the eighteenth century, tentatively and under the force of peculiar pressures. It follows that it will rarely be appropriate to use the term before c. 1800, and considerable caution will still be necessary when using the label in the post-1800 period. Abiding by this discipline is likely to lead to new discoveries in what has been a flat terrain of ‘political theory’.

Nobility and Necessity: The Problem of Courage in Aristotle’s

2001 ◽  
Vol 95 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lee Ward
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Moral Virtue ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Individual

In the current debate over the status of moral virtue in ethical and political theory, Aristotle is an imposing and controversial figure. Both champions and critics of the ancient conception of virtue identify Aristotle as its most important proponent, but commentators often obscure the complexity of his treatment of moral virtue. His account of courage reveals this complexity. Aristotle believes that courage, and indeed virtue generally, must be understood as both an end in itself and a means to a more comprehensive good. In this way Aristotle’s political science offers a middle course that corrects and embraces the claims of nobility and necessity in political life. Honor is central to this political science. It acts as a bridge between the desires of the individual and the needs of the political community and reduces the dangers posed by the excessive pursuit of nobility and the complete acquiescence to necessity.

scholarly journals Corruption, Marginality and Social Disorder as Threats to National and Human Security in Nigeria

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Philip Ogochukwu Ujomu
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Human Security ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Disorder ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Common

This essay focuses on the issue of corruption, marginality and the social disorder attending it, as threats to national and human security in Nigeria. It not only examines the problems of corruption in Nigeria and the implications of this for national security, but also, discusses the role of an ethical idea of citizenship in tackling corruption and reinventing the political community. In Nigeria, corruption has played a key role in aggravating the political and economic crisis besetting the country. Depreciation of human dignity and collapse of infrastructures have ensured the systematic elite misappropriation of state power, the primitive accumulation of capital, ethno-cultural intolerance and political manipulation in the society. This paper searches for a set of norms capable of mitigating needless dehumanization and inequalities, and improving welfare of the majority by evolving public citizens oriented to the common good.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document