Hobbes, Locke, and Confusion's Masterpiece: An Examination of Seventeenth-Century Political Philosophy (review)

2004 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 224-225
Author(s):  
David Lay Williams
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Seventeenth Century

scholarly journals Henry Neville’s The Isle of Pines and the Emergence of Racial and Colonial Discourses in the Genre of Utopia in Britain

2014 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 33-44
Author(s):  
Zahra Jannessari Ladani
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Turbulent Atmosphere ◽  
Utopian Fiction ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Controversial Nature

This essay will explicate and study Henry Neville's The Isle of Pines as one of the most popular utopian/dystopian accounts written in the pamphleteering tradition current in the seventeenth century. The researcher will see how Neville's socio-political philosophy was molded in the highly turbulent atmosphere of the seventeenth century. Then, The Isle of Pines will closely be analyzed to assess its formation under the influence of the controversial nature of the politics of the time. We will also elaborate on Neville's introduction of the pamphleteering tradition to utopian fiction. In addition, Neville's employment and foregrounding of racial and colonial intentions will be discussed to see how these modern discourses gave shape and directed the genre of British utopia as an apology for the republic and commonwealth as the requirement of an age with a disturbed political face.

“On Pure Love”[Pl. 1:656–671]

Fénelon ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 224-236
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Core Concept ◽  
Moral Thought

“On Pure Love” is one of many essays gathered by Fénelon’s editors under the heading Lettres et opuscules spirituels. This particular essay likely dates to the quietism controversy that reached its peak with the publication of Fenelon’s Maxims of the Saints in 1697. “On Pure Love” is properly a work of spirituality rather than political philosophy. Yet its theme—the concept of pure love untainted by self-love—represents Fénelon’s most extensive treatment of a core concept in his political and moral thought, and also presents an important source of reflection on self-love that synthesizes several seventeenth-century views and anticipates key eighteenth-century theories of self-love from Rousseau to Adam Smith.

The Commune of Being and Time

Dialogue ◽  
1971 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 708-726 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graeme Nicholson
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
Being And Time ◽  
Human Community

One cannot determine whether a book is a work of political philosophy merely by glancing at its contents. Heidegger's Being and Time is a case in point. It offers no discussion of the topics which are commonly thought to constitute political philosophy—the state, the nature of law, human rights, and so on. But particular themes such as these reflect in large part the actual conditions which prevailed at certain times and places, fourth-century Athens and seventeenth-century England, for example, so they must not be thought to constitute an outline of the eternal problems of political philosophy. When a philosopher embarks upon a new line of thought at a different time and under novel circumstances, he may find himself instituting a new vocabulary for the problems of the human community.

A Brief Semantic History of Securitas

Security ◽  
2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
John T. Hamilton
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
Sense Of Security ◽  
Positive Sense ◽  
History Of ◽  
Semantic History ◽  
Cultural Connotations ◽  
Historical Usage

What does the term “security” express? What are or have been its semantic functions: its shifting cultural connotations and its divergent discursive values? This chapter examines the figures and metaphors that have been deployed to think about security across the ages. It outlines the main stations along the word's complex itinerary through historical usage. It begins with a cursory overview that marks the major turning points of this history, beginning with ancient Rome and concluding with seventeenth-century Europe. Among the topics covered is the positive sense of security that established its position as a central topic in political philosophy in the work of Thomas Hobbes. Throughout, the affirmation of security as a good is fundamentally connected with the power of sovereignty to alleviate the cares and concerns of its subjects. The state emerges as an institution that protects its citizens from all varieties of existential threats, from external aggression as well as from internal discord.

On the Origins of Conventionalist Political Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emanuele Castrucci
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Political Anthropology ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Philosophical Investigation ◽  
Private And Public

At the basis of any consideration about the modern state of experience lie concepts of great theoretical and practical import, such as the dialectic between private and public, ‘internal’ and ‘external’, essence and appearance, which only a historiographic-philosophical investigation into the origins of the new conventionalistic concept of political order allows us to clarify. I will endeavour, therefore, in the following notes, to focus on the theoretical elements that the new political anthropology injected into the circuitry of sixteenth-century Europe, thanks especially to key thinkers such as Montaigne and Charron, convinced as I am of their thematic relevance in the context of a closer analysis of that phenomenon of primary importance now called, to use Benjamin’s term, the ‘crisis experience’....

Margaret Cavendish

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Cunning
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Cross Section ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Sensory Perception ◽  
First Century ◽  
Margaret Cavendish ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Universe

Margaret Cavendish, a seventeenth-century philosopher, scientist, poet, playwright, and novelist, went to battle with the great thinkers of her time, and in many cases arguably got the better of them, but she did not have the platform that she would have had in the twenty-first century. She took a creative and systematic stand on the major questions of philosophy of mind, epistemology, metaphysics, and political philosophy. She defends a number of theses across her corpus: for example, that human beings and all other members of the created universe are wholly material; that matter is eternal; that the universe is a plenum of contiguous bodies; that matter is generally speaking knowledgeable and perceptive and that non-human creatures like spiders, plants, and cells exhibit wisdom and skill; that motion is never transferred from one body to another, but bodies always move by motions that are internal to them; that sensory perception is not via impressions or stamping; that we can have no ideas of immaterials; and that creatures depend for their properties and features on the behavior of the beings that surround them. Cavendish uses her fictional work to further illustrate these views, and in particular to illustrate the view that creatures depend on their surroundings for their social and political properties. For example, she crafts alternative worlds in which women are not seen as unfit for roles such as philosopher, scientist, and military general, and in which they flourish. This volume of Cavendish’s writings provides a cross-section of her interconnected writings, views, and arguments.

Hobbes's Dagger in the Heart

1987 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 855-873 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Jolley
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Military Service ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
Political Obligation ◽  
The Other ◽  
Major Advance ◽  
David Gauthier

Richard Cumberland, the Anglican divine, concludes his anti-Hobbesian work, Treatise of the Laws of Nature, with the following remarkable observation: ‘Hobbes, whilst he pretends with one hand to bestow gifts upon princes, does with the other treacherously strike a dagger to their hearts.’ This remark sums up a dominant theme of seventeenth-century reactions to Hobbes's political theory; a host of similar complaints could be marshalled from among the ranks of secondary figures such as Clarendon, Filmer and Pufendorf. Today, however, Cumberland's criticism has a relatively unfamiliar ring. Following the lead famously given by John Locke, we are much more likely to be impressed by the totalitarian features of Hobbes's political philosophy than by its subversive character. To preclude initial objections, there is of course a relatively uncontroversial sense in which Hobbes's thought is subversive; in metaphysics, ethics and theology Hobbes's daggers are deliberately aimed at the hearts of the Schoolmen and the Puritans. But Cumberland's concern in the quotation is with Hobbes's theory of sovereignty: the thrust of his criticism is that the theory is top-heavy, and this issue has not received much attention in recent years. One notable exception is David Gauthier who writes that ‘from unlimited individualism only anarchy follows. The theory is a failure.’ Gauthier, however, argues tht Hobbes's presentation of his theory in Leviathan marks a major advance over the earlier De Cive, and if our criterion of success is the strength of the sovereign's position, then this claim seems highly suspect. In the first part of this paper I shall argue that the sovereign of Leviathan is a more vulnerable figure than the sovereign of the earlier De Cive. In the second part of the paper I take up the problem posed by military service for a Hobbesian theory of political obligation. Employing a distinction between act- and rule-prudentialism, I shall argue that here again the position of Leviathan is in some ways less satisfactory than that of the earlier works.

Grotius na Interdisciplinaridade Moderna Entre o Direito e a Filosofia Política

2009 ◽  
Vol 17 (33) ◽  
pp. 95-117
Author(s):  
André Santos Campos ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Theoretical Basis ◽  
Individual Person ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Individual

Modern political philosophy, especially since Machiavelli, intends to uncover what politics actually is, and in order to achieve this it often needs to penetrate into disciplines not immediately related to politics and assimilate for itself additional concepts and methodologies. Thus, it appears to be interdisciplinary in the manipulation of specific conceptual instruments. Since there is a methodological shift in modernity imposing the individual person as a basic starting-point of political philosophy, which is expressed in a language of rights, the birth of this juridical-political interdisciplinarity is to be found in a table of concepts established in the science of law and applicable to political philosophy. In order to further understand this, the origins of Grotius’s definitions of ius must be sought out, since they set the background for the bridge he architected between law and political philosophy to be crossed by subsequent modern political philosophers. The solidity of this theoretical basis for interdisciplinary political philosophy depends upon the simultaneity of all of Grotius’s different meanings of ius: it is from this foundation that seventeenth-century political philosophy can begin from.

Discourse Delivered at the Consecration of the Elector of Cologne[Pl. 2:945–971]

Fénelon ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 120-140
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Modern Philosophy ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Central Theme ◽  
Early Modern Philosophy

The Discourse Delivered at the Consecration of the Elector of Cologne is a transcript of Fénelon’s sermon on the occasion of the 1707 consecration of Joseph-Clément of Bavaria, Elector and ultimately Archbishop of Cologne. Fénelon used this occasion to present his core lessons on what was at once a central theme of his political philosophy and a principal theme of early modern philosophy, one that indeed received particular attention in the seventeenth century in the wake of the writings of Hobbes and Spinoza: the proper relation of church and state, and the ways in which civil authorities ought to be disposed to ecclesiastical authorities.

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