Republicanism or Modern Natural Right?: The Question of the Origins of Modern Representative Democracy and the Political Thought of Giuseppe Duso

This chapter evaluates the arguments and intentions of Leo Strauss’s most ambitious political text, Natural Right and History. Strauss’s stated purpose is to rehabilitate the ancient Greek and Roman conceptions of “natural right”—a term of art by which he referred to the justice inherent in the rational order of nature. His express motivation was to rebut the relativism and historicism that, in his view, characterized twentieth-century political thought. This chapter contends that the book’s core lies in its implicit presentation of philosophical inquiry as the highest human vocation. This idea is presented less through systematic argument than through Strauss’s own engagement with canonical political texts—an engagement designed to illustrate both the excitement and the fulfillment of philosophical dialogue. The political virtues, while defended on the surface of the text, remain as unsettled by the end as they were in the introduction.

Philosophy, Rights and Natural Law

10.3366/edinburgh/9781474449229.001.0001 ◽

2019 ◽

Keyword(s):

Early Modern ◽

Natural Law ◽

Political Thought ◽

The Political ◽

Scottish Enlightenment ◽

History Of Political Thought ◽

German Empire ◽

Modern Natural ◽

History Of ◽

Institutional Contexts

Honouring the work of Knud Haakonssen, this book consists of a series of studies that investigate the place of early modern natural law in the history of political thought. These studies follow Haakonssen’s lead in treating natural law as central to the formulation of doctrines of obligations and rights in accordance with the interests of early modern polities and churches. In doing so, they approach natural law less as a unified doctrine and much more as a field of cross-cutting idioms in which competing political and juridical programs were prosecuted for a variety of purposes. The studies thus investigate how natural law doctrines were formulated, received, and put to work in a wide array of cultural, political and institutional contexts, ranging from the political thought of the Dutch Arminians, Locke’s struggle with the concept of religious toleration, the political-jurisprudential thought of Pufendorf, Thomasius and Wolff in the German Empire, and the jurisprudential thought of Hume and Smith in the context of the Scottish Enlightenment.

From the ‘Indignados Movement’ to power politics: a critical study of the theoretical underpinnings of ‘Podemos’

Studies in Social and Political Thought ◽

10.20919/sspt.27.2017.70 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Javier Zamora García,

Keyword(s):

Political Thought ◽

Representative Democracy ◽

Critical Study ◽

The Political ◽

Power Politics ◽

Gillian Rose ◽

The University ◽

Theoretical Foundations ◽

Political Logic

This paper was awarded the Gillian Rose Memorial Prize for Social and Political Thought 2015, awarded to the best essay produced by a candidate for the MA in Social and Political Thought at the University of Sussex. The following is a shortened version of the original dissertation. This paper argues that the theoretical foundations of Podemos are grounded in a series of premises that do not sufficiently challenge the political logic of liberal representative democracy. This forces the party to adopt a model that presents some similarities with what is encouraged by other realist theories of democracy such as Schumpeter’s or Down’s. As a result, the party has faced serious problems in escaping the competitive, hierarchical and efficacy-driven dynamic of a conception of politics that derives from an overemphasis on the goal of electoral victory.

Leo Strauss's Conception of Political Philosophy: A Critique

The Review of Politics ◽

10.1017/s0034670500040584 ◽

1967 ◽

Vol 29 (4) ◽

pp. 492-517 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

Hwa Yol Jung

Keyword(s):

Political Philosophy ◽

Political Thought ◽

Max Weber ◽

The Political ◽

Political Scientist ◽

Leo Strauss ◽

Natural Right

The political thought of Leo Strauss commands the respect and admiration of even his critics. His critical intellectual carpentry is sharp, cutting, and often rebuking. His criticism of modernity, whether it be that of Machiavelli, Max Weber, an existentialist, or a scientific political scientist, is inspired by and deeply rooted in the Greek intellectualistic essentialism, particularly that of Aristotle, and the age-old tradition of nature and natural right as is shown in his work, Natural Right and History

Catherine Zuckert on Politics and Literature

The Review of Politics ◽

10.1017/s0034670517001127 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 80 (2) ◽

pp. 301-307

Author(s):

Michael Zuckert

Keyword(s):

Political Science ◽

Political Thought ◽

Political Community ◽

The Political ◽

Journal Articles ◽

Politics And Literature ◽

American Political Thought ◽

Natural Right ◽

Insight Into

AbstractCatherine Zuckert's earliest published work was in the area of Politics and Literature. From the start she saw this work as an important supplement to the dominant forms of political science and American political thought. Her work in this area, especially her manifesto-like journal articles and her first book, Natural Right and the American Imagination, made the case that literature provides insight into both the internal and hidden lives of democratic citizens as well as into the elusive broader regime-character of the political community.

Simone Weil

10.3366/edinburgh/9781474423632.003.0031 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Beatrice Marovich

Keyword(s):

Political Thought ◽

The Political ◽

Sovereign Power ◽

Bare Life ◽

Intellectual Curiosity ◽

Creation Theology ◽

Simone Weil

Few of Giorgio Agamben’s works are as mysterious as his unpublished dissertation, reportedly on the political thought of the French philosopher Simone Weil. If Weil was an early subject of Agamben’s intellectual curiosity, it would appear – judging from his published works – that her influence upon him has been neither central nor lasting.1 Leland de la Durantaye argues that Weil’s work has left a mark on Agamben’s philosophy of potentiality, largely in his discussion of the concept of decreation; but de la Durantaye does not make much of Weil’s influence here, determining that her theory of decreation is ‘essentially dialectical’ and still too bound up with creation theology. 2 Alessia Ricciardi, however, argues that de la Durantaye’s dismissal of Weil’s influence is hasty.3 Ricciardi analyses deeper resonances between Weil’s and Agamben’s philosophies, ultimately claiming that Agamben ‘seems to extend many of the implications and claims of Weil’s idea of force’,4 arguably spreading Weil’s influence into Agamben’s reflections on sovereign power and bare life.

The Political Thought of George Grant

Journal of Canadian Studies ◽

10.3138/jcs.26.2.46 ◽

1991 ◽

Vol 26 (2) ◽

pp. 46-68

Author(s):

H.D. Forbes

Keyword(s):

Political Thought ◽

The Political ◽

George Grant

Entangling Plato: A Guide through the Political Theory Archive

Political Theory ◽

10.1177/0090591721998073 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 009059172199807

Author(s):

Liam Klein ◽

Daniel Schillinger

Keyword(s):

Political Theory ◽

Political Thought ◽

The Political ◽

Athenian Democracy

Political theorists have increasingly sought to place Plato in active dialogue with democracy ancient and modern by examining what S. Sara Monoson calls “Plato’s democratic entanglements.” More precisely, Monoson, J. Peter Euben, Arlene Saxonhouse, Christina Tarnopolsky, and Jill Frank approach Plato as both an immanent critic of the Athenian democracy and a searching theorist of self-governance. In this guide through the Political Theory archive, we explore “entanglement approaches” to the study of Plato, outlining their contribution to our understanding of Plato’s political thought and to the discipline of political theory.

Value Pluralism vs Realism in the Political Thought of Bernard Williams

The Journal of Value Inquiry ◽

10.1007/s10790-018-9674-5 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 53 (4) ◽

pp. 529-550

Author(s):

George Crowder

Keyword(s):

Political Thought ◽

The Political ◽

Value Pluralism ◽

Bernard Williams

The Political Thought of the Civil War by ed. by Alan Levine, Thomas M. Merrill, and James R. Stoner Jr.

Civil War History ◽

10.1353/cwh.2021.0019 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 67 (2) ◽

pp. 143-145

Author(s):

Matthew Warshauer

Keyword(s):

Civil War ◽

Political Thought ◽

The Political