Ecological Neutrality and Liberal Survivalism

2006 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcel Wissenburg
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Theories ◽  
Over Time

AbstractPerhaps the most animated debate in green political thought-the subdiscipline of political theory devoted to the relations between humanity, politics and environment-addresses the question of the compatibility of ecologism and liberal democracy, more particularly the liberal aspects of the latter. The present article affirms and further elaborates earlier suggestions that existing approaches to this matter are either flawed or, when defensible, prone to produce trivial conclusions. Incompatibility of the two theories is always to be expected, in one form or another. It is argued that a characterization of political theories as families growing and changing over time, a notion partly derived from Wittgenstein’s family concept, allows us to understand ecologism and liberalism as evolving theories, and to anticipate the development of both-which may lead to far more surprising conclusions.

Carl Schmitt’s Political Theory of Dictatorship

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duncan Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
General Analysis ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
The Political ◽  
Critical History ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter reconstructs the intellectual-historical background to Carl Schmitt’s well-known analysis of the problem of dictatorship and the powers of the Reichspräsident under the Weimar Constitution. The analysis focuses both on Schmitt’s wartime propaganda work, concerning a distinction between the state of siege and dictatorship, as well as on his more general analysis of modern German liberalism. It demonstrates why Schmitt attempted to produce a critical history of the history of modern political thought with the concept of dictatorship at its heart and how he came to distinguish between commissarial and sovereign forms of dictatorship to attack liberalism and liberal democracy. The chapter also focuses on the conceptual reworking of the relationship between legitimacy and dictatorship that Schmitt produced by interweaving the political thought of the Abbé Sieyès and the French Revolution into his basic rejection of contemporary liberal and socialist forms of politics.

scholarly journals A Founder on Founding: Jefferson's Advice to Koraes

2005 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 157
Author(s):  
Ioannis D. Evrigenis
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Thomas Jefferson ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Years Of Experience ◽  
American Founding ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
History Of ◽  
Long Life ◽  
Over Time

<p>In 1823, shortly after the outbreak of the Greek Revolution, and in the context of a general attempt to gather support for the Greek cause, Adamantios Koraes wrote to Thomas Jefferson, whom he had met once in Paris, to request his advice on the founding of a Greek state. Although brief, the exchange between the two men provides a rare, if not unique, record of a founder's advice to an aspiring emulator. Koraes' role in Greek political and intellectual life, coupled with Jefferson's fame, have made the correspondence between the two men a source of some interest among Greek scholars, but Jefferson's advice has never been studied in the context of his broader political theory. This paper traces the history of the acquaintance of the two men and of their subsequent correspondence, and places Jefferson's recommendations in the context of his political thought. Written as it was with the benefit of a long life in politics and more than forty-five years of experience from the American founding, Jefferson's advice to Koraes provides a singular opportunity to assess his political ideas over time.</p>

Politische Stabilität

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Static Stability ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
International Stability ◽  
History Of ◽  
External Forces ◽  
Political Economic

Our political times appear unstable: Liberal democracy is struggling to retain its inner balance and is being destabilised by both internal and external forces. How can stability be achieved — and what is stability? When does stability become undemocratic? And what can we learn from historical diagnoses of crises and instability for current debates on political, economic and international stability? Political theory and the history of political thought on stability offer answers to these questions: They examine stability as a fundamental norm of Democracy — and destabilise ideas of overly static stability. With contributions by Tobias Albrecht, Vincent August, Manuel Becker, Andreas Braune, Frank Decker, Verena Frick, Johannes Gerschewski, Jens Hacke, Eva Hausteiner, Frauke Höntzsch, Michael Kubiak, Sebastian Lange, Philip Manow, Christoph Michael, Tobias Schottdorf, Veith Selk, Grit Straßenberger, RiekeTrimcev, Felix Wassermann.

Intellectual History, Inferentialism, and the Weimar Origins of Political Theory

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 170-195
Author(s):  
David L. Marshall
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Theoretical Investigation ◽  
Weimar Republic ◽  
Historical Account ◽  
The Past ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Intellectual Legacy

The dilemma of presentism is sometimes represented as a choice between the increased relevance and utility of a historiographic practice that can articulate its relation to the present and the increased objectivity or openness to the otherness of the past of a historiographic practice that articulates the past “on its own terms.” The present article argues that, at least with reference to intellectual history, we should understand that ideas appear most fully when they are run through a multitude of contexts and not rooted exclusively in circumstances contemporaneous to either the original emergence of an idea or the writer and first reader of the historical account. The following thesis is advanced: ideas appear only over time, and the contextualization, decontextualization, and recontextualization of ideas in different places and times are all essential to such intellectual historical “appearance.” The article then articulates its position more precisely by means of Robert Brandom’s inferentialism. And, finally, this line of inquiry is exemplified and interrogated by means of a concrete historiographic case—namely, a political theoretical investigation of the intellectual legacy of the Weimar Republic.

21. Tocqueville

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cheryl Welch
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Old Regime ◽  
The Third ◽  
Relevant Today ◽  
The Face ◽  
Democracy In America ◽  
The Revolution

This chapter examines Alexis de Tocqueville's social and political thought. Tocqueville is known as a forerunner of systematic social or political theory, but he is more relevant today as a philosophical historian with particular concerns that parallel those of many contemporary political thinkers. Those concerns are: how to sustain the civic practices underpinning liberal democracy, how to create such practices in the face of hostile histories, and how to think about democracy's need for stabilizing beliefs. The chapter considers the first concern through a discussion of some of the principal arguments of Tocqueville's Democracy in America, the second through an analysis of The Old Regime and the Revolution, and the third by considering the moral touchstones of Tocqueville's thought, in particular his arguments about religion and family. Tocqueville's views on tyranny, individualism, despotism, and aristocracy are also explored.

No More Like Pallas Athena: Displacing Patrilineal Accounts of Modern Feminist Political Theory

Hypatia ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jim Jose
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Karl Marx ◽  
John Stuart Mill ◽  
Social Progress ◽  
Political Theories ◽  
History Of ◽  
Friedrich Engels ◽  
Charles Fourier

The history of modern feminist political theories is often framed in terms of the already existing theories of a number of radical nineteenth-century men philosophers such as James Mill, John Stuart Mill, Charles Fourier, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Engels. My argument takes issue with this way of framing feminist political theory by demonstrating that it rests on a derivation that remains squarely within the logic of malestream political theory. Each of these philosophers made use of a particular discursive trope that linked the idea of women's emancipation with the idea of social progress. I argue that this trope reproduced the masculinist signification and symbolism inherent in their particular political philosophies. I argue for a more positive, less masculinist, account of the history of feminist political thought.

scholarly journals Political Education and the History of Political Thought

1984 ◽  
Vol 78 (4) ◽  
pp. 985-999 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel R. Sabia
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Science Students ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
Common Features ◽  
Political Theories ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Tradition ◽  
Interpretive Strategies

Texts designed to introduce political science students to the history of political thought or to past political theories have been commonplace in the discipline, as have disputes about their pedagogical utility or justifiability, and methodological debates concerning their adequacy or legitimacy. In an effort to address these disputes and some of these debates, I construct three models of historiographical inquiry. Each model represents a particular approach, and each is defined in terms of three common features. The methodological debates are joined both indirectly and directly: indirectly by identifying clearly the major features and purposes of these approaches, and directly by consideration of such issues as the nature of a historical tradition, the legitimacy of certain interpretive strategies and presuppositions, and the viability of certain conceptions of past political theory. I conclude that each approach can make significant contributions to the education of political science students.

scholarly journals Democracy Naturalized: In Search of the Individual in the Post-truth Condition

2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 351-366
Author(s):  
Steve Fuller
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Truth Condition ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Over Time

Abstract This article takes a ‘naturalistic’ look at the historically changing nature of the individual and its implications for the terms on which democracy might be realized, starting from classical Athens, moving through early debates in evolutionary theory, to contemporary moral and political thought. Generally speaking, liberal democracy sees individuality as the mark of an evolutionarily mature species, whereas socialist democracy sees it as the mark of an evolutionary immature species. Overall, the individual has been ‘de-naturalized’ over time, resulting in the indeterminate figure who thrives in the post-truth condition.

A Virtue for Courageous Minds

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aurelian Craiutu
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Moral Virtue ◽  
Individual Liberty ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
Common Notion ◽  
History Of ◽  
Benjamin Constant ◽  
Intellectual Foundations

Political moderation is the touchstone of democracy, which could not function without compromise and bargaining, yet it is one of the most understudied concepts in political theory. How can we explain this striking paradox? Why do we often underestimate the virtue of moderation? Seeking to answer these questions, this book examines moderation in modern French political thought and sheds light on the French Revolution and its legacy. The book begins with classical thinkers who extolled the virtues of a moderate approach to politics, such as Aristotle and Cicero. It then shows how Montesquieu inaugurated the modern rebirth of this tradition by laying the intellectual foundations for moderate government. The book looks at important figures such as Jacques Necker, Germaine de Staël, and Benjamin Constant, not only in the context of revolutionary France but throughout Europe. It traces how moderation evolves from an individual moral virtue into a set of institutional arrangements calculated to protect individual liberty, and explores the deep affinity between political moderation and constitutional complexity. The book demonstrates how moderation navigates between political extremes, and it challenges the common notion that moderation is an essentially conservative virtue, stressing instead its eclectic nature. Drawing on a broad range of writings in political theory, the history of political thought, philosophy, and law, the book reveals how the virtue of political moderation can address the profound complexities of the world today.

Getting Real?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Goodhart
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Political Analysis ◽  
Political Theories ◽  
The World ◽  
Political Norms

Chapter 3 engages with realist political theory throughcritical dialogues with leading realist theorists. It argues that realist political theories are much more susceptible to conservatism, distortion, and idealization than their proponents typically acknowledge. Realism is often not very realistic either in its descriptions of the world or in its political analysis. While realism enables the critical analysis of political norms (the analysis of power and unmasking of ideology), it cannot support substantive normative critique of existing social relations or enable prescriptive theorizing. These two types of critique must be integrated into a single theoretical framework to facilitate emancipatory social transformation.

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