Homo Politicus – Towards a Theory of Political Action and Motivation

2013 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-96
Author(s):  
Zsolt Boda
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Collective Rationality ◽  
Behavioral Models ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Political Studies ◽  
The Common

AbstractThe purpose of this paper is to sketch an anthropology for political studies. Political science relies extensively on behavioral models borrowed from economics (taking human action to be rational and self-interested), sociology (explaining behavior in terms of norm-abidance and conformity), or even psychology (seeing actors as being motivated by their emotions, neurosis etc.). Strikingly, political science has not endeavored to develop an anthropology for its own purposes. Does it mean that there are no motivational structures that are distinctively relevant to political action? The paper argues that this is not the case. In fact, there is a distinctive conception of a human actor present in political science, even if implicitly, i.e., the conception of an actor who aims at what she perceives to be the common good, and guides her behavior along the lines of collective rationality. The paper aims at providing the first steps towards laying the theoretical and empirical foundations of such a model.

Contributions of Contemporary Political Science to an Understanding of the Common Good

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
S.J. Matthew Carnes
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Scientific Theory ◽  
Theory Building ◽  
Catholic Theology ◽  
Politics And Government ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Common ◽  
Nature And Society

The transformation of political science in recent decades opens the door for a new but so far poorly cultivated examination of the common good. Four significant “turns” characterize the modern study of politics and government. Each is rooted in the discipline’s increased emphasis on empirical rigor, with its attendant scientific theory-building, measurement, and hypothesis testing. Together, these new orientations allow political science to enrich our understanding of causality, our basic definitions of the common good, and our view of human nature and society. In particular, the chapter suggests that traditional descriptions of the common good in Catholic theology have been overly irenic and not sufficiently appreciative of the role of contention in daily life, on both a national and international scale.

Justus Lipsius and the Post-Machiavellian Prince

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Brooke
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Political Action ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Historical Significance ◽  
Philosophical Dialogue ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Common ◽  
Political Thinker

This chapter studies the political thought of Justus Lipsius, a moral and political thinker as well as the author of the two-volume philosophical dialogue De constantia (1583) and the six-volume Politica (1589). The chapter explores the scholarship surrounding Lipsius and the historical significance of his works and investigates his connections to Neostoicism. It then embarks on a discussion of the connection between Lipsius's political thought and that of Machiavelli, particularly as revealed in the latter's The Prince (1532). The chapter argues that Machiavelli and Lipsius disagree on the ends of political action: Lipsius's prince aims at serving the common good, understood in terms of the security and welfare of the subject population; Machiavelli's prince acts to secure his own glory.

The Common Good as Reason for Political Action

Ethics ◽  
1973 ◽  
Vol 83 (4) ◽  
pp. 283-293 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. J. Diggs
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Political Action ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Common
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