The Prehistory of Possessive Individualism

PMLA ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 127 (4) ◽  
pp. 918-924 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Rae Greeson
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Citizenship Rights ◽  
Possessive Individualism ◽  
Short Essay ◽  
Liberal Individualism ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Liberal Political Theory ◽  
Labor Potential

One of the central tenets of liberal individualism holds that property rights and citizenship rights are based in self-possession, which is often defined as an original ownership of one's own labor potential. In this short essay I propose that the concept of self-possession rests on a prior assumption that selves are possessable objects—an assumption that was generated, before and alongside liberal political theory, in the practice of Atlantic slave capitalism. I will first consider how John Locke formulates the theory of possessive individualism in one of the most-cited passages of his Second Treatise of Government (1690). To shed light on that theory's implications, I will turn to A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of venture, a Native of Africa (1798), which recounts how Venture Smith, an eighteenth-century man enslaved as a child, came to possess himself, quite literally, by purchasing himself. Smith's account illuminates the tacit precondition of Locke's self-possessing individual: to be owned, the self must first be alienated, entered into the market, “thingified.” Juxtaposing Locke and Smith provides a snapshot of a larger project, in which I argue that Enlightenment thought was founded on—not merely proximal to—the Atlantic imperial context out of which it arose.

Calvinists, Arminians, Socinians: Popular Sovereignty and Natural Rights in Early Modern Political Thought

2019 ◽  
pp. 21-35
Author(s):  
James Moore
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
The Political ◽  
Reformed Church ◽  
Hugo Grotius

This chapter focuses upon natural rights in the writings of Hugo Grotius, the Levellers and John Locke and the manner in which their understanding of rights was informed by distinctive Protestant theologies: by Arminianism or the theology of the Remonstrant Church and by Socinianism. The chapter argues that their theological principles and the natural rights theories that followed from those principles were in conflict with the theology of Calvin and the theologians of the Reformed church. The political theory that marks the distinctive contribution of Calvin and the Reformed to political theory was the idea of popular sovereignty, an idea revived in the eighteenth century, in the political writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Visions of Community in the Writings of John Locke

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Quia  Mou
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Charles Taylor ◽  
Liberal Theory ◽  
Religious Toleration ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
Procedural Rights ◽  
Michael Sandel ◽  
Liberal Political Theory

Liberal political theory is often accused of hindering the development of communities because it encourages people to be individualistic. As one of its founding fathers, critiques of liberalism date back to  the writings of John Locke in the seventeenth century. This research project looks at the writings of Locke within their historical context. In examining Locke’s views on religious toleration, social policy and  economics, this project proposes to show how Locke envisioned a particular form of community. This study also incorporates contemporary debates on liberalism. Specifically, it addresses communitarian  critiques put forth by Michael Sandel and Charles Taylor, and invokes liberal defences, articulated by Will Kymlicka and Alan Buchannan. It proposes that many of today’s defences of liberal political theory can be applied to the writings of John Locke to support and sustain the development of communities within his own time. A second claim against liberal theory is that it favours particular communities instead of  granting fair procedural rights to all communities. To test this objection, this project will also look at the biases from Locke’s religious, political and social backgrounds and how they impacted his beliefs.

On Macpherson's Developmental Liberalism

1982 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 145-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian H. Angus
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Institutional Support ◽  
Liberal Theory ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Rigorous Analysis ◽  
Liberal Tradition ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Liberal Individualism ◽  
Conceptual Foundations ◽  
Liberal Political Theory

The work of C. B. Macpherson is extremely significant for those seeking to understand the cul-de-sac which liberal political theory and institutions have entered. Considering the experience of socialist societies in this century, the necessity for a nonmarket political theory to retain a positive connection to Western liberal values should be beyond dispute. Any postmarket society requires, not pious reassurances, but institutional support for individual rights that are the most vehemently defended in the liberal tradition. But of course this is not enough. Contemporary society is already undermining liberal individualism through massive organizations and manipulated consumption. The inability of liberal theory to analyze effectively and propose alternatives to the contemporary decline of the individual suggests that the cul-de-sac is rooted in the conceptual foundations of liberalism itself. Macpherson's rigorous analysis of the market assumptions of liberal theory pinpoints this conceptual inadequacy and attempts to maintain a commitment to liberal values in a postmarket society.

Principled Toleration and Respectful Indifference in the Liberal Polity

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-14
Author(s):  
Phillip Cole ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
The Public ◽  
Moral Principles ◽  
Or Practice ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Liberal Individualism ◽  
Liberal Political Theory

This paper examines toleration at two levels. At the first level, liberal individualism is concerned that the individual must be as free as possible to pursue their own goals and lifestyles. At the second level, liberal political theory is concerned with the value of liberal political culture and institutions and how to maintain and protect them. I argue that we can learn a great deal about the exercise of toleration and respect at the level of the liberal polity by examining them at the level of the liberal individual. Both tolerance and intolerance at the level of the polity must be principled. Principled tolerance and intolerance have the following features. First, the judgment whether to tolerate a particular belief or practice must be based on the value of toleration itself, not pragmatic political requirements. Second, it should be an issue of setting aside moral principles and convictions rather than dislikes, prejudices or fears. Third, it should respect the distinction between the public and the private, and should only recognise an issue as one of toleration if there is a public impact at stake.

C. B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hugh Breakey
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Global Financial Crisis ◽  
Global Capitalism ◽  
The Political ◽  
Possessive Individualism ◽  
Core Idea ◽  
The Global Financial Crisis

C. B. Macpherson’s 1962 The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke challenged the canonical interpretation of seventeenth-century English political theorists by exploring their allegiance to “possessive individualism,” the idea that man’s normative essence consists in his self-ownership. After surveying the work’s impact, this chapter analyzes Macpherson’s concept of possessive individualism and considers the inter-relations amongst its economic, ontological, and psychological postulates. The chapter argues that—while Macpherson’s exegesis erred in trying to graft the concept onto early modern political theorists like John Locke—his core idea remains significant today. Possessive individualism accurately describes an influential normative perspective increasingly pervading and facilitated by contemporary global capitalism, as exemplified in the global financial crisis of 2007–09.

scholarly journals From Atheists to Empiricists: Reinterpreting the Stoics in the German Enlightenment

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Morgan Golf-French
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Baruch Spinoza ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
German Enlightenment ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Point Of Intersection ◽  
Short Essay ◽  
Stoic Philosophy

From the 1670s Stoic philosophy had been closely associated with atheism and the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza. However, in 1771 the historian Christoph Meiners published a short essay on the concept of apatheia that revived interest in Stoic philosophy within the German lands. Over the following years, he and his colleague Dieterich Tiedemann developed a novel interpretation claiming that Stoicism closely prefigured the philosophy of John Locke and represented a source of valuable philosophical ideas. Immanuel Kant, his allies, and later Idealists such as Hegel adopted this empiricist interpretation, despite their otherwise deep philosophical disagreements with Meiners and Tiedemann. Tracing eighteenth-century German debates around Stoicism reveals how it came to be considered a form of empiricism. As well as contributing to recent scholarship on the reception of Stoicism, the article suggests a major point of intersection between currents of the Enlightenment usually only treated separately.

Maclaurin on Occasionalism: A Reply to Ablondi

2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-135
Author(s):  
Patrick J. Connolly
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Recent Article ◽  
Gravitational Attraction ◽  
Matter Theory ◽  
Key Features ◽  
Short Essay ◽  
The Way

In a recent article Fred Ablondi compares the different approaches to occasionalism put forward by two eighteenth-century Newtonians, Colin Maclaurin and Andrew Baxter. The goal of this short essay is to respond to Ablondi by clarifying some key features of Maclaurin's views on occasionalism and the cause of gravitational attraction. In particular, I explore Maclaurin's matter theory, his views on the explanatory limits of mechanism, and his appeals to the authority of Newton. This leads to a clearer picture of the way in which Maclaurin understood gravitational attraction and the workings of nature.

A Wolf in the City

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cinzia Arruzza
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Athenian Democracy ◽  
The City ◽  
Shed Light

A Wolf in the City is a study of tyranny and of the tyrant’s soul in Plato’s Republic. It argues that Plato’s critique of tyranny is an intervention in an ancient debate concerning the sources of the crisis of Athenian democracy and the relation between political leaders and the demos in the last decades of the fifth century BCE. The book shows that Plato’s critique of tyranny should not be taken as a veiled critique of the Syracusan tyrannical regime but, rather, as an integral part of his critique of Athenian democracy. The book also offers an in-depth and detailed analysis of all three parts of the tyrant’s soul, and contends that this approach is necessary to both fully appraise the complex psychic dynamics taking place in the description of the tyrannical man and shed light on Plato’s moral psychology and its relation with his political theory.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Valls
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
The United States ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
Color Blind ◽  
American Society ◽  
Liberal Political Theory

The persistence of racial inequality in the United States raises deep and complex questions of racial justice. Some observers argue that public policy must be “color-blind,” while others argue that policies that take race into account should be defended on grounds of diversity or integration. This chapter begins to sketch an alternative to both of these, one that supports strong efforts to address racial inequality but that focuses on the conditions necessary for the liberty and equality of all. It argues that while race is a social construction, it remains deeply embedded in American society. A conception of racial justice is needed, one that is grounded on the premises provided by liberal political theory.

‘The Days of Thy Youth’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Bouldin
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Women Educators ◽  
Critical Period ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
Printed Word ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Quaker Women

This chapter explores the range of ideas and activities that engaged Quaker women educators during the eighteenth century, a critical period in the development of Friends’ educational efforts. It analyses key writings of Deborah Bell, Rebecca Jones, and Priscilla Wakefield. These women adopted a variety of approaches to instructing youth, ranging from informal mentorship to formal teaching that stressed a ‘guarded’ (Quaker-only) environment. Bell, Jones, and Wakefield shed light on the leading role that Quaker women played in the education and socialization of young Friends. Their writings highlight the importance of the meetinghouse, the schoolhouse, and the printed word as public venues for women who sought to instil Quaker values in future generations.

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