Ideology Hunting: The Case of James Harrington

1959 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 662-692 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith N. Shklar
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Political Theories ◽  
History Of

It is well known that each age writes history anew to serve its own purposes and that the history of political ideas is no exception to this rule. The precise nature of these changes in perspective, however, bears investigation. For not only can their study help us to understand the past; it may also lead us to a better understanding of our own intellectual situation. In this quest the political theories of the 17th century and particularly of the English Civil War are especially rewarding. It was in those memorable years that all the major issues of modern political theory were first stated, and with the most perfect clarity. As we have come to reject the optimism of the eighteenth century, and the crude positivism of the nineteenth, we tend more and more to return to our origins in search of a new start. This involves a good deal of reinterpretation, as the intensity with which the writings of Hobbes and Locke, for instance, are being reexamined in England and America testify. These philosophical giants have, however, by the force of their ideas been able to limit the scope of interpretive license. A provocative minor writer, such as Harrington, may for this reason be more revealing. The present study is therefore not only an effort to explain more soundly Harrington's own ideas, but also to treat him as an illustration of the mutations that the art of interpreting political ideas has undergone, and, perhaps to make some suggestions about the problems of writing intellectual history in general.

Some Recent Works on the Political Theories of the Medieval Canonists

Traditio ◽  
1954 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 594-625 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Tierney
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Literary History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Law ◽  
The Political ◽  
Significant Shift ◽  
International Diffusion ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Theories ◽  
History Of

During the past decade there has been a significant shift of emphasis in work on the medieval canonists. The traditional studies on the literary history of canonistic sources and on problems of specifically ecclesiastical jurisprudence continue to flourish, and, indeed, have been stimulated by the plans for a new edition of Gratian's Decretum; but alongside this work, and complementary to it, there has appeared a new trend, a lively interest in the content and influence of canonistic doctrine concerning public law and political theory. This trend, moreover, shows all the international diffusion — and even, perhaps, something of the interplay of national susceptibilities — that its exponents have discerned in the work of the medieval canonists themselves. It is especially interesting that notable contributions have come from England and the United States as well as from the more established centers of canonistic studies.

scholarly journals Decolonising Durkheimian Conceptions of the International

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-30
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
The Political ◽  
Emile Durkheim ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
History Of

Over the past 20 years, numerous scholars have called upon social scientists to consider the colonial contexts within which sociology, anthropology and ethnology were institutionalised in Europe and beyond. We explain how historical sociologists and historians of international law, sociology and anthropology can develop a global intellectual history of what we call the ‘sciences of the international’ by paying attention to the political ideas of the Durkheimian school of sociology. We situate the political ideas of the central figures explored in this special issue—Émile Durkheim, Marcel Mauss, Bronisław Malinowski and Alfred Métraux—in their broader context, analysing their convergence and differences. We also reinterpret the calls made by historians of ideas to ‘provincialise Europe’ or move to a ‘global history’, by studying how epistemologies and political imaginaries continued by sociologists and ethnologists after the colonial era related to imperialist ways of thinking.

Fortescue and the Political Theory of dominium

1985 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 777-797 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. H. Burns
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Fundamental Concept ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Society ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
History Of

After more than five hundred years the political ideas of Sir John Fortescue (c. 1394–c. 1476) retain the potency which has ensured that they have seldom suffered total neglect, even if much of the interest they have aroused has been ideological in character. It was perhaps only in the 1930s that Fortescue first received appropriate attention in the context of the history of political thought; and the varied consideration devoted to him by scholars over the past quarter of a century suggests that the process of appraisal is by no means complete. Despite much discussion of Fortescue's basic political categories, it will be argued here, important dimensions of his thought have been fore-shortened – notably in regard to origins, basis, and character of political society as such. Again, some of the perspectives in which the fundamental concept of dominium has been presented may be misleading if they are applied to Fortescue's use of that concept without full recognition of his specific political purposes.

From the Homeric Epic to Modern Political Theory

2017 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-61
Author(s):  
Andrea Catanzaro
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Moral Virtue ◽  
English Version ◽  
Lexical Analysis ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Political Theories ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Works

Starting from the idea that the Hobbesian English version of the Homeric poems was a translation work but especially a tool for spreading political theories and teaching moral virtue in a period when the philosopher was under censorship (Nelson, 2008 and 2012), the article focuses on a remarkable situation where original texts and Hobbesian purposes deeply diverge. In translating the Iliad and the Odyssey, Hobbes had to handle a lexicon imbued with expressions that linked men in power to the Olympian gods. Unfortunately, the existence of these ties was completely at odds with what he had previously explained in his political works; hence he had to work on it extensively. By starting from a lexical analysis and moving to the dimension of History of Political Ideas, the article will show how Hobbes bypasses this problem, in order to reach his political and educational target.

On Constructing a Corruption Principle: The Importance of History and Theory in Practice

2021 ◽  
pp. 174387212110017
Author(s):  
David Fagelson ◽  
Douglas Klusmeyer
Keyword(s):  
Public Good ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Citizens United ◽  
The Public ◽  
Current State ◽  
Political Theories ◽  
History Of ◽  
Market Good ◽  
Primary Goods

Citizens United has stimulated a cottage industry of legal scholarship on corruption. A prominent stream of this literature is self-consciously atheoretical and suggests that the current state of corruption jurisprudence suffers from a misconceived reliance on liberal political theories and a rejection of the public good. We argue that it is impossible to understand specific acts of corruption without a political theory explaining why such actions are wrong. We show that the current jurisprudence relies on a mistaken intellectual history of the public good and a political theory of American constitutionalism that commodifies citizenship and treats political participation as a market good. Pace Teachout, we cannot draw the bright lines many legal scholars desire without a better political theory of the primary goods we want to protect.

A WELL-TEMPERED LIBERALISM: MODERN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY AND POLITICAL THEORY

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 655-682
Author(s):  
JAMES T. KLOPPENBERG
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
The Family ◽  
Family Resemblances ◽  
History Of ◽  
Similar Materials ◽  
Past Half

Intellectual history and the history of political thought are siblings, perhaps even twins. They have similar origins and use similar materials. They attract many of the same friends and make some of the same enemies. Yet like most siblings, they have different temperaments and ambitions. This essay explores the family resemblances and draws out the contrasts by examining two major works by one of the most prominent political theorists of the past half-century, Alan Ryan, who has recently published two big books that intellectual historians will find rewarding and provocative.

Pierre Charron: Precursor to Hobbes

1963 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 212-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul F. Grendler
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Basic Principle ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The State ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Past

The political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes is rightly considered as marking the end of one era in political theory and the beginning of a new one. Formerly, men had sought and found a guide to political conduct in a basic principle upon which the order of well-being of the state depended. Hobbes broke with the past by postulating the state as simply a rationalization of the needs of men. He analyzed man's psychology and relied on his own observation and ratiocination to establish the best possible state commensurate with mankind's situation, but his supreme emphasis on force and authority left no room for the older constitutional, religious, and traditional safeguards of the citizen. This was the price that Hobbes willingly paid to achieve a secure state during the English Civil War.

Unity and Disunity in Javanese Political and Religious Thought of the Eighteenth Century

1992 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 663-678 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. C. Ricklefs
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Political History ◽  
The Political ◽  
Religious Literature ◽  
Religious Thought ◽  
Middle Years ◽  
Historical Reality ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Ideal

A central problem in both the political and the intellectual history of Java is the disparity between the ideal of a unified state and the historical reality of fragmented power and authority, between the image and the reality of pre-colonial Javanese political history. An investigation of views held by literati of the kingdom of Mataram before the middle years of the eighteenth century can elucidate this problem. Turning from historical-political to religious literature in Javanese may help to resolve it.

scholarly journals From Fatherly Government to an Economic State

2021 ◽  
pp. 479-495
Author(s):  
Ere Nokkala
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
The Political ◽  
Central Concept ◽  
Conceptual Changes ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
History Of ◽  
Economic State ◽  
New Interpretation

This article reinterprets late Cameralists’ contribution to the reorientation of Cameral sciences in the second half of the eighteenth century. It analyses the conceptual changes to the central concept of happiness during the second half of the eighteenth century that resulted from the rethinking of the natural law foundations of the discipline. Understanding the political philosophical underpinnings of universal Cameral sciences, as they were formulated using the language of natural law, enables a new interpretation of the history of Cameralism. The shift from duties based on natural law to an emphasis on inalienable natural rights helped the late Cameralists build a political theory of an economic state, which relied on the motivating forces of legitimate self-interest and passions. The late Cameralists redescribed happiness in terms of freedom, thereby accomplishing a shift from Cameral sciences’ legitimization of fatherly rule to a political thought that had its legitimacy in the provision of freedom, security, and wealth to householders, who in their part were the main agents and movers of the economic state.

The Last Malay Raja Muda of Johor

1982 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-235 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dianne Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Great Power ◽  
The Political ◽  
Fundamental Change ◽  
The Past ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
Straits Of Malacca

Much of the history of the people of the Straits of Malacca in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is still unknown and perhaps unknowable, given the lack of source material. However, some aspects of political history are becoming clearer. It has become apparent that this period witnessed a fundamental change in the political structure of the area; able in the past to support empires and cultures of no small renown, the Malay world by the nineteenth century had disintegrated into a mass of petty states, leaderless and disorientated, a power vacuum that the British Empire was eventually forced to fill. Symptoms of this change first became discernable in the early eighteenth century, during the reign of the last Malay Raja Muda of the Johor Empire (1708–18). Johor was then still a powerful force in the Malay world, ruling a widespread area from Siak in Sumatra, through the coastal areas of the Malay peninsula (roughly, in modern terms, from Selangor south, then north again as far as Trengganu), plus the islands of the Riau–Lingga archipelago and Siantan. The sea was still a connecting, rather than a dividing force in Malay politics. In 1708 the administration of this empire fell to Tun Mahmud, who was to be the last Malay to hold the office of Raja Muda in Johor. He was by all accounts a remarkable ruler, under whose guidance Johor attained, for a while, great power and prestige.

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