“Virtue, Obligation and Politics,” Revisited

1976 ◽  
Vol 70 (3) ◽  
pp. 886-904 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard M. Bank ◽  
Steven R. McCarl
Keyword(s):  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Basic Assumption ◽  
Developmental Theory ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Species ◽  
Moral Principles ◽  
Ancient Political Philosophy ◽  
Developmental Scheme

Stephen Salkever in this Review (“Virtue, Obligation and Politics,” APSR 68 [March, 1974]) discusses two paradigms of politics: one based on the concept of virtue (ancient political philosophy), the other resting on obligation (modern political thought). We analyze the meaning and significance of these two paradigms in terms of the cognitive-developmental moral psychology common to Lawrence Kohlberg, John Dewey, and Jean Piaget. We first present the cognitive-developmental theory and its empirical findings. We then demonstrate that the politics of obligation falls within the virtue paradigm as a necessary stage in the development of virtue, which involves placing Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Rawls within our developmental scheme. Finally, we explore the nature of understanding moral principles from within the cognitive-developmental perspective. In all this, we agree with Salkever's basic assumption that any account of political good (public as opposed to private) must be based on moral psychology, i.e., it must deal with the question of “What is good for the most inclusive of all publics, the human species?” We go two steps beyond Salkever, however, by showing the significance of the question, and by providing an answer to it (both of which bear upon the understanding of morality). An underlying purpose of our research is to present and to promote the political relevance and significance of moral psychology in general and cognitive development in particular.

Humans, Jews, and the Other Others

Other Others ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Sergey Dolgopolski
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Paradigm Shifts ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Political Ontology ◽  
Dynamic Key

The “Introduction” formulates the question of the political, and in particular of the emergence and erasure of the political from the horizon of currently predominant political thought in political theology and political ontology. The “Introduction” further attunes the readers to the dynamic key of “effacement” as both emergence and erasure, thereby defining the main register in which the book is proceeding -- as distinct from the keys of chronological periodisation, linear history, paradigm shifts, or other stabilizing approaches. The “Introduction” further draws a distinction between politics and the political, and advances the question of the political in relation to the Talmud as both a text and a discipline of thinking able to shed a new, contrasting, light on the paradox driven modern political notions of a singularizing and even singling out notion of a “Jew,” and a universalizing notion of the “human being.” The “Introduction” concludes by gesturing towards a much closer connection between the question of the political in the Talmud, the notions of the Jews and of the human beings in modernity, and the question of earth and territory as a part of political equation these concepts spell out.

Interroga virtutes naturales: Nature in Giles of Rome’s On Ecclesiastical Power

Vivarium ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 57 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 22-50
Author(s):  
Peter Adamson
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Human Life ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ability To Work ◽  
Christian Community ◽  
Marsilius Of Padua

AbstractGiles of Rome’s On Ecclesiastical Power (De ecclesiastica potestate), a polemical work arguing for the political supremacy of the pope, claims that the papacy holds a ‘plenitude of power’ and has direct or indirect authority over all aspects of human life. This paper shows how Giles uses themes from natural philosophy in developing his argument. He compares cosmic and human ordering and draws an analogy between the relations of soul to body and of Church to state. He also understands the pope’s power to be ‘universal’ in nature, another idea taken from Aristotelian physics. Further, Giles views the pope’s right to intervene arbitrarily in the affairs of the Christian community as mirroring God’s ability to work miracles. We thus see that Giles, no less than intellectuals on the other side of this debate such as Dante and Marsilius of Padua, believed that Aristotelian natural philosophy could be enlisted in the service of political thought.

La frontière politique intérieure: le sens de l’esclavage dans les Lois et dans le Politique de Platon

Méthexis ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-46
Author(s):  
Étienne Helmer
Keyword(s):  
Opposite Direction ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ethical Thought ◽  
Political Field ◽  
Free People

The presence of slavery in Plato’s political and ethical thought is marked by two contrary tendencies: one signals the conventional character of statutory slavery and tends to reduce the moral boundary between free people and servile people; the other one, going in the opposite direction, strongly reaffirms the functional frontier between these two categories, and makes it impassable. What does this double gesture of integration and exclusion of slavery mean with respect to Plato’s political thought? My claim, based on the analysis of a passage in Book vi of the Laws and some excerpts from the Statesman, is the following: for Plato, the statutory slavery fulfills the function of drawing the inner civic boundary on which the political field must be built if it is to have a true conceptual autonomy, by contrast with what contributes to its construction but without being fully political.

Politics and Morality in the Thought of Karl Popper

1995 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Minogue
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Karl Popper ◽  
Open Society ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Social

LIKE MANY PEOPLE, I FIND KARL POPPER BOTH FASCINATING and irritating. His vigour and lucidity are irresistible, and no one could complain that he fails to engage with the big questions. The problems begin when we consider his political thought. Some think him one of the great liberal philosophers of the century. I on the other hand, while being fascinated by The Open Society and its Enemies, am repelled by the grossness of its caricaturing of most of the thinkers it touches. The Poverty of Historicism is a marvellous text in the philosophy of the social sciences, but the idea of historicism is a straw man. The paradox seems to be that while there is a lot that refers to the political questions of the day, there is virtually nothing which takes up issues of political philosophy directly. The result is that he seems to me always to be on the wrong foot, and my problem is to discover why.

The Question of the Political: Back to Where You Once Belonged?

Other Others ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 19-35
Author(s):  
Sergey Dolgopolski
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
The Other ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Ontology ◽  
Jacques Ranciere ◽  
Positive Law ◽  
Jacques Rancière

The chapter analyses how the question of the political in two currently predominant and competing schools of political thought, political theology, exemplified by Carl Schmitt, and political ontology, exemplified by Jacques Rancière. The notion of the other others comes front and centre in this analysis. In political ontology, the concept of the political is predicated on an ability of a politician, a lawyer, or an artist to employ the philosophical, and in modern terms, “ontological” distinction between what is the case in each case and what seems to be the case in each case. In political theology, it is no longer “being” as opposed to “seeming”, but rather an ability to represent as radically distinct from any particular content conveyed. The chapter further traces foundations of both political theology and political ontology in Kant’s transcendentalism -- in particular in the necessity by which transcendentalism denies “positive law,” which Christianity traditionally ascribed to the Jews. The balance of the chapter shows how, however mutually exclusive, both political theology and political ontology remain intersubjective in their scope and thereby both efface and help notice what, in the following chapters will emerge on the pages of the Talmud as interpersonal rather than intersubjective dimension of the political.

The Political Thought of Bernanos

1958 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-242
Author(s):  
Thomas Molnar
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Social

To include in the same sentence the name of Bernanos and the term “political” or “politics” suggests an initial difficulty. Nothing was farther from his impatient and burning temperament than the meticulousness of the news analyst, or the specialist's careful dissection of the political animal. His domain was, rather, the philosopher's insight and intuition, the social critic's scorn and wrath, and the prophet's prediction of doom. He stated about himself:People say that Bernanos is never pleased about anything or anyone. When the righteous were wishing success to the crusade of our good neighbour, Señor Franco, he wrote Les Grands Cimetiéres sous la lune, and defended himself as being above all democratic. Now [1947] that all righteous are each more democratic than the other, he still proclaims himself Catholic, and no more democratic than before. A peculiar fellow, that Bemanos.

scholarly journals Qualified reader or interpreter: on the attitude of the researcher towards the sources of cognition of legal and political doctrines

2021 ◽  
pp. 133-142
Author(s):  
Vladimir Sergeevich Gorban
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
Critical Evaluation ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Practical Orientation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Intellectual Heritage ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cognitive Techniques

This article determines and analyzes certain characteristics of modern approaches towards the problem of attitudes to the sources of study on the history of political and legal thought. The attempts to speculate on hermeneutic practices as the constitutive method in analyzing the political and legal views of the philosophers of the past and modernity are subject to critical evaluation; and, on the other hand, the importance of qualified interpretation and analysis of the classical legal heritage is emphasized. It is demonstrated how conventional, shallow, or ideologized attitude towards the sources of study on the history and political thought creates fallacious and often just quasi-religious patterns of interpretation of the fundamental ideas and concepts, content of the discussed topics and problems, and social-practical orientation of their views. The scientific novelty lies primarily in determination and clarification of certain crucial aspects of modern methodology of the history of political and legal doctrines that are meaningful for the philosophy of law and legal theory overall. This pertains to the improvement of cognitive techniques and practices of the political and legal ideas of the past and modernity,  namely through minimization or elimination of such approaches towards their cognition that speculate on anti-historical attitudes; constitute interpretation as the key semantic unit in assessing the legal views of various philosophers; neglect the principles of objectivity and integrity in reconstructing the intellectual heritage; tendentiously articulate the accents of artistic, rather than documentary reconstruction of legal and political representations.

scholarly journals How to think beyond sovereignty: On Sieyes and constituent power

2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucia Rubinelli
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Constituent Power ◽  
Theories Of Sovereignty ◽  
The French Revolution

Historians and political theorists have long been interested in how the principle of people’s power was conceptualised during the French Revolution. Traditionally, two diverging accounts emerge, one of national and the other of popular sovereignty, the former associated with moderate monarchist deputies, including the Abbé Sieyes, and the latter with the Jacobins. This paper argues against this binary interpretation of the political thought of the French Revolution, in favour of a third account of people’s power, Sieyes’ idea of pouvoir constituant. Traditionally, constituent power has been viewed as a variation of sovereignty, but I show it to be an independent conceptualisation of people’s power. Sieyes’ political theory led him to criticise and refuse contemporary theories of sovereignty in favour of what he understood as a fully modern account of people’s power. Based on extensive research in the archives, I show how Sieyes opposed the deployment of sovereignty by the revolutionary Assemblies and recommended replacing it with the idea of constituent power.

John Stuart Mill on Colonies

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duncan Bell
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Physical Space ◽  
John Stuart Mill ◽  
The Other ◽  
Pivotal Role ◽  
The Political ◽  
Global Order ◽  
Responsible Government ◽  
Over Time

This chapter explores some important yet neglected aspects of John Stuart Mill's vision of global order. Mill has played a pivotal role in the recent wave of scholarship dedicated to unraveling the entanglement of Western political thought and imperialism. The chapter analyzes three key thematics in his colonial writings: (1) his evolving account of the political economy of colonization; (2) his views on “responsible government” and character formation; and (3) finally, his elaboration of the role played by conceptions of physical space, and of the constitutional structure of the imperial system. It also pursues two subsidiary lines of argument. First, it identifies how Mill's justificatory account of colonization shifted over time. The other line of argument focuses on how Mill framed his narrative.

scholarly journals Sayyid Mawdudi's Contribution towards Islamic Revivalism in the Contemporary Islamic Political thought

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-48
Author(s):  
Ibrahim Suleiman ◽  
Ya’u Idris Gadau
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
Life Time ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Electoral Process ◽  
Islamic Ethics ◽  
Islamic Political Thought

This paper discussed the role and ideas of Sheikh Mawdudi in religion and politics in India and later Pakistan, Lahore. It is very paramount that Islamic scholars are considered to be relevant in moulding the minds of Muslims Ummah towards adherence to their religion and participation in politics and electoral process. Therefore, this article highlights the major contributions made by Mawdudi and outlines his role in terms of revivalism during his life-time and beyond. This is accomplished by investigating his major works and his teachings especially in shaping participation in political circle so as to ensure that Muslims are participated in the political and electoral process in India and Pakistan. In his political thought, Sheikh Mawdudi believed strongly in the formation of Islamic state and participation of Muslims in politics and governance as against the other views of anti-democratic arguments. His major concern is to encourage Muslims Ummah to adhere to the teaching of Islam and participate in all government activities in order to protect the interest of their religion considering the diverse nature of these countries. Therefore, assessing the role played by Mawdudi will significantly improve our understanding of Islamization movement towards determining social reality, justice and equity along Islamic ethics and values.

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