The foundations of pluralism in modern Western liberal political thought

2019 ◽  
pp. 99
Author(s):  
Mahmoud Ezzo Hamdo
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Pluralism ◽  
Political Liberal ◽  
Liberal Thought

 Research tackles the bases that pluralism based on . in the western liberal thought for example many of lebral opinions that of called for pluralism were discussed so research divided to for mian aspects : first aspect the theoritical political .liberal and political pluralism concepts of the research . the second aspects : tackles the descussion relativity of the truth  and right and the pluralism of the contemprory western liberal thought . third aspect : tackles the equality and emphasizing of the pluralism in the contemprory western liberal . thought  fanally the fourth aspect tackles the political respresentation and pluralism in the western liberal thought . the research also has ended with many of conclusions .

A pessimistic liberalism: Jacob Talmon’s suspicion and the birth of contemporary political thought

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 650-666
Author(s):  
Dillon Stone Tatum
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Paul Ricoeur ◽  
World Order ◽  
The Political ◽  
Scholarly Work ◽  
Post War ◽  
Liberal Thought

Discussions of liberalism as a political ideology often focus on the progressive, civilisational, and triumphalist ideologies of liberal thinkers. Scholarly work on liberal empire situates these issues in the context of colonialism, and contemporary discussions of liberal world order devote much intellectual space to optimism about liberalism. Scholars have spent much less time connecting liberalism to deep cynicism and suspicion. This article, in focusing on what I term a ‘pessimistic liberalism’, fills this gap by examining the ways that the spectre of totalitarianism influenced post-war liberal thought. The mid-20th century was a pivotal moment where both liberalism and its critics proceeded to make arguments about politics that began from similar attitudes about the nature of the political: suspicion, cynicism, resignation, and fear. Specifically, the article analyses historian Jacob Talmon’s genealogy of modern leftist thought to illustrate the shift in liberal thinking from its 19th century optimism to its 20th century pessimism and scepticism. Talmon’s engagement with the issues of political messianism, nationalism, and cosmopolitanism represented a ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’ ( pace Paul Ricoeur) that critiqued the triumphalism of previous political projects. The article concludes by connecting this project to the broader development of ‘contemporary political thought’ and reflects on pessimism’s place in politics.

Postmodern Paper Tiger

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-252
Author(s):  
Eric Goodfield
Keyword(s):  
Critical Thinking ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The Political ◽  
Jean Baudrillard ◽  
Postmodern Theory ◽  
Critical Thought ◽  
Postmodern Thought ◽  
Liberal Thought ◽  
The Way

For most contemporary theorists, the death of postmodern thought as a theoretical impulse and critical divide has become a given. Yet, since the end of the 1990s a variety of important strands of social and political thought—queer theory, feminism, and postcolonialism to name but a few—have taken up and advanced poststructuralist emphases on language and discourse that are derivative of postmodern theory. In this context, the article considers two of the most central and original postmodern thinkers, Jean-François Lyotard and Jean Baudrillard, to illustrate the political entanglements of postmodern and liberal thought. Through this investigation the article illuminates the way these authors’ works on the political potencies of language raise important questions for the relevancy of poststructuralist political thought for contemporary critical thinking in the context of the global expanse of neoliberal capital. The article initiates an original dialogue between two poststructuralist authors and raises this to a second engagement with current debates over the crises of critical thought and, by extension, carries contemporary relevance as well.

scholarly journals Désobéissance civile et libéralisme

2013 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 369-396 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manuel Cervera-Marzal
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
Civil Disobedience ◽  
Democratic Legitimacy ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Will ◽  
Martin Luther King ◽  
Liberal Concept ◽  
Established Order ◽  
Liberal Thought

Résumé. Des citoyens peuvent-ils désobéir à la loi, pourtant issue de la volonté majoritaire et de la décision du Parlement légitimement élu, au seul motif qu'elle leur semble injuste ? Face à la pensée conservatrice, tenante de l'ordre établi et réfractaire à la moindre transgression (« mieux vaut une injustice qu'un désordre »), la philosophie libérale contemporaine a fourni une défense de la légitimité démocratique de la désobéissance civile. Cependant, les justifications rawlsienne et habermassienne de la désobéissance civile semblent bien timorées dès qu'on accepte de les comparer à la pensée politique des activistes désobéissants eux-mêmes, à savoir Gandhi, Martin Luther King et Howard Zinn. Cette « pensée désobéissante » méconnue, voire occultée, vient révéler les insuffisances et les présupposés de la conception libérale de la désobéissance civile.Abstract. Can citizens disobey the law, which comes from the will of the majority and the decision of the legitimately elected Parliament, merely because it seems to them unjust? Opposing conservative thought, which defends the established order and condemns any transgression, contemporary liberal thought has provided a defense of the democratic legitimacy of civil disobedience. However, the Rawlsian and Habermasian justifications of civil disobedience seem rather weak when compared to the political thought of disobedient activists themselves, namely Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Howard Zinn. This overlooked “disobedient thought” reveals the shortcomings and assumptions of the liberal concept of civil disobedience.

Simone Weil

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beatrice Marovich
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
The Political ◽  
Sovereign Power ◽  
Bare Life ◽  
Intellectual Curiosity ◽  
Creation Theology ◽  
Simone Weil

Few of Giorgio Agamben’s works are as mysterious as his unpublished dissertation, reportedly on the political thought of the French philosopher Simone Weil. If Weil was an early subject of Agamben’s intellectual curiosity, it would appear – judging from his published works – that her influence upon him has been neither central nor lasting.1 Leland de la Durantaye argues that Weil’s work has left a mark on Agamben’s philosophy of potentiality, largely in his discussion of the concept of decreation; but de la Durantaye does not make much of Weil’s influence here, determining that her theory of decreation is ‘essentially dialectical’ and still too bound up with creation theology. 2 Alessia Ricciardi, however, argues that de la Durantaye’s dismissal of Weil’s influence is hasty.3 Ricciardi analyses deeper resonances between Weil’s and Agamben’s philosophies, ultimately claiming that Agamben ‘seems to extend many of the implications and claims of Weil’s idea of force’,4 arguably spreading Weil’s influence into Agamben’s reflections on sovereign power and bare life.

The Political Thought of George Grant

1991 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 46-68
Author(s):  
H.D. Forbes
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
The Political ◽  
George Grant

Entangling Plato: A Guide through the Political Theory Archive

2021 ◽  
pp. 009059172199807
Author(s):  
Liam Klein ◽  
Daniel Schillinger
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The Political ◽  
Athenian Democracy

Political theorists have increasingly sought to place Plato in active dialogue with democracy ancient and modern by examining what S. Sara Monoson calls “Plato’s democratic entanglements.” More precisely, Monoson, J. Peter Euben, Arlene Saxonhouse, Christina Tarnopolsky, and Jill Frank approach Plato as both an immanent critic of the Athenian democracy and a searching theorist of self-governance. In this guide through the Political Theory archive, we explore “entanglement approaches” to the study of Plato, outlining their contribution to our understanding of Plato’s political thought and to the discipline of political theory.

William Rathbone Greg, Scientific Liberalism, and the Second Empire

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Alex Middleton
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
European Politics ◽  
Second Empire ◽  
Liberal Thought

William Rathbone Greg's name is well known to historians of nineteenth-century Britain, but the content of his political thought is not. This article, based on a comprehensive reading of Greg's prolific published output, has two aims. The first is to pin down his politics. The article positions Greg as a leading spokesman for the rationalistic, antidemocratic strand of mid-Victorian Liberalism. It argues that his thought centered on the idea that politics was a science, and that scientific statesmanship might solve many of the problems of the age. The article's second aim is to show that Greg was a sophisticated thinker on politics overseas. He developed distinctive arguments about the structures of European politics, and especially about France under the Second Empire (1852–70). Greg's writings cast important light on the connections between abstract, domestic, and European issues in less familiar reaches of Liberal thought, and on how Victorian political science grappled with Continental despotism.

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