scholarly journals The Place of Slavophilism in the Typology of Conservatism

Stasis ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 13-40
Author(s):  
Andrey Teslya

In the history of political thought, Russian Slavophilism of the period from 1840s till 1880s has two established traditions of interpretation: as a variant of conservative ideology and as one form of Russian liberalism of the 1840s, along with Westernism (in this case, the later history of Slavophilism, i.e. the period between 1860s and 1880s, is viewed as a departure from initially liberal stances. Beginning with the framework of Andrzej Walicki, the article attempts to demonstrate the underpinnings of this peculiar duality of evaluations. Slavophilism is understood as liberal conservatism; the article also uncovers the structural conditions, on which the liberal component of Slavophile views are based. Special attention is given to the analysis of processes, which led to the dominance of the interpretation, according to which Russian Slavophilism is a conservative ideology, where the liberal component is defined as situational. The reason for such a reading are rooted in the peculiar position of Russian liberalism in the late XIX century, when the nationalism agenda was interpreted as entirely pertaining to the conservative side of the political spectrum.

Stasis ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 13-40
Author(s):  
Andrey Teslya

In the history of political thought, Russian Slavophilism of the period from 1840s till 1880s has two established traditions of interpretation: as a variant of conservative ideology and as one form of Russian liberalism of the 1840s, along with Westernism (in this case, the later history of Slavophilism, i.e. the period between 1860s and 1880s, is viewed as a departure from initially liberal stances. Beginning with the framework of Andrzej Walicki, the article attempts to demonstrate the underpinnings of this peculiar duality of evaluations. Slavophilism is understood as liberal conservatism; the article also uncovers the structural conditions, on which the liberal component of Slavophile views are based. Special attention is given to the analysis of processes, which led to the dominance of the interpretation, according to which Russian Slavophilism is a conservative ideology, where the liberal component is defined as situational. The reason for such a reading are rooted in the peculiar position of Russian liberalism in the late XIX century, when the nationalism agenda was interpreted as entirely pertaining to the conservative side of the political spectrum.


Author(s):  
Duncan Kelly

This chapter binds the book together, recapitulating its general argument, and offering pointers as to how the study relates to some contemporary questions of political theory. It suggests that a classification that distinguishes between Weber the ‘liberal’, Schmitt the ‘conservative’ and Neumann the ‘social democrat’, cannot provide an adequate understanding of this episode in the history of political thought. Nor indeed can it do so for other periods. In this book, one part of the development of their ideas has focused on the relationship between state and politics. By learning from their examples, people continue their own search for an acceptable balance between the freedom of the individual and the claims of the political community.


2014 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanne Paul

AbstractAlthough the Greek concept ofkairos (καιρός)has undergone a recent renewal of interest among scholars of Renaissance rhetoric, this revival has not yet been paralleled by its reception into the history of political thought. This article examines the meanings and uses of this important concept within the ancient Greek tradition, particularly in the works of Isocrates and Plutarch, in order to understand how it is employed by two of the most important political thinkers of the sixteenth century: Thomas Elyot and Niccolò Machiavelli. Through such an investigation this paper argues that an appreciation of the concept ofkairosand its use by Renaissance political writers provides a fuller understanding of the political philosophy of the period.


1982 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 331-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. G. A. Pocock

There are, perhaps, in the end only two ways in which a historian may undertake the study of a document in the history of political thought. One may consider it as a text, supposed to have been intended by its author and understood by its reader with the maximum coherence and unity possible; the historian's aim now becomes the reconstitution of the fullest possible interpretation available to intelligent readers at the relevant time. Alternatively, one may consider it as a tissue of statements, organized by its writer into a single document, but accessible and intelligible whether or not they have been harmonized into a single structure of meaning. The historian's aim is now the recovery of these statements, the establishment of the patterns of speech and thought forming the various contexts in which they become intelligible, and the pursuit of any changes in the normal employment of these patterns which may have occurred in consequence of the statements’ being made.


Author(s):  
Burke A. Hendrix ◽  
Deborah Baumgold

Ideas travel. The history of political thought as it has generally been studied is deeply interested in these forms of travel and in the transformations that occur along the way. Ideas of a social contract first crystallize in the England of Hobbes and Locke, and then travel in branching ways to Jefferson’s North America, Robespierre’s France, Kant’s Prussia, and elsewhere. In their travels, these ideas hybridize with others, are repurposed in new social contexts, and often take on political meanings deeply divergent from what their originators intended. Students of the history of political thought are acutely aware of these complexities in the development of European political ideas during the early modern and modern eras, given the centrality of such ideas for shaping the political worlds in which we now live....


Author(s):  
Laura Brace

This book asks what it means to describe someone as a slave and explores the political dimensions of that question. It argues against the search for a transhistorical and timeless definition of slavery, and offers a critical interrogation of the dominant liberal discourse on slavery from the Enlightenment to the present. It pays particular attention to the meanings of the slavery / freedom binary and to the connections between the past and the present in understanding ‘old’ and ‘new’ slavery. The book is about what it means to think about slavery as a historical process and as a political relation, both in the history of political thought and in present debates about trafficking and incarceration. It argues that we need to bring the concept of slavery back into our understandings of freedom, labour and belonging, and unravel the assumptions behind the meanings we ascribe to personhood, sub-personhood and humanity. From Aristotle and the idea of natural slavery, through Locke’s conception of civil society, Hegel’s master-slave dialectic and J.S. Mill’s analogy of slavery and marriage to the discourse of modern abolition and the idea of trafficking as slavery, the book interrogates what it means to think about the idea of freedom as the opposite of slavery, and draws attention to the significance of the tensions, ambiguities and silences that surround that conception.


1963 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jose Arsenio Torres

Contemporary discussions of political forms exhibit a concern with constitutional procedures and values seldom encountered in the history of political thought. The search for a parallel development would require a turning to the classical period of Greek and Roman philosophy and politics. In the light of contemporary constitutional self-consciousness, as well as of the sustained inquiry of the ancient world into the various forms of polity, pure and degraded, ideal and historical, the political analyses of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries assume the character of politico-ideological crystallizations of the breakdown of the ancien regime. There are, of course, fundamental underlying differences between these three periods of political reflection. The ancient Greek analyses, although centering on Greek realities and problems, bear, prima facie, a style of detached theory intended to be taken as philosophy, no more, no less.


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