Ethos: The Great Sceptical Guide

2019 ◽  
pp. 215-259
Author(s):  
Peter S. Fosl
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Aesthetic Judgment ◽  
Common Life ◽  
Hermeneutic Philosophy ◽  
Politics And Religion ◽  
The Way

Custom is the second dimension of the Pyrrhonian Fourfold, and Hume positions custom and habit centrally in his thought. Chapter Five unpacks and weighs the philosophical import of Hume’s thinking about custom and habit. Chapter Six describes the way Hume’s use of custom and habit inform Hume’s theory of general ideas and anticipates hermeneutic philosophy, as well as howHume’s Copy Principle enacts the historicity of Pyrrhonian recollection. The text goes on to show how custom and habit inform Hume’s ideas about nature, contingency, reasoning, moral and aesthetic judgment, and the human self. The chapter then moves into an investigation of Hume’s political theory and his ideas about religion. The chapter shows how the complex and sometimes apparently inconsistent weave of Hume’s thinking about politics and religion is coherently organized around central features of scepticism. With an eye towards the various virtues and pathologies of politics and religion, Chapter Six explores Hume’s critical ideas about opinion, true religion, moderation, tranquillity, balancing, common life, metaphysics, faction, enthusiasm, and superstition.

Between History and Nature

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anik Waldow
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Literary Translation ◽  
Scientific Models ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
Hermeneutic Philosophy ◽  
History Of ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
The Way

From within the philosophy of history and history of science alike, attention has been paid to Herder’s naturalist commitment and especially to the way in which his interest in medicine, anatomy, and biology facilitates philosophically significant notions of force, organism, and life. As such, Herder’s contribution is taken to be part of a wider eighteenth-century effort to move beyond Newtonian mechanism and the scientific models to which it gives rise. In this scholarship, Herder’s hermeneutic philosophy—as it grows out of his engagement with poetry, drama, and both literary translation and literary documentation projects—has received less attention. Taking as its point of departure Herder’s early work, this chapter proposes that, in his work on literature, Herder formulates an anthropologically sensitive approach to the human sciences that has still not received the attention it deserves.

Feminism

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy J. Hirschmann
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Opening Up ◽  
The Way

The topic of feminism within the history of political philosophy and political theory might seem to be quite ambiguous. Feminists interested in the history of political philosophy did not urge the abandonment of the canon at all, but were instead protesting the way in which political philosophy was studied. They thus advocated “opening up” the canon, rather than its abolishment. There have been at least five ways in which this “opening” of the canon has been developed by feminists in the history of political philosophy. All of them do not only demonstrate that the history of political philosophy is important to feminism; they also demonstrate that feminism is important to the history of political philosophy. A two-tiered structure of freedom, with some conceptualizations of freedom designated for men and the wealthy, and other conceptualizations designated for laborers and women, shows that class and gender were important dimensions to be explored when examining the history of political philosophy. One way in which feminism has opened up the canon is its relevance to contemporary politics.

The Logic of Emotionality

PMLA ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 130 (5) ◽  
pp. 1457-1466 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katrin Pahl
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Queer Studies ◽  
The Way

I would like to suggest that we use the term emotionality instead of emotions. this will avoid the taxonomic impulse at work when we take specific emotions and name them as objects of our inquiries. These taxonomies render emotions more stable than they are and create a hierarchy of the most talked-about or salient emotions (like melancholy, for queer studies, or fear, for political theory). More abstract than emotions, the term emotionality can take on the quality of a name and thus allow us to think together with emotionality the way one may think something through with another person. This essay will define emotionality as minimally as possible so that its particulars are allowed to shift and change.

The Scholastic and Conciliar Roots of Samuel Rutherford’s Political Philosophy

2020 ◽  
pp. 208-226
Author(s):  
Simon J. G. Burton
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Way

Samuel Rutherford’s Lex Rex remains a source of perennial fascination for historians of political thought. Written in 1644 in the heat of the Civil Wars it constitutes an intellectual and theological justification of the entire Covenanting movement and a landmark in the development of Protestant political theory. Rutherford’s argument in the Lex Rex was deeply indebted to scholastic and Conciliarist sources, and this chapter examines the way he deployed these, especially the political philosophy of John Mair and Jacques Almain, in order to construct a covenantal model of kingship undergirded by an interwoven framework of individual and communal rights. In doing so it shows the ongoing influence of the Conciliarist tradition on Scottish political discourse and also highlights unexpected connections between Rutherford’s Covenanting and his Augustinian and Scotistic theology of grace and freedom.

Liberty in a Culturally Plural Society

1983 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 91-107
Author(s):  
L. S. Lustgarten
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Legal Doctrine ◽  
Legal Scholar ◽  
Plural Society ◽  
Legal Thinking ◽  
The Way

I want to begin this paper by recalling a once-lively school of English political and legal thinking which has fallen undeservedly into neglect. I refer to the pluralists, notably the lawyer F. W. Maitland, the religious scholar J. N. Figgis, and, early in their careers, the political theorists Harold Laski and G. D. H. Cole. All were influenced by the writings of the German legal scholar Otto von Gierke, which Maitland as editor and translator had first introduced into England. The pluralists' concerns were at once political and legal; virtually alone among English writers in this century until the 1970s, their work avoided the barrenness that comes of treating political theory and jurisprudence as unrelated enterprises. I shall describe the problems that preoccupied them and some of their resultant theories, and also the way in which specifically legal doctrine was both a target of their criticism and an important element in their thinking.

7. St Augustine

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean Bethke Elshtain
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Just War ◽  
Human Person ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
The World ◽  
Moral Orientations ◽  
The Way

This chapter examines Augustine of Hippo's political thought. After providing a brief biography of St Augustine, it considers the fate of his texts within the world of academic political theory and the general suspicion of ‘religious’ thinkers within that world. It then analyses Augustine's understanding of the human person as a bundle of complex desires and emotions as well as the implications of his claim that human sociality is a given and goes all the way down. It also explores Augustine's arguments regarding the interplay of caritas and cupiditas in the moral orientations of persons and of cultures. Finally, it describes Augustine's reflections on the themes of war and peace, locating him as the father of the tradition of ‘just war’ theory.

scholarly journals Who’s the realest?

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 281-290
Author(s):  
Derek Edyvane
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Realism ◽  
Original Essays ◽  
The Way

The revival of interest in realism in political theory is comprehensively explored in Politics Recovered, a major new volume of 14 original essays edited by Matt Sleat. Wide-ranging and engaging throughout, the book takes in both supporters and critics of the realist turn and addresses neglected questions of the political application of realism and of the connection between contemporary political realism and the classical IR tradition of realist thought. But I argue that the book also prompts some troubling questions about the ultimate coherence of the realist orientation and about the way in which realists interpret the limits of political theory and of political theorists.

Liberalism and Liberty: the Fragility of a Tradition

1988 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 207-223
Author(s):  
Keith Graham
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Liberal Theory ◽  
Liberal Political Theory ◽  
The Way

My discussion in this lecture is structured as follows. In section 1 I consider the nature of philosophical enquiry and its affinity to liberalism. In section 2 I lay out some of the basic components of liberal theory and explore their interrelations. In section 3 I discuss two challenges to liberalism: one concerning the conception of liberty which it involves and one concerning the way in which it introduces the idea of legitimate political authority. In section 4 I suggest that these problems, to do with the values of liberalism, arise on the basis of a prior conception of individuals which is in need of modification. In a brief concluding section 5 I indicate the need for a post-liberal political theory.

Methodology in Karl Marx

1970 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph O'Malley
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Karl Marx ◽  
Normative Concept ◽  
Social Nature ◽  
Political Criticism ◽  
Political Journalism ◽  
Systematic Effort ◽  
And Function ◽  
The Way

The development of Marx's mature social and political theory may be traced back in his writings to his political journalism of 1842–43, where a germinal doctrine on man's social nature supports a normative concept of the nature and function of political institutions. But his developing theory first achieved a measure of systematic rigor in his Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right. This work, Marx's earliest major theoretical writing, has lately received increased attention from scholars. My purpose here is to complement existing studies by highlighting certain methodological features of the work, specifically the way in which Marx combined elements of philosophical and political criticism in a systematic effort to develop his own political theory in opposition to the method and institutional conclusions of Hegel.

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