scholarly journals Arendt’s Break with the Liberal Imaginary of Society

2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gorazd Kovačič
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
John Locke ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Thomas Paine ◽  
Liberal Tradition ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Political Struggles ◽  
Mode Of Being

The first part of the article analyses the imaginary of the characteristics and form of (civil) society as developed in early modern liberal political philosophy, especially by John Locke and Thomas Paine. It uses different contemporary receptions of the key authors of this tradition, namely the liberal reception of John Keane, which emphasizes the theoretical distinction between civil society and the state, the materialist reception of Ellen Meiksins Wood, which contextualizes political ideas in the political struggles and class interests of the time, and the reception of Foucault, which focuses on the development of biopolitical governmentality. The article finds that the liberal tradition imagined (civil) society as a given and self-regulating sphere that does not require interference from the state. A socio-historical presupposition of this imaginary was the economic sovereignty of individuals, and it overlooked the relations of domination and exploitation. In its second part, the article presents Hannah Arendt’s critical concept of society. She did not conceptualize society as a given totality and in a spatial way, but used it as a qualifier of a specific, impoverished mode of being, in particular to analyse the situation and perspective of minorities.

“I'd make thee eat the mischief thou hast vented”: Discourse of Law in Ben Jonson's Catiline His Conspiracy

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-45
Author(s):  
Akihiko Shimizu
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Legal Discourse ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
State Of Emergency ◽  
Gunpowder Plot ◽  
Effective Use ◽  
Legal Procedures ◽  
The Way

This essay explores the discourse of law that constitutes the controversial apprehension of Cicero's issuing of the ultimate decree of the Senate (senatus consultum ultimum) in Catiline. The play juxtaposes the struggle of Cicero, whose moral character and legitimacy are at stake in regards to the extra-legal uses of espionage, with the supposedly mischievous Catilinarians who appear to observe legal procedures more carefully throughout their plot. To mitigate this ambivalence, the play defends Cicero's actions by depicting the way in which Cicero establishes the rhetoric of public counsel to convince the citizens of his legitimacy in his unprecedented dealing with Catiline. To understand the contemporaneousness of Catiline, I will explore the way the play integrates the early modern discourses of counsel and the legal maxim of ‘better to suffer an inconvenience than mischief,’ suggesting Jonson's subtle sensibility towards King James's legal reformation which aimed to establish and deploy monarchical authority in the state of emergency (such as the Gunpowder Plot of 1605). The play's climactic trial scene highlights the display of the collected evidence, such as hand-written letters and the testimonies obtained through Cicero's spies, the Allbroges, as proof of Catiline's mischievous character. I argue that the tactical negotiating skills of the virtuous and vicious characters rely heavily on the effective use of rhetoric exemplified by both the political discourse of classical Rome and the legal discourse of Tudor and Jacobean England.

scholarly journals The role of the factors determining national character in building civil society

2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (69) ◽  
pp. 774-795
Author(s):  
Serhii O. Komnatnyi ◽  
Oleg S. Sheremet ◽  
Viacheslav E. Suslykov ◽  
Kateryna S. Lisova ◽  
Stepan D. Svorak
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Climatic Conditions ◽  
The State ◽  
National Character ◽  
The Political ◽  
Main Research ◽  
Mechanism Of Impact ◽  
Two Stages ◽  
The Impact

The article deals with the mechanism of impact of sociopsychological phenomena such as the national character and the political mentality in the construction and functioning of civil society. It aims to show the impact of climate, religion, and the perception of happiness on the state of civil society through details of a national nature. The main research method is to compare data from global research on the state of civil society with data from climatic conditions, dominant religions, and happiness indices. The article proves coincidently that these factors are reflected in such essential characteristics of civil society as "openness" and "closed-mindedness". The interaction between the national character and the construction of civil society has two stages. It is concluded that the results obtained are important to evaluate the prospects for the construction and development of civil society in different countries and regions of the world. Further research in this direction involves the study of other aspects of the impact of national character and political mindset on the functioning of civil society.

Calvinists, Arminians, Socinians: Popular Sovereignty and Natural Rights in Early Modern Political Thought

2019 ◽  
pp. 21-35
Author(s):  
James Moore
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
The Political ◽  
Reformed Church ◽  
Hugo Grotius

This chapter focuses upon natural rights in the writings of Hugo Grotius, the Levellers and John Locke and the manner in which their understanding of rights was informed by distinctive Protestant theologies: by Arminianism or the theology of the Remonstrant Church and by Socinianism. The chapter argues that their theological principles and the natural rights theories that followed from those principles were in conflict with the theology of Calvin and the theologians of the Reformed church. The political theory that marks the distinctive contribution of Calvin and the Reformed to political theory was the idea of popular sovereignty, an idea revived in the eighteenth century, in the political writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Civil Society, Social Movements and the Irish State

2010 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peadar Kirby
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Political System ◽  
Free Market ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Partnership ◽  
Corporate Profit ◽  
Fianna Fail

This article develops a theoretical framework to consider the symbiotic relationship between civil society, social movements and the Irish state. Civil society, largely through social movements, laid the foundations for an independent Irish state in the half-century before independence. Following independence, the nature of the civil society–state relationship changed; civil society became much more dependent on the state. The article empirically traces the nature of society's relationship to the state since the 1920s, and examines the nature of the political system and its major political party, Fianna Fáil, the structure of the economy, and the dominance of particular understandings of the role of civil society and the nature of society itself. The period since the advent of social partnership in 1987 is examined; this period marks a new attempt by the state to co-opt organised civil society making it subservient to its project of the imposition on society of the requirements of global corporate profit-making. The more forceful implementation of a global free-market project by the Irish state since the 1980s, and the co-option of organised civil society into this project, has left huge space for an alternative to emerge, the potential of which was indicated by the success of the ‘No’ campaign in the 2008 Lisbon referendum campaign.

WILLIAM MANNING AND THE POLITICAL THEORY OF THE DEPENDENT CLASSES

2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 331-360 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALEX GOUREVITCH
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Common Good ◽  
The Political ◽  
Early American ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
The Social ◽  
Republican Liberty ◽  
Modern Republicanism ◽  
American Farmer

This article reappraises the political ideas of William Manning, and through him the trajectory of early modern republicanism. Manning, an early American farmer writing in the 1780s and 1790s, developed the republican distinction between “the idle Few” and “the laboring Many” into a novel “political theory of the dependent classes.” On this theory, it is the dependent, laboring classes who share an interest in social equality. Because of this interest, they are the only ones who can achieve and maintain republican liberty. With this identification of the interests of the dependent classes with the common good, Manning inverted inherited republican ideas, and transformed the language of liberty and virtue into one of the first potent, republican critiques of exploitation. As such, he stands as a key figure for understanding the shift in early modern republicanism from a concern with constitutionalism and the rule of law to the social question.

scholarly journals Cacophony of Contestation: Forms of Voice and the Warsaw Taxi Market as a Field of Struggles

2016 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 259-295 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcin Serafin
Keyword(s):  
Field Theory ◽  
Political Action ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Market Institutions ◽  
Political Field ◽  
Political Struggles ◽  
Social Fields ◽  
Taxi Market ◽  
Different Levels

AbstractThis article analyses the political struggles in and around the Warsaw taxi market. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of social fields and incorporating Albert Hirschman’s metaphor of political action as voice, I capture the position-taking of members of the taxi field, highlighting the different levels of involvement in the struggles. By distinguishing between different forms of voice—murmuring, jeering, whispering, hissing, grunting, and shouting—I show that the struggles that shape the Warsaw taxi market take the form of struggles over classifications and struggles over opportunities for exchange. I describe how market institutions are established and contested within the political field; enforced and contested within the bureaucratic field; and interpreted and contested within the juridical field. I thus contribute a field theory that investigates the links between fields and especially between economic fields and the state. This article draws on fieldwork conducted in Warsaw between November 2012 and June 2013.

scholarly journals Hegel's Citizen

2004 ◽  
Vol 25 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 41-53
Author(s):  
Dudley Knowles
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
The State ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Acting Out ◽  
Full Understanding ◽  
Free Agency ◽  
Ethical Status

Hegel's account of freedom is complex and difficult. It integrates a doctrine of free agency, a theory of social freedom, and a self-determining theodicy of Spirit. To achieve full understanding, if full understanding is possible, the student must both disentangle and articulate the components, and then fit together the separate pieces into an intelligible whole. And what is true of the whole is true of the parts; each element is in turn complex and controversial.In this paper, I want to investigate one very small aspect of this picture — the political phenomenology of the citizen of Hegel's rational state. Whether we are delineating the contours of free agency or re-telling Hegel's story about the modes of freedom constitutive of the institutions of the modern state, sooner or later we shall have to interpret Hegel's description of the self-consciousness of the typical citizen. We shall have to give some account of what citizens take to be their political standing, and show how both this standing and the citizens' understanding of it contribute to freedom.This should not be a controversial claim. To paraphrase portions of the famous statement at PR §260: The state is the actuality of concrete freedom. Members of families integrated into civil society knowingly and willingly acknowledge their citizenship and actively pursue the ends of the state. They do not live as private persons merely; in understanding, endorsing and acting out their ethical status as citizens they achieve such subjective fulfilment as isnecessaryfor them to be truly free.

scholarly journals Nazione e Stato nella storia d'Italia

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandro Rogari
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
First World War ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Post War ◽  
First World ◽  
The Way

The book delineates the emergence of a unitary state from the bedrock of a nation formed over centuries. It retraces the major advances in the integration between the state and civil society achieved in the first fifty years after unification, and the disastrous consequences wrought by the First World War and by Fascism. It underscores the way in which the post-war democratic revival rewound the virtuous process of construction of a state capable of expressing the Italian "plural nation". Despite this, it also stresses the way in which the ethical deterioration and the corruption of the political and administrative class that came to a head during the last twenty years of the twentieth century have again brought to the fore the problem of the construction of shared institutions.

scholarly journals POLITICAL SYSTEM AS A CONDITION FOR DEVELOPMENT OF STATE AND LAW

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (6) ◽  
pp. 1803-1805
Author(s):  
Dimitar Spaseski
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Political System ◽  
Strong Relationship ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
The People ◽  
Democratic Societies ◽  
The Government

The state has a central place in the political system. Through its structure and positioning the country has the strength to be a unifier of society against its overall division of the various classes and layers, ethnic, cultural and other groups. The legitimacy of all these processes is given by laws that determine the trajectory of all processes and the conditions under which the processes take place. The state, by adopting the highest legal acts such as: the constitution and the laws, achieves one of its most important functions, which is the management of society. The state directs society to promote development, but also punishes and sanction infringements and mistakes. Depending on who exercises power in the state, i.e. whether it belongs to the people, to an individual or to a powerful group, the political system can be determined. The political system in itself includes the overall state relations, the relations in society and the guidelines for the conduct of the policy of the state. A state in which the government is elected by the people through direct elections certainly fulfills the basic requirement for the development of a stable civil society. The political system is one of the sub-systems of the entire civil society. The political system is specific in that all the activities and relations of which it is composed are directed to the state and its functions. The structure of the political system is composed of political and legal norms, political knowledge, political culture and political structure. These elements confirm the strong relationship between the state, the law and the political system. Developed democratic societies can talk about a developed political system that abounds with political culture and democracy. It is the aspiration of our life. Investing in democratic societies we invest in the future of our children. If we separate the subjects of the political system, we will determine that the people are the basis of the political system. All competencies intertwine around people. Political systems are largely dependent not only on the political processes that take place in them every day, but also on the economic performance and the economic power of the states. Economic stagnation or regression in some countries often threatens democracy and its values. We often forget that we cannot speak of the existence of a functioning and well-organized democratic political system without its strong economic support. In conditions of globalization, it is necessary to pay special attention to international positions as the main factor of the political system, for the simple reason that the functions of the state in this process are increasingly narrowing.

scholarly journals Trzy razy res publica: Thomas Smith, Gasparo Contarini i Wawrzyniec Goślicki

2018 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-104
Author(s):  
Iwona Barwicka-Tylek
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Political System ◽  
The State ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Liberal Tradition ◽  
State And Society ◽  
Civic Virtues ◽  
The Republic

The interest in Republican thought is on the increase again, now chiefl y thanks to the works of Quentin Skinner and the circle of so-called neo-Republicans (or civic Republicans) concentrated around Phillip Petit. They stress the peculiar perspective that Republicans have had on the state and society. This is seen in their distinctive view of freedom as the absence of domination, or attachment to the category of citizenship and the related role of civic virtues. These special characteristics justify, in their opinion, distinguishing the Republican trend of political thought (historically and now) from other positions, especially the liberal tradition. Accepting generally the above opinion, the paper draws our attention to signifi - cant differences within Republicanism itself. To do this, it cites the three conceptions of republic that were formed in the 16th century and refer to England (Sir Thomas Smith), Venice (Gasparo Contarini) and Poland (Wawrzyniec Goślicki). Although they were formed around the same time and have common roots mainly in Aristotle’s philosophy and Roman Republican ideas, each of the three perspectives views the republic from a different angle. While all three authors believe the coexistence of three elements – orderly institutions, wise law and virtuous citizens – to be crucial for any state, they rely in their deliberations on one element only. This has an impact on the way their conceptions fi nally appear and on the conclusions for the political system they draw. And so, Smith gives precedence to institutions, Contarini emphasises the key role of law and Goślicki gives primacy to virtue, concentrated in an ideal senator. Taking notice of such differences among thinkers openly admitting to an attachment to the Republican tradition should make us even more careful so as not to oversimplify it as if it were uniform and completely cohesive. Further, the awareness of such differences may provoke refl ection how justifi ed the use of the Republican banner is in respect of so different authors as, for instance, Machiavelli and Montesquieu.

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