Expanding Ethics

2018 ◽  
pp. 167-211
Author(s):  
Craig Bruce Smith
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Business Ethics ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Early Republic ◽  
Belief Systems ◽  
Job Applicants ◽  
New Concepts ◽  
The French Revolution

From the aftermath of Yorktown through the rise of political parties in the early republic, this chapter shows that legislation and policy (from the Treaty of Paris to the Constitution to attempts at abolitionism) were based on these new concepts of honor and virtue. It also shows the institutionalizing of egalitarian honor in schools, organizations (like the Society of the Cincinnati), occupations, and politics. It charts the development of business ethics in the form of professional honor for lawyers, doctors, and even job applicants. Most importantly, this chapter engages the new conceptions of honor that developed during the early republic, including the rise to prominence of Franklin’s ascending honor (which in part was adapted into the notion of republican womanhood) and Thomas Jefferson’s version that made honor entirely internal and akin to modern ethics. The chapter examines how these new ideals impacted all classes of society including women and African Americans. While most citizens agreed that honor and virtue were defining elements, they differed greatly on how these concepts related to governance, policy (especially the French Revolution), and society. Contestations over the interpretation of national and personal honor would in turn spark in-fighting, dissention, and revival belief systems, highlighted by the development of political parties.

The French Socialist Opposition in 1969

1969 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 294-307
Author(s):  
Harvey G. Simmons
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Socialist Party ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Deep Roots ◽  
The French Revolution

WHATH AS HAPPENED TO THE FRENCH SOCIALIST PARTY? ONCE ONE of the largest and most influential political parties in France, heir to a tradition dating back to the French Revolution, a party with deep roots in local and national politics, the SFIO decided to dissolve itselfin 1969 and to reconstitute a new socialist party. This new party is to be built on the foundations of the old SFIO in co-operation with a number of clubs, most notably the Convention des Institutions Républicaines (CIR), a federation of clubs recently emerged from the now defunct Federation of the Left (Fédération de la gaucbe démocrate et socialiste, FGDS).

The Voters’ Choice

2021 ◽  
pp. 69-92
Author(s):  
Malcolm Crook
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Local Elections ◽  
The Past ◽  
Electoral Choice ◽  
The Government ◽  
Chamber Of Deputies ◽  
The French Revolution

Designated candidates seeking office play a central role in elections today, so it is a surprise to discover that in the past voters were free to name whom they wished on their ballot papers. In France, their choice was only restricted when declared candidatures were required for election to the Chamber of Deputies after 1889, though this liberty lasted much longer when it came to local elections. This raises the question of how individuals aspiring to office put themselves forward, in the absence of manifestos or publicity, when their talents were supposed to speak for themselves. Indeed, before the French Revolution, and even afterwards, to openly seek election was regarded as a disqualification, though this created confusion as votes were widely dispersed and those elected often declined to serve. Yet the reluctance to abandon this approach was not simply attachment to tradition, rather it constituted an assertion of the voters’ sovereign right to exercise an unfettered electoral choice, and to reject those offered to them as official candidates by the government or as the nominees of political parties.

Political Violence in the Republic of Rome: Nothing New under the Sun

2006 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 491-511 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brenda J. Lutz ◽  
James M. Lutz
Keyword(s):  
Roman Republic ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Political System ◽  
Early Republic ◽  
The Sun ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Government ◽  
The French Revolution

AbstractAt various times the Roman Republic faced outbreaks of domestic political violence, including riots and intimidation, assassinations and conspiracies to overthrow the government. Violence was particularly noticeable in the Early Republic and the Late Republic. These activities were quite similar to the terrorism and violence used by mobs and groups during the French Revolution and the tactics of fascists and leftists in Europe in the 1920s or 1930s. More accurately, the actions of mobs and others during the French Revolution and leftists and fascists in Europe were very similar to the techniques used in the Roman political system in the last five centuries BCE.

Political Ideologies in the Age of Globalization

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manfred B. Steger
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Belief Systems ◽  
Social Imaginaries ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Political Ideologies ◽  
Political Roles ◽  
The Status ◽  
Core Concepts ◽  
The French Revolution

This chapter reflects on why and how the forces of globalization have altered the conventional political belief systems codified by social power elites since the French Revolution. In order to explain these dramatic transformations, the chapter discusses at some length the crucial relationship between two ‘social imaginaries’—the national and the global—that underpin the articulation of political ideologies. The chapter suggests a new typology of three contemporary ‘globalisms’ based on the disaggregation of new ideational clusters not merely into core concepts, but, perhaps more dynamically, into various sets of central ideological claims that play crucial semantic and political roles. These three globalisms—market globalism, justice globalism, and religious globalism—represent a set of political ideas and beliefs coherent and conceptually thick enough to warrant the status of mature ideologies.

scholarly journals The French Revolution: The Origins of a Modern Liberal Political Culture?

2006 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 177-193
Author(s):  
James A. Leith
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
General Will ◽  
Constituent Assembly ◽  
The People ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The French Revolution

Abstract Recently it has been argued that the chief legacy of the French Revolution was that it provided a prototype of a modern liberal political culture. This paper argues that, while some of the features of such a political culture did appear during the revolutionary decade, the revolutionaries never discarded an ancient conception of sovereignty which insisted that political will had to be unitary and indivisible. This led to rejection of political parties, legitimate opposition, and pluralism. The debates in the Constituent Assembly already reveal these illiberal tendencies. The Declaration of the Rights of Man, with its apparent emphasis on individual rights, might seem to have counterbalanced these tendencies, but two clauses inserted at the insistence of Abbé Sieyès vested sovereignty in the nation and asserted that law must be the expression of the general will. These clauses transformed the rights of the individual into the rights of the Leviathan. The insistence on a unified will was revealed in the allegorical figures, symbols, and architectural projects of the period. The figure of the demigod Hercules, which came to represent the People, conveyed a monolithic conception of the citizenry in complete contradiction to the conception of them in a pluralistic liberal democracy. Also the fasces, the tightly bound bundle of rods with no power to move independently, suggested a conception of the body politic at odds with that of a variegated liberal society. If such unity did not exist, it was to be created by the rituals performed in Temples décadaires every tenth day, the republican Sunday. Those who would not join this vast congregation would be excised or coerced. Moreover, throughout the decade there were various theories of revolutionary government at odds with liberal ideals: the unlimited power of a constituent body, the concentration of power in a tribune or dictator, or the dictatorship of a committee. Such notions, too, were important for the future.

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