scholarly journals Tacit consent in the doctrines of John Locke and John Rawls

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (19) ◽  
pp. 115-124
Author(s):  
Dragana Obačkić
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Tacit Consent ◽  
Different Types ◽  
The Will

Political theory often raises the question of how to establish an authority that is legitimate, the latter implying that the said authority does not threaten the autonomy of the will of an individual, which, according to modern political theory, is a condition allowing us speak about authority over citizens. Otherwise, we could talk about subjects of that authority, which is not relevant for this paper. In order to preserve the autonomy of the will of an individual, it is necessary that the decision-makers of the authorities voluntarily consent to them. There are different types of consent in political theory and practice, among which are explicit and tacit consent. This paper deals with the phenomenon of tacit consent, more precisely with an analysis of the concept of tacit consent in the doctrines of John Locke and John Rawls.

Ignes fatui or apt similitudes ?- the apparent denunciation of metaphor by Thomas Hobbes1

2005 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Musolff
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
Cognitive Metaphor ◽  
Scholarly Publications ◽  
Metaphor Theory ◽  
George Lakoff ◽  
History Of ◽  
Metaphor Use

AbstractThomas Hobbes's condemnation of metaphor as one of the chief "abuses of speech" in Leviathan occupies a famous (to some critics, infamous) place in the history of thinking about metaphor. From the viewpoint of cognitive metaphor theory, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1980,1981) have depicted Hobbes and John Locke as the founding fathers of a tradition in which "metaphor and other figurative devices [became] objects of scorn". Similar verdicts on Hobbes and on Locke as arch-detractors of metaphor can be found in many other accounts of the history of semantics. However, these indictments stand in marked contrast to a considerable number of scholarly publications that have shown that Hobbes's assessment of rhetoric and metaphor is far from a 'straightforward' denunciation of anything non-'literal'. In this paper I shall use results of this research in an analysis of key-passages from Leviathan to re-assess Hobbes's views on metaphor. I shall demonstrate that some critics of Hobbes have overlooked crucial differentiations (in particular, of different kinds of metaphor and similitude) in his concept of metaphor as a key-issue of public communication. Furthermore, I shall argue that Hobbes's foregrounding of the 'dangers' of metaphor use in political theory and practice should be interpreted as an acknowledgement rather than as a denial of its conceptual and cognitive force.

Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Liberalism

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Weinstein
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Value Pluralism ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
Linguistic Turn ◽  
Classical Utilitarianism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The Right

Anglo-American political theory, especially contemporary analytical liberalism, has become too self-referential and consequently insufficiently attentive to its own variegated past. Some analytical liberals fret about whether the good or the right should have priority, while others agonize about whether liberalism is compatible with value pluralism and with multiculturalism. Too many contemporary analytical liberals see liberalism as beginning with Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, as next reformulated classically by John Stuart Mill, and then as receding into the wilderness of mere history of political thought thanks to the linguistic turn and the vogue of emotivism before being resurrected so magnificently by John Rawls. The Rawlsian liberal tradition severely marginalizes new liberals and idealists such as T. H. Green, Bernard Bosanquet, L. T. Hobhouse, D. G. Ritchie, and J. A. Hobson. New liberals and idealists alike wrote highly original political philosophy, parts of which contemporary liberals have repeated inadvertently with false novelty. In Rawls's view, classical utilitarianism improved intuitionism by systematizing it but by sacrificing its liberal credentials.

Language and the State in Western Political Theory

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Ives
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Language Use ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Language Ideologies ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Language Policy And Planning ◽  
Johann Gottfried Herder ◽  
Policy And Planning ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Modern Nation State

This chapter examines the relationship between language policy and planning (LPP) and political theory, specifically the major figures of modern European political philosophy: Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Johann Gottfried Herder. This chapter illustrates how these four figures’ diverse philosophical conceptions of language have differing implications for government policy aimed at language usage, and how these implications are evident in current LPP theory and practice. Although Locke and Herder are widely seen as mainstays of modern Eurocentric language ideologies central to the armature to the modern nation-state, it is also fruitful to pay greater attention to the tensions and contradictions within what has been depicted as a single ideology. Thus, the purpose here is to analyze connections between specific conceptions of language and various implied or explicit understandings of the relationship(s) between language use and government activity.

Environmental Political Theory and the Liberal Tradition

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Piers Stephens
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Environmental Concern ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Nature Protection ◽  
Liberal Tradition ◽  
Self Development ◽  
History Of

This chapter discusses the history of environmental concern within the liberal tradition from the latter’s roots onwards, moving from the private property orientated “old liberalism” of John Locke into the self-development orientated “new liberalism” of John Stuart Mill, then onwards into American pragmatism and the neutralist liberalism of John Rawls and his contemporary followers. This leads into an overview of the current debate, which started in the 1990s, over the possibilities of synthesizing environmentalist goals of sustainability and nature protection with some variant of liberalism. The chapter concludes with an argument that yokes the new liberal concern with self-development to the environmentalist emphasis on nature protection, arguing that the continued existence of relatively untransformed nonhuman nature is a vital precondition and assistance to human imaginative development and thus freedom.

On the Will of the People: Notes on the Political “Theory” of Populism

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Claus Offe
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Conflicts Of Interest ◽  
Political Rhetoric ◽  
The Political ◽  
The People ◽  
National People ◽  
The Will

The “will of the (national) people” is the ubiquitously invoked reference unit of populist politics. The essay tries to demystify the notion that such will can be conceived of as a unique and unified substance deriving from collective ethnic identity. Arguably, all political theory is concerned with arguing for ways by which citizens can make e pluribus unum—for example, by coming to agree on procedures and institutions by which conflicts of interest and ideas can be settled according to standards of fairness. It is argued that populists in their political rhetoric and practice typically try to circumvent the burden of such argument and proof. Instead, they appeal to the notion of some preexisting existential unity of the people’s will, which they can redeem only through practices of repression and exclusion.

From Crusades to Colonization: Violence in Secular and Religious Political Theory

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Xavier Scott
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Modern Philosophy ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
International Law ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
State Power ◽  
Charles Taylor ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Beliefs And Values

This paper examines the transition in political philosophy between the medieval and early-modern periods by focusing on the emergence of sovereignty doctrine. Scholars such as Charles Taylor and John Rawls have focused on the ability of modern-states to overcome conflicts between different religious confessionals. In contrast, this paper seeks to examine some of the peace-promoting features of Latin-Christendom and some of the conflict-promoting features of modern-secular states. The Christian universalism of the medieval period is contrasted with the colonial ventures promoted by the Peace of Westphalia. This paper’s goal is not to argue that secularism is in fact more violent than religion. Rather, it seeks to demonstrate the major role that religion played in early modern philosophy and the development of sovereignty doctrine. It argues against the view that the modern, secular state is capable of neutrality vis-à-vis religion, and also combats the view that the secular nature of modern international law means that it is neutral to the different beliefs and values of the world’s peoples. These observations emphasize the ways in which state power and legitimacy are at the heart of the secular turn in political philosophy. 

Domestic Colonies

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Arneil
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Mentally Ill ◽  
Abraham Lincoln ◽  
The State ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Civil Society Organizations ◽  
Alexis De Tocqueville ◽  
Modern History ◽  
Peter Kropotkin

Colonization is generally defined as a process by which states settle and dominate foreign lands or peoples. Thus, modern colonies are assumed to be outside Europe and the colonized non-European. This volume contends such definitions of the colony, the colonized, and colonization need to be fundamentally rethought in light of hundreds of ‘domestic colonies’ proposed and/or created by governments and civil society organizations initially within Europe in the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries and then beyond. The three categories of domestic colonies in this book are labour colonies for the idle poor, farm colonies for the mentally ill, and disabled and utopian colonies for racial, religious, and political minorities. All of these domestic colonies were justified by an ideology of domestic colonialism characterized by three principles: segregation, agrarian labour, improvement, through which, in the case of labour and farm colonies, the ‘idle’, ‘irrational’, and/or custom-bound would be transformed into ‘industrious and rational’ citizens while creating revenues for the state to maintain such populations. Utopian colonies needed segregation from society so their members could find freedom, work the land, and challenge the prevailing norms of the society around them. Defended by some of the leading progressive thinkers of the period, including Alexis de Tocqueville, Abraham Lincoln, Peter Kropotkin, Robert Owen, Tommy Douglas, and Booker T. Washington, the turn inward to colony not only provides a new lens with which to understand the scope of colonization and colonialism in modern history but a critically important way to distinguish ‘the colonial’ from ‘the imperial’ in Western political theory and practice.

Two Models of Pluralism and Tolerance

1992 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Will Kymlicka
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Religious Pluralism ◽  
Religious Diversity ◽  
Individual Autonomy ◽  
Individual Rights ◽  
Group Rights ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Social Pluralism

AbstractIn his most recent work, John Rawls argues that political theory must recognize and accomodate the ‘fact of pluralism’, including the fact of religious diversity. He believes that the liberal commitment to individual rights provides the only feasible model for accomodating religious pluralism. In the paper, I discuss a second form of tolerance, based on group rights rather than individual rights. Drawing on historical examples, I argue that this is is also a feasible model for accomodating religious pluralism. While both models ensure tolerance between groups, only the former tolerates individual dissent within groups. To defend the individual rights model, therefore, liberals must appeal not only to the fact of social pluralism, but also to the value of individual autonomy. This may require abandoning Rawls’s belief that liberalism can and should be defended on purely ‘political’, rather than ‘comprehensive’ grounds.

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