scholarly journals Architecture as a tool for aesthetic and political thought

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 397-404
Author(s):  
Thomas Symeonidis
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
The Political ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Main Hypothesis ◽  
Scale Type ◽  
Type Form ◽  
Shed Light

Despite the usual approach of architecture in terms of conception, design and construction of the built environment in our paper we will argue that architecture can be used as a tool for aesthetic and political thought. To this end we will rely on definitions of architecture emphasising either its aspects of principle (arché) or construction either its relational character. In this regard, architecture will be used as a means for conceptualising and thinking issues at the intersection of the two pivotal notions of political theory - equality and justice. Our main hypothesis will be that in the contemporary aesthetic regime the thought of aesthetics is indissosiable from politics endorsing in that way the main aspects of Jacques Rancière's relevant contributions. In our analysis, we will first show the affinity between the political and aesthetic thought and then elaborate on aspects of architecture such as scale, type, form, diagram, history and hierarchy in order to show the functioning of architecture as a tool of thought. To this end we will provide a solid scheme and definitions of thought drawing from contemporary philosophy. By establishing analogies between the process of thought and the processes of architecture we will eventually attempt to show that architecture can be used in an inverted manner so as to shed light on matters of aesthetic and political theory and practice.

Entangling Plato: A Guide through the Political Theory Archive

2021 ◽  
pp. 009059172199807
Author(s):  
Liam Klein ◽  
Daniel Schillinger
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The Political ◽  
Athenian Democracy

Political theorists have increasingly sought to place Plato in active dialogue with democracy ancient and modern by examining what S. Sara Monoson calls “Plato’s democratic entanglements.” More precisely, Monoson, J. Peter Euben, Arlene Saxonhouse, Christina Tarnopolsky, and Jill Frank approach Plato as both an immanent critic of the Athenian democracy and a searching theorist of self-governance. In this guide through the Political Theory archive, we explore “entanglement approaches” to the study of Plato, outlining their contribution to our understanding of Plato’s political thought and to the discipline of political theory.

HOPE AND MEMORY IN THE THOUGHT OF JUDITH SHKLAR

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 591-620 ◽  
Author(s):  
KATRINA FORRESTER
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Harvard University ◽  
The Political ◽  
American Liberalism ◽  
Judith Shklar ◽  
Exclusive Focus

Current interpretations of the political theory of Judith Shklar focus to a disabling extent on her short, late article “The Liberalism of Fear” (1989); commentators take this late essay as representative of her work as a whole and thus characterize her as an anti-totalitarian, Cold War liberal. Other interpretations situate her political thought alongside followers of John Rawls and liberal political philosophy. Challenging the centrality of fear in Shklar's thought, this essay examines her writings on utopian and normative thought, the role of history in political thinking and her notions of ordinary cruelty and injustice. In particular, it shifts emphasis away from an exclusive focus on her late writings in order to consider works published throughout her long career at Harvard University, from 1950 until her death in 1992. By surveying the range of Shklar's critical standpoints and concerns, it suggests that postwar American liberalism was not as monolithic as many interpreters have assumed. Through an examination of her attitudes towards her forebears and contemporaries, it shows why the dominant interpretations of Shklar—as anti-totalitarian émigré thinker, or normative liberal theorist—are flawed. In fact, Shklar moved restlessly between these two categories, and drew from each tradition. By thinking about both hope and memory, she bridged the gap between two distinct strands of postwar American liberalism.

The Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt Edited by Dana Villa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. 320p. $55.00 cloth, $20.00 paper.

2002 ◽  
Vol 96 (3) ◽  
pp. 627-628
Author(s):  
Jeffrey C. Isaac
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
The Political ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Cambridge University

This is an excellent collection of essays about the political thought of Hannah Arendt. Its editor, Dana Villa, has assembled a first-rate group of scholars, many of whom are already well known for their contributions to Arendt studies. The volume is distinguished by the high quality of its contributions and by the effort of so many of its contributors to go beyond standard lines of exegesis to raise interesting questions and to press the boundaries of Arendt commentary. Arendt's work has received a great deal of attention from political theorists in recent years. The Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt makes clear the richness of her thinking, the range of her concerns, and the ability of her writings to inspire creative commentary and constructive political theory.

BEYOND UNITY

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 383-388 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristina Beltrán
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The Political ◽  
Du Bois ◽  
Race Politics

Lawrie Balfour and Robert Gooding-Williams have given us powerful new works of scholarship on the political thought of W. E. B. Du Bois. Not only do these publications enrich the field of Du Bois scholarship, they exemplify the exciting possibilities at the intersection of political theory and race politics.

A Political Theory of Decolonization

2019 ◽  
pp. 14-36
Author(s):  
Adom Getachew
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Black Atlantic ◽  
International Order ◽  
The Political ◽  
International Integration ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Anticolonial Nationalism

This chapter sketches a political theory of decolonization that rethinks how anticolonial nationalism posed the problem of empire to expand our sense of its aims and trajectories. Drawing on recent histories of international law as well as the political thought of Black Atlantic worldmakers, it reconceives empire as processes of unequal international integration that took an increasingly racialized form in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Confronted with a racialized international order, anticolonial nationalists turned to projects of worldmaking that would secure the conditions of international nondomination. It argues that attention to the specificity of political projects that emerged out of the legacy of imperialism provides a postcolonial approach to contemporary cosmopolitanism. A postcolonial cosmopolitanism entails a critical diagnosis of the persistence of empire and a normative orientation that retains the anti-imperial aspiration for a domination-free international order.

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.

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.

Leon Battista Alberti’s Porcaria coniuratio

2020 ◽  
pp. 72-112
Author(s):  
Marta Celati
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political View ◽  
Literary Forms ◽  
Political Perspective ◽  
Stylistic Elements ◽  
Classical Models ◽  
Political Background ◽  
Shed Light

The second chapter focuses on Leon Battista Alberti’s Porcaria coniuratio, the historical epistle on Stefano Porcari’s conspiracy against pope Nicholas V written immediately after the thwarted plot in 1453. The political perspective underlying Alberti’s text does not reflect a merely propagandistic view, but conversely is the expression of a complex and ambiguous political reading of the events. The analysis aims to shed light on Alberti’s unsettled political view, by examining not only the ideological standpoint that emerges in the epistle, but also the rhetorical and stylistic elements that permeate this work. In particular, specific attention is paid to both the choice of the epistolary genre, which is employed to produce a historiographical work and is combined with other literary forms, and the studied use of various classical models (Sallust, satirical authors, Cicero, etc.). The examination of this text, which is read in connection with other works by Alberti, reveals the humanist’s view on historiography, which occupies a pivotal position in the lively fifteenth-century debate on historical writing. Moreover, the analysis shows how the complex rhetorical and stylistic framework of the Porcaria coniuratio implicitly conveys Alberti’s uneasy political thought, which proves to be completely distant from any sympathy with the plotter. Although the epistle is informed by a questioning approach, it reveals the humanist’s disapproval of any attempt at overthrowing established governments. It also betrays Alberti’s problematizing attitude towards political power and his unresolved view on the intricate Roman political background.

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