Questiones super I-VII libros Politicorum

This volume is the first complete critical edition of Peter of Auvergne’s Questiones super I-VII libros Politicorum. The Questiones was produced at the Faculty of Arts of Paris sometime between late 1291 and 1296 and is the earliest surviving commentary in question form on Aristotle’s Politics. As the introduction explains, the Questiones was philosophically innovative and became the most influential question-commentary on the Politics in the Middle Ages. The volume also includes a critical edition of an earlier oral report (reportatio) of Peter’s teaching on Books I-II and part of III which became the basis for those sections of the Questiones. This volume is of interest to scholars of medieval philosophy and the history of political thought and is a reference point for future research on the medieval reception of Aristotle’s Politics and medieval Aristotelian practical philosophy more broadly.

Overcoming the Other America: José Martí's Immanent Critique of the Unionist Paradigm

This article offers a new interpretation of the Cuban intellectual José Martí's international political thought. It argues that Martí's analysis of early US imperialism and call for Spanish American unity are best understood as an immanent critique of the “unionist paradigm,” a tradition of international political thought that originated in the American independence movements. Martí recognized the impediments that racism had placed in the way of both US and Spanish American efforts to stabilize the hemisphere's republics by uniting them under regional institutions. He argued that, in his own time, Anglo-Saxon supremacism had deprived US-led Pan-Americanism of all legitimacy, causing a crisis of international political order in the Americas. In the context of this crisis, he developed a revised, antiracist unionism that, he argued, would free Spanish America's republics from imperial aggression and interstate conflicts, making the region a global model of stable and inclusive self-rule.

Miti e utopie della modernità nelle Riflessioni sulla violenza di Georges Sorel

This paper analyses the work Riflessioni sulla violenza written by Georges Sorel and published in 1908. The principal aim of this paper is to present the deep relationship between myth, violence and politics in order to reevaluate how irrational forces have guided social movements and revolutions. The distinction between the notions of force and violence introduces the central thesis of Georges Sorel’s political thought, which is called anarcho-syndacalism. More specifically, George Sorel puts together Marx and Bergson in order to develop a severe criticism of the Third Republic and to theorize the role of violence in the transition from capitalism to socialism. Through the myth of the general strike, Sorel introduces his philosophical perspective on social struggles against the parlamentarism.

Machiavelli’s Political Thought and Its Inspiration—Text Analysis Based on the Prince

Machiavelli is one of the founders of modern bourgeois political theory. The birth of his masterpiece The Prince creates a new pattern of western political thought, which marks the first time that political science has escaped from the bondage of religion and ethics. At the same time, Machiavelli is also named “Machiavelliism”. The so-called “no means to achieve the purpose” has become the greatest misunderstanding of Machiavelli. Based on the prince analysis of Machiavelli’s political thought, around his national unity of Italy launched the national regime, military, monarchy and other aspects of thinking.

Demagogues and Demagoguery in Hellenistic Greece

This paper introduces scholars of Greek political thought to the continued existence of the phenomenon of demagoguery, or ‘(mis-)leadership of the people’, in the Hellenistic period. After summarizing Classical elite discourse about demagoguery, I explore three areas in which political leaders continued to run afoul of elite norms in Hellenistic democratic poleis: 1) political persecution of the wealthier members of a political community; 2) ‘pandering to’ the people in a way considered infra dignitatem; and 3) stoking bellicosity among the common people. I show that considerable continuities link the Classical and Hellenistic periods and that demagoguery should be approached as a potential window onto ‘popular culture’ in Greek antiquity.

Interplay of Religion and Philosophy in al-Tawḥīdī’s Political Thought and Practical Ethics

Although modern scholars tend to be sceptical of the role of religion in the formation of ethical and political thought in the Būyid period (334/945–440/1048), this article argues that both philosophy and religion, as envisioned by al-Tawḥīdī and his contemporaries, played an integral role in its creation. The analysis shows that modern concepts such as ‘humanism’ and ‘political philosophy,’ as applied to these authors and their texts, are not felicitous to the social and intellectual contexts in which they were produced. Through analysing al-Tawḥīdī’s ethical and political thought, certain modern assumed dichotomies, including scientific enquiry versus religious teaching, theoretical ethics versus practical ethics, and the social versus the personal, are reconsidered. The article argues that a contextual approach to al-Tawḥīdī and his peers should consider the encyclopaedic system of knowledge that shaped their thought and the interdisciplinary nature of their work where religious, philosophical, and literary elements are intertwined. The article highlights al-Tawḥīdī’s political thought, his active role as an intellectual and his attempt to disseminate knowledge based on two main beliefs: the role of knowledge linked to action in social life and reform, and a solid sense of the religious and moral responsibility of the scholar to offer advice to the leaders of the community. The concepts that he uses, such as maḥabba (love) and ṣadāqa (friendship) with its four foundational components, namely the soul (nafs), intellect (ʿaql), nature (ṭabīʿa), and morals (khulq), addressed social and political challenges in Būyid society and produced alternative moral and intellectual responses to sectarianism, social disintegration and the decline in morality, which were characteristic of the Būyid era. Keywords: Ethical political thought, Būyid, Humanism, Political philosophy, ʿIlm (Knowledge), ʿAmal (action), Ṣadāqa (friendship), al-Tawḥīdī, Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ

Territorial and Non-territorial Aspects in the Autonomist Proposals of the Sudeten German Party, 1937–38

The article focuses on two sets of autonomist demands that the far-right Sudeten German Party (SdP) in Czechoslovakia put forward during 1937–38. Its central thesis being that both sets were marked by a profoundly close interplay between territorial and non-territorial approaches at accommodating national diversity, it sets to explore this relationship, highlighting the underlying dynamic. Although the 1937 Volksschutzgesetze posed as an ostensibly “pure” case of non-territorial autonomy, whereas the 1938 Skizze über Neuordnung der innerstaatlichen Verhältnisse entailed major territorial provisions, in both cases the practical end-goal implied territorial autonomy. A closer look into their inner logic and intellectual origins however, also reveals a shared, essentially non-territorial underpinning. While the SdP agenda was firmly centered on national territory, its specific völkisch and organicist understanding of nationality manifested a clear preponderance of non-territoriality. Both sets of autonomist demands may thus be treated as a potentially maximalist combination of territorial and non-territorial arrangements resting on a fundamentally non-territorial notion of Volkspersönlichkeit. Encompassing all the members of the national group, the latter was simultaneously conceived as the basic carrier of political will. Volksschutzgesetze and Skizze thus represented clear examples of illiberal (re-)conceptualization of national autonomy, informed by contemporary völkisch sociological, legal, and political thought.