Western Political Thought Research Articles

The Theory of State Emergence in Western Political Thought: Between Theoretical and Practical Rooting

Objectives:This study aimed at identify the state's emergence theories in Western political thoughts. Methods The study employs three interrelated approaches to examine the research problem. The approaches are historical, descriptive-analytical approach, and the structural-functional. Results: The study concluded with a set of results, the most important of which is although intellectual propositions and theories through which the pioneers of Western political thought presented to justify state's existence; however, this did not contribute to developing a single intellectual theory that would be agreed on by Western thinkers Conclusions: the study attempts to reveal whether theorizing the origin of the state in Western political thought contributes to developing a theory that provides an explanation of state's emergence. Meanwhile, the study sought to identifying the roots of state's concept, its constituent elements, and its functions. In the same context, it examines state's practical efforts, propositions, and intellectual theories through which Western thinkers tried to reach a clear interpretation of the idea of the state.

EL ORIGEN DEL “CONTRATO SOCIAL” EN EL "תרב"

That of “the social contract” is an idea that has been used to explain the western political thinking until today. From the 17th century onwards, that idea has been applied to the study of politics according to a rational or empiric paradigm (Hobbes vs. Locke). When searching the origin we discover that it is, in fact, Jewish theological. This proves the importance of the western Jewish-Christian thinking. This essay explains the origin of the “social contract”. It also describes its basic elements to be able to understand the importance of this idea nowadays. Our explanation will apply our model of performance of ideology to ideography. The texts from the Psalms will be used as our pivotal ideographic reference.

Family Between the Individual and Political Society. A Study On Hobbes's Theory of the Family

In modern Western political thinking, the family does not feature in the relationship between individuals and the State. The article argues that it is Hobbes who made a decisive contribution to this circumstance by making individuals autonomous and denaturalizing the family. He enables individuals to rid themselves of paternal dominion and even reverses the traditional relationship between family and State. Family and State are both essentially artificial, and the first is based on the second. From this point of view, what Hobbes presents is a dynamic state of nature, which makes it possible to answer the criticism of patriarchal thinkers and today's feminists. Furthermore, the article reveals the significance of Hobbes's theory of the family for the formation of modern individuals and their political life.

Post-Saidian Studies of Eighteenth-Century European Literature and Culture

Abstract: A review of Noel Malcom's Useful Enemies: Islam and the Ottoman Empire in Western Political Thought, 1450–1750; Daniel O'Quinn's Engaging the Ottoman Empire: Vexed Mediations, 1690–1815; and Samara Anne Cahill's Intelligent Souls?: Feminist Orientalism in Eighteenth-Century Literature.

Noel Malcolm, Useful Enemies: Islam and the Ottoman Empire in Western Political Thought, 1450-1750,

Ottoman historians in the last decade have focused a lot on Ottoman political thought. This means how the thoughts and writings of different Ottoman scholars, which mainly included the religious strata and other intellectuals, influenced political thought and political decisions in the Empire. Now with the book written by Oxford Professor Noel Malcolm, we have another side of that story.

Useful Enemies: Islam and the Ottoman Empire in Western Political Thought, 1450–1750, by Noel Malcolm

Useful Enemies: Islam and the Ottoman Empire in Western Political Thought, 1450–1750, by Noel Malcolm

Noel Malcolm, Useful Enemies: Islam and the Ottoman Empire in Western Political Thought, 1450–1750

Noel Malcolm, <i>Useful Enemies: Islam and the Ottoman Empire in Western Political Thought, 1450–1750</i>

A Semantic Analysis of the Notion of Consultative Democracy: Xieshang Minzhu (协商民主) in the Chinese Official Political Discourses

Abstract Chinese politics are characterized by the complex issues of a large population and centralized political powers, which offers a distinct political model from the Western models. However, the last two decades have witnessed a sharp collision between Chinese and Western political thinking. In response, domestic authors have increasingly focused on the indigenization (bentuhua 本土化) of Chinese political theories and, therefore, defend the concept of politics with Chinese characteristics. In this article, the authors focus on the discourse of “deliberative democracy” within the Chinese language, namely, Xieshang minzhu 协商 民主. In the current literature, almost no scholarly discussions have explored the semantics of the notion of Xieshang minzhu within Chinese politics. This article engages with this issue, both as a subject and a methodology, to better understand the political language that has been used in the official discourses in China Official propaganda mainly includes five of China’s most authoritative official media (newspapers): People’s Daily (Renmin ribao 人民 日报), Guangming Daily (Guangming ribao 光明 日报), Xinhua Daily(Xinhua ribao 新华 日报), China Comment (Banyutan 半月谈), Qiushi (Qiushi 求是, formerly known as Red Flag (Hongqi 红旗)), Xi Jinping’s series of important speech databases and official documents on the subject of Xieshang or Xieshang minzhu in the Party-Building Database. by 1) establishing a textual corpus by collecting relevant data into the Chinese and English groups through keywords; 2) conducting a statistical analysis based on the Word Cloud and Diagram analyses; and 3) using Word2Vec to calculate the relationship among other sub-keywords. The purpose of this contribution is to differentiate Xieshang minzhu as adopted by Chinese official discourses embedded in the logic of political reforms from the Western discourses. The semantic analysis presented here also serves as a methodology that systematically develops a conceptual model of xieshang, which further clarifies the misconceptions and errors in the existing literature. The authors also provide an outline of the polysemic notion of deliberative democracy, which not only exists within an authoritarian regime but is also present in other forms and other languages (such as Chinese). This serves to further maintain the legitimacy of the “socialist democracy with Chinese characteristics.”

동·서양 정치사상이라는 이분법을 넘어서 한국정치사상의 모색을 위한 시론: 근대성의 형성과 변용 그리고 그 전환의 문제의식을 중심으로

동·서양 정치사상이라는 이분법을 넘어서 한국정치사상의 모색을 위한 시론: 근대성의 형성과 변용 그리고 그 전환의 문제의식을 중심으로

Useful Enemies: Islam and The Ottoman Empire in Western Political Thought, 1450–1750, written by Noel Malcolm, (2019)

Useful Enemies: Islam and The Ottoman Empire in Western Political Thought, 1450–1750, written by Noel Malcolm, (2019)

Justice in Western Political Thought (John Rawles model)

John Rawls is one of the most prominent Western philosophers of contemporary political thought in the 20th century. Through his writings he tried to establish the foundations on which the theory of justice was built in practice and in order to achieve and establish the foundations of justice among peoples. Justice is one of the most important values of civil society, The conflicts of individuals in all their colors and controls the laws of civil society and the construction of the theory is consistent with the results of the public beliefs of what is fair and what is not fair and makes this theory a pattern stands on what is said by the doctrine of public utility and the consequences of a process that can serve as a framework for social life valid and John Rawls believes that justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as is the truth of intellectual systems. Whatever the theory is elegant and economical, it has to be rejected if it is not so honest. The rules and institutions, however efficient and well-formed, must be reformed or revoked if they are unfair.

Racial regimes, comparative politics, and the problem of judgment

ABSTRACTThis review essay examines the practice of judgment that characterized the subfield of comparative politics from its origins in openly racist ideas of the capacity for self-rule through to its twentieth-century behavioralist and positivist iterations. Though continually faced with new political phenomena that called into question its inherited criteria of judgment, comparative politics tended to practice determinative rather than reflective judgment, that is, to subsume the particulars of other cultures under known rules. Further, the essay examines the racialized conception of self-rule described by Michael Hanchard as embedded in a larger problem of Western political thinking: the flight from action into rule and tendency to think of politics wholly in terms of ruling and being ruled.

Christopher Lynch and Jonathan Marks, Eds., Principle and Prudence in Western Political Thought

Christopher Lynch and Jonathan Marks, Eds., Principle and Prudence in Western Political Thought

Response to Martin Breaugh’s review of Disobedience in Western Political Thought: A Geneology

Response to Martin Breaugh’s review of <i>Disobedience in Western Political Thought: A Geneology</i>

Liberty and Property: A Social History of Western Political Thought from Renaissance to Enlightenment. By Ellen Meiksins Wood. London: Verso, 2012. 336p. $26.95.

Liberty and Property: A Social History of Western Political Thought from Renaissance to Enlightenment. By Ellen Meiksins Wood. London: Verso, 2012. 336p. $26.95.

Antik Yunan Dönemi Karşılaştırmalı Siyaset Biliminde Siyasal Sistem Sınıflandırmalarına Genel bir Bakış

The popularity of Comparative Political Science, as a sub-discipline of the Political Science, is on a continuous increase today. This discipline receives many attentions as it provides detailed knowledge on politic systems of various countries. The historical background of such an area, which is drawing more and more interest in our day, is traced back to very old eras. The first political system classification made in the Comparative Political Science appeared in the Ancient Greek era. For this reason, the objective of this paper is to analyze, within frameworks of certain philosophers, the political system classifications in the era of Ancient Greece, which was included in the western political thinking. Firstly the basic concepts of Comparative Political Science and political system are touched upon, and then political system classifications are analyzed with examples of Herodotus, Plato and Aristotle.

Labour’s utopias revisited

This paper revisits a book I published 20 years ago. Labour’s Utopias – Bolshevism, Fabianism, Social Democracy (Routledge, 1992) began from the proposition that utopia was a ubiquitous figure in Western political and social thinking. On the Left the common sense has often been that reform and revolution are but different proposed roads to the same utopian end. Labour’s Utopias shows that this is not the case: Bolshevism, Fabianism and social democracy actually embody different ends. Revisiting the text 20 years later, my sense is that its most interesting and significant weakness lies not in its diagnosis of utopia, but in its failure to differentiate significantly between labour and its intellectual representatives. I hint at the issue of ‘social’ or ‘socialist ventriloquism’, but fail to follow it through. The issue of representation, or claims to representation, remains under-illuminated, as does the possibility that there are significant differences between working-class and middle-class utopias.

Francis Oakley, Empty Bottles of Gentilism: Kingship and the Divine in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (to 1050). (The Emergence of Western Political Thought in the Latin Middle Ages, 1.) New Haven, Conn., and London: Yale University Press, 2010. Pp. xiv, 306. $38.

Francis Oakley, <i>Empty Bottles of Gentilism: Kingship and the Divine in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (to 1050)</i>. (The Emergence of Western Political Thought in the Latin Middle Ages, 1.) New Haven, Conn., and London: Yale University Press, 2010. Pp. xiv, 306. $38.

Citizens to Lords: A Social History of Western Political Thought From Antiquity to the Middle Ages

AbstractThis article seeks to contextualise Ellen Meiksins Wood’s recent survey of classical and medieval political thought within the context of some of the prevailing approaches to the history of political thought. After an initial elaboration of Wood’s ‘political-Marxist’ approach to issues of historical development and contextualisation, I emphasise what is significant about Wood’s specific contribution to the study of Greek, Roman and medieval political ideas in particular, as well as to the history of political thought in general.

Western Political Thought in Dialogue with Asia. Edited by Takashi Shogimen and Cary J. Nederman. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008. 386p. $85.00.

Western Political Thought in Dialogue with Asia. Edited by Takashi Shogimen and Cary J. Nederman. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008. 386p. $85.00.