Work Of Political Theory Research Articles

Poetics as a Presupposition of Philosophy: Hannah Arendt's Denktagebuch

Abstract The Denktagebuch, kept by Hannah Arendt from 1950 until 1973, is not only a fascinating parergon, or secondary work, containing many reflections, observations, and notes on other articles that had not, or not yet, taken on their finished form as essays or books. It presents the foundations and premises of her writing that originate from her notebooks—foundations in a literal sense, i.e., those writings that preceded the author's work in political theory. Several entries contain methodological reflections, explanations of definitions, and analyses of philosophical texts. These are self-commentaries on her own publications, such as reflections on the ambiguous and often…

Social exclusion as conceptual and grammatical metaphor: a cross-genre study of British policy-making

This article analyses `social exclusion' as conceptual and grammatical metaphor, discussing the concept's ideological impact on British policy-making. It complements work in political theory by employing a cognitive critical view of discourse and metaphor. The study draws on five different genres and analyses them quantitatively and qualitatively, looking at lemmas and their grammatical functions, clusters and collocations, and metaphoric expressions. In the data, society is conceptualized as a bounded space with a normative centre and a problematic periphery, with movement towards the centre as the aim of policy-making. Conceptual and grammatical metaphor interact because society is metaphorized as a bounded space, while the collocation `social exclusion' represents an abstract agentless nominalization and is re-concretized through a conceptual metaphor that casts it as a malleable object. This interplay of different forms of metaphor frames the discourse of social exclusion and orients political thought and action towards the reproduction, rather than transformation, of inequality.

Drawing up The Jewish Social Contract

FOLLOWING THE PUBLICATION in 2000 of his Covenantal Rights: A Study in Jewish Political Theory and in 2005 of The Jewish Social Contract: An Essay in Political Theology, the American Canadian rabbi, scholar, and theologian David Novak has emerged as perhaps the most important political thinker within the Jewish tradition in the still very young twenty-first century. With his customary display of vast erudition and incisive thinking Novak has made an impressive endeavor in these books to formulate distinctively Jewish but broadly applicable answers to some of the age-old questions of political philosophy. For this effort he has already received much acclaim.1Novak's goals are certainly very ambitious. Far from being a mere academic exercise, his theological-political project represents a bold attempt to replace modern liberalism. Rejecting what he sees as the social contract foundations on which it based as well as the political theories that have been erected upon them, he offers the blueprints for a better world, one in which the deficiencies of liberalism will remedied but where the admitted benefits it has conferred upon humankind will still retained. Whenever a thinker of Novak's stature promises to do so much, it behooves us to listen carefully.Covenantal Rights, Novak indicates, a work of political theory and The Jewish Social Contract articulates a political theology. What exactly he considers to the difference between these two disciplines difficult to discern. But it quite clear that his political theory completely intertwined with his theology, just as his political theology deeply theoretical. And, if we disregard their respective subtitles, it also quite clear what place each of his two most recent books occupies in his overall project. Covenantal Rights seeks mainly to locate the foundation of human rights, properly understood, in men's covenantal relationship with God. The Jewish Social Contract aims above all to explain now modern polities can best sustained and utilized if they are conceived not as conglomerations of isolated individuals but as the products of social contracts agreed upon by disparate but mutually accommodating covenantal communities. Novak's theoretical efforts will no doubt attract the attention of many Jews who are ill at ease with modern liberalism but averse to anything that would tend to undermine its greatest achievements, especially its guarantee of religious freedom. Ultimately, however, his reasoning can fully persuasive to only a small sector of the Jewish people. For Novak, a self-described traditionalist Jew, bases most of his positive recommendations on dogmatic premises that less traditional Jews simply cannot accept. And the political theology with whick he wishes to replace liberalism rests on a belated and inconsistent appropriation of ideas that are only justifiable on the basis of what he considers to his liberal adversaries' invalid assumptions. It provides, in the final analysis, no solid justification for the preservation of religious freedom and consequently of very doubtful use to the Diaspora Jews it primarily meant to serve.DOGMATIC FOUNDATIONSDavid Novak rejects the idea of the state of nature as a hypothetical-that is, fictitious, even mythical condition.2 He faults the modern social contract theory that takes this idea as its starting point both for its lack of any and ontology and for its essential inutility (JSC, 19). It is, at bottom, a way of thinking that is insufficient to protect us from the anarchy most of us correctly fear.3 Rejecting the social contract theorists' focus on the primacy of individuals, Novak emphasizes the primacy of community, something that can be really located in history-especially in Jewish history (JSC, 19). For Novak, Jewish above all the record of his people's interaction with the God who rules the entire universe.The real history to which Novak refers hardly distinguishable from the biblical narrative, taken quite literally. …

Politics and Civilization: Recent Works in Political Theory

Politics and Civilization: Recent Works in Political Theory

The Global Sphere: Peter Sloterdijk’s Theory of Globalization

The Global Sphere: Peter Sloterdijk’s Theory of Globalization

The Name And Nature of Leviathan: Political Symbolism and Biblical Exegesis

Why did Thomas Hobbes give the title Leviathan to his major work of political theory? On the face of it, the answer to this question is clearly and sufficiently provided in the text itself. In the ...

The Ethics of Immigration

This review essay examines recent work in political theory on the ethics of immigration admissions. It considers arguments put forward by Michael Walzer, Peter Meilaender and David Miller, among others, for state control of borders. Such arguments tend to appeal to the value of political communities and/or the exclusion rights of democratic associations, and I argue that neither of these are successful. Turning to work by Joseph Carens, Phillip Cole, Michael Dummett and others who advocate open or much more open borders, the article considers various arguments that would support this stance, including appeals to freedom of movement, utilitarianism and social justice. I argue that rights to immigration need embedding in global principles of resource redistribution. In the conclusion I sketch a cosmopolitan approach to immigration by which impartial criteria such as population density and gross domestic product would determine how many migrants states have a duty to admit.

What Kind of Democrat was Spinoza?

Spinoza’s Ethics is rarely read as a work of political theory. Its formidable geometric structure and its author’s commitment to a kind of metaphysical determinism do not seem promising materials from which to fashion a theory of democratic self-government. Yet impressions can mislead. A close reading of the Ethics reveals it to be an impassioned, deeply political book. Its aim is not only to liberate the individual from false beliefs and systems of power but also to enable us to act in concert as members of a democratic community. Above all, the work represents a celebration of individuality and the joys of life in all its plenitude. The Ethics provides Spinoza’s clearest answer to the question “What is a free people ( libera multitudo )?” only briefly alluded to at the end of his unfinished Political Treatise.

TOCQUEVILLE IN THE POLITICAL ARENA ACTOR OR ANALYST?

The blurbs on the jacket of this book are unusually misleading. A U.S. senator avers that it ‘conveys a sweep of historical analysis that gives us deep insight… into the American character’, and ‘sheds light on America's present and possible future as well as its past’. Since it contains virtually no historical or sociological evidence about the United States, it is hard to see how it might do this. One Harvard professor calls it ‘a major work of political theory’, and another ‘an enduring work of political theory in its own right’. But while the author conveys his disaffection with contemporary American democracy, he nowhere clearly and succinctly formulates anything that might reasonably be called a theory. A Johns Hopkins professor thinks that it ‘shows us how pertinent Tocqueville remains for democrats today’. Incidentally, it may perhaps do this, though this is hardly the author's intent, since he emphasizes the archaic and feudal quality of Tocqueville's final account of democracy.

Conscience and Community: Revisiting Toleration and Religious Dissent in Early Modern England and America By Andrew R. Murphy. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001. 337p. $45.00.

Political theorists interested in liberalism often fall into one of two quite different camps. There are those (call them the “analytic” school) who engage in arguments designed to justify or criticize various accounts of justice, legitimacy, and the like, and on the other hand, there are those (call them the “historical” school) who aim at providing a rich historical account of the processes through which such concepts developed in the modern age. Rawls and Dworkin as opposed to Pocock and Skinner, if you will. In my view, the most interesting and ultimately fruitful work in political theory is done by those who practice a mixture of the two approaches. Two prime examples would be Jeremy Waldron and Charles Taylor. Andrew Murphy's first book is a highly interesting and very promising exemplar of this mixed approach. I have no doubt but that “pure” historians will question the novelty of his account of arguments over toleration in the seventeenth century, or that “pure” analysts will question the relevance of that account to the more analytical positions with regard to the contemporary concerns he stakes out in the latter portion of the book. But I found it to be one of the great strengths of his book that he does try to look at contemporary issues with an eye toward the historical context out of which they emerged. I found my own understanding of contemporary normative arguments about toleration, religious freedom, and liberal public reason enriched and deepened by a reading of Murphy's clear and lively account of the seventeenth-century arguments.

Reconciliation or Identity in Australia

The struggle by indigenous peoples to assert their rights against the continuing oppression of colonial societies is the source of much contemporary global conflict. Liberaldemocratic states like Australia have managed to contain open violence in that struggle, increasingly by shifting it into a seemingly larger debate about national identity. This article evaluates the Australian debate about Aboriginal reconciliation, drawing on work in political theory to suggest that even a generous revisiting of national identity will impair the selfdetermination of the country's indigenous peoples. The possibility that reconciliation could be a process of justice is overwhelmed by an emphasis on positive nationalism.

How to avoid a coup d'état: The Federalist on the American constitution

SUMMARY In this article Jack Pole considers whether the Constitution of the United States, as drafted in the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 could be regarded as the result of a coup d'état, since the original remit of the Convention had been to modify the existing Confederation of independent states, while the outcome was a constitution for a new sovereign, federal state. The article is based on the use of the collection of essays that were later published collectively as The Federalist to illustrate the thinking of the Convention leaders. It is important that The Federalist was not a work of political theory, but a collection of the ideas of Hamilton, Madison and Jay, which were written in response to developments with the aim of persuading the public to vote for ratification. The central problem for the authors was to balance their wish for a strong central government against the widespread contemporary belief, rooted in Whig thinking, that a strong central government was the most dangerous of all threats to individual liberties. The authors, collectively ‘Publicus’, begin with an orthodox view of sovereignty as ‘indivisible’: but this view was modified in face of strong Anti-Federalist attacks on ‘consolidation’. Key issues were open to later judicial interpretations. The article suggests that, quite apart from the complete absence of armed coercion on the Convention of 1787, the results of its deliberation cannot be seen as the result of any kind of coup.

‘Now a New Kingdom of Femininity is Begun’

Abstract Though it has been virtually ignored by historians of political thought, Christine de Pizan's The Book of the City of Ladies(1405) is the first work of political theory on the grand scale by a woman. It is a serious analysis of the nature of political reality, and it offers a remedy common in the Western political tradition the creation of a kallipolis, a utopian “city in words,” to serve as a guide to political thought and practice. Though written in the form of a medieval allegory, The Book of the City of Ladiesis remarkably modern in its elevation of individual reason, its analysis and critique of the social construction of private and public gender roles, and its hard-headed analysis of the use of power in political life. The book functions as a manual for princesses, in fact as a manual of empowerment for all women, and in its substance and its use of esoteric literary techniques can be fruitfully compared to Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince.

Milton and the Revolutionary Reader.

The English Revolution was a revolution in reading, with over 22,000 pamphlets exploding from the presses between 1640 and 1661. What this phenomenon meant to the political life of the nation is the subject of Sharon Achinstein's book. Considering a wide range of writers, from John Milton, Thomas Hobbes, John Lilburne, John Cleveland, and William Prynne to a host of anonymous scribblers of every political stripe, Achinstein shows how the unprecedented outpouring of opinion in mid-seventeenth-century England created a new class of activist readers and thus helped to bring about a revolution in the form and content of political debate. By giving particular attention to Milton's participation in this burst of publishing, she challenges critics to look at his literary practices as constitutive of the political culture of his age. Traditional accounts of the rise of the political subject have emphasized high political theory. Achinstein seeks instead to picture the political subject from the perspective of the street, where the noisy, scrappy, and always entertaining output of pamphleteers may have had a greater impact on political practice than any work of political theory. As she underscores the rhetorical, literary, and even utopian dimension of these writers' efforts to politicize their readers, Achinstein offers us evidence of the kind of ideological conflict that historians of the period often overlook. A portrait of early modern propaganda, her work recreates the awakening of politicians to the use of the press to influence public opinion.

Distributive Justice: What the People Think

This article attempts to bring together in a creative way two bodies of literature that often seem to run on parallel tracks with only the barest mutual acknowledgment. One is the steadily expanding range of works in political theory on social or distributive justice.' The other is the body of empirical work on people's beliefs aboutjustice and the expression of these beliefs in practice. One might expect there to be a fruitful symbiosis between these two bodies of research, with political theorists setting the agenda for empirical studies of justice, while the results of these studies were fed back into the theoretical literature as data against which more abstract claims about the nature ofjustice could be tested. But this is not the case. There is a small amount of traffic across the border in one direction. Most empirical researchers are aware of the major landmarks in the field of theory-they have heard of Rawls's A Theory of Justice (Rawls 1971), for instance, and a few experiments (discussed below) have been devised to test its claims. But almost without exception political theorists have failed to consider the bearing that empirical findings might have on their formulations.2 There are several reasons for this neglect, of greatly differing character and strength. One is simply the insularity of academic disciplines. Much of the research I shall consider is found in journals that no political theorist would look at as a matter of course. Along with this goes an unfamiliar academic jargon and a style of presentation which (in the case of the social psychology literature, especially) is likely to seem unusually wooden and ponderous. Then there is the view that empirical studies of justice are of little value in getting at

Opera and Republican Virtue: Beethoven's "Fidelio"

The material and cultural influences which engender an era's formal works of political theory are no strangers to the opera house. In this essay, I analyze Beethoven's opera Fidelio as a political text influenced by the republican ideas of the later Enlightenment and the French Revolution. The republicanism of Fidelio lies not so much in its depiction of political institutions. It lies rather in the opera's emphasis on republican virtue. This virtue consists of gendered sets of patriotic habits, attitudes, and practices.

Introduction: Notes on Feminist Political Thought

Previous articleNext article No AccessSymposium on Feminism and Political TheoryIntroduction: Notes on Feminist Political ThoughtCass R. SunsteinCass R. Sunstein Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Ethics Volume 99, Number 2Jan., 1989 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/293063 Views: 29Total views on this site Citations: 6Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1989 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Nebila Abdulmelik, Tsion Belay Advancing Women’s Political Rights in Africa: The Promise and Potential of ACDEG, Africa Spectrum 54, no.22 (Dec 2019): 147–161.https://doi.org/10.1177/0002039719881321Norma R.A. Romm An Exploration and Extension of Churchman’s Insights: Towards the Tackling of Racial Discrimination as a World Problem, (Jan 2006): 289–331.https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-27589-4_15Richard K. Caputo Social Justice, the Ethics of Care, and Market Economies, Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Social Services 83, no.44 (Jun 2018): 355–364.https://doi.org/10.1606/1044-3894.10Beate Rössler Feministische Theorien der Politik, (Jan 1996): 267–291.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-322-86620-2_12Virginia A. Sharpe Justice and care: The implications of the Kohlberg-Gilligan debate for medical ethics, Theoretical Medicine 13, no.44 (Dec 1992): 295–318.https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02126697Eamonn Callan FINDING A COMMON VOICE, Educational Theory 42, no.44 (Sep 1992): 429–441.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-5446.1992.00429.x

:The Status and Appraisal of Classic Texts: An Essay on Political Theory, Its Inheritance, and the History of Ideas

Conal Condren examines the criteria for judging both works of political theory and texts associated with related academic genres. He discusses the rhetoric surrounding terms like originality, influence, and coherence, the value of these terms as criteria of textual assessment, and their use in charting the history of texts. Originally published in 1985. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The Limits of "Complex Equality"

John Rawls' A Theory of Justice, published in 1971 to wide critical acclaim and hailed as the most notable contribution to the Anglo-American tradition of political philosophy since Sidgwick and Mill, has revived interest in broad questions of legal and political theory and encouraged many philosophers to turn their attention to the problem of what constitutes a truly just society. Michael Walzer's book, Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality, is part of the post-Rawlsian dialogue concerning “who gets what, when, and how.” Like Rawls and his critics and commentators, Walzer is concerned with distributive justice, and the subtitle of his book provocatively suggests that twentieth century liberalism is under siege. As a “defense” of pluralism and equality, Walzer's book is squarely within the contemporary liberal political debate. Walzer's book is important not only for its contribution to the post-Rawlsian dialogue, but also for its reflection of the revitalized interest in substantive philosophical inquiry. As commentators on Rawls have noted, A Theory of Justice was noteworthy because it marked a return to an older tradition of political philosophy, one that focused on issues of right and wrong, rather than on the linguistic puzzles posed by contemporary legal positivists. In addition, Rawls' work broke from the positivist school by borrowing from the social sciences — an approach that linked Rawls with “the English tradition of Hume and Adam Smith, of Bentham and of John Stuart Mill, which insists on relating its political speculations to fundamental research in moral psychology and political economy.” Spheres of Justice is part of this revival of philosophical interest in discussing moral and political issues. Walzer attempts not only to develop a theoretical construct for his idea of justice, but also to grapple with such troublesome contemporary political problems as affirmative action, school busing, and tuition voucher plans. In so doing, Walzer, more than Rawls, draws broadly on examples and anecdotes from many disciplines, including anthropology, economics, history, literature, political science, and sociology.Walzer's book is part of the revived substantive philosophical debate in yet another sense. A Theory of Justice, like the great works of Western political theory, is ideological in that it provides a defense and justification for liberal democracy. As commentators have noted, historically significant works of political philosophy — such as those of Hobbes, Locke, Marx, and Lenin — have generally looked to contemporary mores and institutions in formulating a theoretical foundation for civil society. The great works in political theory have often become rallying points for action, and A Theory of Justice is patterned on this tradition. For Walzer, Rawls' theory of just distribution is flawed because it is based on the hypothetical choices of ideally rational men and women. Walzer doubts that ordinary people as we know them, with particular ties to history, culture, and community, would have made the same choices as do Rawls' ideal actors. Walzer's book is intended to be political philosophy in the grand tradition. His point of departure is a criticism of Rawls and all those political philosophers who speculate about man and society in the abstract. At the outset, Walzer promises that this analysis will be “imminent and phenomenological” and will provide “a map and a plan appropriate to the people for whom it is drawn, whose common life it reflects”.Despite its shortcomings, Walzer's notion of “spheres of justice” is original and thought-provoking, and his criticisms of Rawls and other political theorists contribute to the continuing philosophical debate over what constitutes a just society. Ultimately, however, this is a disappointing book. First, the foundation of Walzer's theory — his notion of autonomous spheres — is, in the end, too weak to support the weight of much theorizing. Second, his belief in shared meanings and assumptions takes insufficient account of social diversity and provides no clear methodology for resolving conflict. Finally, Walzer's relativism robs his theory of whatever residual force it might have had. He does, in fact, offer occasional glimpses of his own political preferences — which he describes as “a decentralized democratic socialism” — but in the end he gives us no reason to prefer his own vision of the just society to anyone else's.

Immortality and the Political Life of Man in Albertus Magnus

IMMORTALITY AND THE POLITICAL LIFE OF MAN IN ALBERTUS MAGNUS THE LONG YEARS from the death of Augustine to the ediscovery of Aristotle in the West witnessed the deelopment of Roman Law, the Gelasian theory of temporal and spiritual power, the theory of medieval monarchy ws found in people like John of Salisbury, and the establishment of the feudal structure itself. Likewise, the establishment and growth of the religious orders created a new type of organization which was to provide many ideas for civil political practice. From the standpoint of political theory, these years are not of major significance when compared to the Greek, Augu,stinian, or the great scholastic theories. Nevertheless , the development of the feudal pattern with its ever growing confusion between the realm of the spiritual and the realm of the temporal emphasized a problem of great significance for political theory.1 Plotinus and Augustine, the last truly great pagan philosopher and the first universal Western Doctor of the Church, both had, to a greater or lesser degree, emphasized the contemplative order and its primacy. But there proved to be a danger in overemphasizing the importance of the next life for man. This world, wherein man was to work out his salvation, which to be sure was not political in its essence, could very easily be ignored or simply rejected. All of society's energy could be placed in attaining the next life. Since the solution of Plotinus became practically irrelevant in Western society as a real 1 See Heinrich A. Rommen, The State and Catholic Thought (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co., 1945), pp. 521-36; Charles Howard Mcllwain, Growth of Political Thought in the West (New York: Macmillan, 1932); R. W. and A. J. Carlyle, A History of Medieval Political Thought in the West (Edinburgh : Blackwood, 1928), 6 vols. 535 JAMES V. SCHALL, S.J. movement, the terms of the emphasis became exclusively Christian. The danger of the Christian over-emphasis on the next life, as someone like Hannah Arendt would suggest, was that politics would be undermined. The danger of the Christian message was that it co~ld make the political life of man on earth irrelevant.2 The only thing that mattered was, in an extreme view, the next life. Hannah Arendt's contention raises one of the most significant and perplexing questions in political theory, namely, the relationship between personal immortality and the public life. Arendt suggested that the contemplative life, especially in its Christian context, cut off the very life-blood of the political order as the Greeks saw it, that is, the hope of an earthly "immortality " and the record of heroic deeds and words. For the Christian, such things were merely vanity because his kingdom was not of this world.3 But does the Christian belief in immortality in its own terms, both as resurrection and as an explanation of personal continuity until this restored condition, necessarily render the deeds of this world transitory? Or is it what ultimately renders them possible in their own right? Certainly , one can point to trends in Christian history which would seem to suggest the former alternative. Yet, another interpretation of the importance of the contemplative life or immortality can be held. Indeed, it was the contention of Aristotle that politics needed speculative rectitude before it could exercise its own proper function. This was so because political life might easily become a search for immortality in this life if politics did not recognize the limits of this life and the nature of the contemplative order. 2 Hannah Arendt, The Hurnan Condition (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday Anchor, 1959), pp. 20-21, 50. a Ibid., pp. 286-90. In this connection, I found the discussion of Fr. Benedict T. Viviano, 0. P., on "The Kingdom of God in Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas," (The Thornist, October, 1980), pp. 502-22, to have missed the central significance of Albert's (and Thomas's) work in political theory. Viviano's study, for all its caution, still seemed to imply that the Kingdom of God was to have a political embodiment on earth and that neither Albert nor Thomas could see this because of their own...