Between 1789 and 1815, Britain faced a surge of challenges brought about by the French Revolution. Growing tensions with France, then the outbreak of war, exacerbated domestic political controversy, ...giving rise to new forms of political protest, to which the government responded with ever-increasing severity. Reforming Ideas in Britain brings together a series of essays to provide a vibrant historiography of Britain's political thought and movements during the 1790s and beyond. Challenging traditional perceptions of the period, Philp prompts us to reconsider the weight of various ideas, interpretations and explanations of British politics and language; showing us instead that this dynamic world of popular politics was at once more chaotic, innovative and open-minded than historians have typically perceived it to be. This is an essential interdisciplinary text for scholars of history, political theory and romanticism that offers a fresh perspective on radicalism, loyalism and republicanism in Britain during the French Revolution.
Happiness and Utility brings together experts on utilitarianism to explore the concept of happiness within the utilitarian tradition, situating it in earlier eighteenth-century thinkers and working ...through some of its developments at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. Drawing on a range of philosophical and historical approaches to the study of the central idea of utilitarianism, the chapters provide a rich set of insights into a founding component of ethics and modern political and economic thought, as well as political and economic practice. In doing so, the chapters examine the multiple dimensions of utilitarianism and the contested interpretations of this standard for judgement in morality and public policy.
The chapters are written in celebration of the career of Professor Frederick Rosen. They follow his work by concentrating on Bentham and the two Mills, and by the subtleties and sophistication of their understanding of one of the most alluring but elusive ideas of modern times. The volume will be of interest not only to admirers of Rosen but to academics and postgraduate students in disciplines such as Philosophy, Political Theory, History of Political Thought, Legal Theory and Legal History.
Realism without Illusions Philp, Mark
Political theory,
10/2012, Letnik:
40, Številka:
5
Journal Article
Recenzirano
This essay engages critically with the recent emergence of "political realism" in political theory (centrally in the work of Raymond Geuss and Bernard Williams). While sympathetic to and convinced of ...the importance of the core of the enterprise which it identifies, the essay is critical of some of the claims made about the independence of politics from morality and the historically contingent character of political values, and suggests that realism may itself succumb to illusion. The final section sketches an account of the nature of evaluative judgment in the study of politics and, in conclusion, defends both the pluralist character of political theory and the pressing importance of the questions that realism raises and that are inadequately attended to by the bulk of post-war political theory.
Résumé Cet article examine l’évolution des normes concernant le toucher, en particulier entre les jeunes femmes en âge de se marier et les jeunes hommes en Grande-Bretagne à la fin du 18 e siècle. ...Ces normes émergentes, liées à la sociabilité et aux idéaux de la société polie, ont été largement contrôlées par d’autres femmes. Bien qu’elles leur aient permis une certaine liberté par rapport aux tentatives intrusives des hommes, ces normes s’accompagnent également d’un déni du désir sexuel des femmes. Les personnes considérées comme transgressant ces normes risquent d’être exclues de la « société ». La discussion s’appuie sur une série de mémoires, de journaux intimes, de romans, de livres de conduite et de lettres pour examiner un domaine de conduite qui fait rarement l’objet de commentaires explicites.
The frequent references to the actors and events of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars in the titles of the dance tunes of the period raise the question of how we should understand their ...significance. This article argues that the practice is one of a number of examples of music and song shaping people's lived experience and behavior in ways that were rarely fully conscious. Drawing on a range of music collections, diaries, and journals, the article argues that we need to recognize how significant aural dimensions were in shaping people's predisposition to favor the status quo in this period of heightened political controversy.
RésuméCet article examine l'évolution des normes concernant le toucher, en particulier entre les jeunes femmes en âge de se marier et les jeunes hommes en Grande-Bretagne à la fin du 18e siècle. Ces ...normes émergentes, liées à la sociabilité et aux idéaux de la société polie, ont été largement contrôlées par d'autres femmes. Bien qu'elles leur aient permis une certaine liberté par rapport aux tentatives intrusives des hommes, ces normes s'accompagnent également d'un déni du désir sexuel des femmes. Les personnes considérées comme transgressant ces normes risquent d'être exclues de la « société ». La discussion s'appuie sur une série de mémoires, de journaux intimes, de romans, de livres de conduite et de lettres pour examiner un domaine de conduite qui fait rarement l'objet de commentaires explicites.
This article discusses the concept of accountability in relation to those holding public office in democratic states. It argues that the concept of accountability requires careful specification and ...that it is frequently distorted when put to the service of theoretical models and normative principles. The article develops a definition of accountability and a range of distinctions between forms of accountability, asks what forms of accountability might be appropriate to modern democratic systems and argues that some combinations of democracy and accountability can have serious negative consequences for politics. The article concludes by discussing the types of accountability that are pertinent to recent claims that international institutions should be made more democratically accountable. In each case, the common tendency to inflate the concept of accountability is associated with demands for accountability that threaten both democratic consolidation and the distinctive character of accountability itself.
This article argues for greater realism in political theory with respect to judgements about what politicians ought to do and how they ought to act. It shows that there are major problems in deducing ...what a given politician should do from the value commitments that are common to liberalism and it makes a case for recognizing the major role played by the context of action and particular agent involved. It distinguishes political virtue from moral virtues and argues that the ‘decisionist’ features of political agency render evaluation a partly post hoc process. The article advocates a version of political realism that is rooted in an understanding of the distinctive character of political rule and that provides the basis for a contextualist but non-relativist account of ‘what is to be done’.
Abstract
This article focuses on Thomas Paine’s Agrarian Justice (1796–7). It argues that it represents a major development in his thinking linking social and economic rights to liberty and seeing ...positive and negative rights as closely connected. It locates the impetus for these changes in doctrine to his working out of the implications of the principle of generational sovereignty in relation to his developing case for universal manhood suffrage, against the background of discussions of the Directory Constitution of 1795. This account emphasizes the developing character of Paine’s thought and its increasing subtlety as he ties social and economic rights into an account of the pacific character of commercial society, thereby combining economic liberalism with a significant dimension of egalitarianism.
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