---Introduction: Appendix A. The Tudor literature on church and state. Appendix B. Crowell's interpreter. Appendix C. James and the Puritans. Appendix D. A conference about the next succession to the crown of England, and other books by Robert Parsons. Appendix E. Bibliography, ---The political works of James I : Basilikon Doron. The trew law of free monarchies. An apologie for the oath of allegiance. A premonition to all Christian monarches, free princes and states. 'A defence of the right (...) of kings, against Cardinall Perron. Speech of 1603-1604. Speech of 1605. Speech of 1607. Speech of 1609-1610. Speech in the Star chamber, 1616. ---Index. (shrink)

James Harrington (1611-77) was a pioneer in applying the methods of Machiavelli and other civic humanists to English political society and its landed structure. In the century after his death, his ideas were adapted to become an important ingredient in the vocabulary of both English and American political opposition to the methods of Hanoverian parliamentary monarchy. There has been no complete edition of Harrington's writings since 1771, or of Oceana, his best-known work, since 1924. This is a modernised (...) edition, and includes all of his prose works on political subjects. The critical introduction attempts to revalue the evidence concerning Harrington's life and writings, to locate them in the context of Civil War, Commonwealth and Puritan thinking and to trace the development of Harringtonian and neo-Harringtonian ideology during subsequent generations. (shrink)

After South Asia won its flag-independence from Britain, Pakistani artists pursued two distinct strategies for the shared goal of producing art in the service of national liberation. A group of communist artists sought to innovate new cultural forms to serve movements of the left, while others endeavoured to recover the pre-colonial Islamicate culture of South Asia to serve state-building efforts. During the Zia coup in 1977, protest poetry and art of the Pak Tea House, Lahore’s art and literary salon, inspired (...) resistance against the military dictatorship. This protest was framed not merely against the military dictatorship, but also against US imperialism more broadly. By examining Walter Rodney’s and Frantz Fanon’s ideal role of the postcolonial artist or intellectual, I show how the role of art in leftist politics was rethought in the aftermath of the Zia coup by the artists and leftists who frequented the Pak Tea House. What the discussions about politically engaged art that took place in the Pak Tea House during the Zia Coup reveal is that novelty and abstraction are important strategies in creating art that can combat imperialist dictatorships. (shrink)

The value ofPatriarcha as a historical document consists primarily inits revelation of the strength and persistence in Europeanculture of the patriarchal ...

Wernham's critical edition includes the complete text of the Tractatus Politicus and all the portions of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus having to do with politics and ethics, with Latin and English texts conveniently printed face-à-face. The introduction and notes are balanced and substantial; they conclude from a detailed comparison of Spinoza's political thought with Hobbes' that Spinoza, while less "modern" in outlook than his English contemporary, may nevertheless possess greater relevance for current political philosophy.--J. F. D.

Most work on John Stuart Mill focuses on his account of civil or political liberties. But as Bruce Baum (2006) argues, Mill's commitment to “the free development of individuality” applied in the economic sphere as well as the social and political. As part of his decentralized, ‘liberal’, socialism (McCabe, 2021) he endorsed a ‘pluralist’ economy which combined consumer- and producer-co-operatives with some state provisions. This ‘utopia’ reveals a road untravelled by both socialism and liberalism, but aimed at achieving (...) normative principles dear to both – liberty, equality, security, fraternity, and progress – and which is worth serious consideration today. Dale E. Miller (2003) argues that, given the arguments of On Liberty, Mill should have been open to ‘capitalistic’ as well as ‘socialistic’ enterprises in his utopia. I argue that Mill's socialism (and his account of transition) involves a significant change in attitudes, which would rule out ‘capitalistic’ motivations and thus structures and organisations. One such structure is the labour market. Building on earlier work (McCabe, 2021) and comments by Joseph Persky (2024), I explore the implications of Mill's commitment to ending a competitive labour market whilst maintaining the plurality of economic enterprises for capital, ‘progress’, and Mill's commitment to diversity. (shrink)

Patriarcha -- The freeholder's grand inquest touching the king and his parliament -- Observations upon Aristotle's politiques touching forms of government -- Directions for obedience to government in dangerous or doubtful times -- Observations concerning the originall of government -- The anarchy of a limited or mixed monarchy -- The necessity of the absolute power of all kings.

Many philosophers of music, especially within the analytic tradition, are essentialists with respect to musical experience. That is, they view their goal as that of isolating the essential set of features constitutive of the experience of music, qua music. Toward this end, they eliminate every element that would appear to be unnecessary for one to experience music as such. In doing so, they limit their analysis to the experience of a silent, motionless individual who listens with rapt attention to the (...) sounds produced by either musicians a on stage, a stereo, or a portable device. This approach is illustrated in recent work by Nick Zangwill. Drawing on essentialist assumptions, Zangwill concludes that properly musical experience is effectively disembodied and radically private. While this seems plausible when we consider the essentialists’ paradigm case, Zangwill’s conclusion seems odd once we consider the wide variety of ways that people experience music. One’s body and social situation seem ineluctably enmeshed within the experience of, e.g., hot jazz played in a nightclub, where listeners bob their heads and dance to the music, cheer on the musicians, and socialize with their fellow concertgoers. The question this paper aims to answer is: should we consider this and similar experiences of music properly “musical”? I maintain that we should. Far from the world of pure music that Zangwill and others relegate properly musical experience, I conclude that our musical experiences are fully enmeshed within the somatic, affective, and interpersonal dimensions of human life. (shrink)

When Taylor Swift's record label was sold in 2019, the six studio albums she recorded for them came under the control of a person with whom she has had years of bad blood: Kanye West's former manager Scooter Braun. But rather than move on, Swift chose to take the unprecedented step of re-recording duplicate versions of those albums. With all of the profits made from selling, streaming, and licensing these “Taylor's Versions” going directly to Swift, she could deprive Braun of (...) potentially hundreds of millions of dollars. The gambit has already paid off. The first two Taylor's Versions (of Fearless and Red) debuted at Number 1 on the Billboard charts and have sold over one million copies so far; and four more are still on the way. In this book, nine philosophers and one music producer explore the philosophical richness of Swift's project and the questions it raises: Are Swift's re-recordings new works of art or mere copies of the originals? Do the Taylor's Versions of the songs have the same meanings as the original versions, or do they now mean something different? Is her re-recording project genuinely artistic or merely commercial? Is Swift standing up for artists' rights or looking out for herself? Does the music industry exploit artists, and, if so, how should it be reformed? Together they show the philosophical dividends one of the most famous and acclaimed recording artists of her generation is capable of producing. For anyone interested in the complicated relationship between popular art and commerce this book is a must-read. (shrink)

This dissertation defends the place of representation in music. Music’s status as a representational art has been hotly debated since the War of the Romantics, which pitted the Weimar progressives (Liszt, Wagner, &co.) against the Leipzig conservatives (the Schumanns, Brahms, &co.) in an intellectual struggle for what each side took to be the very future of music as an art. I side with the progressives, and argue that music can be and often is a representational medium. Correspondence (or resemblance) theories (...) of representation, such as the one I offer, have been much maligned in philosophy since the 1960s. Most theories assimilate representation under “meaning,” which has usually been thought to belong primarily to language. As a result, representational content has been taken to be purely conventional in the way that sentential meaning is. People want to know what music “means,” and these theories interpret this as “what does it refer to?” or “what propositions does it express?” I argue that propositional communication is only one (small) part of the issue. Once we overcome the bias of conceiving of musical works as essentially linguistic items, speech acts (performed) or sentence tokens (written), we can begin to take music on its own terms to discover how it represents—one way in which it “means.” The first step is to “naturalize” music’s representational content. Influenced by recent discussions in the philosophies of mind and science, I argue in Chapter 1 that composers represent extra-musical objects, events, and states of affairs through their works by exploiting antecedent relations (such as similarities in pitch, timbre, and structure) in order to secure reference to them. In Chapter 2, I survey and respond to the main challenges that those skeptical of music’s representational possibilities would raise against my theory of musical representation. In Chapter 3, I explore a number of ways through which music has been claimed to represent in order to show how my theory accounts for these diverse phenomena better than its conventionalist rivals, both in terms of the metaphysics and the epistemology. Chapter 4 extends this discussion by offering an account of how we perceive, understand, appreciate, and interpret sophisticated musical representations. I conclude by teasing out some of my theory’s implications and suggesting areas for further research. (shrink)

This book assesses the impact of the work of Chris Brown in the field of International Political Theory. The volume engages with general issues of IPT as well as basic issues such as the use and role of practical reasoning and presents a nuanced understanding about issues regarding the legitimacy of war and violence. It explores questions that pertain to human rights, morality, and ethics, and generally an outlook for devising a ‘better’ world. The project is ideal for audiences (...) with interest in International Relations, Ethics and Morality Studies and International Political Theory. (shrink)

We invited five Cavell scholars to write on this topic. What follows is a vibrant exchange among Paola Marrati, Andrew Norris, Jörg Volbers, Cary Wolfe and Thomas Dumm addressing the question whether, in the contemporary political context, Cavell’s skepticism and his Emersonian perfectionism amount to a politics at all.

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

In this paper, I will argue that Spinoza’s notion of libertas philosophandi in Theological Political Treatise2 is best interpreted as freedom of expression, in the metaphysical sense of expression found in Ethics I. This reading helps understand the role of the Spinozan state in protecting such freedom. Ethics argues that human nature is embodied thought, and its freedom is found both in rational and irreducibly imaginary cognition: imagination is knowledge, and, as such, it is a fundamental aspect of human (...) expression. The last two books of Ethics show that human freedom depends on certain material and intellectual conditions: this clarifies the role of the state as an active participant, rather than a mere watchman, of individual expression. (shrink)

Since the publication of The Sexual Politics of Meat in 1990, activist and writer Carol J. Adams (2000 [1990]) has put forth a feminist defence of veganism based on the argument that meat consumption and violence against animals are structurally related to violence against women, and especially to pornography and prostitution. Adams’ work has been influential in the growing fields of animal studies and posthumanism, where her research is frequently cited as the prime example of vegan feminism. However, her particular (...) radical feminist framework, including her anti-pornography and anti-prostitution arguments, are rarely acknowledged or critiqued. This article challenges the premises of Adams’ argument, demonstrating that her version of vegan feminism is based upon an unsubstantiated comparison between violence against women and violence against other-than-human animals, and on the silencing and exclusion of sex workers as subjects. The article contests the limited reading of Adams, and of feminism, offered in some key works in animal studies and posthumanism, at the same time that it recognises the need to challenge the anthropocentrism evident in much feminist theory. By way of alternative approaches to the sexual politics of veganism, the article highlights the interventions of artist and activist Mirha-Soleil Ross, proposing that her situated and embodied commitment to animal rights brings sex worker agency into the story, while resisting simple comparisons among different forms of violence. The concerns raised by Ross overlap in compelling ways with recent research in performance studies and labour history, bringing the question of work and workers, animal and human, to the fore. These studies point towards a potentially more useful framework than that of Adams for understanding the human violence suffered by different species, including those destined to be eaten by people. (shrink)

Le lien entre « socialisme » et « sexualité » fait l’objet de nombreux débats dans le champ de l’étude historique de la sexualité. Ce lien n’est certes ni évident, ni toujours nécessaire. La plupart des mouvements socialistes ne tenaient pas, ou ne tiennent plus la libération des désirs comme un corollaire ou un facteur fondamental du changement social. Néanmoins, comme s’attache à le démontrer cet ouvrage, il existe indéniablement des rapports entre le projet socialiste de libération social...

Against a widely supported view that Nietzsche was not a political thinker, there have been a number of edited collections and monographs devoted either to Nietzsche’s politics or, what is not quite the same thing, relationships between his thought and contemporary political philosophy. What is striking about this secondary literature is the degree of divergence among the positions taken. The books discussed in the present review provide further illustration of this diversity. This applies not only to the question (...) whether he was or was not a political thinker, but also to the further question what kind of political thinker. (shrink)

This book provides a highly original approach to the writings of the twentieth-century German philosopher Walter Benjamin by one of his most distinguished readers. It develops the idea of "working with" Benjamin, seeking both to read his corpus and to put it to work - to show how a reading ofBenjamin can open up issues that may not themselves be immediately at stake in his texts.The defining elements in Benjamin's writings that Andrew Benjamin isolates - history, experience, translation, technical reproducibility (...) and politics - are put to work; that is, their utility is established in engaging the works of others. The question is how utility is understood. As AndrewBenjamin argues, utility involves demonstrating the different ways in which Benjamin is a central thinker within the project of understanding the nature of modernity. This is best achieved by noting connections and points of differentiation between his work and the writings of Adorno and Heidegger.However, the more demanding project is that "working with" Benjamin necessitates deploying the implicit assumptions within his writings as well as demanding of his formulations more than is provided by their initial presentation. What is at stake is not the application of Benjamin's thought. Ratherwhat counts is its use.Working with Benjamin engages with the themes central to Benjamin's work with deftness, daring and critical insight while at the same time situating those themes within current academic and cultural debates. (shrink)

Social work is a contested tradition, torn between the demands of social governance and autonomy. Today, this struggle is reflected in the division between the dominant, neoliberal agenda of service provision and the resistance offered by various critical perspectives employed by disparate groups of practitioners serving diverse communities. Critical social work challenges oppressive conditions and discourses, in addition to addressing their consequences in individuals’ lives. However, very few recent critical theorists informing critical social work have advocated revolution. A challenging exception (...) can be found in the work of Cornelius Castoriadis (1922–97), whose explication of ontological underdetermination and creation evades the pitfalls of both structural determinism and post-structural relativism, enabling an understanding of society as the contested creation of collective imaginaries in action and a politics of radical transformation. On this basis, we argue that Castoriadis’s radical-democratic revisioning of revolutionary praxis can help in reimagining critical social work’s emancipatory potential. (shrink)

In this article we examine the idea of a politics of misrecognition of working activity. We begin by introducing a distinction between the kind of recognition and misrecognition that attaches to one’s identity, and the kind of recognition and misrecognition that attaches to one’s activity. We then consider the political significance of the latter kind of recognition and misrecognition in the context of work. Drawing first on empirical research undertaken by sociologists at the Institut für Sozialforschung in Frankfurt, we (...) argue for a differentiated concept of recognition that shows the politics of misrecognition at work to be as much a matter of conflict between modes of recognition as it is a struggle for recognition as opposed to non -recognition. The differentiated concept of recognition which allows for this empirical insight owes much to Axel Honneth’s theory. But as we argue in the section that follows, this theory is ambiguous about the normative content of the expectations of recognition that are bound up with the activity of working. This in turn makes it unclear how we should understand the normative basis of the politics of the misrecognition of what one does at work. In the final sections of the article, we suggest that the psychodynamic model of work elaborated by Christophe Dejours and others at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers in Paris can shed light on this matter; that is to say, it can help to clarify the normative significance and political stakes of the misrecognition of working activity. (shrink)

Collective rationality has attracted much attention by formal theorists, but philosophically, much of it is still poorly understood. The difficulties are easily motivated. As long as we only aggregate preferences (as we do in the case of majoritarian decision-making), there are different proposals for how to do so, and arguments on their behalves can be developed. However, there are voting methods that use rankings other than ordinal ones, and arguments for specific preference-based methods fail to be effective against such methods. (...) For example, no such argument can address a proposal that, say, a committee should make a hiring decision by using a 100-point system. On this proposal, each committee member assigns between 0 and 100 points to each applicant, and then these assignments are aggregated by, for example, averaging. Would that system be as reasonable as purely preference-based methods? Or can we distinguish conditions under which ordinal rankings are appropriate from conditions under which other rankings are appropriate? Such questions call for a theory of voting methods that assesses, first, the conditions under which particular kinds of rankings are appropriate (e.g., ordinal or point systems); second, what specific voting method(s) is (are) appropriate for the specific kinds of rankings; and third, what the criteria for appropriateness are in both cases. Recall that I explained at the start that my most of my research could be understood as interrogating notions of justice and fairness: it is through this search for criteria of appropriateness that considerations of fairness enter here. We are far from having such a theory, and it is precisely this point that keeps me fascinated with this area. (shrink)

Bringing together leading international scholars within the fields of social and political theory and philosophy, this book explores how we should understand work and its role(s) in our lives and wider society. -/- What challenges are posed by work in our changing economy and the new economic forms that are beginning to emerge, and how can we best address these challenges? In what ways do patterns of working, as well as work technologies, shape people’s lives within and outside work, (...) in particular their life opportunities and their social and natural environment? How might we organize—or seek to reorganize—workplaces so that the experience of work better reflects our shared ethical ideals and normative principles? This volume examines these vital questions in a comprehensive and systematic manner in order to provide much needed theoretical insight and practical guidance in reflecting on the nature, problems, and possibilities of work currently. -/- This book will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students and established academics in the areas of contemporary political theory and philosophy, social theory, legal philosophy, labour studies, the sociology of work, practical ethics, critical theory, and political activism. (shrink)