This article assesses to what extent the future of democratic liberty depends upon its citizens employing a proper approach to the past, by analyzing Tocqueville’s views of three kinds of historical consciousness—aristocratic, revolutionary, and democratic. It is argued that democracies require certain aristocratic assumptions about historical dynamics to cultivate a historical consciousness that fosters liberty. Key to this is the belief in the human capacity to influence the trajectory of history. Tocqueville’s historical approach, which blends aristocratic and (...) democratic elements, is identified as the most effective method for tempering the fatalistic tendencies of the democratic point of view. Thus, for democracies to maintain liberty, citizens should recognize the dual role of general causes and human agency in directing the course of historical events. Tocqueville’s insights on the effects of historical consciousness on the future of democratic liberty remain particularly relevant today when Western democracies confront internal polarization and external anti-democratic challenges, whether neoliberal, illiberal, populist, or fascist. (shrink)

This pioneering study of Bertrand Russell's social and political thought deals with the years 1896 to 1938, and is the first book to embark on a thorough investigation of the intellectual and cultural context out of which Russell's ideas emerged. Maintaining a sympathetic but critical stance towards Russell's almost innumerable political postures, and focusing in particular on his concern with the intellectual elite, the author renders that thought both plausible and coherent by placing its development against (...) a significant historical background. As well as giving attention to the aspects of Russell's private life which helped determine the direction of his thought, Dr Ironside undertakes an enlightening exploration of the individuals, groups and beliefs by which he was successively influenced. The result is a wide-ranging and highly original view of an important and enduring figure. (shrink)

"Liberalism" is widely used to describe a variety of social and political ideas, but has been an especially difficult concept for historians and political scientists to define. Burckhardt, Mill, and Tocqueville define one type of liberal thought. They share an aristocratic liberalism marked by distaste for the masses and the middle class, opposition to the commercial spirit, fear and contempt of mediocrity, and suspicion of the centralized state. Their fears are combined with an elevated ideal of (...) human personality, an ideal which affirms modernity. All see their ideals threatened in the immediate future, and all hope to save European civilization from barbarism and militarism through some form of education, although all grow more pessimistic towards the end of their lives. Aristocratic Liberalism ignores the national boundaries that so often confine the history of political thought, and uses the perspective thus gained to establish a pan-European type of political thought. Going beyond Burckhardt, Mill, and Tocqueville, Aristocratic Liberalism argues for new ways of looking at nineteenth-century liberalism. It corrects many prevalent misconceptions about liberalism, and suggests new paths for arriving at a better understanding of the leading form of nineteenth-century political thought. The new Afterword by the author presents a novel description of liberal political language as the "discourse of capacity," and suggests that this kind of language is the common denominator of all forms of European liberalism in the nineteenth century. Aristocratic Liberalism will be valuable to students of history, political science, sociology, and political philosophy. (shrink)

Summary The paper discusses the political thought of Cesare Balbo (1789?1853), a leading Risorgimento moderate liberal and politician, in the context of the efforts by the Piedmontese political elite to support and legitimise the constitutional regime introduced by King Charles Albert in 1848. Revising current interpretations of Risorgimento moderate liberalism as backward and provincial, it seeks to locate the political thought of Balbo and his colleagues at the heart of contemporary European, and particularly French, debates (...) regarding liberty and aristocracy. In particular, it argues that the views of Balbo and more broadly Piedmontese moderate liberals on centralisation, the importance of a social elite to defend freedom, and equalisation, were conversant with the ideas of Guizot, Chateaubriand, Burke and Tocqueville. Their harsh condemnation of republican virtue, on the other hand, rendered their liberalism peculiar in the Italian context, where Tuscan moderate liberals continued to resort to the language of civic humanism after 1848 to defend their political and social model. (shrink)

This paper investigates the relation between Tocqueville's conceptual framework and the political thought of the French doctrinaires (Guizot, Royer-Collard, Remusat), that has been unduly neglected by political theorists in the English-speaking world. After a brief description of the doctrinaire group, the paper points out similarities and differences between Tocqueville and the doctrinaires with regard to such issues as history, civilization, the French Revolution, the politics of the July Monarchy, centralization and local liberties, and the contrast between (...) class='Hi'>aristocratic and democratic societies. The most important section is devoted to democracy as social condition, a theme which appeared in the political writings of the French doctrinaires more than a decade before Tocqueville's Democracy in America. The final section explores the fundamental distinction between social and political order, which looms large in both Guizot's and Royer-Collard's writings and speeches. (shrink)

This volume explores the place of aristocratic virtues and values in the modern democratic world. Essays examine aristocratic priorities and interpretations of historic and contemporary aristocratic assemblies as well as critiques of liberal or bourgeois virtues, democratic equality, and democratic institutions.

This paper explores the political thought of Andrew Michael Ramsay with particular reference to his highly acclaimed book called A New Cyropaedia, or the Travels of Cyrus (1727). Dedicated to Prince Charles Edward Stuart, the Young Pretender, to whom he was tutor, this work has been hitherto viewed as a Jacobite imitation of the Telemachus, Son of Ulysses(1699) of his eminent teacher archbishop Fénelon of Cambrai. By tracing the dual legacy of the first Persian Emperor Cyrus in Western (...) thought, I demonstrate that Ramsay was as much indebted to Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet's Discourse on Universal History (1681)as he was to Fénelon's political romance. Ramsay took advantage of Xenophon's silence about the eponymous hero's adolescent education in his Cyropaedia, or the Education of Cyrus (c.380B.C.), but he was equally inspired by the Book of Daniel, where the same Persian prince was eulogised as the liberator of the Jewish people from their captivity in Babylon. The main thrust of Ramsay's adaptation was not only to revamp the Humanist- cum-Christian theory and practice of virtuous kingship for a restored Jacobite regime, but on a more fundamental level, to tie in secular history with biblical history. In this respect, Ramsay's New Cyropaedia, or the Travels of Cyrus, was not just another Fénelonian political novel but more essentially a work of universal history. In addition to his Jacobite model of aristocratic constitutional monarchy, it was this Bossuetian motive for universal history, which was first propounded by the German reformer Philipp Melanchthon in his Chronicon Carionis (1532), that most decisively separated Ramsay from Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, author of another famous advice book for princes of the period, The Idea of a Patriot King (written in late 1738 for the education of Frederick Lewis, Prince of Wales, but officially published in 1749). (shrink)

SUMMARYThis article provides the first comprehensive and historically genuine analysis of Heinrich Ludwig von Hess's pamphlet Der Republickaner. Hess was an important figure in both the German and Swedish eighteenth-century political context. Firstly, I will show that the proper historiographical context for Hess's pamphlet is Sweden. In previous historiography on the subject it has been argued that Der Republickaner was a comment on the constitutional reality of Hamburg. My article demonstrates that the original context of Hess's pamphlet was the (...) power struggle between King Adolf Frederick of Sweden and the council of the realm. Secondly, I argue that Hess's pamphlet is the most elaborate defence of aristocratic republicanism written in Sweden in the Age of Liberty. As a result, Hess's pamphlet is the fiercest attack on absolutism written in German in the eighteenth century. (shrink)

Contemporary political discourse is marked with the language of democracy, and Western countries in particular seek to promote democracy at home and abroad. However, there is a sublimated conflict in general political discourse between a desire to rely on alleged political experts and a desire to assert the supposed common sense of all men. Can the struggle between the democratic and aristocratic values embodied in this conflict be reconciled? The question is perennial, and raises issues that (...) are central to constitutional design. Aristotle, developing in significant ways insights made by his teacher Plato, grapples with it in his Politics. Aristotle's views on these matters are relevant—by way of the American Founders'—to contemporary American politics and modern democracies generally. During the eighteenth century, the Founders, some of whom explicitly reached back to Aristotle's work, also struggled—especially in The Federalist Papers—with these thorny issues of constitutional design. They created the U.S. Constitution in part to address these very same problems and issues. We are living in some ways, then, in the shadow of Aristotle's political theorizing, albeit as transposed by the American Founders. Both Aristotle and some of the American Founders theoretically favor aristocracy over democracy, but concede that in practice a blend of the two has to be integrated into the fundamental structure of political society. We need to reconnect with these important political discussions in order to come to terms with aristocratic and democratic values in our current circumstances. Footnotesa I am grateful to Fred Miller and David Keyt for many helpful suggestions and thoughtful questions throughout the editing process. I would also like to thank Irfan Khawaja for valuable feedback on an earlier version of this essay. (shrink)

Much of classical political thought ascribed paramount importance to elite formation: what institutions and traditions would cultivate the best qualities in the ruling class, and curb their exorbitances. This volume consists of essays by political theorists who explore these questions in the works of aristocratic thinkers, both ancient and modern.

We are currently witnessing a renewal of broad public interest in the life and career of Alexander Hamilton – justly famed as an American founder. This volume examines the possible present-day significance of the man, noting that this is not the first revival of interest in the statesman. Hamilton was a major background figure in the GOP politics of the Gilded Age, with the powerful US Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Sr. drawing on Hamilton to inspire a new, assertive American role (...) in the world. Hamilton was first prominent as a soldier and aide to General Washington, and believed in centralization of power in the federal government and an energetic presidency. He founded the American financial system as the first Secretary of the Treasury, and was a great moving force of America’s first nationalist-conservative party – the Federalists. As shown here, close scholarly attention to Lodge’s biography brings out the darker sides of the celebrated hero. Hamilton’s deeper conviction was the need of an elitist “aristocratic republic,” and he was an advocate of military-commercial empire. The Gilded Age Hamilton revival helped inspire the Spanish-American war of 1898 and an American overseas empire. This book will be of interest for students and professionals in political philosophy, political science, American history and American studies. (shrink)

This essay excavates the pre-capitalist influences of the thought of Guy Debord, French postwar critical theorist and founding member of the Situationist International. Tracing a lineage of what can be described as Debord’s aristocratic sensibility, we discover not simply an aesthetic approach to navigating social life, or guidelines for outmanoeuvring an adversary, but also contempt for honest labour, monetary transactions in cultural affairs, and conventional political gestures. Together these themes remain part of a legacy of an (...) class='Hi'>aristocratic past, one that, as will be examined here, informed Debord’s acrimony towards his own mid-20th-century moment. The following discussion will advance a genealogy of Debord’s thinking with these themes from late antiquity to the Italian Renaissance, and finally with an extended examination of the baroque, a concept that helps advance Debord’s diagnostic concept of the society of the spectacle. (shrink)

This book analyses the use of the crucial concept of 'taste' in the works of five major seventeenth-century French authors, Méré, Saint Evremond, La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyère and Boileau. It combines close readings of important texts with a thoroughgoing political analysis of seventeenth-century French society in terms of class and gender. Dr Moriarty shows that far from being timeless and universal, the term 'taste' is culture-specific, shifting according to the needs of a writer and his social group. The notion (...) of 'taste' not only helped to shape a new dominant culture, but also registered the conflicts within that culture between a view of taste that presupposted the values of 'polite society' as an exclusive (though not necessarily aristocratic) group, and a view that stressed the value of the classical-humanist tradition as a source of standards ratified by a broader public. this study sheds light not only on the central concept, but also on the individual authors discussed and on the norms of French classical literature in general. (shrink)

Aristotle's claims that 'man is a political animal' and that political community 'exists for the sake of living well' have frequently been celebrated by thinkers of divergent political persuasions. The details of his political philosophy, however, have often been regarded as outmoded, contradictory, or pernicious. This book takes on the major problems that arise in attempting to understand how the central pieces of Aristotle's political thought fit together: can a conception of politics that seems (...) fundamentally inclusive and egalitarian be reconciled with a vision of justice that seems uncompromisingly hierarchical and authoritarian? Riesbeck argues that Aristotle's ideas about the distinctive nature and value of political community, political authority, and political participation are coherent and consistent with his aristocratic standards of justice. The result is a theory that, while not free of problems, remains a potentially fruitful resource for contemporary thinking about the persistent problems of political life. (shrink)

The fundamental article of my political creed, declared John Adams, is that despotism, or unlimited sovereignty, or absolute power is the same in a majority of a popular assembly, an aristocratical council, an oligarchical junto, and a single emperor. Equally arbitrary, cruel, bloody, and in every respect diabolical. The consequences of this article for Adams' thought are nowhere better articulated than in this anthology, which presents his remarkable attempts at constructing a complete political system based on constitutional, (...) balanced, representative government. (shrink)

This paper examines a political theory implict in Kierkegaard's critique of the novel Two Ages. To achieve that aim, it views Kierkegaard as a political radical relative to modern liberalism and aristocratic conservatism of the 1840's in Denmark, by juxtaposing him to Locke. Basic to the theory is a notion of individuality which relies on three interlocking concepts: will, equality, and autonomy. That notion in turn supports ideas of authority and leadership that throw further light on Kierkegaard's (...) understanding of the relation between religion and politics and suggests what is central to the political logic operative in the critique in his publication Literary Review. (shrink)

The advent of democracy in nineteenth-century Europe was resisted by a set of thinkers who shared an 'aristocratic vision'. These aristocratic thinkers rejected the view that the greater good of the majority was of greater value than some higher good of a smaller number. It was the noble minority that was the more valuable part of society. This view corresponds in part to the philosophical tradition known as perfectionism. Matthew Arnold and Friedrich Nietzsche, thinkers rarely considered together, represent (...) significant exemplars of the liberal and radical versions of the aristocratic vision, and their similarities and differences are representative of the broad spectrum of aristocratic thought. Their common rejection of philistinism was part of an aristocratic vision of cultural perfection which was, Alexis de Tocqueville suggested, the natural reaction of a minority against the overwhelming materialism of democratic society. (shrink)

This is a lively and engaging introduction to the contentious topic of Nietzsche's political thought. It traces the development of Nietzsche's thinking on politics from his earliest writings to the mature work in which he advocates aristocratic radicalism as opposed to 'petty' European nationalism. The key ideas of the will to power, eternal return and the overman are discussed and all Nietzsche's major works analysed in detail, such as Beyond Good and Evil and The Genealogy of Morals, (...) within the context of the concerns of modern political theory. The book concludes with an assessment of Nietzsche's enduring relevance and of the insights afforded by contemporary liberal and feminist readings. This textbook will be essential for all students of Nietzsche and of the history of political ideas. It includes a chronology of Nietzsche's life and works and a guide to further reading. (shrink)

In this exciting new study, Don Dombowsky proposes that the foundation of Nietzsche's political thought is the aristocratic liberal critique of democratic society. But he claims that Nietzsche radicalizes this critique through a Machiavellian conversion, based on a reading of The Prince , adapting Machiavellian virtbliog— (the shaping capacity of the legislator), and immoralism (the techniques applied in political rule), and that, consequently, Nietzsche is better understood in relation to the political ideology of the neo-Machiavellian (...) elite theorists of his own generation. (shrink)

In this paper I employ the notion of the ‘thought of the outside’ as developed by Michel Foucault, in order to defend the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze against the criticisms of ‘elitism,’ ‘aristocratism,’ and ‘political indifference’—famously leveled by Alain Badiou and Peter Hallward. First, I argue that their charges of a theophanic conception of Being, which ground the broader political claims, derive from a misunderstanding of Deleuze’s notion of univocity, as well as a failure to recognize the (...) significance of the concept of multiplicity in Deleuze’s thinking. From here, I go on to discuss Deleuze’s articulation of the ‘dogmatic image of thought,’ which, insofar as it takes ‘recognition’ as its model, can only ever think what is already solidified and sedimented as true, in light of existing structures and institutions of power. Then, I examine Deleuze’s reading of Foucault and the notion of the ‘thought of the outside,’ showing the ‘outside’ as the unthought that lies at the heart of thinking itself, as both its condition and its impossibility. Insofar as it is essential to thinking itself, finally, I argue that the passage of thought to the outside is not an absolute flight out of this world, as Hallward claims, but rather, a return of the different that constitutes the Self for Deleuze. Thinking is an ongoing movement of deterritorialization and reterritorialization, or as Foucault says, death and life. Thinking, as Deleuze understands it, is essentially creative; it reconfigures the virtual, thereby literally changing the world. Thinking is therefore, according to Deleuze, thoroughly political. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Nietzsche's Immoralism: Politics as First Philosophy by Donovan Miyasaki, and: Politics after Morality: Toward a Nietzschean Left by Donovan MiyasakiJeffrey ChurchDonovan Miyasaki, Nietzsche's Immoralism: Politics as First Philosophy Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022. xv + 292 pp. isbn: 978-3-031-11358-1. Cloth, $54.99.Donovan Miyasaki, Politics after Morality: Toward a Nietzschean Left Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022. xv + 330 pp. isbn: 978-3-031-12227-9. Cloth, $54.99.Without a doubt, Nietzsche's political philosophy is one (...) of the most elusive and ambiguous features of his corpus. How else can we explain the dizzying, even contradictory, variety of interpretations of Nietzsche's politics? Some read him as anti-political or a liberal skeptical of state power. For others, he is an aristocratic radical, obsessed with using state power to entrench a new class of Übermenschen. For still others, his thought is most compatible with democracy, as his defenses of perspectivism and agonism are best realized within a democratic political system. Finally, some other scholars throw up their hands and say that Nietzsche's political thought is incoherent.In this two-volume work, Donovan Miyasaki enters this fray with a distinctive defense of the democratic Nietzsche. Two features distinguish his view from others. First, it provides a novel grounding of Nietzschean democracy—what Miyasaki calls Nietzsche's "metapolitics." This grounding is examined in the first volume, Nietzsche's Immoralism (hereafter NI). Second, it offers the most radical political vision of a left Nietzschean form of Nietzschean socialism. For Miyasaki, socialism follows from Nietzsche's fundamental commitments, rather than the aristocratic radicalism that Miyasaki sees Nietzsche inferring—wrongly—from his own commitments. [End Page 97] This extrapolation from Nietzsche's "metapolitics" is undertaken in the second volume, Politics after Morality (hereafter PM). I discuss each of these contributions in turn. In general, I found Miyasaki's work to be clear, perceptive, and bold in their interpretations. That said, with a book that critiques so much of the Nietzsche scholarship and offers such a radical take on Nietzsche's politics, I have some potential objections to raise.Nietzsche's MetapoliticsOther interpreters of a left Nietzsche ground their reading on what they take to be Nietzsche's radical epistemological views: either his perspectivism or his anti-essentialism. This was a popular approach for the postmodern and agonistic readings. By contrast, Miyasaki grounds Nietzschean democracy in a completely different way, on his metaphysics, particularly his determinism and "hard incompatibilism" (NI 25). On Miyasaki's view, Nietzsche denies that freedom and determinism are compatible and hence also that any kind of moral responsibility or moral agency is possible. This is the meaning of Nietzsche's "immoralism." For Miyasaki, Nietzsche's alternative ideal is to engender a particular feeling, namely, the love of this determinism or amor fati.This thesis of hard incompatibilism leads Miyasaki to some sweeping critiques of scholarship on Nietzsche's ethics. Against the many recent interpreters who develop a Nietzschean view of freedom, Miyasaki argues that freedom is impossible in a deterministic world. Against the perfectionist and constitutivist interpreters of Nietzsche's ethics, Miyasaki argues that ethics requires the freedom to improve or fail, and such freedom is impossible. At the same time, Miyasaki admits that Nietzsche at times appeals to and even defends freedom. Yet he explains that what Nietzsche is after in these passages is not freedom, but only the "feeling" of freedom (NI 49). Miyasaki is driven to some strained interpretive moves, such as when he argues that higher individuals' feeling of freedom is enhanced precisely to the degree to which they have abandoned the "illusion of freedom" (NI 49). How can I have the feeling of something I have come to see as an illusion?It is true that Nietzsche critiques the traditional metaphysical notion of the freedom of the will on the basis of his naturalism and determinism. Yet in recent years, scholars have argued that Nietzsche defends a novel conception of freedom that is compatible with determinism, akin to what we find in Spinoza. On this view, freedom is defined in terms of agency rather [End Page 98] than a power or faculty of choice. A free agent is... (shrink)

The fundamental article of my political creed, declared John Adams, is that despotism, or unlimited sovereignty, or absolute power is the same in a majority of a popular assembly, an aristocratical council, an oligarchical junto, and a single emperor. Equally arbitrary, cruel, bloody, and in every respect diabolical. The consequences of this article for Adams' thought are nowhere better articulated than in this anthology, which presents his remarkable attempts at constructing a complete political system based on constitutional, (...) balanced, representative government. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Politics of Eating: Feasting in Early Greek SocietyJohn RundinIn Euripides’ Cyclops, Silenus and his satyr companions have been shipwrecked in the realm of Polyphemus and have become his slaves. 1 Odysseus lands there, meets Silenus, and, conversing with him, asks who inhabits the land:Odysseus: Who occupies the area? A race of beasts? Silenus: Cyclopes. They live in caves, not roofed houses. Odysseus: Who is their leader? Or do (...) they have a democracy? Silenus: They’re herdsmen. No one has any power over anyone else. Odysseus: Do they sow Demeter’s grain? Or what do they live on? Silenus: Milk and cheeses and meals [borai] of mutton. Odysseus: Do they have Dionysus’ drink, the liquid of the vine? Silenus: Not at all. For that reason, they live in a land without choruses. Odysseus: Are they hospitable, and do they treat strangers with respect? Silenus: They claim that strangers have the most delicious flesh. [End Page 179] Odysseus: What do you mean? They like meals [borai] of men they have killed? Silenus: Everyone who comes here has been eaten up.(117–28)Silenus has rapidly made clear the beastly level of Cyclopean gastronomy. The savagery of the Cyclopes’ diet is underlined by his diction: the LSJ tells us that the word translated twice here as “meals,” borai, is more appropriately used to describe food for animals than for people. Silenus also lets us know that the Cyclopes are herdsmen and, like atavistic throwbacks to a time before cereal culture, raise no grain. 2 They are so backward that they do not have even wine. One dire consequence of this is spelled out by Silenus: they have no choruses. Polyphemus himself later illustrates another: they totally lack sympotic sophistication (483–589). So great is their culinary degeneracy, that, in defiance of the accepted norms of hospitality, they eat strangers who visit their realm. Not only, however, do the Cyclopes lack the elements of a cultured cuisine, they also lack basic political institutions. They have no ruler, nor do they have a democracy: as Silenus says, “no one has any power over anyone else.” The lack of political institutions and of culinary development may at first seem like two independent elements of a culturally deprived life. This is not the case, however. We shall see that in early Greek culture there is a strong connection between eating and politics. Indeed, it will soon be apparent that the Cyclopes’ culinary and political deficiencies are closely related.It is my hope to demonstrate this relationship. Emphasis will be placed on representations of eating in the Iliad and the Odyssey. It will then be shown how the patterns uncovered in Homeric texts lived on in later documents and institutions. It is impossible to know how accurately the life portrayed in the Homeric poems represents the historical conditions of any real society. 3 It may be true that the analysis of institutions [End Page 180] described in them is relevant only to an ideal world or to an aristocratic ideology. Such complex issues, however, may be avoided by merely analyzing certain aspects of eating as presented by Homer without thought of how well those aspects match the practice of any actual people. In the endeavor, of course, caution must be exercised not to expect too much of the data. Even if Homer’s narrative does represent some actual society, it is the nature of narrative to be selective, and it would therefore be inappropriate to try to extract from the poems either a comprehensive picture of foodways or any quantitative data about them. Nevertheless, it is impossible not to be struck by how consistent representations of eating in Homer are, and, moreover, not to acknowledge that patterns revealed in the Homeric representations had a long afterlife not only in later texts but even in social institutions.Feasting and the Homeric Political EconomyOn the shield of Achilles, a microcosm of the Iliadic world, is wrought a scene which reveals some political aspects of eating.And he put on it [the shield] the precinct of a king. There workmen were reaping with sharp sickles in their hands. Some of the bunches of grain were falling... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 123.4 (2002) 645-648 [Access article in PDF] Thomas N. Habinek. The Politics of Latin Literature: Writing, Identity, and Empire in Ancient Rome. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998. x + 234 pp. Cloth, $39.50. This is an important book, one that has in its brief life (a paperback edition appeared in 2001) spawned many scholarly debates in both written and spoken form. Many have disagreed—and will (...) disagree—with Habinek's ideas, and I certainly have many questions about his methodology, his use of sources and evidence, and his sometimes conflicting claims. Nonetheless, he takes on one of the most serious issues in Classics: how we read classical texts, what the reader's involvement with the text should be, and what part ideology plays (and did play) in both the formation and the reception of a text.Habinek's task, as he states it, is to study literature as a representation of society and an intervention in it (3). His overall aim is to assess the social function of Latin literature, a literature that was produced within a traditional aristocratic empire "by and for an elite that sought to maintain and expand its dominance over other sectors of the population through reference to an authorizing past" (3). As his title indicates (with "Politics" coming before "Literature"), he sets out to "politicize and historicize the reading of texts of classical Latin literature that are still too frequently regarded in purely formalistic and aesthetic terms" (4-5) by examining, chapter by chapter, a series of test cases or scenarios that embed Roman literature in its social, economic, and cultural context. This book is meant to offer the reader, then, a "historically engaged mode of reading" (5) by looking at intertexts of many sorts.Such an approach to literature belongs to the school of cultural-materialist studies, those critics who read and analyze literature as "ideological discourse and social institution" (5), and it draws from many schools of thought and disciplines, including Marxism, feminist theory, anthropology, political science, deconstruction, literary criticism, New Historicism, and Foucauldian theory. The genesis of Habinek's book was the close philological study of the "meaning and usage of specific Latin words and phrases in specific discursive contexts" (6). Thus he began with a close examination of the political basis of words but then broadened his lens to analyze textual systems and the construction of political identity. Habinek distinguishes himself from the semioticians and the formalists in his focus on the "interestedness" of textual utterances and the historical and political dynamics of the text. The particular kind of interestedness that Habinek zeroes in on is the Roman aristocratic elite and its anxieties about strategies for sustaining a moral and political hegemony.Habinek enters into a fray that has long simmered in the discipline of Classics but that boiled up into a full-scale battle with the publication of Martin Bernal's Black Athena. Habinek contends that Classical scholars' idealizing view of the ancient world (more Greece than Rome) and their isolation of Latin literature from Roman culture has allowed them to ignore "the social implications of their own practice" (10), a comfortable, ahistoricized position that militates [End Page 645] against reading Latin literature in a sociopolitical framework. If, for example, we read Ovid's exile poetry without acknowledging Ovid's contribution to Roman colonialism and his authorly assistance in constructing and disseminating an imperial discourse of domination, we risk imitating some famous scholarly forebears who "avoided the historical reality of Rome in order to actualize their own fantasies of the apolitical innocence of literature and literary studies" (14). Thus, Habinek sympathizes with Bernal's idea that "scholarship... is influenced by the scholar's sociopolitical background" (173, n. 2), and he urges us to follow Giambattista Vico, who privileged Roman literature and culture (over Greek), saw society and culture as something changing not fixed, and regarded language and cultural institutions as social constructs. Habinek contrasts Vico with figures like Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve, who, in the German Romantic tradition, idealized Greece and firmly separated... (shrink)

Two important criticisms of contemporary liberalism turn to Aristotle's political thought for support that which advocates participatory democracy, and that sympathetic to the rule of a virtuous or philosophic elite. In this commentary on Aristotle's politics the author explores how Aristotle offers political rule as an alternative to both the rule of aristocratic virtue and an unchecked participatory democracy. Writing in lucid prose, she offers an interpretation grounded in a close reading of the text, and combining (...) a respectful and patient attempt to understand Aristotle in his own terms with a wide, sympathetic, and argumentative reading in the secondary literature. (shrink)

Spinoza's Political Treatise constitutes the very last stage in the development of his thought, as he left the manuscript incomplete at the time of his death in 1677. On several crucial issues - for example, the new conception of the 'free multitude' - the work goes well beyond his Theological Political Treatise, and arguably presents ideas that were not fully developed even in his Ethics. This volume of newly commissioned essays on the Political Treatise is the (...) first collection in English to be dedicated specifically to the work, ranging over topics including political explanation, national religion, the civil state, vengeance, aristocratic government, and political luck. It will be a major resource for scholars who are interested in this important but still neglected work, and in Spinoza's political philosophy more generally. (shrink)

Chulpforta, 1862 -- Napoleon III as president -- Saint-just -- Two-poem cycle two kings -- Louis the sixteenth -- Louis the fifteenth -- Agonistic politics, 1871-1874 -- The Greek state, 1871 -- On the future of our educational institutions, third lecture, February 27th, 1872 -- Homer's contest -- Untimely meditations -- David Strauss : the confessor and the writer, 1873 -- Schopenhauer as educator, 1874 -- The free spirit, 1878-1880 -- Human, all too human : a book for free spirits, (...) 1878 -- Miscellaneous maxims and opinions, 1879 -- The wanderer and his shadow, 1880 -- The campaign against morality, 1881-1885 -- Dawn of day thoughts on the prejudices of morality, 1881 -- The joyful wisdom, 1882 -- Thus spoke Zarathustra : a book for everyone and no one, 1883-1885 -- On the new idol -- On the rabble -- On the Tarantulas -- On old and new law tablets -- Conversation with the kings -- Nachlass fragments, 1883-1885 -- Aristocratic radical, 1886-1887 -- Beyond good and evil : prelude to a philosophy of the future, 1886 -- The joyful wisdom, book v, 1887 -- On the genealogy of morals : a polemical tract, 1887 -- First essay, good and evil, good, and bad -- Second essay, guilt, bad conscience, and related matters -- Third essay, what do ascetic ideals mean? -- Nachlass fragments, 1885-1887 -- The antichrist, 1888 -- Twilight of the idols : or how one philosophises with a hammer, 1888 -- Morality as anti-nature -- The improvers of mankind -- What the Germans lack -- Skirmishes of an untimely man -- The antichrist : a curse on Christianity, 1888 -- Ecce homo : how one becomes what one is, 1888 -- Why I am so wise -- Why I write such good books -- The case of Wagner : a musician's problem -- Why I am a destiny -- Nachlass fragments, 1887-1888. (shrink)

In his defenses of empire, Alexis de Tocqueville emphasized the need to achieve grandeur for France, and his writings on Algeria have shaped our understanding of his political career. In pursuing empire abroad as a remedy for weak politics at home, scholars maintain that Tocqueville abandoned the participatory politics of Democracy in America. This essay argues, however, that the focus on Tocqueville’s international turn has obscured his interest in the greatness of domestic party politics. It demonstrates that Tocqueville championed (...) a version of grandeur tied to the latent energies of the lower classes and distinct from the Bonapartism and aristocratic nostalgia that characterized his thoughts on empire. This version of grandeur was a political reclamation of disagreement and debate that supported great party opposition to counter the malaise of bourgeois rule. The essay concludes by comparing Tocqueville’s attitude toward foreign others, whose freedoms had to be sacrificed to the cause of French nationalism, with his description of the lower classes within his own nation, whose inclusion in the franchise could foster great politics. This comparison enables us to draw modest lessons for interpreting political grandeur in the present day. (shrink)

The cumbersome title of this argumentative and often tedious book is illustrative of its intention, which is to offer a Marxist interpretation of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. By presenting history as the progressive unfolding of the course of dialectical materialism, the authors are enabled to argue that political philosophy is best understood in the context of the ever evolving class struggle that constitutes that unfolding. The ancient world is conceived of as being divided into two hostile camps: reactionary, authoritarian (...) aristocrats on the one hand, and progressive, or liberating democrats on the other. As Athens became more of a polis, that is, as political life within it became more public or democratic, class lines between the "producers and appropriators" hardened. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, political partisans of the first order, were the articulate, although morally obtuse apologists for "the increasing class consciousness of the aristocracy." More often than not, the projection of this recent concept upon the distant past has the effect of reducing the thought of the past to simple ideological cant. (shrink)

The argument consists of two main parts. First, it is shown that Augustine understood a people (populus) as a natural entity that is neither completely depraved (the city of Man) nor saintly (the city of God). While Augustine considered the city of God the true republic, he conceded that political bodies approximated its true justice and that they too deserve to be considered republics. This understanding is implicit in his reformulation of Cicero's definition of a people, and his reformulation (...) maintains the classical concept of political friendship. Second, for Augustine, a people can articulate itself through a republican mode. Neither a monarchy nor a pure democracy, Augustine understood a republic to include the functions of governors and governed (possibly being traded among different individuals), which means that a republic possesses democratic, aristocratic and monarchic parts. Augustine accounts for the monarchic part in his analysis of what in Rome was called the dictator, the office taken up by someone without formal political power and used to save the republic in crisis situations. (shrink)

This book offers an analysis of Nietzsche as a political philosopher in the context of the political movements of his era. Don Dombowsky examines Nietzsche’s political thought, known as aristocratic radicalism, in light of the ideology associated with Napoleon I and Napoleon III known as Bonapartism. Dombowsky argues that Nietzsche’s aristocratic radicalism is indistinguishable from Bonapartism and that Nietzsche is a delegate of the Napoleonic cult of personality.

In 300 BCE, the tutor of the heir-apparent to the Chu throne was laid to rest in a tomb at Jingmen, Hubei province in central China. A corpus of bamboo-strip texts that recorded the philosophical teachings of an era was buried with him. The tomb was sealed, and China quickly became the theater of the Qin conquest, an event that proved to be one of the most significant in ancient history. For over two millennia, the texts were forgotten. But in (...) October 1993, they were unearthed. The discovery of the Guodian texts, together with other recently discovered Warring States manuscripts, has revolutionized the study of early Chinese intellectual history. Kenneth Holloway argues that the Guodian corpus puts forth a political philosophy based on the harmonious interconnection of individuals engaged in moral self-cultivation. This unique worldview, says Holloway, cannot meaningfully be categorized as "Confucian" or "Daoist," because it shares important concepts and vocabulary with a number of different textual traditions that have anachronistically been characterized as competing or incompatible "schools" of thought. He finds that within the Guodian corpus familiar philosophical concepts and texts are applied in distinctive ways, presenting a worldview that is quite different from the received textual traditions. In the corpus, the most important function of government is to assist in the harmonization of state and family relations. It sees the relationship between these two entities - the family and the collection of families that ultimately constitute the state - as being inherently conflicting social groupings. The texts posit an interesting solution: State and family disharmony can be overcome by developing a hybrid government that employs both meritocratic and aristocratic methods. Without knowledge of the emphasis on hybridization found in the Guodian texts, however, scholars were unable to understand the interrelationships between these two methods of government. This new understanding illuminates central issues of government, religion, and philosophy in early China that were overlooked in received texts. As part of the contribution to our understanding of this particular body of texts, Holloway proposes a methodology for assessing a corpus of texts without relying on assumptions and definitions that derive from two thousand years of scholarship. The Guodian corpus, and Holloway's analysis of it, are now absolutely indispensable to any student or scholar of ancient Chinese intellectual history. (shrink)

반지성주의는 지성 자체를 부정하지는 않으나 자신이 아는 것만을 옳다고 여기며, 그에 반하는 지적 토론을 반사회적인 것으로 취급하여 권력으로 억압하려는 생각이나 태도를 말한다. 유가가 지적 탐구를 통해 덕성을 함양하고 유위(有爲)의 공동선을 창출하려는 지성주의라면, 도가는 인위적 매개를 끊고 무위(無爲)를 통해 신명(神明)의 도에 직접 다다르려는 다른 의미의 지성주의였다. 『노자』의기지(棄智)는 지성 자체에 대한 반대가 아니라 교지(巧智)에 대한 반대이며, 내면의 밝음[明]을 찾아가는 과정이다. 『장자』의 공자비판은 인위적 가공을 거치지 않고 인간 내면에 실재하는 자연성인 진지(眞知)로 돌아가자는 것이다. 황노(黃老)는 유가의 인의예법이란 외재적 매개를 거부하고, 내재하는 신명을 정신적 주체로 (...) 삼아 직접 도(道=천=자연)에 이르고자 하였다. 이렇게 볼 때 노장과 황노 모두 반지성주의가 아니다. 유가와 도가 논쟁의 핵심은 지식 자체에 대한 문제가 아니라, 무엇이 진정한 지식인가에 대한 것이다. (shrink)

The theory of the separation of powers between a legislature, an executive and a judiciary is still the foundation of modern representative democracy. It was developed by Montesquieu and came to replace the older theory of the mixed constitution which goes back to Plato, Aristotle and Polybios: there are three types of constitution: monarchy, oligarchy and democracy; when institutions from each of the three types are mixed, an interplay between the institutions emerges that affects all functions of state: legislation, implementation (...) of laws and jurisdiction. Today Montesquieu's separation of powers is riddled with so many exceptions that it is an obstacle rather than a help to understand the structure of modern democracy. The mixed constitution deserves to be revived as a corrective to the prevailing view that Western states are pure democracies and that democracy is rule by the people. (shrink)