Rethinking Modern Political Theory PDF Download

Author: John Dunn
Publisher: CUP Archive
ISBN: 9780521316958
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
This volume of essays discusses the weaknesses in modern political theory and suggests how they might begin to be remedied.

Author: Annabel Brett
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 113945997X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 27

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Book Description
Quentin Skinner's classic study The Foundations of Modern Political Thought was first published by Cambridge in 1978. This was the first of a series of outstanding publications that have changed forever the way the history of political thought is taught and practised. Rethinking the Foundations of Modern Political Thought looks afresh at the impact of the original work, asks why it still matters, and considers a number of significant agendas that it still inspires. A very distinguished international team of contributors has been assembled, including John Pocock, Richard Tuck and David Armitage, and the result is an unusually powerful and cohesive contribution to the history of ideas, of interest to large numbers of students of early modern history and political thought. In conclusion, Skinner replies to each chapter and presents his own thoughts on the latest trends and the future direction of the history of political thought.

Author: Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773586679
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
Rethinking the Political demonstrates that the Collège de Sociologie's quest to create a new place for the sacred in modern collective life ostensibly entailed avoiding the theorization of both aesthetics and politics. While the Collège condemned manipulation by totalitarian regimes, its understanding of community also led to a rejection of democratic and communist forms of political organization, leaving the group open to accusations of flirting with fascism. Acknowledging these political ambiguities, the author goes beyond a narrow ideological reading to reveal the Collège's important contribution to our thinking about the relationships between community formation, politics, aesthetics, and the sacred in the modern world. She expands her historical account of the members' thought, including their relationship to Surrealism, beyond the group's dissolution, and shows how the work of Claude Lefort extends, but also resolves, many of the Collège's key theoretical insights. A fascinating study of some of the twentieth-century's most daring thinkers, Rethinking the Political offers crucial insights into the contradictions at play in modern notions of community that still resonate today.

Author: Nancy J. Hirschmann
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501725645
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
In Rethinking Obligation, Nancy J. Hirschmann provides an innovative analysis of liberal obligation theory that uses feminism as a theoretical method for rethinking political obligations from the bottom up. In articulating a feminist method for political theory, Hirschmann skillfully brings together theoretical categories and methods previously seen as opposed: feminist standpoint and postmodernism, gender psychology and anti-essentialism, empiricism and interpretivism. Rethinking Obligation mounts a vital challenge to central aspects of liberal theory. Students and scholars of political philosophy, political theory, feminist theory, and women’s studies will want to read it.

Author: Bhikhu C. Parekh
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674009950
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
Bhikhu Parekh argues for a pluralist perspective on cultural diversity. Writing from both within the liberal tradition and outside of it as a critic, he challenges what he calls the "moral monism" of much of traditional moral philosophy, including contemporary liberalism--its tendency to assert that only one way of life or set of values is worthwhile and to dismiss the rest as misguided or false. He defends his pluralist perspective both at the level of theory and in subtle nuanced analyses of recent controversies. Thus, he offers careful and clear accounts of why cultural differences should be respected and publicly affirmed, why the separation of church and state cannot be used to justify the separation of religion and politics, and why the initial critique of Salman Rushdie (before a Fatwa threatened his life) deserved more serious attention than it received. Rejecting naturalism, which posits that humans have a relatively fixed nature and that culture is an incidental, and "culturalism," which posits that they are socially and culturally constructed with only a minimal set of features in common, he argues for a dialogic interplay between human commonalities and cultural differences. This will allow, Parekh argues, genuinely balanced and thoughtful compromises on even the most controversial cultural issues in the new multicultural world in which we live.

Author: Matthew H. Bowker
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317975103
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
What does it mean to describe something or someone as absurd? Why did absurd philosophy and literature become so popular amidst the violent conflicts and terrors of the mid- to late-twentieth century? Is it possible to understand absurdity not as a feature of events, but as a psychological posture or stance? If so, what are the objectives, dynamics, and repercussions of the absurd stance? And in what ways has the absurd stance continued to shape postmodern thought and contemporary culture? In Rethinking the Politics of Absurdity, Matthew H. Bowker offers a surprising account of absurdity as a widespread endeavor to make parts of our experience meaningless. In the last century, he argues, fears about subjects’ destructive desires have combined with fears about rationality in a way that has made the absurd stance seem attractive. Drawing upon diverse sources from philosophy, literature, politics, psychoanalysis, theology, and contemporary culture, Bowker identifies the absurd effort to make aspects of our histories, our selves, and our public projects meaningless with postmodern revolts against reason and subjectivity. Weaving together analyses of the work of Albert Camus, Georges Bataille, Judith Butler, Emmanuel Levinas, and others with interview data and popular narratives of apocalypse and survival, Bowker shows that the absurd stance and the postmodern revolt invite a kind of bargain, in which meaning is sacrificed in exchange for the survival of innocence. Bowker asks us to consider that the very premise of this bargain is false: that ethical subjects and healthy communities cannot be created in absurdity. Instead, we must make meaningful even the most shocking losses, terrors, and destructive powers with which we live. Bowker's book will be of interest to scholars and practitioners in the fields of political science, philosophy, literature, psychoanalysis, sociology, and cultural studies.

Author: David Armitage
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521807077
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
This insightful and wide-ranging volume traces the genesis of international intellectual thought, connecting international and global history with intellectual history.

Author: Kimberly Hutchings
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 1473946158
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
`A lucid, comprehensive analysis of normative approaches to international relations, and an original contribution to critical theory′ - Andrew Linklater, University of Keele `Hutchings combines a valuable account of the current state of the art with a lucid expositon of her own, highly distinctive, position. This will be required reading for students in international political theory, and indeed anyone interested in normative issues in international relations′ - Chris Brown, London School of Economics and Political Science Providing an invaluable overview of the competing schools of thought in traditional and contemporary international theory, this book seeks to path the way forward for new ways of thinking about international political morality. First, the role and place of normative theory in the study of international politics is explained before a discussion of mainstream approaches within international relations and applied ethics. Here the student is introduced to the central debates between realists and idealists, and cosmopolitans and communitarians. Second, the conceptual challenges of contemporary approaches in critical theory, postmodernism and feminism are outlined and then used as a platform to develop the author′s own Hegelian-Foucauldian approach for doing normative international theory. Third, the insights drawn from each approach are applied to the study of two key topics in contemporary theoretical debate: the right to self-determination, and the idea of cosmopolitan democracy, and conclusions drawn for transcending the theoretical deadlock in international relations. Accessibly written and wide-ranging, this text will quickly become essential reading for all students and academics of politics and international relations seeking a deeper understanding of the underlying tensions and future potential of international theory today.

Author: Maria Dimova-Cookson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429766203
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
This book argues that the distinction between positive and negative freedom remains highly pertinent today, despite having fallen out of fashion in the late twentieth century. It proposes a new reading of this distinction for the twenty-first century, building on the work of Constant, Green and Berlin who led the historical development of these ideas. The author defends the idea that freedom is a dynamic interaction between two inseparable, yet sometimes fundamentally, opposed positive and negative concepts – the yin and yang of freedom. Positive freedom is achieved when one succeeds in doing what is right, while negative freedom is achieved when one is able to advance one’s wellbeing. In an environment of culture wars, resurging populism and challenge to progressive liberal values, recognising the duality of freedom can help us better understand the political dilemmas we face and point the way forward. The book analyses the duality of freedom in more philosophical depth than previous studies and places it within the context of both historical and contemporary political thinking. It will be of interest to students and scholars of liberalism and political theory.

Author: Chia-Yu Chou
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317064151
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
Rethinking Hobbes and Kant argues that predominant approaches to the theoretical relationship between Hobbes and Kant have reached conclusions that were pre-digested in assumptions about the ‘isms’ which these two writers are propounding. Chou shows how these assumptions have inhibited commentators from recognising the affinities between Hobbes’s and Kant’s political philosophies, or, if they have, prevented them from providing a plausible explanation of those affinities. To provide a fresh understanding of the relation between Hobbes and Kant, this book examines and compares what they actually wrote about some central conceptions in political theory, as it becomes visible once the assumptions out of which they are formed are set aside. Chou argues that what matters is that that we reflect upon our own assumptions, and that we have at least some conscious awareness that the assumptions of our day were not held all the time and everywhere, and that we do not reify them into crude models which distort the thought of the past and the present in equal measure. This book therefore seeks to bring into the arena of conscious thought assumptions which are deeply rooted in many modern minds and which work to distort many current studies of the relationship between Hobbes’ and Kant’s political philosophies, with negative consequences for the understanding of Hobbes, of Kant, and of politics itself. Providing a fresh understanding of the relation between Hobbes and Kant, this book will be of great use for graduates and scholars of Political Theory, Philosophy and Political Sociology.