II: Political Thinkers and Ideas/Penseurs et Idées Politiques
| Published date | 01 February 2016 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002083451606600102 |
| Date | 01 February 2016 |
| Subject Matter | Abstracts |
35
II
POLITICAL THINKERS AND IDEAS
PENSEURS ET IDÉES POLITIQUES
66.351 ABOLAFIA, Jacob — Solar theology and civil religion in
Plato’s Laws. Polis (Journal of Ancient Greek Political
Thought) 32(2), 2015 : 369-392.
How is a legislator to harness the positive cohesive power of religion
without falling prey to a charge of hypocrisy? Plato first recognized this
paradox of civil religion. Consequently, the multi-tiered religion he pro-
poses in the Laws should be understood as western thought’s first
attempt to solve this problem. At the center of the Laws stands a single
icon — the sun — that fits within both the Olympian schema of polis-
religion and a naturalistic, rationalist account persuasive to the more
philosophically minded. Using the language and imagery of solar wor-
ship, Plato designed a shared “civil religion”, that can reasonably claim to
link the social forms of political life to the higher truths of reason, even if
not all the city’s citizens will mean the same thing when they speak of the
god and his rites. [R, abr.]
66.352 ADAMS, Matthew S. ; JUN, Nathan J. — Political theory
and history: the case of anarchism. Journal of Political
Ideologies 20(3), Dec. 2015 : 244-262.
This essay critically examines one of the dominant tendencies in recent
theoretical discussions of anarchism, post-anarchism, and argues that
this tradition fails to engage sufficiently with anarchism’s history. Through
an examination of late 19th c. anarchist political thought — as repre-
sented by one of its foremost exponents, Peter Kropotkin — we demon-
strate the extent to which post-anarchism has tended to oversimplify and
misrepresent the historical tradition of anarchism. The article concludes
by arguing that all political-theoretical discussions of anarchism going
forward should begin with a fresh appraisal of the actual content of
anarchist political thought, based on a rigorous analysis of its political,
social, and cultural history. [R]
66.353 ALEXANDER, James — The major ideologies of liberal-
ism, socialism and conservatism. Political Studies 63(5),
Dec. 2015 : 979-994.
In the last thirty years, ideologies have been treated as if they are con-
tingent assemblages of concepts. This has complicated the study of
ideologies so much that some philosophical consideration now seems
necessary. In this article an original theory is put forward in which the
three major ideologies of liberalism, socialism and conservatism are
understood to be three differing views about the nature of the fundamen-
tal criterion by which politics should be judged. Since this theory explains
the relation between the three as if they are elaborations of the same
original criterion, it enables us to see how the ideologies relate to and yet
differ from each other. [R]
66.354 ATACK, Carol — Aristotle’s Pambasileia and the meta-
physics of monarchy. Polis (Journal of Ancient Greek Politi-
cal Thought) 32(2), 2015 : 297-320.
Aristotle’s account of kingship in Politics 3 responds to the rich discourse
on kingship that permeates Greek political thought, in which the king is
the paradigm of virtue, and also the instantiator and guarantor of order,
linking the political microcosm to the macrocosm of the universe. Both
models, in separating the individual king from the collective citizenry,
invite further, more abstract thought on the im portance of the king in the
foundation of the polity, whether the king can be considered part of, or
separate from, the polis, and the relationship between polis and uni-
verse. In addressing these aspects of kingship theories, Aristotle ex-
plores a “metaphysics of monarchy”, connecting his account of kingship
to his thought on citizenship and distributive justice within the polis. [R,
abr.]
66.355 BASSIN, Mark — Lev Gumilev and the European new
right. Nationalities Papers 43(6), Nov. 2015 : 840-865.
The striking affinities that have developed between radical-conservative
movements in Western Europe and Russia since the end of the Cold
War have been widely noted. This essay considers these affinities
through the example of the Soviet historian and geographer Lev Niko-
laevich Gumilev (1912-1992). It argues that Gumilev and the European
New Right developed perspectives that were highly comparable, founded
on similar principles, and articulated through similar images and allu-
sions. Yet despite the powerful resonances in terms of basic concepts
and theoretical orientation, there were nonetheless deep differences in
terms of the conclusions regarding the practical implications for their
respective societies that Gumilev and the Europeans deduced from
these principles. [R]
66.356 BRAHM, Gabriel Noah — Shakespeare's fault or yours?
Melzer's Maxim: a guide to tentative omniscience for the
congenitally hyperfallible. Perspectives on Political Science
44(4), Dec. 2015 : 207-211.
The tradition of esoteric writing in political philosophy exists, as A. Melzer
convincingly demonstrates, and the consequences of this discovery are
as significant as he claims. But the method of esoteric reading that he
recommends applies more broadly than he seems to suggest. Applied
liberally, moreover, as a corrective to nearly everything that's gone wrong
with education in the humanities and social sciences over the last forty
years, his humble heuristic — Melzer's Maxim, I call it — has the poten-
tial to reorient and renew the whole concept of Liberal Education for an
age whose pedagogy is foundering. A boon to the sub-discipline of
Political Theory in particular, Philosophy Between the Lines has even
more to offer to classroom instruction in general. Melzer's work promises
nothing less than the opening of the American mind. [R, abr.] [First article
of a symposium on “Arthur Melzer's Philosophy Between the Lines: the
lost history of esoteric writing [Chicago, 2014]”. See Abstr. 66.360, 376,
387, 389]
66.357 BROOKS, Michael — Analytic conservatism and analytic
radicalism: of understated distinctions and other analyti-
cal things. Constitutional Political Economy 26(4), Dec.
2015 : 442-454.
I re-examine Brennan and Hamlin’s so-called convexity argument for
analytic conservatism and Taylor’s counter-argument that a sufficiently
strong exit option may provide a case for analytic radicalism. In doing so,
I expose and underscore some of the implicit assumptions and under-
stated distinctions that are present in some of the extant literature on
analytic conservatism. [R]
66.358 CAMMACK, Daniela — Plato and Athenian justice. History
of Political Thought 36(4), Winter 2015 : 611-642.
Plato's interest in justice is pronounced and familiar. So too are his
criticisms of Athenian democracy. This article suggests that Plato's
conceptualization of justice constituted a direct and conscious confronta-
tion of the highly democratic mode of justice pursued in Athens' popular
courts. Yet Plato did not resist all Athenian judicial norms. His approach
recalls Athenian homicide trials, which operated quite differently from the
ordinary trials. Plato's signal contribution to the history of political thought
may be characterized as having taken the conception of justice associ-
ated with homicide to be paradigmatic, with remarkably enduring effects.
[R]
66.359 CARVER, Terrell — “Roughing it”: the “German Id eology”
“main manuscript”. History of Political Thought 36(4), Win-
ter 2015 : 700-725.
The “German ideology” “main manuscript”, edited as “chapter I. Feuer-
bach” in the 1920s, is a canonical source for Marx scholars for resolving
a “materialist interpretation of history”. Its presentation as a “text of the
last hand” relegated interesting features of the manuscript to the status
of textual “variants”. This article interprets these uniquely rough pas-
sages and debates, within a wider frame of reference [for] political
theorists. Marx and Engels [explore] humanity, social activity, the plausi-
bility of truthful and persuasive generalizations, and how political thinking
makes a difference. New translations of Marx and Engels show they
were working towards an anti-philosophy, [where] the world is human-
ized and historicized in experience, rather than observed through a
timeless conjunction of mind with matter. [R, abr.]
66.360 CLARK, Maudemarie — Philosophy and esotericism [A.
Melzer]. Perspectives on Political Science 44(4), Dec. 2015 :
212-220.
A. Melzer's Philosophy Between the Lines [Chicago, 2014] establishes
the historical reality of esotericism, or at least the reputation for it,
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