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John of Salisbury (c. 1120–80) is a key figure of the twelfth-century renaissance. A student at the cosmopolitan schools of medieval Paris, an associate of Thomas Becket and an acute commentator on society and rulership, his works and letters give unique insights into the political culture of this period. This volume reassesses the influence of classical sources on John’s political writings, investigating how he accessed and used the ideas of his ancient predecessors.
By looking at his quotations from and allusions to classical works, O’Daly shows that John not only borrowed the vocabulary of his classical forbears, but explicitly aligned himself with their philosophical positions. She illustrates John’s profound debt to Roman Stoicism, derived from the writings of Seneca and Cicero, and shows how he made Stoic theories on duties, virtuous rulership and moderation relevant to the medieval context. She also examines how John’s classical learning was filtered through patristic sources, arguing that this led to a unique synthesis between his political and theological views.
The book places famous elements of John’s political theory - such as his model of the body-politic, his views on tyranny - in the context of the intellectual foment of the classical revival and the dramatic social changes afoot in Europe in the twelfth century. In so doing, it offers students and researchers of this period a novel investigation of how Stoicism comprises a ‘third way’ for medieval political philosophy, interacting with – and at times dominating – neo-Platonism and proto-Aristotelianism.
, but his ideas have not been given their proper due or been rigorously analysed. Therefore, this is the first full-scale study of Ascham’s political thought. During the crucial period between the Second Civil War and the aftermath of the abolition of monarchy and the establishment of the English Republic, when he served as official pamphleteer of Parliament and the republican government, Ascham did not
of political convictions and commitments (if one is a liberal) and one's work as a political theorist? I believe that question to be of fundamental importance to political thought as a discipline. At its heart, it is about where we draw the limits on our theoretical work. It is a question that we will have sufficient opportunity to reflect on throughout this book, and one that I return to again, in detail, in the concluding chapter. There are other questions raised by our referring to Shklar as a liberal thinker. For we must first ask, what is
development of popular government provides an insightful view of early Enlightenment political theory, when the seventeenth-century preoccupation with monarchical supremacy was called into question by the British model of mixed government. During the period between 1719 and 1732 Ramsay wrote five works that contained his political thought. These were the Essay de Politique (1719), Essay philosophique sur le gouvernement civil (1721), L’Histoire de la Vie de Fénelon (1723), Les Voyages de Cyrus (1727), and A Plan of Education for a Young Prince (1732). With the exception of
Throughout this book we have seen Shklar adopting a distinctive approach to her work as a political theorist. To start with, there are very sound reasons to place her work in the same camp as so-called political non-moralists. In putting cruelty first among the vices, she sees herself as offering a version of liberalism understood primarily as a protection against the worst abuses of power (Sagar 2016 , p. 370). Hers is also a sceptical form of political theory, and so she endeavours to engage in political thought without having to rely on a
43 2 Rethinking resistance: Spencer, Krishnavarma, and The Indian Sociologist Inder S. Marwah In recent years, political theorists and intellectual historians have begun to examine the impacts of empire in shaping the conceptual frameworks of late modern political thought, and more particularly, the ways that ideas were absorbed, integrated, synthesized and refracted in colonial contexts situated at the intersection of local and global knowledge systems.1 This chapter aims to contribute to these efforts by excavating a philosophically distinctive line of anti
readers. But it is possible to imagine a range of other sources that could be equally valuable. Third, the study has placed emphasis on the way in which narratives of historical change informed ideological contestation. For several decades, social scientists have been drawing attention to the way in which history mediates political thought and behaviour. 5 This tradition of scholarship has done much to aid the study of political ideas. It has been attentive, for instance, to the way in which an actor’s location in a sequence of events may determine their receptivity
’l-Hayʾa al-Qawmiyya li’l-Bahth al-ʿIlmi, 1990), pp. 17–35. See also Samer Frangie, “Historicism, Socialism and Liberalism after the Defeat: On the Political Thought of Yasin al-Hafiz,” Modern Intellectual History 12.2 (2015), pp. 325–352. 154 See especially Sadiq Jalal al-ʿAzm, al-Naqd al-Dhati bʿada al-Hazima (Beirut: Dar al-Taliʿa, 1969), and Munif, al-Dimuqratiyya . In his foreword to the English edition of the book published in 2014, al-ʿAzm highlighted the works of such liberal thinkers as Egypt’s Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd and Syria’s Muhammad Shahrur, “[who] share
historical phase when Patriarcha was first published (1680). The analysis of language and backdrop has helped to unfold not only the texture of his theories, but also how they were received and employed at the time of the exclusion crisis and afterwards. Furthermore, Patriarcha has been used as a thread leading us into early modern political thought and culture. In particular, it has served as a prism through which to see the lasting importance of the paradigms of patriarchalism and patriotism during the long seventeenth century in england. By way of an informative and
7 The traditionalists1 So how should Conservatives talk? What is the mood they should be seeking to promote? Authority should be the by-word, not freedom. Peregrine Worsthorne, 19782 What the Conservative Party, then, should concern itself with … is the strength of the nation. T. E. Utley, 19783 T he purpose of this chapter is to outline the political thought of the traditionalists associated with the Conservative Party. The core ideas of the traditionalists can be summarised as a strong sense of patriotism, defence of the established social order and respect