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The Puritan Revolution of mid-seventeenth-century England produced an explosion of new and important political thinking. In addition to most famous thinkers, Thomas Hobbes, Sir Robert Filmer and the Levellers, there are other important figures who have been relatively neglected, of whom Anthony Ascham is one. This book is the first full-scale study of Ascham's political thought. Ascham's works were intended to convince lay Presbyterians and royalists to adhere to the policy of national pacification implemented from 1648 by the Independent 'party' within Parliament. From 1648 to 1650 Ascham's propaganda primarily dealt with the issue of the validity of oaths, and insisted on the reciprocal relation between obedience and protection. The first part of Ascham's Discourse focused on 'what things, and how farre a man may lawfully conform to the power and commands of those who hold a kingdome divided by civill warre'. Ascham adopted a twofold line of argument: in the first, he sought to demonstrate that war was consistent with natural law and scripture. Secondly, not all types of war were consistent with the Christian religion and the natural law of self-preservation, only the defensive war. Ascham's natural law theory, which he drew from Hugo Grotius, Thomas Hobbes and John Selden, had therefore both civil and religious implications. Ascham proposed a synthesis between Grotius and Niccolò Machiavelli, underlining the priority of state order over political participation, and justifying war as a means of accessing power only to confirm the necessity of re-establishing order.
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
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
’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
other words, is derivative in a twofold sense: it has its origin in the pre-political data of biological life, and it has its end in the post-political, highest possibility of human destiny.”13 This paradox is especially evident in the thought of Karl Marx, who sought to explain politics with the ultimate goal of escaping from a condition of politics defined in terms of class struggle. Arendt argues that the death of Socrates represented a major threat to philosophy, and set in motion an intellectual tradition whereby the pursuit of political thought is directed
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
, 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
-first-century social and economic conditions. Turning to the wide-ranging form of political thought known as anarchism, we discuss anarchist views of human nature, the state, liberty and equality, and economic life. The chapter ends with a critique of anarchism and some thoughts as to its relevance to modern politics. POINTS TO CONSIDER Is Marxism correct in identifying class as the most important form of
We have seen how Shklar is, in various ways, a widely acknowledged and significant influence on the approach to political thinking that we have called political non-moralism. Like many political non-moralists, hers is a sceptical approach that focuses on protection against the greatest political evil, namely cruelty, and arguably tyranny is its apotheosis. Nonetheless, scepticism is not the only characteristic of her mature political thought, and it may not even be the most important when it comes to the question of how she understands
revival in the late twentieth century. Chapter 8 looks at the very different region of East Asia. Specifically, the chapter explores Japan’s deeper connections with China and the West and how these have influenced cultural and political thought. The Conclusion is a précis of the overall argument with highlights of what is absent from civilisational analysis at large. At the very end I ask questions about the vocation of civilisational analysis in contemporary contexts of creation and transformation, which includes critical global problems of the human condition. I