Download or read book The Theological Basis of Liberal Modernity in Montesquieu s Spirit of the Laws written by Thomas L. Pangle and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-05-15 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Spirit of the Laws—Montesquieu’s huge, complex, and enormously influential work—is considered one of the central texts of the Enlightenment, laying the foundation for the liberally democratic political regimes that were to embody its values. In his penetrating analysis, Thomas L. Pangle brilliantly argues that the inherently theological project of Enlightenment liberalism is made more clearly—and more consequentially— in Spirit than in any other work. In a probing and careful reading, Pangle shows how Montesquieu believed that rationalism, through the influence of liberal institutions and the spread of commercial culture, would secularize human affairs. At the same time, Pangle uncovers Montesquieu’s views about the origins of humanity’s religious impulse and his confidence that political and economic security would make people less likely to sacrifice worldly well-being for otherworldly hopes. With the interest in the theological aspects of political theory and practice showing no signs of diminishing, this book is a timely and insightful contribution to one of the key achievements of Enlightenment thought.
Download or read book Montesquieu s Philosophy of Liberalism written by Thomas L. Pangle and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2020-04-07 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This first comprehensive commentary on The Spirit of the Laws uncovers and explicates the plan of Montesquieu's famous but baffling treatise. Pangle brings to light Montesquieu's rethinking of the philosophical groundwork of liberalism, showing how The Spirit of the Laws enlarges and enriches the liberal conception of natural right by means of a new appeal to History as the source of basic norms.
Download or read book The Spirit of Montesquieu s Persian Letters written by Constantine Christos Vassiliou and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2023-05-08 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Spirit of Montesquieu’s Persian Letters explores Montesquieu’s careful treatment of the spiritual, ethical, and civic dilemmas France encountered in the early 18th Century. In examining Montesquieu’s response to Bourbon France’s commercial and political culture of this time, it will help deepen our understanding of his political philosophy.
Download or read book Civil Religion in Modern Political Philosophy written by Steven Frankel and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2020-07-15 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inspired by Machiavelli, modern philosophers held that the tension between the goals of biblical piety and the goals of political life needed to be resolved in favor of the political, and they attempted to recast and delimit traditional Christian teaching to serve and stabilize political life accordingly. This volume examines the arguments of those thinkers who worked to remake Christianity into a civil religion in the early modern and modern periods. Beginning with Machiavelli and continuing through to Alexis de Tocqueville, the essays in this collection explain in detail the ways in which these philosophers used religious and secular writing to build a civil religion in the West. Early chapters examine topics such as Machiavelli’s comparisons of Christianity with Roman religion, Francis Bacon’s cherry-picking of Christian doctrines in the service of scientific innovation, and Spinoza’s attempt to replace long-held superstitions with newer, “progressive” ones. Other essays probe the scripture-based, anti-Christian argument that religion must be subordinate to politics espoused by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and David Hume, both of whom championed reason over divine authority. Crucially, the book also includes a study of civil religion in America, with chapters on John Locke, Montesquieu, and the American Founders illuminating the relationships among religious and civil history, acts, and authority. The last chapter is an examination of Tocqueville’s account of civil religion and the American regime. Detailed, thought-provoking, and based on the careful study of original texts, this survey of religion and politics in the West will appeal to scholars in the history of political philosophy, political theory, and American political thought.
Download or read book Fanaticism and the History of Philosophy written by Paul Katsafanas and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-11-07 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Voltaire called fanaticism the "monster that pretends to be the child of religion". Philosophers, politicians, and cultural critics have decried fanaticism and attempted to define the distinctive qualities of the fanatic, whom Winston Churchill described as "someone who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject". Yet despite fanaticism’s role in the long history of social discord, human conflict, and political violence, it remains a relatively neglected topic in the history of philosophy. In this outstanding inquiry into the philosophical history of fanaticism, a team of international contributors examine the topic from antiquity to the present day. Organized into four sections, topics covered include: Fanaticism in ancient Greek, Indian, and Chinese philosophy; Fanaticism and superstition from Hobbes to Hume, including chapters on Locke and Montesquieu, Shaftesbury, and Hutcheson; Kant, Germaine de Stael, Hegel, Nietzsche, William James, and Jorge Portilla on fanaticism; Fanaticism and terrorism; and extremism and gender, including the philosophy and morality of the "manosphere"; Closed-mindedness and political and epistemological fanaticism. Spanning themes from superstition, enthusiasm, and misanthropy to the emotions, purity, and the need for certainty, Fanaticism and the History of Philosophy is a landmark volume for anyone researching and teaching the history of philosophy, particularly ethics and moral philosophy. It is also a valuable resource for those studying fanaticism in related fields such as religion, the history of political thought, sociology, and the history of ideas.
Download or read book Research Handbook on the History of Political Thought written by Cary J. Nederman and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2024-06-05 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This insightful Handbook reviews the key frameworks guiding political scientists and historians of political thought. Comprehensive in scope, it covers historical methodology, traditions, epochs, and classic authors and texts, spanning from ancient Greece until the nineteenth century.
Download or read book Montesquieu s Political Economy written by Andrew Scott Bibby and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-04-29 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an introductory survey of Montesquieu's economic ideas and a fresh examination of the longstanding controversy over the meaning and purpose of Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Laws. No one doubts that Montesquieu helped to formulate the core liberal ideals at the heart of the development of liberal republican traditions on both the European and American continents. Yet, questions remain about Montesquieu's political intentions. In particular, the view of Montesquieu as a conscious proponent of commercial modernity has come under increasing scrutiny. While not ignoring recent scholarly challenges, Bibby moves the debate forward by uncovering the many hidden connections between commerce, liberty, and religion in The Spirit of the Laws. A failure to make these connections, Bibby argues, has led to significant interpretative errors. This book attempts to eliminate one source of the confusion which continues to cloud Montesquieu's political philosophy in obscurity.
Download or read book Machiavelli s Effectual Truth written by Harvey C. Mansfield and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-09-30 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Machiavelli, master conspirator of effectual truth, meets his equal in Montesquieu, who takes the task of maintaining the modern world.
Download or read book The Democratic Soul written by Aaron L. Herold and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2021-08-06 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Democratic Soul, Aaron L. Herold argues that liberal democracy's current crisis—of extreme polarization, rising populism, and disillusionment with political institutions—must be understood as the culmination of a deeper dissatisfaction with the liberal Enlightenment. Major elements of both the Left and the Right now reject the Enlightenment's emphasis on rights as theoretically unfounded and morally undesirable and have sought to recover a contrasting politics of obligation. But this has re-opened questions about the relationship between politics and religion long thought settled. To address our situation, Herold examines the political thought of Spinoza and Tocqueville, two authors united in support of liberal democracy but with differing assessments of the Enlightenment. Through an original reading of Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise, Herold uncovers the theological foundation of liberal democracy: a comprehensive moral teaching rehabilitating human self-interest, denigrating "devotion" as a relic of "superstition," and cultivating a pride in living, acting, and thinking for oneself. In his political vision, Spinoza articulates our highest hopes for liberalism, for he is confident such an outlook will produce both intellectual flourishing and a paradoxical recovery of community. But Spinoza's project contains tensions which continue to trouble democracy today. As Herold shows via a new interpretation of Tocqueville's Democracy in America, the dissatisfactions now destabilizing democracy can be traced to the Enlightenment's failure to find a place for religious longings whose existence it largely denied. In particular, Tocqueville described a natural human desire for a kind of happiness found, at least partly, in self-sacrifice. Because modernity weakens religion precisely as it makes democracy stronger than liberalism, it permits this desire to find new and dangerous outlets. Tocqueville thus sought to design a "new political science" which could rectify this problem and which therefore remains indispensable today in recovering the moderation lacking in contemporary politics.
Download or read book Making Religion Safe for Democracy written by J. Judd Owen and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines a unified reinterpretation of Christianity by Hobbes, Locke, and Jefferson, and compares that to de Tocqueville's analysis of changes.
Download or read book Are Markets Moral written by Arthur M. Melzer and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2018-09-06 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite the remarkable achievements of free markets—their rapid spread around the world and success at generating economic growth—they tend to elicit anxiety. Creative destruction and destabilizing change provoke feelings of powerlessness in the face of circumstances that portend inevitable catastrophe. Thus, from the beginning, capitalism has been particularly stimulative for the growth of critics and doomsayers. While early analysts such as Karl Marx primarily emphasized an impending economic disaster, in recent years the economic critique of capitalism has receded in favor of moral and environmental concerns. At the heart of this collection of original essays lies the question: does morality demand that we adopt a primarily supportive or critical stance toward capitalism? Some contributors suggest that the foundational principles of the capitalist system may be at odds with the central requirements of morality, while others wonder whether the practical workings of markets slowly erode moral character or hinder the just distribution of goods. Still others consider whether morality itself does not demand the economic freedom constitutive of the capitalist system. The essays in Are Markets Moral? represent a broad array of disciplines, from economics to philosophy to law, and place particular emphasis on the experiences of non-Western countries where the latest chapters in capitalism's history are now being written. Contributors: Andrew S. Bibby, Gurcharan Das, Richard A. Epstein, Fonna Forman, Robert P. George, Steven J. Kautz, Peter Augustine Lawler, Steven Lukes, Deirdre Nansen McCloskey, Peter McNamara, Arthur M. Melzer, John Tomasi.
Download or read book Montesquieu and the Logic of Liberty written by Paul Anthony Rahe and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2009-09-22 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fresh examination of the world of Montesquieu seeks to understand the short-comings of modern democracy in light of the French philosopher's insightful critique of commercial republicanism.
Download or read book The Double Edged Sword of Freedom of Speech written by Stanislaw Sielicki and published by Stanislaw Sielicki. This book was released on 2012-02-15 with total page 35 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author argues that not only Ancient philosophers and political thinkers of the Age of Enlightenment saw the guiding and prominent role of educated elites and their censorship of thoughts and mores of the rest as an important factor in preserving Liberty in society. Such an argument was also an essential part of the Founding Fathers' reasoning. The resulting "Aristocratic Constitution" (in terms of Anti-Federalists) was meant to limit imprudence of the general populace, in particular that which was influenced by the autocratic, Bible-centered political ideology of the Puritan, Calvinist sects. When the paternalistic social model of the Founders was over-throned during the Civil War, which was effectively a coup d'état of the Big Capital supported by Puritans who saw commonalities between their self-reliance doctrine and the new unrestricted predatory capitalism ideology, original mechanisms of the Founders' Constitution had begun to work against Liberty. The firm hold on the power by the union of the Big Capital and Evangelicals was briefly and indecisively interrupted by the Progressivist ideas of the New Deal, but now it is precipitously strengthening again. In such conditions the unrestricted Freedom of Speech and Expressions, guarded not exclusively from the infringements of the Government, but also from the Special Interest Groups and individuals, is the only way to save our deteriorating Liberty.
Download or read book Persecution Toleration written by Noel D. Johnson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-02-14 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Noel D. Johnson and Mark Koyama tackle the question: how does religious liberty develop?
Download or read book A Defence of the Spirit of Laws written by Charles Louis de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2015-06-12 with total page 74 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brede et de Montesquieu generally referred to as simply Montesquieu, was a French lawyer, man of letters, and political philosopher who lived during the Age of Enlightenment. He is famous for his articulation of the theory of separation of powers, which is implemented in many constitutions throughout the world. He did more than any other author to secure the place of the word despotism in the political lexicon. Montesquieu is credited as being among the progenitors, which include Herodotus and Tacitus, of anthropology, as being among the first to extend comparative methods of classification to the political forms in human societies. Indeed, the French political anthropologist Georges Balandier considered Montesquieu to be "the initiator of a scientific enterprise that for a time performed the role of cultural and social anthropology." According to social anthropologist D. F. Pocock, Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Laws was "the first consistent attempt to survey the varieties of human society, to classify and compare them and, within society, to study the inter-functioning of institutions." Montesquieu's political anthropology gave rise to his theories on government. When Catherine the Great wrote her Nakaz (Instruction) for the Legislative Assembly she had created to clarify the existing Russian law code, she avowed borrowing heavily from Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws, although she discarded or altered portions that did not support Russia's absolutist bureaucratic monarchy."
Download or read book Temporary Economic Crises written by Shahzavar Karimzadi and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-12-30 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In traditional theory of economic crisis, and in all its manifestations, there is no fundamental difference between economic disorder and economic crisis: the two types of economic turmoil are both considered temporary states. This book is a methodical study of deep-seated causes of economic crises. The aim of the book is to explain the key difference between economic disorder and economic crisis. Its key argument is that economic disorder is a permanent condition, whereas economic crises are a series of transitory periods. Economic crises, unlike economic disorders, are acute and frenzied volatilities that are unpredictable and short-lived. Humans cannot survive in a condition of perpetual economic crises but can only accommodate life under unremitting economic disorders. The book also explores the root cause of economic crisis. Unlike the received wisdom in economics, this book looks at the root cause of such hysterical economic turbulences as a result of an innate propensity of human fallibility. The final section of this book looks at the ramifications of this alternative perspective on macroeconomic policy formation and implementation. This book is a major contribution to the literature on economic disorder and crises and will be of great interest to readers of economic theory, philosophy of economics, and the history of economic thought.
Download or read book Montesquieu the Despotic Ideas of Europe written by Vickie B. Sullivan and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-09-05 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Montesquieu is rightly famous as a tireless critic of despotism, which he associates in his writings overtly with Asia and the Middle East and not with the apparently more moderate Western models of governance found throughout Europe. However, a careful reading of Montesquieu reveals that he recognizes a susceptibility to despotic practices in the West—and that the threat emanates not from the East, but from certain despotic ideas that inform such Western institutions as the French monarchy and the Roman Catholic Church. Nowhere is Montesquieu’s critique of the despotic ideas of Europe more powerful than in his enormously influential The Spirit of the Laws, and Vickie B. Sullivan guides readers through Montesquieu’s sometimes veiled, yet sharply critical accounts of Machiavelli, Hobbes, Aristotle, and Plato, as well as various Christian thinkers. He finds deleterious consequences, for example, in brutal Machiavellianism, in Hobbes’s justifications for the rule of one, in Plato’s reasoning that denied slaves the right of natural defense, and in the Christian teachings that equated heresy with treason and informed the Inquisition. In this new reading of Montesquieu’s masterwork, Sullivan corrects the misconception that it offers simple, objective observations, showing it instead to be a powerful critique of European politics that would become remarkably and regrettably prescient after Montesquieu’s death when despotism wound its way through Europe.
