American Political Thought and the American Revolution

1952 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 321-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louis Hartz
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
American Political Thought ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Democratic Revolution

“The great advantage of the American,” Tocqueville once wrote, “is that he has arrived at a state of democracy without having to endure a democratic revolution….” Fundamental as this insight is, we have not remembered Tocqueville for it, and the reason is rather difficult to explain. Perhaps it is because, fearing revolution in the present, we like to think of it in the past, and we are reluctant to concede that its romance has been missing from our lives. Perhaps it is because the plain evidence of the American revolution of 1776, especially the evidence of its social impact that our newer historians have collected, has made the comment of Tocqueville seem thoroughly enigmatic. But in the last analysis, of course, the question of its validity is a question of perspective. Tocqueville was writing with the great revolutions of Europe in mind, and from that point of view the outstanding thing about the American effort of 1776 was bound to be, not the freedom to which it led, but the established feudal structure it did not have to destroy. He was writing too, as no French liberal of the nineteenth century could fail to write, with the shattered hopes of the Enlightenment in mind. The American revolution had been one of the greatest of them all, a precedent constantly appealed to in 1793.

What Kind of Book is The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution?

2018 ◽  
Vol 91 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Nelson
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Consciousness ◽  
American Political Thought ◽  
Early American ◽  
The Relationship

Most scholarship on the ideology of the American Revolution asks the question: “What did American patriots think about politics”? But The Ideological Origins asks instead: “ How did patriots think about politics”? At issue here is the distinction between political theory and political consciousness. Once we get this distinction properly into view, we can rethink the relationship between two great, and apparently rivalrous, historiographies on early American political thought.

Writing the American Revolution: War Veterans in the Nineteenth-Century Cultural Memory

1998 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
EDWARD TANG
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Rhode Island ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Henry David Thoreau ◽  
Revolutionary War ◽  
Benjamin Franklin ◽  
The Past ◽  
Bunker Hill ◽  
Israel Potter

With how little cooperation of the societies after all is the past remembered – At first history had no muse – but a kind fate watched over her – some garrulous old man with tenacious memory told it to his child.Henry David Thoreau,Journals (1842)In 1823, something of the bittersweet occurred in Cranston, Rhode Island: an aged revolutionary war veteran returned to his hometown after a prolonged exile in England. Hopeful about reuniting with his family and community after an absence of nearly fifty years, the old soldier was surprised and disappointed to learn that his property had been sold, his family had moved west, and few among the remaining villagers even remembered who he was. Such is the story of one Israel Potter. An adventurous fellow, he had fought at the battle near Bunker Hill, had met Benjamin Franklin, and, after being captured by the British, had roamed England after the war, continually poverty-stricken, while searching for a passage back to America. Once returned to Cranston, he applied for a federal pension for his wartime services. In all probability, Potter never received any financial compensation, but he left a narrative of his life, reminding his readers that at one point in the republic's history, he did matter.

The Politics of Slavery

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Brace
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The Political ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
Historical Process ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Dimensions ◽  
Definition Of

This book asks what it means to describe someone as a slave and explores the political dimensions of that question. It argues against the search for a transhistorical and timeless definition of slavery, and offers a critical interrogation of the dominant liberal discourse on slavery from the Enlightenment to the present. It pays particular attention to the meanings of the slavery / freedom binary and to the connections between the past and the present in understanding ‘old’ and ‘new’ slavery. The book is about what it means to think about slavery as a historical process and as a political relation, both in the history of political thought and in present debates about trafficking and incarceration. It argues that we need to bring the concept of slavery back into our understandings of freedom, labour and belonging, and unravel the assumptions behind the meanings we ascribe to personhood, sub-personhood and humanity. From Aristotle and the idea of natural slavery, through Locke’s conception of civil society, Hegel’s master-slave dialectic and J.S. Mill’s analogy of slavery and marriage to the discourse of modern abolition and the idea of trafficking as slavery, the book interrogates what it means to think about the idea of freedom as the opposite of slavery, and draws attention to the significance of the tensions, ambiguities and silences that surround that conception.

scholarly journals Oude waarheden - Over de terugkeer van de klassieke oudheid in de verlichtingshistoriografie

2014 ◽  
Vol 127 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-246
Author(s):  
Wyger R.E. Velema
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Review Article ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
The Many

Since the publication of Peter Gay’s The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, scholarly interest in the classical presence in Enlightenment culture has waned. Over the past decade, however, this topic has returned to center stage. This review article discusses the ways in which recent research has contributed to the rediscovery of the classical past in the Enlightenment. It starts with an evaluation of the current reinterpretation of the Querelle des anciens et des modernes, continues with an overview of recent scholarship on the various intellectual and institutional environments in which knowledge of the classical past was acquired and transmitted, and ends with a discussion of the crucial role of the ancient world in eighteenth-century historiography and political thought. In its conclusion the article draws attention to the many ways in which recent scholarship on the eighteenth-century reception of the classics has broken new ground. It also argues that the ‘classical turn in Enlightenment studies’ is still unjustifiably neglected in general interpretations of the Enlightenment.

The Development of Platonic Studies in Britain and the Role of the Utilitarians

Utilitas ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyriacos Demetriou
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
John Stuart Mill ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Greek Thought

The British utilitarians are not generally considered explorers of classical Greek thought. This paper examines the contribution of James Mill, John Stuart Mill, and George Grote to the development of Platonic studies in nineteenth-century Britain. Their understanding of Platonic philosophy challenged prevalent interpretations, and caused a fruitful debate over long neglected aspects of Plato's thought. Grote's Platonic analysis, which comes last in order of time, cannot, of course, be considered in isolation from the relevant debates in Germany. Grote, the erudite historian of ancient Greece, paid considerable attention to the arguments of the German classicists, put forward in many cases a new point of view, and prompted a radical revaluation of Platonic political thought.

scholarly journals Intertextual Connections in Nikolai Shchegolev’s Lyrical Poetry: Pasternak, Mayakovski, Futurists

2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 164-185
Author(s):  
Ksenia V. Abramova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Classical Literature ◽  
Rhythmic Structure ◽  
Boris Pasternak ◽  
Special Position ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The Past ◽  
Lyrical Poetry ◽  
Intertextual Connections

This article analyses the poetics of Nikolai Shchegolev’s works from the point of view of the influence of the futuristic and avant-garde tradition on the artistic world of his works. The research aims to identify semantic (themes and motifs) and asemantic aspects (such as the rhythmic structure and construction peculiarities of stanzas and rhymes) of Shchegolev’s poems. These aspects resonate with such phenomena in the poems that were associated in émigré circles with the revolution and Soviet Russia’s art. There is a tendency in scholarly literature to consider the works of poets and writers of the “Eastern branch” of emigration as part of the development of nineteenth-century classical literature and as a continuation of the traditions of symbolism and Acmeism. This approach is often associated with the special position of Harbin, the Russian city in China, which has become a kind of symbol of the past, as life there was based on the model of pre-revolutionary Russia. Nevertheless, some scholars (A. A. Zabiyako, G. V. Efendiyeva, E. O. Kirillova, E. Yu. Kulikova) note the reflection and development of Harbin poets’ avant-garde experience. Nikolai Shchegolev’s works, including these aspects, remain insufficiently explored. In this work, referring to historical and literary and structural and semiotic approaches and the principles of intertextual and poetic analysis, the author turns to the study of themes, motifs, and images, as well as rhythm and strophic structures in the poetry of Nikolai Shchegolev, which makes it possible to deepen and summarise ideas about the poetics of his works. When considering individual texts, the author concludes that some themes and motifs (such as urban themes, the images of a cinematograph and a mannequin which is coming back to life, and the associated theme of oscillation between the living and the dead), as well as experiments with rhythm, strophic division, and word coinage were accepted and understood by Shchegolev through the poetry of Vladimir Mayakovski, Boris Pasternak, and the futurists.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
pp. 233-244
Author(s):  
Christophe Jaffrelot ◽  
Laurence Louër
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Middle East ◽  
South Asia ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Past ◽  
Muslim Scholars

This volume on the relations between the Gulf and South Asia from the point of view of Islamic flows suggests a series of conclusions. Several chapters are revealing about a tension between South Asian Islam and Arabian Islam. Certainly, as shown by Christophe Jaffrelot, the two-way traffic of the nineteenth century, when Muslim scholars of South Asia and the Middle East—including clerics of Mecca and Medina—were in a conversation, is something of the past. Indeed, as shown by Ayesha Sidiqqa, the ‘...

The Making of Modern Liberalism

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Ryan
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Social Identity ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Liberal Tradition ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
History Of

This book is a deep and wide-ranging exploration of the origins and nature of liberalism from the Enlightenment through its triumphs and setbacks in the twentieth century and beyond. The book is the fruit of more than four decades during which the author reflected on the past of the liberal tradition—and worried about its future. This is essential reading for anyone interested in political theory or the history of liberalism. The book consists of five parts. It covers subjects such as liberalism, freedom, the liberal community and the death penalty, Thomas Hobbes's political philosophy, individualism, human nature, John Locke on freedom, John Stuart Mill's political thought, utilitarianism and bureaucracy, pragmatism, social identity, patriotism, self-criticism, and more.

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