Contemporary British Political Thought

1952 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 641-659 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Catlin
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
John Locke ◽  
The United States ◽  
Glorious Revolution ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Present Generation ◽  
The World ◽  
European Civilization

The ideas of the bloodless and “glorious Revolution” of 1688, and especially those of John Locke, inspired the Founding Fathers of the United States and, both directly and indirectly, influenced the French Revolution. In the nineteenth century a successful Britain also made her great contribution to European civilization, and this not least in terms of her political ideas and of her parliamentary institutions. Politically it would be quite accurate to say that she led the world.In this present generation, however, England is in a poorer way as a fount of political ideas than she has been for centuries. The great succession of Occam and Fortescue, More and Hooker, Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Bentham, the Mills, Green, even Spencer, perhaps Bradley, seems to be broken. Many British writers are too content to subedit Hegel or Marx and to explain what they really meant. The most eminent now living, Lord Russell, is primarily a mathematical philosopher.

John Adams's Machiavellian Moment

1995 ◽  
Vol 57 (3) ◽  
pp. 389-417 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Bradley Thompson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
John Adams ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
The World ◽  
Political Epistemology

John Adams was unique among the Founding Fathers in that he actually read and took seriously Machiavelli's ideas. In his Defence of the Constitutions of the United States, Adams quoted extensively from Machiavelli and he openly acknowledged an intellectual debt to the Florentine statesman. Adams praised Machiavelli for having been “the first” to have “revived the ancient politics” and he insisted that the “world” was much indebted to Machiavelli for “the revival of reason in matters of government.” What could Adams have meant by these extraordinary statements? The following article examines the Machiavellian ideas and principles Adams incorporated into his political thought as well as those that he rejected. Drawing upon evidence found in an unpublished fragment, Part one argues that the political epistemology that Adams employed in the Defence can be traced to Machiavelli's new modes and orders. Part two presents Adams's critique of Machiavelli's constitutionalism.

Two Currents in Contemporary English Political Theory

1955 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 487-495
Author(s):  
Thomas P. Peardon
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The Self ◽  
General Tendency ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Present Generation ◽  
The World ◽  
Eric Voegelin

There is widespread discontent today with the state of English political theory. This does not seem to have been so a generation ago. In 1915, Ernest Barker certainly revealed uneasiness about some intellectual tendencies of the time, but his overriding belief was that the new psychology and the new awareness of the personality of groups within society would enrich thinking in the long run. Ten years later, Lewis Rockow was distinctly optimistic at the end of his Contemporary English Political Thought. Having surveyed the first quarter of this century, he was impressed by “the richness of the contemporary mind” and the boldness of its political speculation. How different is the self-judgment of our own day. “In the present generation,” declared Professor Catlin in 1952, “England is in a poorer way as a fount of political ideas than she has been for centuries.” There were only a few men—Laski, Barker, Oakeshott, E. H. Carr—whom he would put in a high category, while apart from them he went on to say, “a drear darkness has fallen on British political theory which was so bright.” A little later, and speaking of the world in general rather than of England alone, Professor Cobban lamented “a general tendency to cease thinking about society in terms of political theory.” He could find no original thought since the eighteenth century and concluded that the idea of democracy had become a mere shibboleth—and not even a serviceable one, since all camps used it. He felt that the study of politics had taken a wrong turn, being corrupted by a neglect of the moral element, by an indifference to the practical problems besetting men, and by a deep pessimism about the possibility of resolving the dilemma between “moral man and immoral society.” Eric Voegelin seems at first to strike a more cheerful note when he speaks of “the revival, not to say the outburst, of political philosophy at Oxford in recent years,” but his article is critical of some of its tendencies and even goes so far at one point as to refer to its “distressing state.”

Histoire du mot «démocratie» au Canada et au Québec. Analyse politique des stratégies rhétoriques

2009 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 321-343
Author(s):  
Francis Dupuis-Déri
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Institutional Changes ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
Discursive Strategies ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Masses ◽  
Le Canada

Résumé.L'étude des discours des «pères fondateurs» du Canada moderne révèle qu'ils étaient ouvertement antidémocrates. Comment expliquer qu'un régime fondé dans un esprit antidémocratique en soit venu à être identifié positivement à la démocratie? S'inspirant d'études similaires sur les États-Unis et la France, l'analyse de l'histoire du mot «démocratie» révèle que le Canada a été associé à la «démocratie» en raison de stratégies discursives des membres de l'élite politique qui cherchaient à accroître leur capacité de mobiliser les masses à l'occasion des guerres mondiales, et non pas à la suite de modifications constitutionnelles ou institutionnelles qui auraient justifié un changement d'appellation du régime.Abstract.An examination of the speeches of modern Canada's “founding fathers” lays bare their openly anti-democratic outlook. How did a regime founded on anti-democratic ideas come to be positively identified with democracy? Drawing on the examples of similar studies carried out in the United States and France, this analysis of the history of the term “democracy” in Canada shows that the country's association with “democracy” was not due to constitutional or institutional changes that might have justified re-labelling the regime. Instead, it was the result of the political elite's discursive strategies, whose purpose was to strengthen the elite's ability to mobilize the masses during the world wars.

THE APPEARANCE OF AMERICAN GIRLS, AS VIEWED BY MOREAU DE SAINT-MÉRY ABOUT 1795

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1980 ◽  
Vol 66 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-167
Author(s):  
T. E. C.
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
The United States ◽  
Young Girls ◽  
The North ◽  
North Side ◽  
The World ◽  
The French Revolution

The French jurist, Méderic Louis Élie Moreau de Saint-Méry (1750-1819), was driven into exile during the French Revolution by Robespierre's accession to power. From 1794 to 1798 Moreau lived in the United States. In the journal he kept during these years, he described American young girls as follows: American girls are pretty, and their eyes are alive with expression; but their complexions are wan, bad teeth spoil the appearance of their mouths, and there is also something disagreeable about the length of their legs. In general, however, they are of good height, are graceful, and, in enumerating their charms, one must not forget the shapeliness of their breasts. Philadelphia has thousands of beauties between fourteen and eighteen. To offer but a single proof: on the north side of Market Street, between Third and Fifth Street, on a single winter's day I saw four hundred young maidens promenading, each one of whom would surely have been followed in Paris, a seductive tribute that could be offered by perhaps no other city in the world. But these girls soon became pale, and an indisposition which is reckoned among the most unfavorable for the maintenance of the freshness of youth is very common among them. They have thin hair and bad teeth, and are given to nervous illnesses. The elements which embellish beauty, or rather which compose and order it, are not often bestowed by the graces. Finally, they are charming, adorable at fifteen, dried up at twenty-three, old at thirty-five, decrepit at forty or fifty.

Review of J. L. Talmon, Political Messianism: The Romantic Phase (London: Secker & Warburg, 1960)

2021 ◽  
pp. 325-326
Author(s):  
Martin Wight
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Revolutionary War ◽  
The World ◽  
National Boundaries ◽  
The French Revolution

Wight noted that in an earlier book, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy, Professor Talmon identified Rousseau as the ‘main source’ of ‘the totalitarian messianism of the French Revolution’. In this sequel he examines ‘the vast effervescence of utopian political thought between 1815 and 1848, which produced modern nationalism and Communism’. He aims to place the genesis of Marxism ‘in a wider historical setting than histories of socialism usually supply, against a background not only of Owen and Fourier, Fichte and Hegel, but of the whole romantic range of the Saint-Simonists and Lamennais, Michelet, Mazzini, and Mickiewicz’. The complex outcome is ‘the world we still live in, where national particularities seek to justify themselves in the service of a universal ideal, but revolutionary war makes national frontiers irrelevant; where national uniqueness is the strongest adversary of international revolution, nationalism finds its fulfilment by turning socialist, and socialism cannot establish itself except within national boundaries’.

1848/1898: Memorial Day, Places of Memory, and Imperial Amnesia

PMLA ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 124 (5) ◽  
pp. 1869-1873
Author(s):  
Amy S. Greenberg
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Young Men ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Defense ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Present Generation ◽  
The World ◽  
Places Of Memory ◽  
The Absolute

Mr. Speaker, I believe that as we sow so shall we reap; and if in the minds of the present generation of boys and girls, young men and women, we sow the seeds of lukewarm patriotism, in the next we will reap a race of men and women who will care very little for love of country. … I would have this nation the absolute master of the commerce of the world. … [I]t is impossible to look up without having a feeling of pride steal over you for the patriots of '76, the sailors of '12, the boys in blue of '61, the courage of the boys in gray. …—Representative Edmund H. Driggs to Congress, 8 March 1898On 15 February 1898, the USS Maine exploded in Havana harbor, killing 266 crewmen. American journalists clamored for vengeance against the Spanish authorities they wrongly blamed for the accident. Three weeks later the Fifty-Fifth Congress unanimously voted in support of President McKinley's $50 million bill for the “national defense” (Morgan 275). By May, Spain and the United States were at war.

The Organization, The Goals, and Some Activities of The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics

1973 ◽  
Vol 66 (5) ◽  
pp. 476-480
Author(s):  
H. Vernon Price
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Council ◽  
The World ◽  
The French Revolution

The great watchword of the French Revolution was Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. Although a great oversimplification, it has been said that France exemplifies liberty, Great Britain equality, and the United States fraternity. Without attempting to apportion these virtues among the nations of the world, I should like to dwell for a few moments on fraternity as it applies in the United States to the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, I believe it is in this domain that we have developed into the largest mathematical organization in the world and—we should like to think—one of the most influential.

scholarly journals Carter Versus Reagan: The Human Rights Records of Two Administrations

1988 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Michael A. Kelley
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Concern ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
Class Hierarchy ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
The World ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The U.S

The emergence of human rights as a public concern during the Carter administration was a recrudescence of the long tradition of moralism in American foreign policy. Confident that the republic is the pinnacle of political, social, and human development, Americans have believed since 1776 that the “United States must be a beacon of human rights to an unregenerate world” (Schlesinger, 1978: 505). Yet, while to the founding fathers America’s avoidance of Europe’s evils of class, hierarchy, and power politics was to be its greatest glory it is quite clear that they intended the U.S. to illuminate the path to a better world by example not by action. John Quincy Adam’s famous July 4 speech explained his perception of America’s mission to the world.

Constitutional Order, Revolutionary Violence, and Modern Power

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheldon S. Wolin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
The United States ◽  
Glorious Revolution ◽  
American Constitution ◽  
Hundredth Anniversary ◽  
Revolutionary Violence ◽  
The Glorious Revolution ◽  
Centennial Celebrations

In 1988 and 1989, centenary celebrations were held in the United States, Great Britain, and France that linked together constitutions and revolutions. Americans observed the two hundredth anniversary of the ratification of their constitution; Britons the tercentenary of the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and of the constitutional settlement that followed; and for the French the bicentennial of their revolution of 1789. This chapter asks, is it an accident of centennial celebrations, themselves an accident of calendars, that found 1988–1989 a moment for celebrating the anniversaries of two conceptual opposites, the ratification of the American Constitution and the outbreak of the French Revolution? It suggests that unless revolutions produce “genuine” constitutions there is no reason to celebrate them and perhaps good reasons not to.

Life and Works

2019 ◽  
pp. 3-27
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
David Hume ◽  
John Locke ◽  
George Washington ◽  
John Adams ◽  
James I ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Before And After ◽  
History Of

This biographical introduction begins with the formation of Catharine Macaulay’s political ideas from when, as Catharine Sawbridge, she lived at the family estate. It follows her through her mature development as the celebrated female historian, to her death in 1791, as Mrs. Macaulay Graham. It notes the influence on her of writings of John Milton, Algernon Sidney, and John Locke as well as other republican works. It covers her marriage to the physician and midwife George Macaulay, and sets out the circumstances which led to the composition, and influence of, her History of England from the Accession of James I (HEAJ). The content of her histories, political philosophy, ethical and educational views, and criticisms of the philosophers David Hume, Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Edmund Burke are sketched, and it is argued that her enlightenment radicalism was grounded in Christian eudaimonism, resulting in a form of rational altruism, according to which human happiness depends on the cultivation of the self as a moral individual. It deals with her engagement with individuals in North America before and after the American Revolution, in particular her exchanges with, John Adams, Mercy Otis Warren, Benjamin Rush, and George Washington, and also recounts her contacts with influential players in the French Revolution, in particular, Jacques-Pierre Brissot de Warville and Honoré-Gabriel Riqueti count of Mirabeau. The introduction concludes with her influence on Mary Wollstonecraft and an overview of her mature political philosophy as summarized in her response to Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France.

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