Politics and the Public Interest in the Seventeenth Century (RLE Political Science Volume 27)
Politics and the Public Interest in the Seventeenth Century (RLE Political Science Volume 27)

Author: J. A. W. Gunn

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-06-17

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13: 1135026572

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This book examines the concept of public interest against the background of English politics from the Civil War to the coming of the Hanoverians. These years witnessed both the rise of the modern notion of the public interest as a part of ordinary political language and the growth of a social philosophy of individualism. The new ideas challenged the status quo, based on order, reason of state and national power, in the name of legitimate self-interest and respect for the rights of the private person. In presenting a complex set of ideas in their historical context, the author examines both abstract philosophies and the issues of the day as recorded in press, pulpit and law courts. A chapter devoted to economic thought includes a re-assessment of the social assumptions of mercantilism.

The Politics of the People in Eighteenth-Century Britain
The Politics of the People in Eighteenth-Century Britain

Author: H.T. Dickinson

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-01-13

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 134924659X

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This challenging and original study examines the most important aspects of popular political culture in eighteenth-century Britain. The first part explores the way the British people could influence existing political institutions or could exploit their existing powers, by looking at the role of the people in parliamentary elections, in a wide range of pressure groups, in their local urban communities, and in popular demonstrations. The second part shows how the British people became increasingly politicised during the eighteenth century and how they tried to shape or defend their political world.

Sir Robert Filmer and English Political Thought
Sir Robert Filmer and English Political Thought

Author: James Daly

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 1979-12-15

Total Pages: 335

ISBN-13: 1442638036

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Sir Robert Filmer (1588-1653) was a defender of 'the Natural Power of Kings against the Unnatural Liberty of the People.' His doctrine of omnicompetent sovereignty had little influence on the thought and political debates of his time, for none of his writings was published until the last few years of his life; but it came under scrutiny later in the century, particularly during the exclusion crisis and in the political writings of John Locke. This book is the first comprehensive analysis of his thought, its context, and its place in English political thought as a whole. Daly examines Filmer's publishing career, his relation to contemporary writers and critics, and the chief sources on which he drew. The book thus provides the background for a study of Filmer's theory of sovereignty, its voluntarist concept of law, its rejection of prescription, fundamental law, and non-monarchical forms of government, and its insistence that monarchy be not only absolute, but arbitrary as well. Analysing Filmer's interpretation of Adam's (and all kings') 'fatherly power,' here described as 'legal patriarchalism,' Daly shows it to be very different from most contemporary thought. In comparing Filmer's thought with that of other royalists and the positions taken by his critics, notably Edward Gee, James Tyrrell, Algernon Sidney, and of course Locke, he shows it to be strikingly original, almost revolutionary, and frequently distorted by those who dealt with it.

The Politics of Liberty in England and Revolutionary America
The Politics of Liberty in England and Revolutionary America

Author: Lee Ward

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2004-07-26

Total Pages: 478

ISBN-13: 1107320445

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This study locates the philosophical origins of the Anglo-American political and constitutional tradition in the philosophical, theological, and political controversies in seventeenth-century England. By examining the quarrel it identifies the source of modern liberal, republican and conservative ideas about natural rights and government in the seminal works of the Exclusion Whigs Locke, Sidney, and Tyrrell and their philosophical forebears Hobbes, Grotius, Spinoza, and Pufendorf. This study illuminates how these first Whigs and their diverse eighteenth-century intellectual heirs such as Bolingbroke, Montesquieu, Hume, Blackstone, Otis, Jefferson, Burke, and Paine contributed to the formation of Anglo-American political and constitutional theory in the crucial period from the Glorious Revolution through to the American Revolution and the creation of a distinctly American understanding of rights and government in the first state constitutions.

Ideas of Contract in English Political Thought in the Age of John Locke
Ideas of Contract in English Political Thought in the Age of John Locke

Author: Martyn P. Thompson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-08-01

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 1000448894

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Originally published in 1987. This book analyses what Englishmen understood by the term contract in political discussions during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. It provides evidence for reconsidering conventional accounts of the relationships between political ideas, groups and practices of the period. But also suggests cause for examining the general history of modern European contract theory. It considers contract as a term appearing in a spectrum of works from philosophical treatise to sermons and polemical pamphlets. Looking at the various vocabularies relating to contractualist ideas, the author suggests that standard histories of social contract theory and particular histories of English political thought during this unstable period have misrepresented the meaning of the term contract as a key term in political argument. He shows that there were in fact three different categories of contract theory but allows that the various kinds of contractualism did share certain broad features. This study of a crucial age in the history of appeals to contract in political argument will be of interest to political philosophers and historians.

An Approach to Political Philosophy
An Approach to Political Philosophy

Author: James Tully

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1993-03-18

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 9780521436380

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An Approach to Political Philosophy: Locke in Context brings together Professor Tully's most important and innovative statements on Locke in a systematic treatment of the latter's thought that is at once contextual and critical. Each essay has been rewritten and expanded for this volume, and each seeks to understand a theme of Locke's political philosophy by interpreting it in light of the complex contexts of early modern European political thought and practice. These historical studies are then used in a variety of ways to gain critical perspectives on the assumptions underlying current debates in political philosophy and the history of political thought. The themes treated include government, toleration, discipline, property, aboriginal rights, individualism, power, labour, self-ownership, community, progress, liberty, participation, and revolution.