Liberty, Rationality, and Agency in Hobbes's Leviathan
Author: David van Mill
Publisher: SUNY Press
Published: 2001-07-19
Total Pages: 270
ISBN-13: 9780791450352
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA new interpretation of the theory of Hobbes.
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Liberty, Rationality, and Agency in Hobbes's Leviathan
Author: David van Mill
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 2001-07-19
Total Pages: 270
ISBN-13: 0791490297
DOWNLOAD EBOOKMarking a significant departure from most scholarship on Hobbes, this book offers new interpretations of his theories of freedom, agency, rationality, morality, psychology, and politics. Hobbes's arguments concerning many different aspects of civil society and human psychology are brought together to provide a comprehensive theory of agency. Hobbes's theory of freedom is demonstrated to be considerably more complicated than previously thought, revealing a concern with both "internal" and "external" conditions of action. On close examination Hobbes can be seen to move beyond his limited definition of negative liberty and to champion autonomous rational action. Throughout, the book evaluates the relevance of this reformulation for contemporary debates in political philosophy.
Leviathan
Author: Thomas Hobbes
Publisher: Courier Corporation
Published: 2012-10-03
Total Pages: 418
ISBN-13: 048612214X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWritten during a moment in English history when the political and social structures were in flux and open to interpretation, Leviathan played an essential role in the development of the modern world.
Routledge Philosophy GuideBook to Hobbes and Leviathan
Author: Glen Newey
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2008-01-07
Total Pages: 232
ISBN-13: 1134591683
DOWNLOAD EBOOKHobbes is one of the most important figures in the history of ideas and political thought and his book Leviathan is widely recognized as one of the greatest works of political philosophy. In this GuideBook Glen Newey offers a balanced guide to this key text that explores both its historical and philosophical aspects. The author introduces: the relevance of Hobbes' ideas to modern political thought the major interpretations of Leviathan Hobbes' life and the background of Leviathan The Routledge Philosophy GuideBook to Hobbes and Leviathan is the ideal introduction for students who wish to understand more about this important philosopher and this classic work of philosophy.
Rethinking Hobbes and Kant
Author: Chia-Yu Chou
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-07-15
Total Pages: 171
ISBN-13: 1317064151
DOWNLOAD EBOOKRethinking Hobbes and Kant argues that predominant approaches to the theoretical relationship between Hobbes and Kant have reached conclusions that were pre-digested in assumptions about the ‘isms’ which these two writers are propounding. Chou shows how these assumptions have inhibited commentators from recognising the affinities between Hobbes’s and Kant’s political philosophies, or, if they have, prevented them from providing a plausible explanation of those affinities. To provide a fresh understanding of the relation between Hobbes and Kant, this book examines and compares what they actually wrote about some central conceptions in political theory, as it becomes visible once the assumptions out of which they are formed are set aside. Chou argues that what matters is that that we reflect upon our own assumptions, and that we have at least some conscious awareness that the assumptions of our day were not held all the time and everywhere, and that we do not reify them into crude models which distort the thought of the past and the present in equal measure. This book therefore seeks to bring into the arena of conscious thought assumptions which are deeply rooted in many modern minds and which work to distort many current studies of the relationship between Hobbes’ and Kant’s political philosophies, with negative consequences for the understanding of Hobbes, of Kant, and of politics itself. Providing a fresh understanding of the relation between Hobbes and Kant, this book will be of great use for graduates and scholars of Political Theory, Philosophy and Political Sociology.
Power, Pleasure, and Profit
Author: David Wootton
Publisher: Belknap Press
Published: 2018-10-08
Total Pages: 401
ISBN-13: 0674976673
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA provocative history of the changing values that have given rise to our present discontents. We pursue power, pleasure, and profit. We want as much as we can get, and we deploy instrumental reasoning—cost-benefit analysis—to get it. We judge ourselves and others by how well we succeed. It is a way of life and thought that seems natural, inevitable, and inescapable. As David Wootton shows, it is anything but. In Power, Pleasure, and Profit, he traces an intellectual and cultural revolution that replaced the older systems of Aristotelian ethics and Christian morality with the iron cage of instrumental reasoning that now gives shape and purpose to our lives. Wootton guides us through four centuries of Western thought—from Machiavelli to Madison—to show how new ideas about politics, ethics, and economics stepped into a gap opened up by religious conflict and the Scientific Revolution. As ideas about godliness and Aristotelian virtue faded, theories about the rational pursuit of power, pleasure, and profit moved to the fore in the work of writers both obscure and as famous as Hobbes, Locke, and Adam Smith. The new instrumental reasoning cut through old codes of status and rank, enabling the emergence of movements for liberty and equality. But it also helped to create a world in which virtue, honor, shame, and guilt count for almost nothing, and what matters is success. Is our world better for the rise of instrumental reasoning? To answer that question, Wootton writes, we must first recognize that we live in its grip.
Religious Pluralism and Political Stability
Author: David Golemboski
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2022-07-29
Total Pages: 203
ISBN-13: 1000618234
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book argues that the principles and institutions of political liberalism are necessary conditions for achieving reliable stability amid conditions of pluralism. Only a political system of this sort can bring citizens’ moral, religious, and political loyalties into robust agreement. Through an analysis that encompasses normative political theory and American constitutional law, David Golemboski illustrates the implications of this conclusion by examining contemporary legal debates in law and religion. By developing a fresh perspective on how legal frameworks for religious exercise and establishment can ameliorate conflict and enhance the stability of a liberal constitution, this book demonstrates that political systems need not subordinate or sacrifice important liberal priorities in favor of stability. Rather, those liberal priorities are themselves necessary components of a stable order. Religious Pluralism and Political Stability will be of interest to scholars across the fields of political philosophy, legal theory, and constitutional law who have an interest in religion.
Thomas Hobbes and Political Theory
Author: Mary G. Dietz
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
Published: 1990-01-30
Total Pages: 232
ISBN-13: 0700605193
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis volume explores, from a variety of perspectives, the political theory of the man who is arguably the greatest English political thinker. It is the first substantial collection of new, critical essays on Thomas Hobbes by leading scholars in over a decade. Hobbes’s writings stirred debate in his own lifetime, for two centuries thereafter, and continue to do so in ours. They emerged in a period of intense political turmoil—a time of civil war and regicide, of puritanical rule and royal restoration. “They were motivated,” Dietz argues, “by concrete political problems and a practical concern, namely, to secure political order, absolute sovereignty, and civil peace.” The contributors emphasize and answer a series of expressly political questions that, to date, have not been fully addressed in the Hobbes literature. They contend that Hobbes’s writings are not mere static artifacts of a particular historical milieu, but rather rich sources of a variety of interpretations and criticisms that spur discussion and debate in their turn.
Shakespeare's Fugitive Politics
Author: Thomas P. Anderson
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Published: 2016-08-16
Total Pages: 296
ISBN-13: 0748697357
DOWNLOAD EBOOKEstablishes Shakespeares plays as some of the periods most speculative political literature Shakespeares Fugitive Politics makes the case that Shakespeares plays reveal there is always something more terrifying to the king than rebellion. The book seeks to move beyond the presumption that political evolution leads ineluctably away from autocracy and aristocracy toward republicanism and popular sovereignty. Instead, it argues for affirmative politics in Shakespeare the process of transforming scenes of negative affect into political resistance. Shakespeares Fugitive Politics makes the case that Shakespeares affirmative politics appears not in his dialectical opposition to sovereignty, absolutism, or tyranny; nor is his affirmative politics an inchoate form of republicanism on its way to becoming politically viable. Instead, this study claims that it is in the place of dissensus that the expression of the eventful condition of affirmative politics takes place a fugitive expression that the sovereign order always wishes to shut down. Key FeaturesPromotes a new understanding of 'fugitive democracy'Establishes the presence of a form of alternative politics in early modern drama, articulated through the contours of theories of sovereigntyExplores how the parameters of contemporary radical politics take shape in major Shakespeare plays, including Coriolanus, King John, Henry V, Titus Andronicus, The Winters Tale and Julius Caesar
Emotional Minds
Author: Sabrina Ebbersmeyer
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Published: 2012-07-30
Total Pages: 332
ISBN-13: 3110260921
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe thoroughly contemporary question of the relationship between emotion and reason was debated with such complexity by the philosophers of the 17th century that their concepts remain a source of inspiration for today’s research about the emotionality of the mind. The analyses of the works of Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and many other thinkers collected in this volume offer new insights into the diversity and significance of philosophical reflections about emotions during the early modern era. A focus is placed on affective components in learning processes and the boundaries between emotions and reason.
