This book examines some of the salient historiographical and conceptual issues that animate current scholarly debates about the nature of the medieval contribution to modern Western political ideas
Lineages of European Citizenship provides an historical analysis of the development of citizenship from the nineteenth to the Twentieth-century in Europe and the USA. The contributors focus on the role played by internal struggles for social and political inclusion in shaping the character of both the state and citizenship, and the deployment of two main political languages, loosely associated with liberalism and republicanism, in legitimizing citizens' claims.
Containing the latest scholarship by an international group of scholars, this book provides an essential guide both to the life and works of Marsilius of Padua as well as to the leading interpretive debates surrounding one of the greatest thinkers of the Latin Middle Ages.
Of the great philosophers of pagan antiquity, Marcus Tullius Cicero is the only one whose ideas were continuously accessible to the Christian West following the collapse of the Roman Empire. Yet, in marked contrast with other ancient philosophers, Cicero has largely been written out of the historical narrative on early European political thought, and the reception of his ideas has barely been studied. The Bonds of Humanity corrects this glaring oversight, arguing that the influence of Cicero’s ideas in medieval and early modern Europe was far more pervasive than previously believed. In this book, Cary J. Nederman presents a persuasive counternarrative to the widely accepted belief in the dominance of Aristotelian thought. Surveying the work of a diverse range of thinkers from the twelfth to the sixteenth century, including John of Salisbury, Brunetto Latini, Marsiglio of Padua, Christine de Pizan, and Bartolomé de Las Casas, Nederman shows that these men and women inherited, deployed, and adapted key Ciceronian themes. He argues that the rise of scholastic Aristotelianism in the thirteenth century did not supplant but rather supplemented and bolstered Ciceronian ideas, and he identifies the character and limits of Ciceronianism that distinguish it from other schools of philosophy. Highly original and compelling, this paradigm-shifting book will be greeted enthusiastically by students and scholars of early European political thought and intellectual history, particularly those engaged in the conversation about the role played by ancient and early Christian ideas in shaping the theories of later times.
Ambivalence towards kings, and other sovereign powers, is deep-seated in medieval culture: sovereigns might provide justice, but were always potential tyrants, who usurped power and 'stole' through taxation. Rebel Barons writes the history of this ambivalence, which was especially acute in England, France, and Italy in the twelfth to fifteenth centuries, when the modern ideology of sovereignty, arguing for monopolies on justice and the legitimate use of violence, was developed. Sovereign powers asserted themselves militarily and economically provoking complex phenomena of resistance by aristocrats. This volume argues that the chansons de geste, the key genre for disseminating models of violent noble opposition to sovereigns, offer a powerful way of understanding acts of resistance. Traditionally seen as France's epic literary monuments - the Chanson de Roland is often presented as foundational of French literature - chansons de geste in fact come from areas antagonistic to France, such as Burgundy, England, Flanders, Occitania, and Italy, where they were reworked repeatedly from the twelfth century to the fifteenth and recast into prose and chronicle forms. Rebel baron narratives were the principal vehicle for aristocratic concerns about tyranny, for models of violent opposition to sovereigns and for fantasies of escape from the Carolingian world via crusade and Oriental adventures. Rebel Barons reads this corpus across its full range of historical and geographical relevance, and through changes in form, as well as placing it in dialogue with medieval political theory, to bring out the contributions of literary texts to political debates. Revealing the widespread and long-lived importance of these anti-royalist works supporting regional aristocratic rights to feud and revolt, Rebel Barons reshapes our knowledge of reactions to changing political realities at a crux period in European history.
This comprehensive work provides an up-to-date survey of social and political philosophy, charting its history and key figures and movements, and addressing enduring questions as well as contemporary research.
Europe and the Eastern Other critically evaluates and supports the argument for adopting an intercultural or comparative approach in western political theory. Hassan Bashir examines the encounters between Europeans and their eastern others before the European Enlightenment and illustrates that the West's cultural others have played a foundational role in developing a distinct western cultural self-understanding. This analysis includes records of eyewitness accounts of European visitors in Eastern lands during the medieval and early modern periods, including William of Rubruck's account of the Mongol lands in mid-thirteenth century, observations of the first Jesuit mission in the court of Mughal Indian emperor Akbar the Great, and circumstances in late Ming China as recorded in the journals of Jesuit missionary and scholar Matteo Ricci. This work illustrates the dynamism and complexity involved in an inter-cultural encounter and highlights the fact that cultural self-understanding is often deeply rooted in how we understand our cultural others.
The Routledge Companion to Social and Political Philosophy, Second Edition, is a comprehensive, definitive reference work, providing an up-to-date survey of the field, charting its history and key figures and movements, and addressing enduring questions as well as contemporary research. Features unique to the Companion are as follows: Extensive coverage of the history of social and political thought, including separate chapters on the development of political thought in the Islamic world, India, and China as well as in modern Germany, France, and Britain A focus on the core concepts and the normative foundations of social and political theory A section devoted exclusively to distributive justice, the central issue of political philosophy since Rawls' Theory of Justice Several chapters on global justice and international issues. The Companion's 74 commissioned chapters, by leading scholars from throughout the world, are divided into eight thematic sections: The History of Social and Political Theory; Political Theories and Ideologies; Normative Foundations; Distributive Justice; The National State and Beyond; Political Concepts; Approaches; and Issues in Social and Political Philosophy. Expanded, updated, and revised throughout, this Second Edition includes new chapters on Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE); Political Epistemology; Race and Ethnicity; Power; Foucault; and New Diversity Theory.
This book examines some of the following issues: Is political theory 'Western-centric'? What can we learn from non-Western traditions of political thought? How do we compare different strands of national and regional political thought? Political thought in China, India, the Middle East and Latin America ; Islamic political thought and more. Political thought in the wake of post-colonialism. This is a much-needed overview of this key emerging area and will be of interest to all tsudents of political theory, thought and philosophy.
Over the past two decades or so, medieval geopolitics have come to occupy an increasingly prominent place in the collective imagination—and writings—of International Relations scholars. Although these accounts differ significantly in terms of their respective analytical assumptions, theoretical concerns and scholarly contributions, they share at least one common – arguably, defining – element: a belief that a careful study of medieval geopolitics can help resolve a number of important debates surrounding the nature and dynamics of "international" relations. There are however three generic weaknesses characterizing the extant literature: a general failure to examine the existing historiography of medieval geopolitics, an inadequate account of the material and ideational forces that create patterns of violent conflict in medieval Latin Christendom, and a failure to take seriously the role of "religion" in the geopolitical relations of medieval Latin Christendom. This book seeks to address these shortcomings by providing a theoretically guided and historically sensitive account of the geopolitical relations of medieval Latin Christendom. It does this by developing a theoretically informed picture of medieval geopolitics, theorizing the medieval-to-modern transition in a new and fruitful way, and suggesting ways in which a systematic analysis of medieval geopolitical relations can actually help to illuminate a range of contemporary geopolitical phenomena. Finally, it develops an historically sensitive conceptual framework for understanding geopolitical conflict and war more generally.