Political Theory: History of Political Thought eJournal最新文献

{"title":"Russell Hardin's Hobbes","authors":"P. Ngomo","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3103479","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3103479","url":null,"abstract":"I sketch a reception of Russell Hardin’s critique, appropriation, and creative redeployment of Hobbesian insights. I highlight the central tenets of his rereading of Hobbes as he reconstructs the structure of his arguments to determine their epistemological status within a broader lineage of social-scientific thinking on political order. The result, I suggest, is a critique of Hobbes, that is, an examination of the possibilities and limits of the conceptual framework that grounds his theory of government. In Hardin’s interpretation, Hobbes is characterized as articulating a “holistic normative principle” that justifies mutually advantageous institutions. He is said to subscribe to a welfarist vision of order derived uniquely from self-interest with no prior normative commitment. Finally, his contractarian justification of institutions is rejected as a “lousy theory” that mischaracterizes the structure of the problem of maintaining orderly government.","PeriodicalId":397807,"journal":{"name":"Political Theory: History of Political Thought eJournal","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-01-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125511913","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Adam Smith (‘Self Interest’ Meant the Virtue of Prudence) Against Jeremy Bentham and the Economics Profession (‘Self Interest’ Meant the Vice of Greed, Selfishness, and Avarice)","authors":"M. E. Brady","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.3084451","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.3084451","url":null,"abstract":"The economics profession has completely mixed up Adam Smith’s definition of self-interest, by which Smith means the absolute necessity of successfully applying the Virtue of Prudence, with Jeremy Bentham’s directly conflicting definition of self-interest, which is the Vice of Greed, Selfishness, and Avarice a la Scrooge in Charles Dickens’s Christmas tale. There is a direct contradiction between Smith and Bentham. It is impossible to create a synthesis of the two. This inherent contradiction has been buried deeply into the field of microeconomics since the deaths of Benjamin Franklin and Adam Smith in 1790 resulted in Bentham’s directly conflicting concept of Maximizing Utility, as presented in his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, to dominate the economics profession through the influence of Bentham’s students, J B Say, David Ricardo, James Mills, John Stuart Mills, and Nassua Senior. Smith’s theoretical world of a profit maximizing, purely competitive economy is populated with a huge number of “sober” individuals, all seeking to apply the virtue of prudence. They are circumspect, hardworking, dedicated, motivated, frugal, parsimonious, careful, cautious, and disciplined. Their goal, in order to make their small business a success over time so as to care for themselves, their families and relatives ‘is financial success. Of course, Prudence is the necessary condition that must be satisfied first before any of the other virtues can be attempted, practiced, or implemented. Maximizing the profits from their small business operations represents Prudent behavior. \u0000Bentham’s world is one that is populated by greedy, selfish, avaricious prodigals, imprudent risk takers, and projectors. They can be represented by the behavior of the British East India Company, John Law, Cantillon, etc. Bentham and all of his students either worked for, or were consultants and advocates of, the policies of the British East India Company that Smith so heavily criticized in The Wealth of Nations. Bentham’s Maximizing Utility dictum is a good representation of how Max U thinking was implemented by the British East India Company in its attempt to dominate the American colonies in the period from 1760 to the start of the American Revolutionary War in 1776, the attempted subjugation of the USA in the War of 1812, as well as there being the main instigator in the “Napoleonic” Wars from 1795-1815 with France. \u0000The economics profession has totally mixed up diametrically opposing concepts, Smith’s prudent and judicious goal of maximizing profits, with Bentham’s Scrooge-like goal to maximize only his utility. Given these direct conflicts, it is clear that the real founder of the economics profession is Jeremy Bentham and not Adam Smith. Of course, given that practically all philosophers consider Benthamite Utilitarianism to be a failure, it is understandable and not surprising that the economics profession would seek to try to claim that Adam Smith was the f","PeriodicalId":397807,"journal":{"name":"Political Theory: History of Political Thought eJournal","volume":"67 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-12-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123957724","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A Review Essay of Dennis Rasmussen, 'The Infidel and the Professor: David Hume, Adam Smith, and the Friendship That Shaped Modern Thought'","authors":"Erik W. Matson","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.3083713","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.3083713","url":null,"abstract":"This is a review essay of Dennis Rasmussen's 2017 book, The Infidel and the Professor: David Hume, Adam Smith, and the Friendship that Shaped the Modern Thought.","PeriodicalId":397807,"journal":{"name":"Political Theory: History of Political Thought eJournal","volume":"228 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124530877","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Anarcho-Calculus of Consent: Proprietary Communities as Substitutes for the State","authors":"Michael Makovi","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2944516","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2944516","url":null,"abstract":"James Buchanan pioneered constitutional political economy, especially in The Calculus of Consent (with Gordon Tullock) and The Limits of Liberty. While he briefly considered private clubs and associations, he mostly limited his analysis to the traditional state. However, privately governed proprietary communities are capable of providing most public goods and internalizing most externalities. We argue that such proprietary communities offer a viable and feasible means for implementing a non-state-based constitutional political economy which satisfies Buchanan's own standards. The state is not necessary to accomplish Buchanan's goals, and Buchanan's works carry unrecognized anarchist implications.","PeriodicalId":397807,"journal":{"name":"Political Theory: History of Political Thought eJournal","volume":"226 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133339317","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Alexis de Tocqueville on Pauperism or the Unfulfilled Promises of the Democratic Revolution","authors":"Jimena Hurtado","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2984019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2984019","url":null,"abstract":"Spanish Abstract: Alexis de Tocqueville, mas conocido por su analisis del Antiguo Regimen y la democracia, tambien fue un hombre politico y parlamentario. En 1848, antes y despues de la Revolucion de febrero, Tocqueville en sus intervenciones frente a la Asamblea, advierte sobre las implicaciones politicas y sociales de la cuestion social. La situacion de los trabajadores asalariados debia ser prioridad si Francia pretendia preservar el caracter liberal de la Revolucion de 1789. La democracia, con su promesa de igualdad y oportunidades para todos, se quedaba corta frente a las aspiraciones de esta nueva clase trabajadora, fuente excluida de la prosperidad social. Tanto en sus intervenciones como en sus dos memorias sobre el pauperismo, Tocqueville hace un llamado urgente a ocuparse de la paradoja de las democracias industriales: el empobrecimiento de los trabajadores asalariados en medio del enriquecimiento del resto de la sociedad. \u0000 \u0000English Abstract: Alexis de Tocqueville, better known for his analysis of the Ancien Regime and democracy, was also politician and congressman. In 1848, before and after the February Revolution, Tocqueville warned in his discourses in the Assembly about the social and political consequences of the social question. Public intervention to relief the situation of waged laborers should be a priority for the state if the liberal character of the French Revolution was to be preserved. Democracy with its promise of equality and opportunities for all seemed to have failed those who produced social prosperity. In his interventions as in his two memoires on pauperism, Tocqueville calls for a public intervention to deal with the paradox of industrial democracies: the impoverishment of the working class amidst the increase of wealth for the rest of society.","PeriodicalId":397807,"journal":{"name":"Political Theory: History of Political Thought eJournal","volume":"284 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-06-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133066573","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Rousseau, Theorist of Constituent Power","authors":"Joel I Colón-Ríos","doi":"10.1093/OJLS/GQW012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OJLS/GQW012","url":null,"abstract":"© The Author 2016. Rousseau has always had an uncertain relationship with the theory of constituent power. On the one hand, his distrust of political representation and support for popular sovereignty seem consistent with the idea of the people as a legally unlimited constitution-maker. On the other hand, if, from those views about representation and sovereignty, it follows that Rousseau is a proponent of direct democracy, then there seems to be no place in his thought for a theory that presupposes, above all, a separation between those who exercise a delegated authority (eg legislators) and those who possess an original constitution-making power (the people). In a legal order in which all laws must be directly made by the people, such a separation is absent: the constituent and the legislative body are one and the same. It is therefore not surprising that Rousseau's name is largely absent from contemporary literature on constituent power. In this article, however, I will show that once Rousseau's particular conception of law, as well as his distinction between sovereignty and government, are properly understood, one finds in his work not only the first major formulation of the theory of constituent power, but also a careful exploration of its implications for actual constitutional practice.","PeriodicalId":397807,"journal":{"name":"Political Theory: History of Political Thought eJournal","volume":"43 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-05-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117132937","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Mises, Rand and the 20th Century","authors":"Peter J. Boettke","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.2722861","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.2722861","url":null,"abstract":"The two most ardent critics of collectivism in the 20th century were arguably Ludwig von Mises and Ayn Rand. Mises was a hard-nosed economist and political economist; Rand was a hard hitting novelist and philosopher. Mises attacked the economic and political workings of collectivism; Rand attacked the morality and aesthetics of collectivism. This essay discusses the relationship between these two modes of argumentation, what I will term the “head” and the “heart” arguments and why the “head” must be used to temper the “heart”. Both Mises and Rand emphasized the primacy of private property in their defense of individualism. Whereas Mises was using the “head” argument to emphasize the role of private property as the necessary institutional framework for rational economic calculation, Rand appealed to the “heart,” emphasizing the role of private property in securing the conditions necessary for the operation of human reason. I then discuss why a “heart” tempered by the “head” is still nevertheless a beating “heart”. The essay addresses the relevance of the relationship between technical economics and social philosophy and explains why the abysmal failure of collectivism should be seen not as a weakness of humanity, but as a failure of the ideal.","PeriodicalId":397807,"journal":{"name":"Political Theory: History of Political Thought eJournal","volume":"26 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133461939","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Önde Gelen İngiliz Aydınlanma Düşünürlerinde ‘İslam’ Algısı (Perception of ‘Islam’ by the Leading British Enlightenment Philosophers)","authors":"Muhsin Altun","doi":"10.1501/SBEDER_0000000104","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1501/SBEDER_0000000104","url":null,"abstract":"This article aims to demonstrate the perceptions of Islam by the leading British Enlightenment philosophers, John Locke, Thomas Paine and David Hume based on the examination of the context in which they employed Islam, Muslim, Qur’an and Turk words within their canonical writings. Their different approaches representing Tolerant, Deist and Skeptical viewpoints are examined in the light of the historical background influencing the formation of the perception of Islam in the common imaginary of British people.","PeriodicalId":397807,"journal":{"name":"Political Theory: History of Political Thought eJournal","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121575981","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Recent Engagements with Adam Smith and the Scottish Enlightenment","authors":"M. Paganelli","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2619822","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2619822","url":null,"abstract":"Recent literature on Adam Smith and other eighteenth-century Scottish thinkers shows an engaged conversation between the Scots and today's scholars in the sciences that deal with humans—the social sciences and the humanities, as well as neuroscience and evolutionary psychology. We share with the eighteenth-century Scots preoccupations about understanding human beings, human nature, sociability, moral development, our ability to understand nature and its possible creator, and about the possibilities to use our knowledge to improve our surroundings and standard of living. As our disciplines evolve, the studies of Smith and the Scottish Enlightenment evolve with them. Smith and the Scots remain our interlocutors.","PeriodicalId":397807,"journal":{"name":"Political Theory: History of Political Thought eJournal","volume":"180 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117138960","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Vasily Vasilievich Grigoryev: The Path of a Russian Orientalist","authors":"A. Obraztsov, I. Gaĭda","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.2514281","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.2514281","url":null,"abstract":"The paper outlines the life and works of the prominent Russian orientalist and rightist conservative statesman Grigoryev, the founder of Europe's first department of Oriental history, the president of 3rd International Symposium of Orientalists (St. Petersburg 1876). Grigoryev was not only a world-renowned scholar but also a top imperial bureaucrat of colonial type. In 1854-1862 he virtually ruled “the Kyrghyz” (Kazakh) steppe. This article is an output of the research project \"“Minority” vs “Majority” in the Historical and Cultural Continuum of Asia and Africa \" implemented as part of the Basic Research Program at the Higher School of Economics (HSE).","PeriodicalId":397807,"journal":{"name":"Political Theory: History of Political Thought eJournal","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-10-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133466357","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}