Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham - Brossura

Laski, Harold

Brossura

ISBN 10: 1508625638 ISBN 13: 9781508625636

Casa editrice: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015

Riassunto

This is a history on political theory looking at some of England's most famous theorists of the 17th century, notably John Locke. From the intro: "The eighteenth century may be said to begin with the Revolution of 1688; for, with its completion, the dogma of Divine Right disappeared for ever from English politics. Its place was but partially filled until Hume and Burke supplied the outlines of a new philosophy. For the observer of this age can hardly fail, as he notes its relative barrenness of abstract ideas, to be impressed by the large part Divine Right must have played in the politics of the succeeding century. Its very absoluteness made for keen partisanship on the one side and the other. It could produce at once the longwinded rhapsodies of Filmer and, by repulsion, the wearisome reiterations of Algernon Sidney. Once the foundations of Divine Right had been destroyed by Locke, the basis of passionate controversy was absent. The theory of a social contract never produced in England the enthusiasm it evoked in France, for the simple reason that the main objective of Rousseau and his disciples had already been secured there by other weapons. And this has perhaps given to the eighteenth century an urbaneness from which its predecessor was largely free. Sermons are perhaps the best test of such a change; and it is a relief to move from the addresses bristling with Suarez and Bellarmine to the noble exhortations of Bishop Butler. Not until the French Revolution were ultimate dogmas again called into question; and it is about them only that political speculation provokes deep feeling. The urbanity, indeed, is not entirely new. The Restoration had heralded its coming, and the tone of Halifax has more in common with Bolingbroke and Hume than with Hobbes and Filmer. Nor has the eighteenth century an historical profundity to compare with that of the zealous pamphleteers in the seventeenth. Heroic archivists like Prynne find very different substitutes in brilliant journalists like Defoe, and if Dalrymple and Blackstone are respectable, they bear no comparison with masters like Selden and Sir Henry Spelman."

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About the Author:

Harold Joseph Laski (30 June 1893 – 24 March 1950) was a British Marxist, political theorist, economist, author, and lecturer, who served as the chairman of the Labour Party during 1945–1946, and was a professor at the London School of Economics from 1926 to 1950. Laski was a proponent of Marxism and believed in a planned economy based on the public ownership of the means of production. Instead of as he saw it, a coercive state, Laski believed in the evolution of co-operative states that were internationally bound and stressed social welfare. He also believed since the capitalist class would not acquiesce in its own liquidation, the cooperative commonwealth was not likely to be attained without violence. But he also had a commitment to civil liberties, free speech and association, and representative democracy. Initially he believed that the League of Nations would bring about a "international democratic system". However from the late 1920s his political beliefs became radicalized and he believed that it was necessary to go beyond capitalism to "transcend the existing system of sovereign states". Laski was dismayed by the Hitler-Stalin pact and wrote a preface to the Left Book Club collection criticising it, Betrayal of the Left. In his last years he was disillusioned by the Cold War and the communist takeover of Czechoslovakia. George Orwell described him as "A socialist by allegiance, and a liberal by temperament".

Su questa edizione

• Editore: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Data di pubblicazione: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1508625638
• ISBN 13: 9781508625636
• Rilegatura: Paperback
• Numero di pagine: 84