Major Concepts in Politics and Political Theory – serie

The Viennese Socrates: Karl Popper and the Reconstruction of Progressive Politics examines Karl Popper’s attempt to develop a political theory that draws upon Socratic fallibilism and commitment to ethical autonomy while preserving progressive sociological insights and commitment to activism. Philip Benesch argues that Popper’s critique of Marxist theory is largely an endeavor to separate its progressive-activist core from its positivist and uncritical-rationalist entanglements. The author defends Popper against the charges of positivism and scientism leveled by the Frankfurt School, among others. Although he is in no sense an apologist for Popper’s commentary on the classical tradition of philosophy, Benesch contends that Popper’s philosophical contribution is of classical breadth and significance and that it continues and advances «the great conversation» that is the substance of the classical tradition.

Faith and Politics in America explores the period from 1607 to the American Civil War. This book addresses the role of religion in the political process in early America, the extent to which religion influenced eighteenth century politicians and decision-makers, and how the founding fathers used religion in laying the foundations for a fair and just constitution. It also explores the meaning of the separation of church and state in the mind of many of the great political actors and thinkers in America in the early and late federal period and their views on traditional Christianity. The book traces how religion contributed to the success of subsequent political leaders, such as the founders of the Whig and Democratic parties, who claimed to be religious or to be adherents of a certain faith and who used religion as a guide to execute policies; and the role of religious faith in arguments over the institution of slavery before and during the Civil War. While exploring these topics from the time of the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries, the essays included in Faith and Politics in America afford unique assessments of the American Revolution; the thought of Thomas Jefferson; the religious philosophy of James Madison; the life and thought of John Quincy Adams; the operation of the second party system; and religious debates over the acceptability of slavery immediately prior to the Civil War.

This book consists of an extensive examination of the work and life of one of the most important American political scientists of the twentieth century, V. O. Key, Jr. (1908-1963). The research is based on Key’s voluminous personal papers, interviews with his family, colleagues, and graduate students, plus thorough study of all of his published and unpublished writings, much of which is not readily accessible today.Part I offers a narrative account of Key’s life from his upbringing and early education in Texas, through his graduate political science training at the University of Chicago and his steady rise as a scholar from the latter 1930s through the end of the 1940s, to his highly productive final fourteen years (1949-1963) at the very pinnacle of the discipline. Part II is made up of five chapters that explore the many aspects of Key’s professional career during his peak years, chapters that fully reveal his wise, sensible approach to the study of politics.

This book is a comparative study of the political theories of Thomas Jefferson, one of the founders of the United States of America, and Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey. Similarities are found in their imperial settings, wars of national independence, establishment of republics, freedom of religion, public education, and economics. The impact of these two great political thinkers on the West and the Middle East is detailed.

Is Plato one of the most authoritarian authors ever to have appeared on the face of the earth? This question has received almost every conceivable answer in the past, but inquiry into it has not been helped by easy generalizations and unwarranted anachronisms. Plato on Democracy addresses this question by charting both the development of Plato’s political thought and the complex relationships between metaphysics, history, and politics in his work. Never losing sight of the social context in which Plato’s thinking developed, Plato on Democracy is a thorough and comprehensive analysis of Plato’s political philosophy.

This is the first volume of a detailed history of the traditions of natural law and political realism in western political thought. It elucidates the ways in which the relation between politics and morality was understood by major thinkers from classical antiquity to the Renaissance. Emphasis is given not only to the exegesis of texts, but to the intellectual and historical contexts in which those texts must be read if they are to be properly understood. The second volume continues the analysis through the twenty-first century and addresses the question of whether the modern «natural law» rhetoric of human rights can be given a respectable philosophical basis. This two-volume set is a valuable resource for scholars working in the fields of history, international relations, philosophy, and politics.