History of Political Thought

Volume XXI Issue 4 (Winter 2000)

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  • H.H. Bleakley, Some Additional Thoughts on Ockham’s Right Reason: An Addendum to Coleman  abstract
  • L.T. Sarasohn, Was Leviathan a Patronage Artifact?  abstract
  • R. Bourke, Edmund Burke and Enlightenment Sociability: Justice, Honour and the Principles of Government  abstract
  • P. Lindsay, Overcoming False Dichotomies: Mill, Marx and the Welfare State  abstract
  • D.A. Stack, The First Darwinian Left: Radical and Socialist Responses to Darwin, 1859–1914  abstract   full text (pdf format)
  • P. Carrese, The Complexity, and Principles, of the American Founding: A Response to Alan Gibson
  • Book Reviews
    • Alexander M. Martin, Romantics, Reformers, Reactionaries: Russian Conservative Thought and Politics in the Reign of Alexander I. Reviewed by Dmitry Shlapentokh.
    Ronald J. Terchek, Gandhi: Struggling for Autonomy. Reviewed by Simon Vickers.
    Uday Singh Mehta, Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought. Reviewed by David Long.
    Michael Levin, The Condition of England Question: Carlyle, Mill, Engels. Reviewed by Gareth Stedman Jones.
    Conor Cruise O’Brien, The Long Affair: Thomas Jefferson and the French Revolution. Reviewed by Terence Ball.
    Auguste Comte, Early Political Writings, ed. and trans. H.S. Jones. Reviewed by Ceri Crossley.
    Andrew Lintott, The Constitution of the Roman Republic. Reviewed by Peter Wiseman.
    The Collected Works of Bernard Bosanquet, ed. William Sweet. Reviewed by Peter Nicholson.
    ‘The Treatise of the Three Impostors’ and the Problem of Enlightenment, ed. and trans. Abraham Anderson. Reviewed by David Wootton.
    Eldon J. Eisenach, Mill and the Moral Character of Liberalism. Reviewed by William Stafford.
    Politics and the Political Imagination in Later Stuart Britain. Essays presented to Lois Green Schwoerer, ed. Howard Nenner. Reviewed by Blair Worden.
    Bernard Mandeville, By a Society of Ladies: Essays in The Female Tatler, ed. M.M. Goldsmith. Reviewed by Irwin Primer.
  • Annual Index

    • Selected Abstracts

    THE FIRST DARWINIAN LEFT: RADICAL AND SOCIALIST RESPONSES TO DARWIN, 1859–1914
    D.A. Stack, Department of History, Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London, London, E1 4NS. Email: D.A.Stack@qmw.ac.uk

    Abstract: Myths, misunderstanding and neglect have combined to obscure our understanding of the relationship between left-wing politics and Darwinian science. This article seeks to redress the balance by studying how radical and socialist thinkers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, desperate to legitimate their work with scientific authority, wrestled with the paradoxical challenges Darwinism posed for their politics. By studying eight leading radical and socialist thinkers — ranging from the co-founder of the theory of evolution by natural selection, Alfred Russel Wallace, through to Britain’s first Labour Prime Minister, J. Ramsay MacDonald — this article analyses the often tortuous relationship between Darwinism and the left, as well as providing fresh insights into the historiographical debate over ‘continuity’ in radicalism and socialism. A strict definition of ‘Darwinian’ is adopted throughout, in order to help us delineate what was specifically ‘Darwinian’ from what merely reflected the general evolutionary ethos of the age, in left-wing thought, and to move us beyond the sensational and distorting focus on eugenics which has characterized previous studies. Full text (pdf format)

    SOME ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS ON OCKHAM’S RIGHT REASON:
    AN ADDENDUM TO COLEMAN
    H.H. Bleakley, Newnham College, Cambridge, CB3 9DF. Email:  hmh20@hermes.cam.ac.uk

    Abstract: The connection between William of Ockham’s philosophy and his politics has long been a subject of debate among scholars. Many have seen his nominalist epistemology, which asserts that the individual thing is the object of knowledge, as contributing towards his focus on the individual in his political thought. In her most recent article, ‘Ockham’s Right Reason and the Genesis of the Political as “Absolutist” ’, Janet Coleman supports this argument concerning the influence of Ockham’s philosophical individualism upon his political individualism. But she also provides a different and, I believe, more important argument as to how Ockham’s philosophical epistemology is connected to his politics: that what man can know about himself and others through right reason is Ockham’s starting point for analysing human authority. This article attempts to support Coleman’s argument that the role of right reason in the life of the individual has significant consequences for Ockham’s notion of political rule. This is done through a detailed analysis of the specific role of right reason in Ockham’s theory of the virtuous act, and how this treatment of right reason can be said to influence Ockham’s notion of the purpose and methodology of political rule. Specifically, Ockham’s notion of right reason in his ethical theory plays out in his political theory by defining the limitations of political knowledge, and thereby creating a pronounced discontinuity between the function of the individual as a self-ruler and the function of the political ruler.

    EDMUND BURKE AND ENLIGHTENMENT SOCIABILITY: JUSTICE, HONOUR AND THE PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT
    Richard Bourke, University of London, Queen Mary and Westfield College, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS.

    Abstract: This article situates the work of Edmund Burke, principally his writings on the French Revolution, in an enlightenment debate about sociability, monarchy and mixed government. It shows how his conception of manners in general, and honour in particular, relates to similar preoccupations in Montesquieu, Voltaire, Smith and Millar, and how that conception has consequences for his theory of authority and moderation in politics.

    OVERCOMING FALSE DICHOTOMIES: MILL, MARX AND THE WELFARE STATE
    Peter Lindsay, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA 30303. Email: polpl@langate.gsu.edu

    Abstract: There is a strong perception in the social sciences that the welfare state and socialism differ qualitatively rather than by degree. This perception holds that the welfare state is fundamentally incapable, in any incarnation, of realizing the social aspirations of socialism, and that socialism is likewise destructive of welfare state ideals. As a result of such thinking, the marginal, intersectional world that does exist between the welfare state and socialism becomes hidden from view. This consequence is of particular concern to theorists in search of a more egalitarian society than markets, on their own, can produce. This paper analyses the welfare state/socialism dichotomy in the works of Marx and J.S. Mill, looking to see whether it was plausible at its point of historical origin. The conclusion is that it was not; that the dichotomy only seemed to make sense because neither theorist employed a language capable of capturing the complexity of the social relations in question.

    WAS LEVIATHAN A PATRONAGE ARTIFACT?
    Lisa T. Sarasohn, Department of History, Oregon State University, 306 Milam Hall, Corvallis, OR 97331-5104, USA. Email: LSarasohn@aol.com

    Abstract: Hobbes’s experience with patronage, as the servant and client of the Earls of Devonshire and Newcastle, influenced the concepts of human nature and human action found in his major political works.  The desire for honour, which he emphasized in Leviathan, constitutes one of the major motivations of behaviour both in the state of nature and the state, as it did in the status-driven society Hobbes knew from his own experiences as a client.  Hobbes’s concepts of free gift and gratitude reflect the dynamic interchanges which propelled and cemented the societal bonds created through patronage.  Patronage also helps explain Hobbes’s actions in presenting a copy of Leviathan to the uncrowned king, Charles II, and his subsequent return to England in 1652.

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