History of Political Thought
Volume XXII Issue 2 (Summer 2001)
HPT home page
Imprint Academic home
page
R. Kamtekar, Social Justice and Happiness in the Republic: Plato’s
Two Principles abstract
D. Morrison, Politics as a Vocation, According to Aristotle abstract
J.M. Blythe, Women in the Military: Scholastic Arguments and Medieval
Images of Female Warriors abstract full
text (pdf format)
W. Walker, Paradise Lost and the Forms of Government abstract
K.S. Decker, Right and Recognition: Criminal Action and Intersubjectivity
in Hegel’s Early Ethics abstract
L. Janara, Commercial Capitalism and the Democratic Psyche: The
Threat to Tocquevillean Citizenship abstract
M. Francis, Review Article: Histories of Australian Republicanism
abstract
Book Reviews
Selected Abstracts
WOMEN IN THE MILITARY: SCHOLASTIC ARGUMENTS AND MEDIEVAL
IMAGES OF FEMALE WARRIORS full text (pdf format)
James M. Blythe, The University of Memphis, Department of History, Mitchell
Hall 100, Campus Box 526120, Memphis, TN 38152-6120, USA. Email: jmblythe@memphis.edu
In their political treatises, the scholastic writers Ptolemy of Lucca (c.1236–1327)
and Giles of Rome (1243–1316) discussed the question of whether women should
serve in the military. The dispute came in response to Aristotle, who reported
in his Politics that Plato and Socrates taught that women should receive
the same military training as men and take an equal part in fighting. Such
a treatment was made possible by a medieval context in which women under
certain circumstances could be feudal lords responsible for maintaining
a contingent of knights and sometimes commanding them, and in which a large
number of medieval stories of women fighters or leaders of knights circulated,
some of them mythical but others based on real women. Both Giles and Ptolemy
ultimately rejected female participation but, in keeping with the dialectical
method, proposed arguments on both sides. These involve historical precedent,
the biological and medical differences between men and women, analogies
between female animals and women, divinely ordained gender roles, and the
benefits of exercise.
RIGHT AND RECOGNITION: CRIMINAL ACTION AND INTERSUBJECTIVITY
IN HEGEL’S EARLY ETHICS
Kevin S. Decker, Dept. of Philosophy, St Louis University, Humanities Building,
3800 Lindell Blvd, St Louis, MO 63103, USA. Email: deckerks@slu.edu
This paper explores one aspect of the political in the early Hegel, that
of criminal action and its relationship to the concept of recognition in
the System of Ethical Life. While it is clear that in this work Hegel thinks
that criminal action plays an important role in the transformation of simple
ethical communities, it is not clear that, for Hegel, the formal character
of crime in the struggle for recognition is anything but negative. I attempt
to show how this role for crime leads Hegel to a legalistic conception
of Right that has no solid connection with recognition as a social force.
REVIEW ARTICLE: HISTORIES OF AUSTRALIAN REPUBLICANISM
Mark Francis, University of Canterbury, Department of Political Science,
Christchurch, New Zealand. Email: m.francis@pols.canterbury.ac.nz
Review of:
Mark McKenna, The Captive Republic: A History of Republicanism
in Australia, 1788–1996 (Cambridge University Press, 1996), xiv + 334
pp., £40.00, ISBN 0 521 5728 4.
Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government
(Oxford University Press, 1997), xii + 304 pp., £25.00, ISBN 0 19
8290837.
Bruce Scates, A New Australia: Citizenship, Radicalism and the
First Republic (Cambridge University Press, 1997), viii + 261 pp.,
£45.00, ISBN 0 521 57296 7.
COMMERCIAL CAPITALISM AND THE DEMOCRATIC PSYCHE: THE
THREAT TO TOCQUEVILLEAN CITIZENSHIP
L. Janara, The University of Western Ontario, Department of Political Science,
Social Science Centre, London, Ontario, Canada, N6A 5C2. Email: ljanara@julian.uwo.ca
A preeminent theorist of democracy, Alexis de Tocqueville has been both
criticized for ignoring the dangerous impact of capitalism on democracy,
and lauded for elucidating their happy symbiosis. In fact, Democracy in
America features pungent, though limited and isolated, commentary on what
Tocqueville calls ‘commerce’ and ‘industry’. In this article, these scattered
observations are brought to bear on Tocqueville’s rich portrait of democracy,
its characteristic passions and anxieties, and its varying potentialities.
The yield is a critical psycho-political account of how commercial capitalism
exacerbates democracy’s unhealthy tendencies to undermine democracy’s potential
to foster healthy, meaningful democratic citizenship.
SOCIAL JUSTICE AND HAPPINESS IN THE REPUBLIC: PLATO’S
TWO PRINCIPLES
Rachana Kamtekar, Dept. of Philosophy, University of Michigan, 2215 Angell
Hall, 435 S. State St., Ann Arbor, MI 48109. Email: rkamteka@umich.edu
In the Republic, Socrates says that social justice is ‘doing one’s own’,
i.e. ‘everyone must practice one of the occupations in the city for which
he is naturally best suited’. One would ordinarily suppose social justice
to concern not only the allocation of duties but also the distribution
of benefits. I argue that this expectation is fulfilled not by Plato’s
conception of social justice, but by the normative basis for it, Plato’s
requirement of aiming at the happiness of all the citizens. I argue that
Plato treats social justice as a necessary but not sufficient means to
happiness that guarantees only the production of the greatest goods; ensuring
that these goods are distributed so as to maximize the happiness of the
whole city requires a direct application of Plato’s happiness principle,
which I interpret individualistically and then use to explain women’s equality
in work and education.
POLITICS AS A VOCATION, ACCORDING TO ARISTOTLE
Donald Morrison, Philosophy Dept., MS 14, Rice University, PO Box 1892,
Houston, TX 77251, USA. Email: donaldm@rice.edu
What does Aristotle think of ‘politics as a vocation’? For whom does Aristotle
believe that a life devoted to politics is choiceworthy? In Nicomachean
Ethics I, 2, Aristotle argues that the goal of politics is the ultimate
and natural goal for all human beings. This chapter is often interpreted
weakly, as if Aristotle’s point were only that human beings are suited
to lead lives of general sociability. But what his argument implies is
stronger. If the human good, the ultimate end of human action, is the public
good, then when each citizen asks, ‘What is the ultimate goal of my actions?’
the correct answer should be, ‘the eudaimonia of my polis’.
PARADISE LOST AND THE FORMS OF GOVERNMENT
William Walker, School of English, Morven Brown Building, University of
New South Wales, Sydney 2052, Australia. Email: W.Walker@unsw.edu.au
In his epic poem, Paradise Lost, Milton does not, as many critics have
recently claimed, repudiate monarchy and recommend republics; he rather
asserts that the legitimacy of any particular form of government in any
particular situation depends upon what he refers to as the ‘merit’ or ‘worth’
of the rulers and the ruled. On a strict definition of republicanism as
a position grounded in the repudiation of monarchy and the recommendation
of republics, this poem would thus fail to qualify as a republican text.
However, neither Livy’s History nor Machiavelli’s Discourses unconditionally
repudiates monarchy and recommends republics; both texts claim that the
legitimacy of any particular form of government in any particular situation
depends upon many things, including the merit of the rulers and the ruled.
Given that both of these texts fall within the tradition of republican
thought, it follows that Milton’s teaching on the forms of government in
Paradise Lost is consistent in important respects with some of the central
texts of this tradition, and that the poem may thus reasonably be understood
as a republican text. But this teaching is also consistent with Milton’s
Protestant commitment to evaluating all human works and forms on the grounds
of the spirit in which they are produced and administered.
HPT home page
Imprint Academic home
page