Suchergebnisse

This essay explores three questions: (1) What are the salient features of Hobbes's concept of prudence? Prudence for Hobbes is a capacity to predict the future rooted in experience. (2) Can "Hobbesian individuals" have significantly different capacities for prudence? Challenging a common view, asserted even by Hobbes himself, I contend that Hobbes's own conception of prudence yields significant variation across individuals' capacities for prudence. (3) What is the role of prudence in Hobbes's political thought? A consequence of the significant variation among individuals is that prudence plays a much more consequential role in Hobbes's political philosophy than is often appreciated. Adapted from the source document.

But play, you must, A tune beyond us, yet ourselves, A tune upon the blue guitar Of things exactly as they are. — Wallace Stevens

A report on a Cambridge meeting on political philosophy delineates the scope & content of the debate. Among topics discussed were problems of canonicity & contextuality; the significance of Marx & Rawls for the field both past & present; the value of social choice theory & mathematical modeling; the degree of influence of feminism & postmodernism; & the relation of political philosophy to empirical social science. The report closes by identifying key issues for future disciplinary debate: justice & distribution, democracy & deliberation, internationalism & globalization, & civil society & social capital. K. Coddon

This paper defends the idea of empowering citizens by means of teaching them political philosophy. First, I explain and define empowerment as an experience leading to the development of critical and philosophical capabilities. Several challenges to using philosophy to empower citizens are then discussed and rejected. This group of challenges is called the 'divorce theory', because, according to them, philosophy and politics should be distinguished, as if divorced from each other, so that they can live happily side by side, but not together. Finally, empowerment is normatively defended and distinguished from paternalism, and examine the relationships between empowerment through political philosophy and deliberative democracy.

Reflects on the definition(s) of political theory. As the task of studying politics is by nature multiple & fluid, four key attributes are identified: (1) a privileging of practice; (2) an objective that seeks not to establish norms but rather to provide, via critical thinking, solutions to problems of governance; (3) the historicized attention to discursive formations & their genealogies; & (4) an ongoing dialogic engagement with present struggles & transformations. This approach, although part of a tradition that goes back to the ancients, is analyzed along a modern continuum from Enlightenment (Rousseau & Wollstonecraft through Marx & Mill), post-Enlightenment or modernist (Nietzsche through Arendt & Adams), & recent postmodern (eg, Skinner, Cambridge School, Foucault, & Said) applications. K. Coddon