Suchergebnisse

This article explores how our thinking about time shapes epistemological and ontological understandings of the world. It considers the idea of modernity as constituted by the ancient/modern binary through an examination of Montesquieu's and Benjamin Constant's development of this binary in relation to their understandings of commerce, the law of nations and conquest, political rule and freedom in the context of European colonial empire. Modernity demarcates a break in (historical) time between a past and a present that extends into a future. This rupture plays a role in distinctions between modern European and pre-modern non-European societies. The ancient/modern binary underpins conceptions of collective and individual liberty. It associates modernity with individual liberty, progress, reason and science. I analyse how this binary operated across space to categorise various societies as not modern, pre-modern or less developed according to levels of scientific, technological, political and economic progress in Montesquieu's thought and through Constant's silences. This article develops an innovative reading of the ancient/modern binary in French political thought.

This article explores how our thinking about time shapes epistemological and ontological understandings of the world. It considers the idea of modernity as constituted by the ancient/modern binary through an examination of Montesquieu's and Benjamin Constant's development of this binary in relation to their understandings of commerce, the law of nations and conquest, political rule and freedom in the context of European colonial empire. Modernity demarcates a break in (historical) time between a past and a present that extends into a future. This rupture plays a role in distinctions between modern European and pre-modern non-European societies. The ancient/modern binary underpins conceptions of collective and individual liberty. It associates modernity with individual liberty, progress, reason and science. I analyse how this binary operated across space to categorise various societies as not modern, pre-modern or less developed according to levels of scientific, technological, political and economic progress in Montesquieu's thought and through Constant's silences. This article develops an innovative reading of the ancient/modern binary in French political thought.

Republicanism is generally said to promote virtue and equal political participation, yet many historical republics and republican theories endorse the hierarchical political participation of the upper and lower social classes and recommend a centralised executive power. Republican constitutions incorporate the authority of the nobles, the freedom of the people and the political power of one man. Cicero formulates this understanding of the republic, which endures in the ideas of Machiavelli and Montesquieu. I characterise this school of thought as conservative because it promotes the preservation of the social hierarchy, private property and stability; moreover, it harnesses change by advancing a policy of expansion. I challenge the mainstream Cambridge School interpretation by tracing the trajectory of conservative republican ideas in the thought of Cicero, Machiavelli and Montesquieu. Few interpretations relate the republicanism of these three thinkers to each other; hence this reading contributes a new way of thinking about republicanism.

Abstract
Why did republicanism enjoy a revival in interest in the sixties and seventies and a "rediscovery" in the history of Western political thought? Over the twentieth century, many new states created through processes of decolonization conceptualized themselves as independent sovereign republics. Yet the main thrust of the study of republicanism has focused on the development of the classical paradigm centered on virtue, citizenship, and self-government in Western political thought that culminated in American and French republican foundings. This historical excavation of the republican paradigm elides postcolonial republican foundings. This article contends there is a reclaiming of the republican tradition and practice as Western that perpetuates the division between the West and non-West. This article examines the impact of Machiavellian virtue/fortune on Arendt and Pocock's republican historiography and demonstrates that their understandings contribute to a dualistic historiography of Western and postcolonial republics and contends that India's republican founding transformed Western republican conceptions.

In The Spirit of the Laws Montesquieu claims that commerce brings peace. His ideas on the separation and balance of powers and commerce form the cornerstones of liberal democratic theory. Yet it is often overlooked that they were conceived in the context of colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade. Most scholars interpret his constitutional theory as promoting freedom against the absolutist French monarchy and most argue that he rejects imperialism and despotism in favour of international and democratic peace that advances trade relations between republics. By contrast, I present a new reading that interprets his theory in the light of commerce and colonialism. Montesquieu's constitutional theory provides the conditions for the republic to pursue empire without collapsing. It further underlies the development of democratic institutions that incorporate a greater number of people and support a market economy, as the benefits of international trade transformed both global and domestic orders. Montesquieu's 'fundamental constitution' establishes a strong central executive power and a distinct legislative power that incorporates the landed nobility and the upwardly mobile portion of the popular social classes on a hierarchical basis. Executive power mediates social conflict and facilitates expansion. This paper examines the institutions that constitute this expansive republic as well as Montesquieu's arguments on climate, orientalism and commerce that justify 18th-century colonial empire. It is important to understand the elements of Montesquieu's argument since these inform contemporary understandings of the standard of civilisation and the international order seen to be comprised of moderate democratic republics, developing states and immoderate despotic states.

This book brings together voices from the Global South and Global North to think through what it means, in practice, to decolonise contemporary higher education.Occasionally, a theoretical concept arises in academic debate that cuts across individual disciplines. Such concepts - which may well have already been in use and debated for some time - become suddenly newly and increasingly important at a particular historical juncture. Right now, debates around decolonisation are on the rise globally, as we become increasingly aware that many of the old power imbalances brought into play by colonialism have not gone away in the present. The authors in this volume bring theories of decoloniality into conversation with the structural, cultural, institutional, relational and personal logics of curriculum, pedagogy and teaching practice. What is enabled, in practice, when academics set out to decolonize their teaching spaces? What commonalities and differences are there where academics set out to do so in universities across disparate political and geographical spaces? This book explores what is at stake when decolonial work is taken from the level of theory into actual practice. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Third World Thematics.