In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 61.3 (2000) 453-471 [Access article in PDF] Liberty, Authority, and Trust in Burke's Idea of Empire Richard Bourke When Edmund Burke first embarked upon a parliamentary career, British political life was in the process of adapting to a series of critical reorientations in both the dynamics of party affiliation and the direction of imperial policy. During the period of the Seven (...) Years' War, a reconstituted militia became a focus for patriotic enthusiasm, uniting national sentiment against France and effectively eradicating the remnants of Jacobite rhetoric and aspiration. Traditional opposition between Tory and Whig became irrelevant, while Court and Country jointly came to the support of the Pitt-Newcastle ministry. However, in due course the Old Corps disintegrated as George III succeeded to the throne with the promise of an end to factional strife and the beginning of a patriotic alliance in government. But while competing ideologies and interests on the domestic political scene were undergoing comprehensive realignment, the pursuit of a blue-water policy in tandem with strategic continental campaigns brought Britain's struggle against France into North America, the Caribbean, and India. Trade continued to expand into Asia and West Africa, but the principles of commercial advantage were continually brought into open conflict with the exigencies of war. The division of power in Europe became embroiled in a substantial redivision of empire, and by 1763 British territorial expansion had reached its zenith.When Burke was appointed private secretary to the Marquis of Rockingham, with the national debt standing at an all time high and the demands of imperial defense unlikely to diminish, the politics of empire called for urgent attention from all sections of the political establishment. In particular the Rockinghamites, adopting a posture of aloofness from venality and petty interest, were obliged to advance policies for imperial government on the solid basis of political principle. 1 Coming into parliament as a member for Wendover in the wake of [End Page 453] Grenville's Stamp Act, at a time when the East India Company was assuming control of the revenue in Bengal, Burke set about formulating a doctrine of imperial sovereignty which would be serviceable to the party either in power or in opposition and which would be adequate to the complex reality of detached and extensive empire. The immediate reception of that inquiry, both in Britain and on the Continent, into the fraught world of post-Revolutionary political debate has had the long-term effect of distorting the order of emphasis in terms of which his career as a whole ought properly to be understood.The vigorous elaboration, in opposition to the Jacobin experiment in France, of the conditions under which moderate government could be exercised within the context of an absolute sovereignty was expressed in terms which had originally been invoked as part of a sustained attempt to reconcile civility with empire. As we shall see, that attempt involved a process of delicate coordination by means of which the interests of freedom would be brought into harmony with the demands of public power. In that sense the effort to make liberty and authority mutually responsible can be said to constitute the core ambition of Burke's political rhetoric. In this context responsibility defines the optimally beneficial relation between government and people on the one hand and national sovereignty and the extended empire on the other. This article outlines the practical and theoretical exploration of those relations within the frame of Burke's intervention in the world of eighteenth-century political discourse.Burke was of course well placed in 1765 to evolve a theory of imperial government that was at once ideologically compelling and politically viable. In his capacity as secretary to William Gerard Hamilton in the early 1760s he had already examined the corruption of legitimate empire as represented by the introduction of penal legislation into Ireland after 1694. The Tracts Relating to Popery Laws set out to convict the Irish Parliament in Dublin of flagrant misrule. A subordinate legislature within the empire is charged with having employed... (shrink)

Is there a political philosophy of conservatism? A history of the phenomenon written along sceptical lines casts doubt on the existence of a transhistorical doctrine, or even an enduring conservative outlook. The main typologies of conservatism uniformly trace its origins to opposition to the French Revolution. Accordingly, Edmund Burke is standardly singled out as the ‘father’ of this style of politics. Yet Burke was de facto an opposition Whig who devoted his career to assorted programmes of reform. In restoring Burke (...) to his original milieu, the argument presented here takes issue with 20th-century accounts of conservative ideology developed by such figures as Karl Mannheim, Klaus Epstein and Samuel Huntington. It argues that the idea of a conservative tradition is best seen as a belated construction, and that the notion of a univocal philosophy of conservatism is basically misconceived. (shrink)

This book by leading international scholars in the fields of history, philosophy and politics restores the subject to a place at the very centre of political theory and practice.

This collaborative volume offers the first historical reconstruction of the concept of popular sovereignty from antiquity to the twentieth century. First formulated between the late sixteenth and mid-seventeenth centuries, the various early modern conceptions of the doctrine were heavily indebted to Roman reflection on forms of government and Athenian ideas of popular power. This study, edited by Richard Bourke and Quentin Skinner, traces successive transformations of the doctrine, rather than narrating a linear development. It examines critical moments in (...) the career of popular sovereignty, spanning antiquity, medieval Europe, the early modern wars of religion, the revolutions of the eighteenth century and their aftermath, decolonisation and mass democracy. Featuring original work by an international team of scholars, the book offers a reconsideration of one of the formative principles of contemporary politics by exploring its descent from classical city-states to the advent of the modern state. (shrink)

The concept of ‘Ethnicity’ still enjoys some currency in the historical and social science literature. However, the cogency of the idea remains disputed. First coming to prominence in the 1980s, the word is often used to depict the character of social relations in the context of conflicts over sovereignty. The case of Northern Ireland presents a paradigmatic example. This article is a rejoinder to Ian McBride’s contention that my scepticism about the notion lacks justification. With reference to disputes over the (...) state, I show in response that ‘ethnicity’ in effect means nationality. I further claim that the nation state is a successor to the dynastic state. In clarifying the meaning of this arrangement, the article brings out how the nation is a juridical rather than empirical category. More specifically, it derives from the notion of corporate personality in law. For this reason, its retrospective integrity is a matter of fabrication, depending on the fiction of ancestral continuity. At the same time, its future-oriented cohesiveness means that it must be invested with a unifying will. I conclude that the legitimacy of a nation state rests on its democratic will, whose coherence is expressed in the action of its government. (shrink)

This provocative book explores the difficulties surrounding the attempt to understand the relationship between literary and political discourse. It examines the initial formulation of these difficulties in Georgian Britain, and traces them through the cultural debates of the Victorian men of letters to the critical ideologies of the twentieth-century literary academy. Richard Bourke offers an incisive critique of the way in which the idea of Culture has been used as a means of resolving the failure to establish an (...) adequate theory of politics in the wake of the French Revolution. (shrink)

Hobbes's place in the history of political philosophy is a highly controversial one. An international symposium held at Queen Mary, University of London in February 2009 was devoted to debating his significance and legacy. The event focussed on recent books on Hobbes by Quentin Skinner and Philip Pettit, and was organised around four commentaries on these new works by distinguished scholars. This paper is designed to introduce the subject of the symposium together with the commentaries and subsequent responses from Petit (...) and Skinner. It examines the themes of language and liberty in the philosophy of Hobbes and concludes by highlighting some of the ways in which further research into Hobbes's debt to Aristotle's Politics will prove fruitful and illuminating. (shrink)

This book is an inter-disciplinary volume based on collaborative research in the humanities and social sciences that explores the benefits of historical understanding in leading disciplines, including History, Politics, Literature, Economics, Anthropology, Law, Sociology, and Philosophy.

This book offers the first historical treatment of Hegel's political ideas since the 1970s. It completely revises our understanding of his response to the French Revolution, the most dramatic and significant event of his age. A fresh account of his take on the Revolution itself provides a new perspective on his thought as a whole. It also illuminates Hegel's relevance to modern politics. Dominant strands of post-War thought have taken the form of a repudiation of Hegel. This reaction has largely (...) been based on dubious arguments and poor scholarship. The alternative analysis offered here contextualizes attempts to disparage Hegel as pursued by strands of critical theory associated with postmodernism. In the process, the book challenges recent onslaughts against so-called "Western" rationalism. It takes issue with the ambition to relativize all values and to represent knowledge as an effect of power. (shrink)

The Irish Revolution was a pivotal moment of transition for Ireland, the United Kingdom, and British Empire. A constitutional crisis that crystallised in 1912 electrified opinion in Ireland whilst dividing politics at Westminster. Instead of settling these differences, the advent of the First World War led to the emergence of new antagonisms. Republican insurrection was followed by a struggle for independence along with the partition of the island. This volume assembles some of the key contributions to the intellectual debates that (...) took place in the midst of these changes and displays the vital ideas developed by the men and women who made the Irish Revolution, as well as those who opposed it. Through these fundamental texts, we see Irish experiences in comparative European and international contexts, and how the revolution challenged the durability of Britain as a global power. (shrink)

G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831) has commonly been seen as Europe’s leading philosopher since Kant. His influence extended across the globe down to the Second World War – not least through his dissident disciple, Karl Marx. Since then, despite intermittent revivals, his importance has tended to be eclipsed by a rising tide of anti-modernist polemic, extending from Heidegger to postmodernism. Central to Hegel’s political thought was his view of the French Revolution. But notwithstanding its pivotal role in the development of (...) his ideas, his reaction to that event has been systematically misconstrued. In presenting a more faithful account of Hegel’s interpretation of his own era, the argument presented here places his response to contemporary developments in the context of a series of World Revolutions which framed the meaning of his age. This approach serves to illustrate the unique combination of historical and philosophical reasoning on which Hegel’s thought depended. In the process, reconstructing his arguments raises challenging questions about the applicability of bygone political ideas to later historical periods. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Intellectual historians have tended to focus either on shifts in sensibility or, more analytically, on the substance and structure of thought. They might usefully, however, examine both, as well as the reciprocal action of the one upon the other. This applies equally to political and religious ideas. In early twentieth-century Ireland, it was the relationship between religion and politics that stirred controversy. How would the institutions of church and state function, respectively, under Home Rule and the Union. Opposing camps (...) advanced competing prognostications. This contest forces us to rethink the claim that revolutionary insurgency in Ireland was a species of ‘political religion’. The evidence points to a more complex picture while at the same time highlighting the persistence of sectarian attitudes in the historiography of the period. (shrink)

Suele considerarse a Hegel (1770-1831) el filósofo europeo más importante desde Kant. Su influencia se extendió por todo el mundo hasta la Segunda Guerra Mundial, sobre todo a través de su discípulo díscolo, Karl Marx. Desde entonces, su importancia ha tendido a verse eclipsada por una marea creciente de polémica antimodernista, que ha ido de Heidegger al postmodernismo (aunque de forma ocasional e intermitente haya vuelto a prestársele atención). La visión que Hegel tenía de la Revolución Francesa fue fundamental en (...) la forja de su pensamiento político. Sin embargo, a pesar del papel decisivo que desempeñó en el desarrollo de sus ideas, su reacción ante este acontecimiento ha sido sistemáticamente malinterpretada. Mediante la presentación de un relato más fiel de la interpretación que Hegel hizo de su propia época, el argumento que aquí se expone sitúa su respuesta a los acontecimientos contemporáneos en el contexto de una serie de Revoluciones Mundiales que determinaron el significado de su época. Esta manera de aproximarse al problema sirve para ilustrar la singular combinación de razonamiento histórico y filosófico de la que dependía el pensamiento de Hegel. Cuando procedemos de ese modo, la reconstrucción de sus argumentos nos lleva a poner en cuestión la aplicabilidad de las ideas políticas del pasado a los periodos históricos posteriores. (shrink)

Hobbes's place in the history of political philosophy is a highly controversial one. An international symposium held at Queen Mary, University of London in February 2009 was devoted to debating his significance and legacy. The event focussed on recent books on Hobbes by Quentin Skinner and Philip Pettit, and was organised around four commentaries on these new works by distinguished scholars. This paper is designed to introduce the subject of the symposium together with the commentaries and subsequent responses from Petit (...) and Skinner. It examines the themes of language and liberty in the philosophy of Hobbes and concludes by highlighting some of the ways in which further research into Hobbes's debt to Aristotle's Politics will prove fruitful and illuminating. (shrink)

The concept of ‘Ethnicity’ still enjoys some currency in the historical and social science literature. However, the cogency of the idea remains disputed. First coming to prominence in the 1980s, the word is often used to depict the character of social relations in the context of conflicts over sovereignty. The case of Northern Ireland presents a paradigmatic example. This article is a rejoinder to Ian McBride’s contention that my scepticism about the notion lacks justification. With reference to disputes over the (...) state, I show in response that ‘ethnicity’ in effect means nationality. I further claim that the nation state is a successor to the dynastic state. In clarifying the meaning of this arrangement, the article brings out how the nation is a juridical rather than empirical category. More specifically, it derives from the notion of corporate personality in law. For this reason, its retrospective integrity is a matter of fabrication, depending on the fiction of ancestral continuity. At the same time, its future-oriented cohesiveness means that it must be invested with a unifying will. I conclude that the legitimacy of a nation state rests on its democratic will, whose coherence is expressed in the action of its government. (shrink)

Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categories and (...) On Interpretation and boethius'S textbook on topical inference. They comprise a freestanding Dialectica (“Logic”; probably c.1116), a set of commentaries (known as the Logica [Ingredientibus], c. 1119) and a later (c. 1125) commentary on the Isagoge (Logica Nostrorum Petititoni Sociorum or Glossulae). In a work Abelard called his Theologia, issued in three main versions (between 1120 and c.1134), he attempted a logical analysis of trinitarian relations and explored the philosophical problems surrounding God's claims to omnipotence and omniscience. The Collationes (“Debates,” also known as “Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew”; probably c.1130) present a rational investigation into the nature of the highest good, in which the Christian and the Philosopher (who seems to be modeled on a philosopher of pagan antiquity) are remarkably in agreement. The unfinished Scito teipsum (“Know thyself,” also known as the “Ethics”; c.1138) analyses moral action. (shrink)

The proof theory of many-valued systems has not been investigated to an extent comparable to the work done on axiomatizatbility of many-valued logics. Proof theory requires appropriate formalisms, such as sequent calculus, natural deduction, and tableaux for classical (and intuitionistic) logic. One particular method for systematically obtaining calculi for all finite-valued logics was invented independently by several researchers, with slight variations in design and presentation. The main aim of this report is to develop the proof theory of finite-valued first order (...) logics in a general way, and to present some of the more important results in this area. In Systems covered are the resolution calculus, sequent calculus, tableaux, and natural deduction. This report is actually a template, from which all results can be specialized to particular logics. (shrink)

Logic has pride of place in mathematics and its 20th century offshoot, computer science. Modern symbolic logic was developed, in part, as a way to provide a formal framework for mathematics: Frege, Peano, Whitehead and Russell, as well as Hilbert developed systems of logic to formalize mathematics. These systems were meant to serve either as themselves foundational, or at least as formal analogs of mathematical reasoning amenable to mathematical study, e.g., in Hilbert’s consistency program. Similar efforts continue, but have been (...) expanded by the development of sophisticated methods to study the properties of such systems using proof and model theory. In parallel with this evolution of logical formalisms as tools for articulating mathematical theories (broadly speaking), much progress has been made in the quest for a mechanization of logical inference and the investigation of its theoretical limits, culminating recently in the development of new foundational frameworks for mathematics with sophisticated computer-assisted proof systems. In addition, logical formalisms developed by logicians in mathematical and philosophical contexts have proved immensely useful in describing theories and systems of interest to computer scientists, and to some degree, vice versa. Three examples of the influence of logic in computer science are automated reasoning, computer verification, and type systems for programming languages. (shrink)

This study reconstructs the relationship between philosophy and politics in the way in which Heidegger's failure as a politician influenced the redevelopment of philosophy in the 1930s. The author also explains how Heidegger's failure influenced the content and direction of his later work.

Studies the politics of Heidegger in terms of "thrownness" or "existential contingency". Attempts to think through Heidegger's philosophy in a manner that parallels his own dialogue with other key western thinkers.

There may in general be said to be two ways in which progress may be made in the understanding and towards the solution of a problem. The one is that of the continual development of it in the form originally given to it, by confirming this and rejecting that point in the light of fresh evidence, by clarification of concepts, and by detecting and resolving ambiguities and inconsistencies. Here it is assumed that the standpoint from which the problem has been (...) approached is relevant and adequate. The other is entered upon when an “impasse” has been reached which can only be avoided by the realization that the original question was asked in a way which was either partially or wholly false or misleading. This is the more radical way of partial or total reformulation of the problem to be solved. (shrink)

There are two main questions which it is possible to ask about war. The first is, whether it is inevitable; the second, whether it is desirable. The former question is one of fact, the latter one of value. In the discussions of ordinary conversation the two are frequently-confused and obscured; arguments to prove war desirable may be heard based upon the supposed fact of its inevitability, and conversely. It is worth while considering how the two are related.

Despite their differences in origin, the three influential schools of twentieth-century continental cultural criticism--the Frankfurt School, existentialism, and poststructuralism--have long been treated as an ensemble and with critical hesitancy. Examining these schools as responses to the apparent collapse of Western civilization in the twentieth-century and as formidable intellectual challenges to the cultural legacies of the Enlightenment, this book provides a productive base for criticism and broadens our understanding of their histories and reception.

Personalised medicine has been discussed as a medical paradigm shift that will improve health while reducing inefficiency and waste. At the same time, it raises new practical, regulatory, and ethical challenges. In this paper, we examine PM strategies epistemologically in order to develop capacities to address these challenges, focusing on a recently proposed strategy for developing patient-specific models from induced pluripotent stem cells so as to make individualised treatment predictions. We compare this strategy to two main PM strategies—stratified medicine and (...) computational models. Drawing on epistemological work in the philosophy of medicine, we explain why these two methods, while powerful, are neither truly personalised nor, epistemologically speaking, novel strategies. Both are forms of correlational black box. We then argue that the iPSC models would count as a new kind of black box. They would not rely entirely on mechanistic knowledge, and they would utilise correlational evidence in a different way from other strategies—a way that would enable personalised predictions. In arguing that the iPSC models would present a novel method of gaining evidence for clinical practice, we provide an epistemic analysis that can help to inform the practical, regulatory, and ethical challenges of developing an iPSC system. (shrink)

Having visited Ireland regularly during the 1930s, Ludwig Wittgenstein resigned his Cambridge philosophy professorship in 1947 and moved there, living in a fishing village on the Atlantic coast and hotels in Dublin and the Wicklow Mountains. Although Wittgenstein spent some time out of the country, Ireland was effectively his base for three very productive years during which he worked on what would become one of his key books, the posthumously published Philosophical Investigations. Wittgenstein in Ireland represents the first sustained account (...) of Wittgenstein's time in Ireland, placing it in its historical context. Wall pays a good deal of attention to the representation of the Irish landscape in which the Austrian philosopher found himself able to work; a large part of his writings were produced in the bleak landscapes of Ireland and Norway. (shrink)

Methods available for the axiomatization of arbitrary finite-valued logics can be applied to obtain sound and complete intelim rules for all truth-functional connectives of classical logic including the Sheffer stroke and Peirce’s arrow. The restriction to a single conclusion in standard systems of natural deduction requires the introduction of additional rules to make the resulting systems complete; these rules are nevertheless still simple and correspond straightforwardly to the classical absurdity rule. Omitting these rules results in systems for intuitionistic versions of (...) the connectives in question. (shrink)