Constant: Political Writings

Constant: Political Writings PDF Author: Benjamin Constant
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521316323
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
This 1988 book is an English translation of the major political works of Benjamin Constant.

Constant: Political Writings

Constant: Political Writings PDF Author: Benjamin Constant
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521316323
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
This 1988 book is an English translation of the major political works of Benjamin Constant.

Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments

Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments PDF Author: Benjamin Constant
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 594

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Book Description
Benjamin Constant (1767-1830) was born in Switzerland and became one of France's leading writers, as well as a journalist, philosopher, and politician. His colourful life included a formative stay at the University of Edinburgh; service at the court of Brunswick, Germany; election to the French Tribunate; and initial opposition and subsequent support for Napoleon, even the drafting of a constitution for the Hundred Days. Constant wrote many books, essays, and pamphlets. His deepest conviction was that reform is hugely superior to revolution, both morally and politically. While Constant's fluid, dynamic style and lofty eloquence do not always make for easy reading, his text forms a coherent whole, and in his translation Dennis O'Keeffe has focused on retaining the 'general elegance and subtle rhetoric' of the original. Sir Isaiah Berlin called Constant 'the most eloquent of all defenders of freedom and privacy' and believed to him we owe the notion of 'negative liberty', that is, what Biancamaria Fontana describes as "the protection of individual experience and choices from external interferences and constraints." To Constant it was relatively unimportant whether liberty was ultimately grounded in religion or metaphysics -- what mattered were the practical guarantees of practical freedom -- "autonomy in all those aspects of life that could cause no harm to others or to society as a whole." This translation is based on Etienne Hofmann's critical edition of Principes de politique (1980), complete with Constant's additions to the original work.

The Liberty of Ancients Compared with that of Moderns

The Liberty of Ancients Compared with that of Moderns PDF Author: Benjamin Constant
Publisher: Good Press
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 30

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Book Description
This is an essay by Benjamin Constant. In this essay, Constant contrasted two views on freedom: one held by "the Ancients," particularly those in Classical Greece, and the other by members of modern societies. He investigates the dangers of attempting to impose ancient liberty in a modern context, as well as the risks associated with each type of liberty. The danger of ancient liberty was that men, preoccupied with securing their share of social power, might place too little value on individual rights and pleasures. The danger of modern liberty is that we will give up our right to participate in political power too easily, absorbed in the enjoyment of our independence and the pursuit of our particular interests." Constant believes that the two types of liberty must eventually be combined.

Spencer: Political Writings

Spencer: Political Writings PDF Author: Herbert Spencer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521437400
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
This book places Spencer's famous argument for political individualism in his The Man versus the State alongside his early The Proper Sphere of Government, out of which, after due gestation, emerged not only The Man versus the State but also Social Status and his all-embracing theory of evolution. Both are valuable as unyielding statements of anti-state political theory and as sources of perceptive comments on political events of the times. An introduction sets them in their context and examines their main themes. The book will be of interest to both undergraduates and specialists in politics, political theory, social policy, sociology and history.

The Only Constant Is Change

The Only Constant Is Change PDF Author: Ben Epstein
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190699000
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Over the course of American political history, political elites and organizations have often updated their political communications strategies in order to achieve longstanding political communication goals in more efficient or effective ways. But why do successful innovations occur when they do, and what motivates political actors to make choices about how to innovate their communication tactics? Covering over 300 years of political communication innovations, Ben Epstein shows how this process of change happens and why. To do this, Epstein, following an interdisciplinary approach, proposes a new model called "the political communication cycle" that accounts for the technological, behavioral, and political factors that lead to revolutionary political communication changes over time. These changes (at least the successful ones) have been far from gradual, as long periods of relatively stable political communication activities have been disrupted by brief periods of dramatic and permanent transformation. These transformations are driven by political actors and organizations, and tend to follow predictable patterns. Epstein moves beyond the technological determinism that characterizes communication history scholarship and the medium-specific focus of much political communication work. The book identifies the political communication revolutions that have, in the United States, led to four, relatively stable political communication orders over history: the elite, mass, broadcast, and (the current) information orders. It identifies and tests three phases of each revolutionary cycle, ultimately sketching possible paths for the future. The Only Constant is Change offers readers and scholars a model and vocabulary to compare political communication changes across time and between different types of political organizations. This provides greater understanding of where we are currently in the recurring political communication cycle, and where we might be headed.

Benjamin Constant and the Birth of French Liberalism

Benjamin Constant and the Birth of French Liberalism PDF Author: K. Steven Vincent
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230117104
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 479

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Book Description
This book advances a new interpretation of the timing and character of French (and more broadly European) liberalism, and contributes to the ongoing debate concerning the place of morality, sociability, and conceptions of the "self" in modern liberal thought.

Benjamin Constant and the Post-revolutionary Mind

Benjamin Constant and the Post-revolutionary Mind PDF Author: Biancamaria Fontana
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780300049954
Category : Europe
Languages : en
Pages : 165

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Book Description
The Swiss writer and political theorist Benjamin Constant was a key figure in the early 19th century attempt to come to terms with the new political world created by the French Revolution of 1789. In this book, Biancamaria Fontana presents an overview of Constant's life and writings, showing the unity of his vision and exploring analogies between the issues he discussed and those that confront modern democratic states today.

Leibniz: Political Writings

Leibniz: Political Writings PDF Author: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521358996
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
In this new edition, Professor Riley makes available the most representative pieces from Leibniz's political theory.

Hobhouse: Liberalism and Other Writings

Hobhouse: Liberalism and Other Writings PDF Author: L. T. Hobhouse
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521437264
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
L. T. Hobhouse's Liberalism (1911), which has acquired the status of a modern classic, is the most enduring statement of the political principles which animated British liberal social reformers in the early years of the twentieth century. While written in a popular style, it is actually a theoretical work of some subtlety, combining an historical analysis of the evolution of liberal doctrine with a philosophical discussion of the character of liberal belief, and proposing a reformulation of liberalism which emphasises community, individual welfare rights, and an activist state. This 1994 edition of the work includes a number of his other writings from the same period, and will be of interest to a broad range of students and scholars in politics and the history of political thought.

Liberalism and Its Discontents

Liberalism and Its Discontents PDF Author: Alan Brinkley
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674530171
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
How did liberalism, the great political tradition that from the New Deal to the 1960s seemed to dominate American politics, fall from favor so far and so fast? In this history of liberalism since the 1930s, a distinguished historian offers an eloquent account of postwar liberalism, where it came from, where it has gone, and why. The book supplies a crucial chapter in the history of twentieth-century American politics as well as a valuable and clear perspective on the state of our nation's politics today. Liberalism and Its Discontents moves from a penetrating interpretation of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal to an analysis of the profound and frequently corrosive economic, social, and cultural changes that have undermined the liberal tradition. The book moves beyond an examination of the internal weaknesses of liberalism and the broad social and economic forces it faced to consider the role of alternative political traditions in liberalism's downfall. What emerges is a picture of a dominant political tradition far less uniform and stable--and far more complex and contested--than has been argued. The author offers as well a masterly assessment of how some of the leading historians of the postwar era explained (or failed to explain) liberalism and other political ideologies in the last half-century. He also makes clear how historical interpretation was itself a reflection of liberal assumptions that began to collapse more quickly and completely than almost any scholar could have imagined a generation ago. As both political history and a critique of that history, Liberalism and Its Discontents, based on extraordinary essays written over the last decade, leads to a new understanding of the shaping of modern America.