Montesquieu's Comparative Politics and the Spirit of American Constitutionalism PDF Download
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Author: Anne M. Cohler
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700631445
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 227
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Book Description
“American republicans,” notes Forrest McDonald, “regarded selected doctrines of Montesquieu’s as being virtually on par with Holy Writ.” But exactly how the French jurist’s labyrinthian work, The Spirit of the Laws, with was published in 1748, influenced the eighteenth-century conception of the republic is not well understood by historians or theorists. Anne M. Cohler undertakes to show the importance of Montequieu’s teaching for modern legislation and for modern political prudence generally, with specific reference to his impact on the Federalist and Tocqueville. In so doing, she delineates Montequieu’s contribution to political philosophy and suggests new ways to think about the formation of the American Constitution. To analyze the comparative politics found in the Spirit of the Laws, Cohler focuses on four fundamental principles underlying Montesquieu’s view of government: spirit, moderation, liberty, and legislation. In this endeavor she is guided by the conviction that the philosopher hews to the spirit of the laws rather than to the laws themselves—that is, to internal rather than external principles. Montesquieu, in Cohler’s argument, addresses the problem posed by the tendency to see human beings in light o universal abstractions at the expense of particular relationships, distinctions, and forms. To counter this tendency, which can be fostered by religion, Montesquieu develops a theory of prudence designed to support the world of politics an dpolitical life, necessarily an intermediate world occupying a space between universal abstractions and individual particularities. Cohler suggest that the Federalists and Tocqueville were most influenced by this preoccupation with spirit and moderation. James Madison and other Federalists, for example, were not drawn to limited government as a principled notion but rather as a consequence of understanding the context within which a moderate government must act not to become despotic. Similarly, Tocqueville extols democracy as self-government as an antidote to the dangers of democracy as a rule; the character of the governed shapes the nature of the governors. These and other conclusions will prove valuable to intellectual historians, political theorists, and students of religion.
Author: Anne M. Cohler
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700631445
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 227
Get Book Here
Book Description
“American republicans,” notes Forrest McDonald, “regarded selected doctrines of Montesquieu’s as being virtually on par with Holy Writ.” But exactly how the French jurist’s labyrinthian work, The Spirit of the Laws, with was published in 1748, influenced the eighteenth-century conception of the republic is not well understood by historians or theorists. Anne M. Cohler undertakes to show the importance of Montequieu’s teaching for modern legislation and for modern political prudence generally, with specific reference to his impact on the Federalist and Tocqueville. In so doing, she delineates Montequieu’s contribution to political philosophy and suggests new ways to think about the formation of the American Constitution. To analyze the comparative politics found in the Spirit of the Laws, Cohler focuses on four fundamental principles underlying Montesquieu’s view of government: spirit, moderation, liberty, and legislation. In this endeavor she is guided by the conviction that the philosopher hews to the spirit of the laws rather than to the laws themselves—that is, to internal rather than external principles. Montesquieu, in Cohler’s argument, addresses the problem posed by the tendency to see human beings in light o universal abstractions at the expense of particular relationships, distinctions, and forms. To counter this tendency, which can be fostered by religion, Montesquieu develops a theory of prudence designed to support the world of politics an dpolitical life, necessarily an intermediate world occupying a space between universal abstractions and individual particularities. Cohler suggest that the Federalists and Tocqueville were most influenced by this preoccupation with spirit and moderation. James Madison and other Federalists, for example, were not drawn to limited government as a principled notion but rather as a consequence of understanding the context within which a moderate government must act not to become despotic. Similarly, Tocqueville extols democracy as self-government as an antidote to the dangers of democracy as a rule; the character of the governed shapes the nature of the governors. These and other conclusions will prove valuable to intellectual historians, political theorists, and students of religion.
Author: Anne M. Cohler
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 232
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Book Description
Author: George Thomas
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421403269
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 264
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Book Description
Today, we think of constitutional questions as being settled by the Supreme Court. But that is not always the case, nor is it what the framers intended in constructing the three-branch federal government. This volume examines four crucial moments in the United States' political history—the Civil War and Reconstruction, the Progressive Era, Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency and the New Deal, and the Reagan revolution—to illustrate the Madisonian view that the present rise of judicial supremacy actually runs counter to the Constitution as established at the nation’s founding. George Thomas opens by discussing how the Constitution encourages an antagonistic approach to settling disputes, thereby preserving itself as the nation's fundamental law rather then ceding that role to the president, Congress, or Supreme Court. In considering the four historical case studies, he focuses on judicial interpretations and the political branches' responses to them to demonstrate that competing conceptions of constitutional authority and meaning, as well as intergovernmental disputes themselves—rather than any specific outcome—strengthen the nature of the nation's founding document as a political instrument. Engagingly written and soundly argued, this study clarifies and highlights the political origins of the nation's foundational document and argues that American constitutionalism is primarily about countervailing power not legal limits enforced by courts.
Author: M. J. C. Vile
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780865971752
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Arguably no political principle has been more central than the separation of powers to the evolution of constitutional governance in Western democracies. In the definitive work on the subject, M. J. C. Vile traces the history of the doctrine from its rise during the English Civil War, through its development in the eighteenth century—when it was indispensable to the founders of the American republic—through subsequent political thought and constitution-making in Britain, France, and the United States. The author concludes with an examination of criticisms of the doctrine by both behavioralists and centralizers—and with "A Model of a Theory of Constitutionalism." The new Liberty Fund second edition includes the entirety of the original 1967 text published by Oxford, a major epilogue entitled "The Separation of Powers and the Administrative State," and a bibliography. M. J. C. Vile is Professor of Politics at the University of Kent at Canterbury and author also of The Structure of American Federalism.
Author: Sharon R. Krause
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674007567
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 294
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Book Description
Why do men and women sometimes risk everything to defend their liberties? What motivates principled opposition to the abuse of power? In Liberalism with Honor, Sharon Krause explores honor as a motive for risky and difficult forms of political action. She shows the sense of honor to be an important source of such action and a spring of individual agency more generally. Krause traces the genealogy of honor, including its ties to conscientious objection and civil disobedience, beginning in old-regime France and culminating in the American civil rights movement. She examines the dangers intrinsic to honor and the tensions between honor and modern democracy, but demonstrates that the sense of honor has supported political agency in the United States from the founders to democratic reformers such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Martin Luther King, Jr. Honor continues to hold interest and importance today because it combines self-concern and personal ambition with principled higher purposes, and so challenges the disabling dichotomy between self-interest and self-sacrifice that currently pervades both political theory and American public life.
Author: Paul Carrese
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107121051
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 245
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Book Description
A rediscovery of Montesquieu's legacy in shaping America's complex political order including influence on Washington's practical moderation.
Author: Charles S. Hyneman
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252063480
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 332
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Book Description
"An Illini book from the University of Illinois Press"--Page 4 of cover.
Author: Aurelian Craiutu
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691171343
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 361
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Book Description
Political moderation is the touchstone of democracy, which could not function without compromise and bargaining, yet it is one of the most understudied concepts in political theory. How can we explain this striking paradox? Why do we often underestimate the virtue of moderation? Seeking to answer these questions, A Virtue for Courageous Minds examines moderation in modern French political thought and sheds light on the French Revolution and its legacy. Aurelian Craiutu begins with classical thinkers who extolled the virtues of a moderate approach to politics, such as Aristotle and Cicero. He then shows how Montesquieu inaugurated the modern rebirth of this tradition by laying the intellectual foundations for moderate government. Craiutu looks at important figures such as Jacques Necker, Madame de Staël, and Benjamin Constant, not only in the context of revolutionary France but throughout Europe. He traces how moderation evolves from an individual moral virtue into a set of institutional arrangements calculated to protect individual liberty, and he explores the deep affinity between political moderation and constitutional complexity. Craiutu demonstrates how moderation navigates between political extremes, and he challenges the common notion that moderation is an essentially conservative virtue, stressing instead its eclectic nature. Drawing on a broad range of writings in political theory, the history of political thought, philosophy, and law, A Virtue for Courageous Minds reveals how the virtue of political moderation can address the profound complexities of the world today.
Author: H. N. Hirsch
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000706524
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 410
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Book Description
First published in 1992. A Theory of Liberty seeks to change the way we think about the American constitution. The focus of the book is the legal status of minority groups in the United States a topic at the top of the current political agenda. Arguing that minority rights were vitally important to the founding fathers, H. N. Hirsch presents an original and provocative look at issues such as affirmative action, abortion, and the rights of children, lesbians and gay men, mental patients, and the physically disabled. In an analysis which blends history, philosophy, law, and social science, Hirsch attacks both liberals who hide from history and conservatives who push for "original intent." He argues that we can remain faithful to the most basic intent of the founding fathers without losing our ability to reinterpret the Constitution against the backdrop of contemporary social "facts." Hirsch exposes the errors and hypocrisy of the current Supreme Court majority, and argues that the Constitution’s liberty can and should be interpreted to protect the rights of minority groups. Timely and controversial, this title offers a challenging look at some of America’s most basic ideological commitments, and will appeal to anyone concerned with the current state of American law or the treatment of minority groups.
Author: Trevor Shelley
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess
ISBN: 0268107319
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 389
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Book Description
In this learned and wide-ranging book, Trevor Shelley engages the controversial topic of globalization through philosophical exegesis of great texts. Globalization and Liberalism illustrates and defends the idea that at the heart of the human world is the antinomy of the universal and the particular. Various thinkers have emphasized one aspect of this tension over the other. Some, such as Rousseau and Schmitt, have defended pure particularity. Others, such as Habermas, have uncritically welcomed the intimations of the world state. Against these twin extremes of radical nationalism and antipolitical universalism, this book seeks to recover a middle or moderate position—the liberal position. To find this via media, Shelley traces a tradition of French liberal political thinkers who take account of both sides of the antinomy: Montesquieu, Tocqueville, and Manent. As Shelley argues, each of these thinkers defends the integrity of political bodies, denies that the universal perspective is the only legitimate perspective, and recognizes that, without differences and distinctions across the political landscape, self-government and freedom of action are impossible. As human beings, we can live free and fulfilling lives neither as isolated individuals nor as members of humanity. Rather, we require a properly constituted particular political community in which we can make manifest our universal humanity. In the liberalism of these three thinkers, we find the resources to think through what such a political community might look like. Globalism and Liberalism demonstrates the importance of these writers for addressing today’s challenges and will interest political theorists, historians of political thought, and specialists of French political thought.
