The political logic of discourse: a neo-Gramscian view

This article contrasts Mark Bevir's approach to the history of ideas with a neo-Gramscian theory of discourse. Bevir puts the case for an ‘anti-foundationalist’ approach to understanding ideas, yet he defends a weak rationalism centred on individual intentions as the original source of all meanings. Discourse theorists—specifically Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe—also adopt an anti-foundationalist perspective but pursue its implications beyond any rationalism. The advantages of discourse theory are argued to lie in its emphasis on power and conflict in the consitution and transformation of social meanings and identity. Laclau and Mouffe's work, it is claimed, alerts us to a political logic of discourse that Bevir's more rationalist approach to ‘ideas’ sidesteps.     

The Bullion Controversy and the history of political thought: experience,innovation and theory

ABSTRACT

In 1797 the British government relieved the Bank of England of the obligation to pay specie for its notes upon demand; then, after bitter debate and sustained inflation, it restored this burden in 1821. The episode is studied as the “Bullion Controversy”, and it is commonly assigned high significance in the development of monetary theory. Yet the Bank stood as an old target for so-called “country” thought, which suspected commerce of corroding virtue and undermining the proper functions of Parliament. Both the Bank and the Whig regime that created it in 1694 had withstood such attacks, but in the nineteenth century these critical voices were joined by political economists who reworked the existing lines of attack, above all by presenting themselves not as defenders of an ancient virtue but as the champions of a modern, commercial society that was being endangered by the government's and the Bank's ignorance and self-interest. This paper thus examines the Bullion Controversy in relation to the history of political thought, and reveals how the return to convertibility represented an early victory for political economy's self-styled “theorists” in reforming the state's institutions in the nineteenth century.     

The political logic of discourse: a neo-Gramscian view

This article contrasts Mark Bevir's approach to the history of ideas with a neo-Gramscian theory of discourse. Bevir puts the case for an ‘anti-foundationalist’ approach to understanding ideas, yet he defends a weak rationalism centred on individual intentions as the original source of all meanings. Discourse theorists—specifically Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe—also adopt an anti-foundationalist perspective but pursue its implications beyond any rationalism. The advantages of discourse theory are argued to lie in its emphasis on power and conflict in the consitution and transformation of social meanings and identity. Laclau and Mouffe's work, it is claimed, alerts us to a political logic of discourse that Bevir's more rationalist approach to ‘ideas’ sidesteps.     

丁文江政治思想述论

丁文江对政治有着强烈的兴趣。他一生议政、参政可以分为三个阶段：第一阶段是留学时期,这一时期他喜欢阅读《新民丛报》,与康有为、吴稚晖等人有过来往。第二阶段是在五四时期到1926年底,这时期他与梁启超、胡适等人关系密切,在《努力周报》发表了大量文字,出任淞沪商埠督办公署总办,表现了积极参政的倾向。第三阶段是在1930年代,丁文江在《独立评论》上发表了大量时评政论和旅行游记,充分表达了自己的政治思想。丁文江虽有政治热情,且具行政才干,但却缺乏意识形态和政党的背景,这实际限制了他在政治上的作为。     

Slavery discourse before the Restoration: The Barbary coast,Justinian's Digest,and Hobbes's political theory

Seventeenth-century natural-law philosophers participated in colonizing and slave-trading companies, yet they discussed slavery as an abstraction. This dispassionate approach is commonly explained with the “distance thesis” that the practice of slavery was at some remove from Northwest Europe. I contest the thesis, with a specific focus on pre-Restoration English discourse and Hobbes's political theory. By laying out the salient context — English experience of Barbary-coast slavery and an inherited neo-Roman intellectual frame — I argue, first, that slavery was hardly a distant phenomenon and, second, that Hobbes's discussion of slavery expressed ideas familiar in ordinary discourse. The conclusion contrasts the English neo-Roman outlook with Spanish neo-Aristotelianism.     

Reconstructing and deconstructing Hume's political thought

David Miller, Philosophy and Ideology in Hume's Political Thought, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1985, pp. 218. $15.50 (paper)

Frederick G. Whelan, Order and Artifice in Hume's Political Philosophy, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1985, pp. 393. $US35.00 (cloth)     

Conceptions of Australian political thought: A methodological critique

This paper takes issue with a number of standard interpretations of Australian political thought and the methods of argument by which they have been reached. It confronts the substantive claims (a) that Australia has produced no significant indigenous political thought, ideology, or ideological conflict, and (b) that which passes for political thought is generally derivative, lacking in originality and inferior. It is argued that such claims are based upon unduly narrow conceptions of political thought and misplaced categories of evaluation. Finally, the paper demonstrates that by expanding our conceptions of political thought beyond that of ‘epic’ or universalist political philosophy, and applying methods of evaluation appropriate to the subject matter, more sensible conclusions can be drawn about the existence and quality of Australian political thought, as well as its place in political life.     

The foundations of modern political thought

This paper aims at setting Montesquieu's 1729 sojourn in the Dutch Republic within its specific Dutch context whilst reconsidering the impact this short period may have exerted on his work. Based on a wide variety of Dutch, English and French sources, the article offers a study of Montesquieu's Dutch networks and contacts, a comparative Franco-Dutch approach to taxation and fiscal policy and an insight into the history of the stadholderate under William IV. The main argument made in the paper is two-fold: first, that the Dutch Republic was a mirror Montesquieu held up to the French monarchy, allowing him to put a number of ideas of government to the test; secondly that, owing to the fluctuating nature of Dutch political events between 1729 and 1748, the Dutch model remained somewhat elusive in Montesquieu's broader understanding of the paradigm of republican regimes.     

Property and morality: women in the communal courts of late Ottoman Greece

Abstract

Women in Ottoman Greece were present in a number of different courts of law, one being the so-called communal courts. These courts became increasingly important towards the end of the Ottoman period, especially in areas where there was little if any Muslim population, and they dealt with a great variety of cases ranging from property disputes to rape and crimes of morality. Women were very active in such courts, both as accusers and as accused, showing remarkable knowledge of the manner in which such courts functioned. They frequently chose to pursue cases in them, in part because communal courts were supportive of individuals in difficult circumstances such as widows, who form the bulk of the female petitioners. This was an outcome of the nature of these courts which were composed of the same individuals who exercised executive powers over their communities and who thus wanted to ensure tranquillity and the prosperity of their people. For that reason notables appear almost unconcerned with the stipulations of customary law in several of their judgments, seeking instead to achieve compromises, or what we could term the greater social good. Being local, easily accessible, and familiar to the members of each community, communal courts were attractive to women and men in the years leading to the emergence of the modern Greek state, forming one tier of the complex Ottoman 'system' of conflict resolution.