Algernon Sidney between Modern Natural Rights and Machiavellian Republicanism

Algernon Sidney between Modern Natural Rights and Machiavellian Republicanism PDF

Author: Luís Falcão

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2020-08-27

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 1527558762

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The book investigates the political thought of Algernon Sidney (1623-1683), a historical character of the English civil wars, republic, protectorate, and Rump Parliament, who faced his trial and execution during the Exclusion Crisis. In his writings, Sidney mixed hugely different traditions of political philosophy: the modern natural rights, which were predominant in England in his generation, and the republicanism of Machiavelli. This volume will interest researchers in political philosophy, history of political thought and, particularly, republican theory. Its contribution to these topics explores the specificities of a thought that uses the language of natural rights and social contract and, on the other hand, the tumults, expansion and virtues of the republics.

Machiavelli's Liberal Republican Legacy

Machiavelli's Liberal Republican Legacy PDF

Author: Paul A. Rahe

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2005-11-14

Total Pages: 390

ISBN-13: 1139448331

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The significance of Machiavelli's political thinking for the development of modern republicanism is a matter of great controversy. In this volume, a distinguished team of political theorists and historians reassess the evidence, examining the character of Machiavelli's own republicanism and charting his influence on Marchamont Nedham, James Harrington, John Locke, Algernon Sidney, John Trenchard, Thomas Gordon, David Hume, the Baron de Montesquieu, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton. This work argues that while Machiavelli himself was not liberal, he did set the stage for the emergence of liberal republicanism in England. By the exponents of commercial society he provided the foundations for a moderation of commonwealth ideology and exercised considerable, if circumscribed, influence on the statesmen who founded the American Republic. Machiavelli's Liberal Republican Legacy will be of great interest to political theorists, early modern historians, and students of the American political tradition.

Republicanism and Democracy

Republicanism and Democracy PDF

Author: Skadi Siiri Krause

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2022-11-28

Total Pages: 238

ISBN-13: 303115780X

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This book discusses whether democracy and republicanism are identical, complementary, or contradicting ideas. The rediscovery of classic republicanism a few decades ago made it clear how profoundly modern notions of democracy had been shaped by the republican tradition. But defining these two concepts remains difficult, and the views diverge widely. The overarching aim of this book is to discuss the extent to which democracy and republicanism are identical, complementary or mutually contradicting ideals / ideas. Pursuing this open approach to the subject means calling into question a widely used formula according to which modern democracy is composed of liberal principles such as individualism, the rule of law and human rights, on the one hand, and of republican principles such as focusing on the common good and popular sovereignty, on the other. This book will appeal to students, researches, and scholars of political science interested in a better understanding of political theory and political history.

Sidney: Court Maxims

Sidney: Court Maxims PDF

Author: Algernon Sidney

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1996-02-23

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 9780521467360

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This remarkable expression of radical republican thought has never before been published. Algernon Sidney was among the most unrelenting partisans of the parliamentary party during the Commonwealth, and died on the scaffold in 1683 for his opposition to Charles II. Sidney's voluminous Discourses Concerning Government was published after his death, but the earlier and more vivid Court Maxims was only recently rediscovered in a manuscript in Warwick Castle. Written during Sidney's continental exile, Court Maxims is of the greatest importance for the study of the international ramifications of seventeenth-century republican thought. Its dialogue structure presents a lively discussion about the principles of government and the practice of politics, articulating a vital tradition of republicanism in an age of absolutism. These characteristics make Court Maxims a unique text, essential reading for anyone interested in republicanism or early modern political thought.

The Discourses of Algernon Sidney

The Discourses of Algernon Sidney PDF

Author: Scott A. Nelson

Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13: 9780838634387

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This book focuses on the theory of political society found in Sidney's Discourses Concerning Government, published in 1698. The book demonstrates that Sidney's insurrectionist agenda is supported by a consistent view of the "social contract, " providing a link in the evolution of contract theory.

Natural Law Republicanism

Natural Law Republicanism PDF

Author: Michael C. Hawley

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2022

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 0197582338

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"By any metric, Cicero's works are some of the most widely read in the history of Western thought. In this book, Michael Hawley suggests that perhaps Cicero's most lasting and significant contribution to philosophy lies in helping to inspire the development of liberalism. Individual rights, the protection of private property, and political legitimacy based on the consent of the governed are often taken to be among early modern liberalism's unique innovations and part of its rebellion against classical thought. However, this book demonstrates that Cicero's thought played a central role in shaping and inspiring the liberal republican project. Cicero argued that liberty for individuals could arise only in a res publica in which the claims of the people to be sovereign were somehow united with a commitment to universal moral law, which limits what the people can rightfully do. Figures such as Hugo Grotius, John Locke, and John Adams sought to work through the tensions in Cicero's vision, laying the groundwork for a theory of politics in which the freedom of the individual and the people's collective right to rule were mediated by natural law. This book traces the development of this intellectual tradition from Cicero's original articulation through the American Founding. It concludes by exploring how our modern political ideas remain dependent on the conception of just politics first elaborated by Rome's great philosopher-statesman"--

The Politics of Liberty in England and Revolutionary America

The Politics of Liberty in England and Revolutionary America PDF

Author: Lee Ward

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2004-07-26

Total Pages: 478

ISBN-13: 1107320445

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This study locates the philosophical origins of the Anglo-American political and constitutional tradition in the philosophical, theological, and political controversies in seventeenth-century England. By examining the quarrel it identifies the source of modern liberal, republican and conservative ideas about natural rights and government in the seminal works of the Exclusion Whigs Locke, Sidney, and Tyrrell and their philosophical forebears Hobbes, Grotius, Spinoza, and Pufendorf. This study illuminates how these first Whigs and their diverse eighteenth-century intellectual heirs such as Bolingbroke, Montesquieu, Hume, Blackstone, Otis, Jefferson, Burke, and Paine contributed to the formation of Anglo-American political and constitutional theory in the crucial period from the Glorious Revolution through to the American Revolution and the creation of a distinctly American understanding of rights and government in the first state constitutions.

Discourses Concerning Government

Discourses Concerning Government PDF

Author: Algernon Sidney

Publisher: Liberty Fund Studies in Politi

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780865971424

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I have lately undertaken to read Algernon Sidney on government. . . . As often as I have read it, and fumbled it over, it now excites fresh admiration that this work has excited so little interest in the literary world. As splendid an edition of it as the art of printing can produce—as well for the intrinsic merit of the work, as for the proof it brings of the bitter sufferings of the advocates of liberty from that time to this, and to show the slow progress of moral, philosophical, and political illumination in the world—ought to be now printed in America. —John Adams to Thomas Jefferson (1823) Written in response to Sir Robert Filmer's Patriarcha (1680), the Discourses Concerning Government by Algernon Sidney (1623–1683) has been treasured for more than three centuries as a classic defense of republicanism and popular government. Sidney rejected Filmer's theories of royal absolutism and divine right of kings, insisting that title to rule should be based on merit rather than birth; and republics, he thought, were more likely to honor merit than were monarchies. Like John Milton, Sidney revered and idealized the Commonwealth (1649–1660) as England's noble achievement in the grand tradition of ancient Greece and Rome. Sidney's treatise was published posthumously in 1698, fifteen years after he was executed for complicity in a plot to assassinate Charles II. Sidney's papers, including a draft of the Discourses, were used as evidence against him. Although there is nothing in the work incompatible with constitutional monarchy, the indictment claimed that it was a "false, seditious, and traitorous libel," citing sentences which stated that the king is subject to law and is responsible to the people. Sidney's Discourses was widely read in the colonies and influenced a number of American revolutionary leaders. Thomas G. West is Professor of Politics at the University of Dallas.

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