The Immortal Commonwealth

The Immortal Commonwealth PDF

Author: David P. Henreckson

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2019-07-04

Total Pages: 219

ISBN-13: 1108470211

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Reveals how early modern religious conceptions of covenant and community were deployed for surprisingly radical political ends.

Utopia

Utopia PDF

Author: Mark Stephen Jendrysik

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2020-04-09

Total Pages: 108

ISBN-13: 1509534946

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Human beings universally dream of a better world. For centuries they have expressed their yearning for ways of life that are free from oppression, want and fear, through philosophy, art, film and literature. In this concise and engaging book, Mark Jendrysik examines the multifarious ways utopians have posed the question of how human beings might establish justice and realize truly human values. Drawing upon a range of sources, from Plato’s Republic and Thomas More’s Utopia to Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed, he argues that, though for many utopia means ‘demanding the impossible’, the goals that seemed out of reach for one generation are often realized in the next. Nonetheless, he shows that, while utopian thought points toward our most noble aspirations, it also illustrates the dangers of totalitarianism, of the surveillance state and of global climate change. This engaging book will be an invaluable guide for anyone seeking to understand how, for good or ill, utopian aspirations shape our lives, even in times that seem designed to close off dreams of a better world.

Foundations of American Constitutionalism

Foundations of American Constitutionalism PDF

Author: David A. J. Richards

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 1989

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 0195059395

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In writing the constitution, the Founders combined a Lockean theory of politically legitimate power with the political science they had learned from Machiavelli, Harrington, Hume, and Montesquieu to articulate a new conception of constitutional argument. Examining the Founders' humanist analytical methods and working assumptions, this book combines history, political philosophy, and interpretive practice as it demonstrates an alternative exegesis of the Constitution. It clarifies a wide range of interpretive issues of federalism, enumerated rights (religious liberty and free speech), unenumerated rights (the constitutional right to privacy), and equal protection.

Utopia and the Ideal Society

Utopia and the Ideal Society PDF

Author: J. C. Davis

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1983-07-28

Total Pages: 444

ISBN-13: 9780521275514

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This text provides a major study for all those working in the fields of 16th- and 17th-century political and social thought.

The Corporate Commonwealth

The Corporate Commonwealth PDF

Author: Henry S. Turner

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2016-06-17

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 022636335X

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At a time when the standing and status of corporations is much in the news, this study of the early modern history of the concept of the corporation is particularly timely. Henry S. Turner provides a new account of early modern political institutions and political concepts by turning to the history of the corporation as a type of notional person and as a way of organizing collective life. Universities, guilds, towns and cities, religious confraternities, joint-stock companies: all were legal corporations, and all enjoyed rights and freedoms that sometimes exceeded the authority of the State. Drawing on the resources of economic and colonial history, literary criticism, law, political philosophy, and the history of science, Turner reads works by Thomas More, William Shakespeare, Francis Bacon, and Thomas Hobbes, among many others, to find the resources for a new account of corporations as fictional bodies and persons endowed with identities, rights, and the capacity for action. Turner tackles a number of fascinating questions: How did early modern writers make sense of the paradoxical essence of the corporationa collectivity at once imaginary and material, coherent but unbounded, many and at the same time one? And what can the history of the corporation tell us about the history of our own moment, when public goods are increasingly privatized and citizens seek new models of association and meaningful political action? His answers will be of compelling interest to historians, political theorists, literary scholars, and others."