Foundations Of Modern International Thought

This insightful and wide-ranging volume traces the genesis of international intellectual thought, connecting international and global history with intellectual history.

Quentin Skinner's classic study The Foundations of Modern Political Thought was first published by Cambridge in 1978. This was the first of a series of outstanding publications that have changed forever the way the history of political thought is taught and practised. Rethinking the Foundations of Modern Political Thought looks afresh at the impact of the original work, asks why it still matters, and considers a number of significant agendas that it still inspires. A very distinguished international team of contributors has been assembled, including John Pocock, Richard Tuck and David Armitage, and the result is an unusually powerful and cohesive contribution to the history of ideas, of interest to large numbers of students of early modern history and political thought. In conclusion, Skinner replies to each chapter and presents his own thoughts on the latest trends and the future direction of the history of political thought.

This collection of primary sources from the founding period covers the unique combination of theoretical influences in American political thought.

This unique collection presents texts in international relations from Ancient Greece to the First World War. Major writers such as Thucydides, Augustine, Aquinas, Machiavelli, Grotius, Kant and John Stuart Mill are represented by extracts of their key works; less well-known international theorists including John of Paris, Cornelius van Bynkershoek and Friedrich List are also included. Fifty writers are anthologised in what is the largest such collection currently available. The texts, most of which are substantial extracts, are organised into broadly chronological sections, each of which is headed by an introduction that places the work in its historical and philosophical context. Ideal for both students and scholars, the volume also includes biographies and guides to further reading.

The purpose of this volume is to explore the medieval inheritance of modern international relations. Recent years have seen a flourishing of work on the history of international political thought, but the bulk of this has focused on the early modern and modern periods, leaving continuities with the medieval world largely ignored. The medieval is often used as a synonym for the barbaric and obsolete, yet this picture does not match that found in relevant work in the history of political thought. The book thus offers a chance to correct this misconception of the evolution of Western international thought, highlighting that the history of international thought should be regarded as an important dimension of thinking about the international and one that should not be consigned to history departments. Questions addressed include: what is the medieval influence on modern conception of rights, law, and community? how have medieval ideas shaped modern conceptions of self-determination, consent, and legitimacy? are there ‘medieval’ answers to ‘modern’ questions? is the modern world still working its way through the Middle Ages? to what extent is the ‘modern outlook’ genuinely secular? is there a ‘theology’ of international relations? what are the implications of continuity for predominant historical narrative of the emergence and expansion of international society? Medieval and modern are certainly different; however, this collection of essays proceeds from the conviction that the modern world was not built on a new plot with new building materials. Instead, it was constructed out of the rubble, that is, the raw materials, of the Middle Ages.This will be of great interest to students and scholars of IR, IR theory and political theory. .

Recently, there has been a notable rise in interest in the idea of "toleration", a rise that Ingrid Creppell argues comes more from distressing political developments than positive ones, and almost all of them are related to issues of identity: rampant genocide in the 20th Century, the resurgence of religious fundamentalism around the world; and ethnic-religious wars in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. In Toleration and Identity, Creppell argues that a contemporary ethic of toleration must include recognition of identity issues, and that the traditional liberal ideal of toleration is not sufficiently understood if we define it strictly as one of individual rights and freedom beliefs. Moving back and forth between contemporary debates and the foundational writings of Bodin, Montaigne, Lock, and Defoe, Toleration and Identity provides a fresh perspective on two key ideas deeply connected to current philosophical debates and political issues.

What India’s founders derived from Western political traditions as they struggled to free their country from colonial rule is widely understood. Less well-known is how India’s own rich knowledge traditions of two and a half thousand years influenced these men as they set about constructing a nation in the wake of the Raj. In Righteous Republic, Ananya Vajpeyi furnishes this missing account, a ground-breaking assessment of modern Indian political thought. Taking five of the most important founding figures—Mohandas Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Abanindranath Tagore, Jawaharlal Nehru, and B. R. Ambedkar—Vajpeyi looks at how each of them turned to classical texts in order to fashion an original sense of Indian selfhood. The diverse sources in which these leaders and thinkers immersed themselves included Buddhist literature, the Bhagavad Gita, Sanskrit poetry, the edicts of Emperor Ashoka, and the artistic and architectural achievements of the Mughal Empire. India’s founders went to these sources not to recuperate old philosophical frameworks but to invent new ones. In Righteous Republic, a portrait emerges of a group of innovative, synthetic, and cosmopolitan thinkers who succeeded in braiding together two Indian knowledge traditions, the one political and concerned with social questions, the other religious and oriented toward transcendence. Within their vast intellectual, aesthetic, and moral inheritance, the founders searched for different aspects of the self that would allow India to come into its own as a modern nation-state. The new republic they envisaged would embody both India’s struggle for sovereignty and its quest for the self.