A History of Modern Political Thought

The Question of Interpretation

Gary Browning author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Oxford University Press

Published:20th Oct '16

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A History of Modern Political Thought cover

How are we to understand past political thinkers? Is it a matter simply of reading their texts again and again? Do we have to relate past texts of political thought to the contexts in which ideas were composed and in which the aims of past thinkers were formulated? Or should past political theories be deconstructed so as to uncover not what their authors maintain, but what the texts reveal? In this book, theories of interpreting past political thinkers are examined and the interpretive methods of a range of theories are reviewed, including those of Hegel, Marx, Oakeshott, Collingwood, the Cambridge School, Foucault, Derrida and Gadamer. The application of these theories of interpretation to notable modern political theorists, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Bentham, Mill, Nietzsche and Beauvoir is then used as a way of understanding modern political thought and of assessing interpretive theories of past political thought. The result is a book which sees the history of modern political thought as more than a procession of political theories but rather as a reflection on the meaning of past political thought and its interpretation. It provides a way of reading the history of modern political thought, in which the question of interpretation matters both for understanding how we interpret the past but also for considering what it means to undertake political thinking.

This densely layered and intricate study combines modes of interpreting political thought with discussion of major political thinkers from Machiavelli through J. S. Mill and Nietzsche... Highly recommended. * CHOICE *
Browning's A History of Modern Political Thought is likely to become something of a landmark. First, it offers this new approach to the study of modern political thought-the insistence on 'interpretation' which features in the subtitle and which is explained carefully and illustrated copiously in the course of the book itself. Second, it will no doubt form a main text on many university courses; it is certainly not a text book in the conventional sense, but it offers both great sweep and enormous erudition, which means that it will have much to offer for both scholars of political thought and relative novices alike. * Nick Hewlett, University of Warwick, The European Legacy *
If any book is testament to the flourishing world of political philosophy and its history in the second half of the twentieth century after its supposed 'death' at the hands of logical positivism in the 1950s, then this is it. Gary Browning in effect demonstrates how such a claim was deeply provincial. The book seeks to be an interpretation of some of the interpretive strategies deployed in analysing the canonical texts and thinkers in the history of modern European political thought. * Jules Townsend, Manchester Metropolitan University *

ISBN: 9780199682294

Dimensions: 232mm x 158mm x 23mm

Weight: 652g

440 pages