Without Foundations : Justification in Political Theory / Donald J. Herzog.
Material type:
TextLanguage: English Publisher: Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, [2018]Copyright date: ©1985Description: 1 online resourceContent type: - text
- computer
- online resource
- 9781501723001
Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- PREFACE -- INTRODUCTION -- ONE. HOBBES'S PRESCRIPTIVE ARGUMENTS -- TWO. LOCKE' S DIVINE POLITICS -- THREE. AGAINST UTILITARIANISM -- FOUR. THEORY IN CONTEXT: HUME AND SMITH -- CONCLUSION -- BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WORKS CITED -- INDEX
Open Access unrestricted online access star
https://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_abf2
Can political theorists justify their ideas? Do sound political theories need foundations? What constitutes a well-justified argument in political discourse? Don Herzog attempts to answer these questions by investigating the ways in which major theorists in the Anglo-American political tradition have justified their views. Making use of a wide range of primary texts, Herzog examines the work of such important theorists as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, the utilitarians (Jeremy Bentham, J. S. Mill. Henry Sidgwick, J. C. Harsanyi, R. M. Hare, and R. B. Brandt), David Hume, and Adam Smith. Herzog argues that Hobbes, Locke, and the utilitarians fail to justify their theories because they try to ground the volatile world of politics in immutable aspects of human nature, language, theology, or rationality. Herzog concludes that the works of Adam Smith and David Hume offer illuminating examples of successful justifications. Basing their political conclusions on social contexts, not on abstract principles, Hume and Smith develop creative solutions to given problems.
Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
This eBook is made available Open Access. Unless otherwise specified in the content, the work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) license:
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0
https://www.degruyter.com/dg/page/open-access-policy
In English.
Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Sep 2018)
There are no comments on this title.