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Citizens And The Republic

Posted on:2007-10-02Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:X L LiuFull Text:PDF
GTID:1116360182486151Subject:Political Theory
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
The last four decades, there have seen a resurgence of interest in the tradition of political thought known as republicanism (or civic republicanism). Indeed, the rise in historical, legal and political commentary on, and interest in, republicanism has been so dramatic as to be called a "republican revival".In this paper, I will survey the central ideas of republican political theory and outline some of their contemporary claims to attention. Especially, I will examine the concepts of liberty, democracy and citizenship in new republicanism.The roots of the contemporary republican/liberal debate lie in Isaiah Berlin's famous distinction between positive and negative liberty. Traditionally, many theorists believed that republicanism was best understood as a doctrine of positive liberty. These civic humanist or neo-Athenian republicans held that freedom was connected with a specific type of flourishing in a system of democratic self-government. The neo- Athenian republicanism of Hannah Arendt and Charles Taylor favour this type of approach.However, recently a growing body of scholarship has challenged this view. Most notable among these is the work of Quentin Skinner and Philip Pettit, who argue that the neo-Roman republicanism of Machiavelli and those later theorists he influenced is best understood within the context of negative liberty as it relates to agents acting unimpeded by others. By both forms, republican freedom rests on two dimensions of active citizenship—civic virtue and political participation.Republican citizens are expected to take account of the common good, not just their own individual interests. There is the traditional, rather authoritarian sense of the common good. But there is another sense, of shared goods, which citizens enjoy only as citizens, through the social practices in which they participate. These common goods are not fixed and predeterminate. Thus contemporary republican proposals to reinstate concern for the common...
Keywords/Search Tags:New Republicanism, Classic Republicanism, Liberalism, Positive Liberty, Negative Liberty, Participation Democracy, Deliberative Democracy, Common Good, Civic Virtue
PDF Full Text Request
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