Political Philosophy in Gulliver's Travels

Shocked by The Just Society
1. Auflage 2022
ISBN: 978-3-030-98852-4
Verlag: Springer International Publishing

Buch, Englisch, 213 Seiten, Format (B × H): 153 mm x 216 mm, Gewicht: 413 g

Reihe: Recovering Political Philosophy

This book analyzes Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels from a political philosophy perspective. When authors have focused on politics in Swift’s writings, this has usually meant a study of how Swift located himself on issues of his day such as church and state, and Ireland. Robertson claims by contrast that Gulliver’s Travels is fundamentally a book about the “ancients” (e.g. Plato, Aristotle), and the “moderns” (science and technology), and their contrasting views about the human condition. The claim that the Travels is “a kind of prolegomena” to political philosophy leaves open the possibility that it does not achieve, or seek to achieve, a fusion of various teachings but rather uses the device of alien societies to point us to uncomfortable aspects of political philosophy’s “larger questions” we are prone to ignore.  Swift, Robertson argues, draws our attention to some version of the classical republic, as idealized in Aristotle’s political writings andin Plato’s Republic, as opposed to a modern regime which, at its best or most intellectual, emphasizes modern science and technology in combination as a way to improve the human condition.

Zielgruppe

Research

Autoren/Hrsg.

Robertson, Lloyd W.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Sozialphilosophie, Politische Philosophie
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturwissenschaft
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Strömungen & Epochen
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Theorie, Politische Philosophie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Chapter 1. Introduction.- Chapter 2. Little People and Big People.- Chapter 3. Nameless Moderns: Science, Miracles and Faith.- Chapter 4. A Realistic Utopia, and Human Passions.- Chapter 5. Heroic Ancients.- Chapter 6. Rational Horses and Humans.- Chapter 7. European Imperialism and The Bible.- Chapter 8. What we can learn

Über Autor(innen)

Lloyd W. Robertson is a former lecturer in political science at St. Thomas University in Canada, among other post-secondary institutions.