Liberalism: A History of Thought and Culture (Western Political Theory and Practice Series) Humanistic Translation Series

Author: Pierre Monnet
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-01-03
Features: In this paper, I intend to present the major propositions and key moments in the history of liberalism. Because for nearly three centuries, this political doctrine has constituted the mainstream of modern European and Western politics. Therefore, I feel it necessary to first depict and explain the history of Europe before introducing liberalism, in order to better understand the development of liberalism itself. The reader will not find here a long history of European politics, but rather a proportional model (scale model) of political history and a summary of these elaborations. As a guide, I mention many major works in political philosophy from Machiavelli to Tocqueville. In my view, political philosophy clearly reveals the essence of our history and political institutions. One characteristic of the modern historical context is that political thought and political life are closely linked in the modern era. This is something new. The political culture of Greece or Rome is relevant only in terms of not involving "ideas" or "theories." In The Peloponnesian War, Thucydides said nothing about the "intellectual culture" or "cultural life" of a stage that we call a certain period. Yet to this day, his history is still regarded as a masterpiece of Greece, possibly all chronicles. This fact is particularly striking because Greece is the birthplace of philosophy, especially political philosophy. From the life experience of the Greek city-state, Plato and Aristotle developed their understanding of human life, which formed the matrix of subsequent political philosophy. However, these interpretations appeared after the great cycle of Greek politics. In contrast, the problems of modern political philosophy are quite different. We can tentatively say that philosophy is imaginable and selectable before it is realized. And the owl of liberalism only takes flight at dusk.