Dimensions of Politics and English Jurisprudence

Examines modern politics, justice and order in light of the historical, philosophical and theological forces which helped define them.

Sean Coyle (Author)

9780521196598, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 27 June 2013

397 pages
23.6 x 15.9 x 2.4 cm, 0.7 kg

Understandings of law and politics are intrinsically bound up with broader visions of the human condition. Sean Coyle argues for a renewed engagement with the juridical and political philosophies of the Western intellectual tradition, and takes up questions pondered by Aristotle, Plato, Augustine, Aquinas and Hobbes in seeking a deeper understanding of law, politics, freedom, justice and order. Criticising modern theories for their failure to engage with fundamental questions, he explores the profound connections between justice and order and raises the neglected question of whether human beings in all their imperfection can ever achieve truly just order in this life. Above all, he confronts the question of whether the open society is the natural home of liberals who have given up faith in human progress (there are no ideal societies), or whether liberal political order is itself the ideal society?

Introduction
Part I. Jurisprudence: 1. Jurisprudence and the liberal order
2. Concept and reality in jurisprudence
3. On the 'Protestant' inheritance of juridical thought
4. The form and direction of Anglo-American jurisprudence
5. Three approaches to jurisprudence
Part II. Understanding the Present: 6. Authority and tradition: visions of law and politics
7. Legalism and modernity I: identifying and understanding the problem
8. Legalism and modernity II: reflections upon the problem
9. Political thought and the 'well-ordered society'
10. The limits of legal ideologies
11. Conservatism and its dilemmas
12. Liberal jurisprudence and its order
Part III. Justice: 13. Justice without mercy
14. Justice and moral argument
15. Fallen justice
16. Freedom and justice in a democratic age.

Subject Areas: Jurisprudence & general issues [LA], Law [L], Social & political philosophy [HPS]