Robert Sparling
Biographic Data
| ID | 4371970 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Robert Sparling |
| GIVEN NAMES | Robert |
| FAMILY NAME | Sparling |
| SIGNATURE | SPARLING R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Ottawa |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1629-7585 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 20 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 13 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Contracts, Treaties and Relationships: Collective Debt, Collective Responsibility and Contractarian Confusions
Aaron Mills (2017) has argued persuasively that to understand treaty relationships as contracts is to betray the spirit of those relationships. In this, he joins numerous Indigenous scholars who express wariness of contractualist understandings of treaty. This article inquires into the distinction between contractualist and relational understandings of treaty in order to think about the phenomenon of collective, transhistorical debt. Drawing out …
Debt, Corruption, and State Identity: Lessons from Eighteenth‐Century Political Thought
The subject of national debt raises serious questions concerning state identity. Should a state that has radically altered its constitution be responsible for decisions taken by the previous state? Much hangs on how we characterize the state as a continuous agent. This article explores debates over national debt, state integrity, and corruption in the eighteenth century, the era in which the modern financial‐bureaucratic state was in its infancy.…
Friend of the people
This paper offers several challenges to Shmuel Nili’s argument concerning ‘the people’ as a unitary moral agent. Nili’s argument is exceedingly statist, which risks subordinating non-state collectivities. Nili’s claim also has a curious relationship to the Rousseauian general will. This article draws this out and indicates some of the difficulties of treating the state as a unitary agent. In spite of these difficulties, however, Nili’s conception…
Blocked Exchanges and the Constitution: Montesquieu on the Moral and Constitutional Limits of Markets
In contemporary debates over blocked exchanges, there is a tendency to become fixated on the essentially tradeable or untradeable nature of given goods or practices without entering into the wider constitutional questions raised by the issue of where and when market logic should obtain. This article offers some perspective on contemporary commodification debates by examining an eighteenth-century conversation over ethical and legal limitations on…
Impartiality and the Definition of Corruption
The study of political corruption has been beset by disagreements concerning the exact definition of the term. One definition that has grown increasingly popular in the social-scientific literature in recent years is that proposed by Oskar Kurer and developed by Bo Rothstein: political corruption should be understood as a breach of the norm of impartiality. This article argues that while this definition has intuitive plausibility and while its re…
The Concept of Corruption in J.G.A. Pocock's The Machiavellian Moment
In the scholarship on the concept of political corruption, one frequently encounters the lamentation that the manner in which the concept is deployed in liberal modernity is insufficiently attuned to the richer sense in which the term was employed in the ‘civic humanist’ tradition. In these lamentations, the usual point of reference is J.G.A. Pocock's The Machiavellian Moment, a work that made corruption the central term of art in a political lan…
Corruption and Partisanship: Rousseau, Ferguson and Two Competing Models of Republican Revival
Partisanship inspires a degree of ambivalence. There is a widespread tendency—which has a long history in republican political thought—to decry division and partisanship as corrupting, undermining individual judgment, and promoting clientelism, dependencies and loyalties antithetical to the common good. Yet there is an equally widespread intuition that excessive unity is corrupting, undermining the vigour of civic life. Contemporary political the…
Le Prince et le problème de la corruption: Réflexions sur une aporie machiavélienne
Dans les études sur la corruption politique, on trouve fréquemment des retours au lieu commun que les problèmes d’abus de charge publique en vue d’un intérêt privé ne peuvent être réglés sans la magie du leadership (l’anglicisme malheureux s’impose ici), cette qualité énigmatique de commandement qui saurait mettre en place les dispositifs d’incitatifs, de surveillance et de contrôle nécessaires pour contrer les abus. Mais un tel argument mène à u…
A Companion to Enlightenment Historiography
This book provides a survey of the most important historians and historiographical debates in the long eighteenth century, examining these debates' stylistic, philosophical and political significance. The chapters, many of which were specially commissioned for this volume, offer a mixture of accessible introduction and original interpretive argument; they will thus appeal both to the scholar of the period and the more general reader. Part I consi…
Political Corruption and the Concept of Dependence in Republican Thought
The concept of dependence is central both to the study of modern republicanism and to the study of systemic corruption. Recently, Lawrence Lessig has described American politics as suffering from “dependency corruption,” a type of institutional corruption about which eighteenth-century republican writers were extremely worried. This article examines the use of the concept “dependence” in the current “neo-roman” republican theory stemming from Que…
Sunlight is the best disinfectant? Étienne de la Boétie on corruption and transparency
Étienne de La Boétie (1530–63) is a central, if enigmatic, figure in modern French political philosophy. While his name is most famous for his friendship with Montaigne, his Discours de la servitude volontaire (Discourse of Voluntary Servitude) is a tour-de-force of humanist political writing, a youthful paean to liberty arguing that subjection to tyrants is the result of popular corruption. This article argues that the text can be read as a refl…
Theory and Praxis: Simone Weil and Marx on the Dignity of Labor
Simone Weil had an ambivalent attitude toward Marx. While she thought that the young Marx's celebration of labor had “lyrical accents,” she ultimately believed that Marx had neglected his own insights, embracing a blind worship of mechanization and a theory of history and revolution that was insufficiently attentive to the material conditions of workers. Marx, in her view, was insufficiently materialist and excessively wedded to a hierarchical mo…
M.K. Gandhi: Reconciling Agonism and Deliberative Democracy
Deliberative democrats and agonists have sparred over the inclusiveness and justificatory power of rational proceduralism. This paper looks at the thought of M.K. Gandhi, who was both a great champion of public reason‐giving and a sceptic about reason’s justificatory power. Opposing Gandhi to neo‐Enlightenment rational proceduralism, the article suggests that Gandhi’s thought and practice provide a bridge between the theoretical poles of agonisti…
Political Corruption and the Concept of Dependence in Republican Thought
The concept of dependence is central both to the study of modern republicanism and to the study of systemic corruption. Recently, Lawrence Lessig has described American politics as suffering from “dependency corruption,” a type of institutional corruption about which eighteenth-century republican writers were extremely worried. This article examines the use of the concept “dependence” in the current “neo-roman” republican theory stemming from Que…
Impartiality and the Definition of Corruption
The study of political corruption has been beset by disagreements concerning the exact definition of the term. One definition that has grown increasingly popular in the social-scientific literature in recent years is that proposed by Oskar Kurer and developed by Bo Rothstein: political corruption should be understood as a breach of the norm of impartiality. This article argues that while this definition has intuitive plausibility and while its re…
Sunlight is the best disinfectant? Étienne de la Boétie on corruption and transparency
Étienne de La Boétie (1530–63) is a central, if enigmatic, figure in modern French political philosophy. While his name is most famous for his friendship with Montaigne, his Discours de la servitude volontaire (Discourse of Voluntary Servitude) is a tour-de-force of humanist political writing, a youthful paean to liberty arguing that subjection to tyrants is the result of popular corruption. This article argues that the text can be read as a refl…
Blocked Exchanges and the Constitution: Montesquieu on the Moral and Constitutional Limits of Markets
In contemporary debates over blocked exchanges, there is a tendency to become fixated on the essentially tradeable or untradeable nature of given goods or practices without entering into the wider constitutional questions raised by the issue of where and when market logic should obtain. This article offers some perspective on contemporary commodification debates by examining an eighteenth-century conversation over ethical and legal limitations on…
Corruption and Partisanship: Rousseau, Ferguson and Two Competing Models of Republican Revival
Partisanship inspires a degree of ambivalence. There is a widespread tendency—which has a long history in republican political thought—to decry division and partisanship as corrupting, undermining individual judgment, and promoting clientelism, dependencies and loyalties antithetical to the common good. Yet there is an equally widespread intuition that excessive unity is corrupting, undermining the vigour of civic life. Contemporary political the…
Theory and Praxis: Simone Weil and Marx on the Dignity of Labor
Simone Weil had an ambivalent attitude toward Marx. While she thought that the young Marx's celebration of labor had “lyrical accents,” she ultimately believed that Marx had neglected his own insights, embracing a blind worship of mechanization and a theory of history and revolution that was insufficiently attentive to the material conditions of workers. Marx, in her view, was insufficiently materialist and excessively wedded to a hierarchical mo…
M.K. Gandhi: Reconciling Agonism and Deliberative Democracy
Deliberative democrats and agonists have sparred over the inclusiveness and justificatory power of rational proceduralism. This paper looks at the thought of M.K. Gandhi, who was both a great champion of public reason‐giving and a sceptic about reason’s justificatory power. Opposing Gandhi to neo‐Enlightenment rational proceduralism, the article suggests that Gandhi’s thought and practice provide a bridge between the theoretical poles of agonisti…
Theory and Praxis: Simone Weil and Marx on the Dignity of Labor
Simone Weil had an ambivalent attitude toward Marx. While she thought that the young Marx's celebration of labor had “lyrical accents,” she ultimately believed that Marx had neglected his own insights, embracing a blind worship of mechanization and a theory of history and revolution that was insufficiently attentive to the material conditions of workers. Marx, in her view, was insufficiently materialist and excessively wedded to a hierarchical mo…
A Companion to Enlightenment Historiography
This book provides a survey of the most important historians and historiographical debates in the long eighteenth century, examining these debates' stylistic, philosophical and political significance. The chapters, many of which were specially commissioned for this volume, offer a mixture of accessible introduction and original interpretive argument; they will thus appeal both to the scholar of the period and the more general reader. Part I consi…
Political Corruption and the Concept of Dependence in Republican Thought
The concept of dependence is central both to the study of modern republicanism and to the study of systemic corruption. Recently, Lawrence Lessig has described American politics as suffering from “dependency corruption,” a type of institutional corruption about which eighteenth-century republican writers were extremely worried. This article examines the use of the concept “dependence” in the current “neo-roman” republican theory stemming from Que…
Sunlight is the best disinfectant? Étienne de la Boétie on corruption and transparency
Étienne de La Boétie (1530–63) is a central, if enigmatic, figure in modern French political philosophy. While his name is most famous for his friendship with Montaigne, his Discours de la servitude volontaire (Discourse of Voluntary Servitude) is a tour-de-force of humanist political writing, a youthful paean to liberty arguing that subjection to tyrants is the result of popular corruption. This article argues that the text can be read as a refl…
Le Prince et le problème de la corruption: Réflexions sur une aporie machiavélienne
Dans les études sur la corruption politique, on trouve fréquemment des retours au lieu commun que les problèmes d’abus de charge publique en vue d’un intérêt privé ne peuvent être réglés sans la magie du leadership (l’anglicisme malheureux s’impose ici), cette qualité énigmatique de commandement qui saurait mettre en place les dispositifs d’incitatifs, de surveillance et de contrôle nécessaires pour contrer les abus. Mais un tel argument mène à u…
Corruption and Partisanship: Rousseau, Ferguson and Two Competing Models of Republican Revival
Partisanship inspires a degree of ambivalence. There is a widespread tendency—which has a long history in republican political thought—to decry division and partisanship as corrupting, undermining individual judgment, and promoting clientelism, dependencies and loyalties antithetical to the common good. Yet there is an equally widespread intuition that excessive unity is corrupting, undermining the vigour of civic life. Contemporary political the…
The Concept of Corruption in J.G.A. Pocock's The Machiavellian Moment
In the scholarship on the concept of political corruption, one frequently encounters the lamentation that the manner in which the concept is deployed in liberal modernity is insufficiently attuned to the richer sense in which the term was employed in the ‘civic humanist’ tradition. In these lamentations, the usual point of reference is J.G.A. Pocock's The Machiavellian Moment, a work that made corruption the central term of art in a political lan…
Impartiality and the Definition of Corruption
The study of political corruption has been beset by disagreements concerning the exact definition of the term. One definition that has grown increasingly popular in the social-scientific literature in recent years is that proposed by Oskar Kurer and developed by Bo Rothstein: political corruption should be understood as a breach of the norm of impartiality. This article argues that while this definition has intuitive plausibility and while its re…
Blocked Exchanges and the Constitution: Montesquieu on the Moral and Constitutional Limits of Markets
In contemporary debates over blocked exchanges, there is a tendency to become fixated on the essentially tradeable or untradeable nature of given goods or practices without entering into the wider constitutional questions raised by the issue of where and when market logic should obtain. This article offers some perspective on contemporary commodification debates by examining an eighteenth-century conversation over ethical and legal limitations on…
Friend of the people
This paper offers several challenges to Shmuel Nili’s argument concerning ‘the people’ as a unitary moral agent. Nili’s argument is exceedingly statist, which risks subordinating non-state collectivities. Nili’s claim also has a curious relationship to the Rousseauian general will. This article draws this out and indicates some of the difficulties of treating the state as a unitary agent. In spite of these difficulties, however, Nili’s conception…
Debt, Corruption, and State Identity: Lessons from Eighteenth‐Century Political Thought
The subject of national debt raises serious questions concerning state identity. Should a state that has radically altered its constitution be responsible for decisions taken by the previous state? Much hangs on how we characterize the state as a continuous agent. This article explores debates over national debt, state integrity, and corruption in the eighteenth century, the era in which the modern financial‐bureaucratic state was in its infancy.…
Contracts, Treaties and Relationships: Collective Debt, Collective Responsibility and Contractarian Confusions
Aaron Mills (2017) has argued persuasively that to understand treaty relationships as contracts is to betray the spirit of those relationships. In this, he joins numerous Indigenous scholars who express wariness of contractualist understandings of treaty. This article inquires into the distinction between contractualist and relational understandings of treaty in order to think about the phenomenon of collective, transhistorical debt. Drawing out …
Political science (12 works) · Law (11 works) · Philosophy (11 works) · Law (10 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Law and economics (9 works) · Philosophy (8 works) · Politics (8 works) · Epistemology (7 works) · American Constitutional Law and Politics (6 works)