On the Role of Symbolism in Political Thought

Bibliographic Data

ID4995477
AuthorsMichael Walzer (0000-0002-2036-9388, Harvard University, corresponding author)
Year1967
Volume82
Issue2
Pages191-204
Publication date1967-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePolitical Science Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0032-3195 • E-ISSN: 1538-165X
PublisherOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2147214
OpenAlexW2314297371
LanguageEN
Citations received85

New philosophy calls in doubt, wrote John Donne, and thereby suggested a theory of intellectual transformation. Because the universe was of a piece, its parts harmoniously connected, the Copernican revolution seemed to call into question not only Ptolemaic astronomy but also a whole series of related ideas having to do with order, not in the heavens but on earth. With the sun lost and the cosmos all in pieces, Prince, Subject, Father, Son are things forgot.' Suddenly, the very categories of social and political thought seemed empty anct useless. In a sense, Donne was right: later seventeenth-century writers like Hobbes and Locke were indeed compelled to work out anew the meanings of authority and subjection and to redefine political and familial obligation. But was he also right to suggest that this work was made necessary by the new philosophy? For other writers, it was the new religious ideas which had destroyed the perceived coherence of the social world. Machiavellian atheism and Protestant voluntarism, thought Richard Hooker, endangered the ancient, elaborate, and lawful structure of human

Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Law · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought

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