The Political Theory of Political Thinking The Anatomy of a Practice 1st Edition by Michael Freeden 9780199568031 0199568030

1. Thinking politically

2. Paths not taken

3. The mission in method

4. A preliminary note on ‘realism’

1. Theorizing about Political Thinking

1. The finality quest of politics

2. Pinpointing the political

3. Political theory: older and newer contenders

4. Thinking politically and its features

5. Competing methodologies

6. Changing conceptions of the political: The popular and the professional

7. Consensus meets conflict

8. Political theory and political science

9. Theorizing about mainstream practices

10. Fragmentation, division, obfuscation: The political confronts indeterminacy

a. ‘Real’ politics

b. The democratic mission

c. Disrupting the ‘political’?

2. Language, Emotion, and Political Thought

1. Beyond logos and logic

2. The interpretative flexibilities of language

3. Linguistic pluralisms and semantic interconnections

4. The emotionality of thinking politically

3. The Arrogance of Politics

1. Finality as temporality

a. The political as Godly

b. Earthly Gods: echoing the ‘big bang’ of politics

c. The secular originary

d. The case of nationalist ideology

2. The spatial parcelling of competences

a. The discursive management of social conduct

b. Drawing the line

3. Sovereignty, authority, and legitimacy

a. The compelling ubiquity of sovereignty

b. Authority and legitimacy: the pursuit of political gravitas

4. Ranking and the Distribution of Significance

1. The choice of values and the value of choice

2. Rights: the ranking device par excellence

3. The chimera of incommensurability?

4. Zero-sum intractability: the case of abortion

5. Choice versus life: an American story

6. The Danish cartoons

7. A note on urgency

8. Emotions and ranking

5. The Scramble for Acceptance: Mobilizing and Withholding Support

1. Conceptualizing support

2. The semantic limitations of political obligation

3. Generality, asymmetry, supremacy

4. Levels and defences of (dis)obligation

5. Alternative terminologies of support

6. Commitment and loyalty

7. Support as trust

8. The morphological complexity of support: professional and vernacular perspectives

9. Ceremonial performativity as a language of support

6. Stability, Order, and Disruption: Discourses of Balance and Contention

1. Digging under stability

2. Order and disorder

3. Political order and coherence

4. Stability and instability

5. Stability in America

6. Four normative genres

a. Constitutions

b. Deliberative democracy

c. Reasonable stability

d. The ethics of order

7. The order of disorder

8. Negotiating towards stability

7. Visions and Prescriptions: Temptations and Failures of Political Thinking

Part one: Living in the future

1. Untrodden trajectories

2. Planning as promise and inspiration

3. Science and utopia

Part two: Endemic failures of political thinking

1. Three criteria of failure

2. The asymmetry of failure and success

3. Uncontrollable and absent temporal trajectories

4. The limits of determinacy

5. The elusiveness of inclusiveness

6. Normalizing failure: from conservative fatalism to liberal epistemology

8. Power Patterns and Power Surges: Organizing and Intensifying Speech Acts

1. The immanent power of language

2. Performative speech acts

3. Reason and reasoning

4. Rhetoric

5. Emotion

6. Menace and threats

7. Refacing power

8. Past intensities

9. Ranking and intensity

10. Non-verbal power: a note

Epilogue

Bibliography

Index