In 'Political Atheism vs. The Divine Right of Kings,' I build on Thompson and Scrivener’s work analysing John Thelwall’s play 'The Fairy of the Lake' as a political allegory, arguing all religious symbolism in 'FL' to advance the traditionally Revolutionary thesis that “the King is not a God.” My first chapter contextualises Thelwall’s revival of 17th century radicalism during the French Revolution and its failure. My second chapter examines how Thelwall’s use of fire as a symbol discrediting the Saxons’ pagan notion of divine monarchy, also emphasises the idolatrous apotheosis of King Arthur. My third chapter deconstructs the Fairy of the Lake’s water and characterisation, and concludes her sole purpose to be to justify a Revolution beyond moral reproach. My fourth chapter traces how beer satirises Communion wine, among both pagans and Christians, in order to undermine any religion that could reinforce either divinity or the Divine Right of Kings. / A close reading of an all-but-forgotten Arthurian play as an allegory against the Divine Right of Kings.

在托克維爾政治思想中，民主一直是核心的議題，也引發大西洋兩岸知識界熱烈的爭論。直到今天，政治、學術、新聞等各界仍經常引用他的觀點。本文即就托克維爾有關民主體制的思想進行研究，並發現可分梳為民主社會一般傾向、民主社會潛在的腐化危機，及民主體制存續之道三個面向進行討論。而這三個相關的部分，更可就其內在邏輯整合而成共和主義研究途徑。 首先，在民主社會的特徵及其發展方面，托克維爾認為民主社會強調國民主權及身份平等，雖然使社會充滿活力；但也易於衝動，缺乏遠見，造成庸俗的中產階級政治。同時在資本主義及工業革命影響下，可能會形成個體主義，使得人際關係疏離，且對公共事務冷漠；也造成物質主義，只想追求物質享受。大多數勞工也會有異化現象，淪為工作的奴隸。不過，民主社會也會發展出諸如結社、地方自治等鍛鍊政治自由的機制，提供個體自主性及公民性格寬廣的公共領域。托克維爾並主張國家利用宗教、法律培養公民參與的熱情與美德。這種觀念下的國家對人生計劃並不中立，顯現共和主義多於自由主義的立場。 其次，在民主體制潛藏的腐化危機方面，托克維爾指出三種可能形式。一是因身份平等可能切斷封建社會原有的社會紐帶，使得個體孤立無援，必須服從統治的多數，終而導致一種多數專制─以一種社會一致性窒息個體的思想。二是因公民追求物質主義過甚，竟而完全退出公共領域，並召喚一種保護性權力，在民主自由的形式下，溫柔親切地奴役人民。此亦即民主專制。三是在民主革命初期或資本主義發達之後，必將出現中央集權。國家為解決工業社會複雜的問題，因應人民龐雜的需求，在多數授權下集中所有權力，破壞了政治自由得以維繫的各種機制。 第三，在民主體制的維繫方面，托克維爾的主張也充滿共和主義的色彩。例如，為使公民保持自由的技藝，他認為，公民應參與鄉鎮自治、結社（特別是政治結社）、陪審團。而在培養公共精神的美德方面，托克維爾強調宗教的重要性。藉由教條式信仰，宗教可培養公民認識「適當理解的自利原則」。而且，民主社會也有賴宗教提供一種道德與知識的權威。在這一方面，女性公民扮演了傳承與複製的重要角色，因而在托克維爾的民主思想中也占有一席之地。 本文最後提出國民主權、身份平等、公私領域、社會共識等四方面的引申討論，進一步分析托克維爾共和主義式的民主思想，對當前主流民主理論所能提供的貢獻。此外，也依個人見解評論其不足之處。 / Democracy has always been a core concept and a controversial issue in Tocqueville’s political thought at both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Politicians, scholars as well as journalists still quote Tocqueville’s points at the present time. This thesis studies Tocqueville’s democratic thought, and analyzed it in three aspects: the general tendency of democratic societies, the potential danger of corruption in democratic societies, and the maintenance of democratic system. With the interlock between these aspects, this thesis integrated them into an approach of republicanism to Tocqueville’s democratic thought. For the first aspect, Tocqueville believed that with the emphasis on popular sovereignty and equality of condition, democratic societies will bring themselves diversified vitality. However, the societies will also be passionate and myopic, as the characteristics of mediocre bourgeois politics. Influenced by capitalism and industrial revolution, the prevailing individualism in democratic societies results in social alienation, public apathy and overwhelming materialism. Most workers will degrade into slaves of their works. On the other hand, democracy will promote associations, local self-governments which provide public spheres to practice autonomy and citizenship through the art of political freedom. Furthermore, Tocqueville requested the states to cultivate the passion and virtue of civic participation by means of religion and law. States under this requirement is not neutral toward citizens’ life plans, and seems more republican than liberal. For the second aspect, Tocqueville pointed out three possible forms of corruption from democratic societies: majority tyranny, democratic tyranny and centralization. First, majority tyranny results in extreme exploitation of equality of condition which cut off the original social bonds in feudal societies, hence isolate the individuals and render them totally helpless but to obey the ruling majority. Majority tyranny stifles citizen’s originality with social conformity. Secondly, mainly on account of materialism, citizens would escape into private life and material happiness, and moreover give away thoroughly public affairs to a tutelage power to enslave people gently within the liberal democratic form. That is democratic tyranny. Thirdly, centralization will present itself definitely, either during the early stage of democratic revolution or after capital economy is delivered. In order to solve the complicated problems in industrial societies, respond to a lot of diverse demands, the state concentrate all the power under the delegation of the majority, and destroy all kinds of mechanism which sustaining the art of political freedom. For the third aspect, Tocqueville offered republican solution to the maintenance of democratic system. He thought that citizens should take part in township self-governance, associations (especially political associations) and the jury. He also emphasized the importance of religion in teaching the virtue of public spirit, as well as cultivating the knowledge of “the principle self-interest properly understood” by dogmatic belief. In the same way, religion affords ethical and intellectual authority to democratic societies. In this regard, the female citizens play so important part of sustaining and reproducing these ethical and intellectual lessons that Tocqueville had to illuminate the role of women in his democratic thought. In addition to these interpretations, this thesis presents four related concepts for further discourse: popular sovereignty, equality of condition, public and private sphere and social consensus. Based on these discourses, the thesis evaluates the merit and deficiency of Tocqueville’s thought of republican democracy.

Si Ferdinand Buisson a, du point de vue institutionnel, joué un rôle de premier plan dans l'édification de l'école laïque sous la IIIe République, il fut aussi un remarquable observateur de son temps et un penseur engagé soucieux de faire apparaître toute l'intelligibilité des différentes causes qu'il a embrassées au cours de sa longue carrière d'homme publique, du protestantisme libéral au radical-socialisme. Pour appréhender la cohérence de cet itinéraire intellectuel, la question de l'autorité offre un bon fil directeur: avant d'être envisagée en termes pédagogiques, celle-ci s'est en effet posée à Buisson de manière particulièrement vive dans le contexte théologique et ecclésiologique mouvementé qui était celui de la communauté réformée dans la seconde moitié du XIXe siècle. Prenant énergiquement parti pour les "libéraux" dans le débat qui les oppose alors aux "orthodoxes" quant aux statuts respectifs de l'Ecriture et de la conscience dans l'économie de la foi, Buisson esquisse dès les années 1860 une interprétation originale de la tradition protestante qu'il développera bien plus tard dans sa thèse de 1891 sur Sébastien Castellion. A la lumière de ses écrits protestants, sa philosophie de l'éducation laïque apparaît à bien des égards comme l'expression sécularisée d'un geste inaugural et profondément religieux de refus de l'autorité dans ses formes conservatrices et toutes extérieures. Loin de consister cependant en un simple développement d’une essence préexistante, la continuité de cette pensée ne se dessine qu'au gré d'un permanent travail de réécriture commandé par les contextes de discussion abordés, les arguments adverses et les situations historiques que Buisson s'est efforcé d'infléchir avec un sens consommé du kairos. Ce sont ces ajustements et infléchissements successifs de l'idéal buissonien que nous avons tenté d’appréhender depuis les jeunes heures de l'école laïque jusqu'aux premières discussions relatives à sa "démocratisation" à la veille de la première guerre mondiale. / Ferdinand Buisson did not only play a major role, as regards institutions, in the foundation of nondenominational education during the Third Republic, he was also both a talented observer of his time and a committed thinker, concerned with the intelligibility of the various causes he embraced throughout his long career as a public figure , from liberal Protestantism to radical- socialism. The coherence of his intellectual path may be apprehended through a clear issue: The question of authority. As a matter of fact, before considering it from an educational standpoint, Ferdinand Buisson had to face it acutely inthe stormy theological and ecclesiological context of the protestant community during the second half of the 19th century. He stood up vigourously for the”liberals” in their dispute against the “orthodox” concerning respectively, the status of the Scriptures and of conscience in the process of faith. As early as 1860, Ferdinand Buisson outlines an original interpretation of the protestant tradition, which he will later on develop in 1891 in his thesis about Sébastien Castellion. In the light of his protestant works, and in many respects, his philosophy of non-denominational education sounds like the secularized expression of a deeply religious inaugural gesture in refusal of authority, in its external conservative forms. Yet, far from simply expanding on a pre-existent essence, the continuity of this thinking only becomes clear through a continuous work of re-writing, induced from debates, opposing arguments and historical situations which Buisson endeavoured to reorientate with his accomplished sense of Kairos. Indeed, we have tried to apprehend those successive reorientations and realignments of Buisson’s ideal, starting from the very first days of non-denominational education to the first discussions relating to its democratization on the eve of the first World War.

盧梭的思想內涵豐富，不同學者由於關切的焦點不同，其所研究的主題也各異，例如，有些學者關懷的是盧梭思想在觀念史上的定位與影響，另外有些學者則是關心盧梭思想中的民主或極權成分，但是關於盧梭思想中公民共和主義的要素，則少有人提及。因此，本文的主要論旨即是從公民共和主義的核心觀念──腐化與德行此一角度切入，分析其政治思想。 根據此一研究主軸，本文第二章探討的是盧梭思想中的腐化意涵、腐化的歷程，以及造成腐化的各種因素，並將腐化的現象區分成政治腐化與和財產相關的社會腐化。面對這些腐化現象，盧梭是以德行作為對治之道，一方面以德行為標準批判當時政治、社會的腐化，另一方面則是以德行作為理想政治共同體重建的基礎。盧梭的這些想法似乎是深受古典共和主義思想家，以及古斯巴達與羅馬兩共和國影響。關於盧梭德行觀將在本文第三章探討。 以德行為基礎的政治共同體重建，將可在盧梭的社會契約理論，以及盧梭為其他國家草擬憲法、改革政制的著作中獲得印證。社會契約接櫫了理想政治共同體的原型，而社會契約的締結與維繫則有賴一位卓然出眾的立法家，他一方面轉化、消除造成腐化的種種因素，另一方面則創造培育德行的環境，使「德行共和國」的理想得以實現。 然而並非所有思想家對腐化的思考方向都和盧梭相同，孟德斯鳩與康士坦都提出和盧梭相異的思考，本文最後將探討這些思想家和盧梭思想的差異之處。 / The essence of Rousseau‘s thought is rich. A wide variety of focuses are thus occurred due to various scholar’s different concerns. Their research subjects are different too. For example, some scholars concern the position and influence of Rousseau’s thought on the idea of history, while others concern the components of democracy and authoritarianism of his thought. Nevertheless, the concerning of the elements of Rousseau’s thought on civic republicanism is not very prevailing. The main purpose of this thesis is from the core concept of civic republicanism, i.e., corruption and virtue, to analyze Rousseau’s political thought. Based on this research core, the second chapter of this thesis discusses the meaning of corruption, its process and the factors in causing corruption, as well as to divide the phenomena of corruption into political corruption and social corruption which is relevant to property. Rousseau dealt these corrupt phenomena with virtue. One the one hand, he applied virtue as the standard to criticize the contemporary political and social corruption. On the other hand, he applied virtue as the foundation to reconstruct ideal political community. The thought of Rousseau seems to be influenced by the classical republicanism thinkers and the two ancient Republic, i. e., Sparta and Rome Republic. Rousseau’s view toward virtue will be discussed in the third chapter of this thesis. The foundation of reconstructing political community by virtue will be found in Rousseau’s theory of social contract and to be proved in Rousseau’s drafting the manuscript of constitution reform policy for other states. Social contract reveals the stereotype of ideal political community, however, the binding and the maintaining of social contract depends on an outstanding legislator. On the one hand, he transforms and eliminates the various factors of corruption formation. On the other hand, he creates the various environment of virtue cultivation, enforcing the “Republic of virtue” to be realized. Not every thinker’s way of thinking toward corruption is the same with Rousseau. Montesquieu’s and Constant’s thinking are different from Rousseau. The last part of this thesis will discuss the differences among them.

This thesis examines the ideological nexus of nationalism and heritage under the social conditions of neoliberalism. The investigation aims to demonstrate how neoliberal economics stimulate the irrationalism manifest in nationalist idealisation of the past. The institutionalisation of national heritage was originally a rational function of the modern state, symbolic of its political and cultural authority. With neoliberal erosion of the productive economy and public institutions, heritage and nostalgia proliferate today in all areas of social life. It is argued that this represents a social pathology linked to the neoliberal state's inability to construct a future-orientated national project. These conditions enhance the appeal of irrational nationalist and regionalist ideologies idealising the past as a source of cultural purity. Unable to achieve social cohesion, the neoliberal state promotes multiculturalism, encouraging minorities to embrace essentialist identity politics that parallel the nativism of right-wing nationalists and regionalists. This phenomenon is contextualised within the general crisis of progressive modernisation in Western societies that has accompanied neoliberalisation and globalisation. A new theory of activist heritage is advanced to describe autonomous, politicised heritage that appropriates forms and practices from the state heritage sector. Using this concept, the politics of irrational nationalism and regionalism are explored through fieldwork, including participant observation, interviews and photography. The interaction of state and activist heritage is considered at the Wewelsburg 1933-1945 Memorial Museum in Germany wherein neofascists have re-signified Nazi material culture, reactivating it within contemporary political narratives. The activist heritage of Israeli Zionism, Irish Republicanism and Ulster Loyalism is analysed through studies of museums, heritage centres, archaeological sites, exhibitions, monuments and historical re-enactments. These illustrate how activist heritage represents a political strategy within irrational ideologies that interpret the past as the ethical model for the future. This work contends that irrational nationalism fundamentally challenges the Enlightenment's assertion of reason over faith, and culture over nature, by superimposing pre-modern ideas upon the structure of modernity. An ideological product of the Enlightenment, the nation state remains the only political unit within which a rational command of time and space is possible, and thus the only viable basis for progressive modernity.

L’étude saisit comment les Catalans réfugiés en France ont pu maintenir, entre 1939 et 1977, une identité politique et culturelle forte, en dépit d’une position minoritaire au sein de l’exil républicain espagnol. Contribution à l’analyse des dynamiques identitaires des exils, la recherche repose sur l’exploitation de sources variées : françaises et catalanes, publiques, privées ou orales. Elle s’organise selon un plan chronologique en trois parties. La première s’attache aux héritages politiques et culturels d’une immigration assez cohérente pour poser les jalons d’une identité républicano-catalaniste auxquels les exilés de 1939 seront redevables. La seconde partie traite de la période 1939-1945, terrible en termes d’expériences et décisive dans la mise à l’épreuve d’une identité républicaine, elle relègue au second plan la singularité strictement catalane et relativise la portée du contentieux catalane-castillan. Le double traumatisme de la défaite et d’u11 accueil hostile marque pour longtemps les exilés et leur représentation de la France. La troisième partie examine comment, avec le retour à la paix et en dépit de la dissipation rapide des espoirs de retour victorieux au pays, l’exil populaire catalan, délesté de sa frange intellectuelle partie en Amérique ou revenue en Espagne, traverse l’épreuve du temps, engagé dans un processus complexe de recomposition identitaire sur fond d’intégration. / The study focuses on how Catalan refugees in France managed to hold a strong political and cultural identity, between the years 1939 and 1977, despite their minority position within the Spanish republican exile. This research is based on the use of varied sources - French and Catalan, public and private, written or oral - aims to contribute to the analysis of the identical dynamics of the exiles. It gets organized according to a chronological plan in three parts. The first one is attached to the political and cultural inheritances of a previous and rather coherent immigration to show the way of a Catalan-republican identity in which the exiles of 1939 will be indebted. The second part deals with period 1939-1945, terrible in terms of experiences and decisive in the testing of a republican identity, it relegates in the background the strictly Catalan peculiarity and puts in perspective the impact of the Catalano-Castillan dispute. The double trauma of the defeat and the hostile reception marks for a long time the exilés and their representation of France. The third part examines how, with return in the peace and in spite of the squandering of the hopes of victorious return in the country, the Catalan popular exile, relieved of its intellectual fringe left for America or returned in Spain, crosses the test of time, launched in a complex process of identity reorganization on an integration background.

Prenant appui sur une historicisation critique des postulats méthodologiques et idéologiques au fondement des catégories d’humanisme civique et de républicanisme, la thèse entend renoncer à une lecture uniquement théorique de l’œuvre des humanistes florentins et restituer aux textes leur statut d’énoncés historiques. L’enjeu est de redessiner les lignes portantes d’une tradition civile et républicaine propre à la réalité florentine dont les penseurs des guerres d’Italie (Savonarole, Guichardin, Machiavel) seront les dépositaires critiques. Un travail d’interprétation de la correspondance familière de Coluccio Salutati (1331-1406) constitue le socle de la recherche et fait apparaître la dimension juridique de la pensée du chancelier, et ce à double titre : d’une part elle révèle l’omniprésence d’un lexique juridique qui fournit l’essentiel de l’arsenal interprétatif de l’analyse politique, et d’autre part, elle définit un « office d’exhortation » qui constitue la théorie politique de Salutati non pas simplement comme une rhétorique propagandiste mais aussi comme un discours réformateur. L’apport de Leonardo Bruni (1370-1444) est ainsi réévalué dans le sillage de l’humanisme politique de Salutati, et se distingue de ce dernier surtout par la valeur nouvelle accordée à l’histoire dans l’élaboration d’une langue et d’une science de la vie civile. / Starting from a critical historicization of the methodological and ideological foundations of categories such as civic humanism and republicanism, this thesis investigates the works of the Florentine humanists not only from the point of view of political theory but also in relation to their historical significance. The aim is to redefine the structural lines of a republican tradition characteristic of Florentine history, a tradition which the thinkers of the Italian Wars (Savonarola, Guicciardini, Machiavelli) inherited and criticized. An extensive reading of the private letters by Coluccio Salutati (1331-1406) constitutes the central part of this work and reveals the juridical character of the Chancellor’s thought : on the one hand, the juridical vocabulary is omnipresent in the letters and provides the core of the hermeneutic tools necessary to political analysis ; on the other hand, it helps defining an « office of exhortation » which discloses Salutati’s urge for reform rather than his role of propagandist. New light is then shed on Leonardo Bruni’s contribution to political thought as Bruni is seen following the path of Salutati’s political humanism. Leonardo Bruni (1370-1444), in comparison with his master, stresses the superiority of history, but finds himself equally involved in the formulation of a language and a science of political life.

As the main research interest of this study one is able to highlight the issue of early- modern political thought, whose patterns have been analysed as protomodern grounds within the formative process of national identity. The thesis is based on the assumption that the political discourse of Polish aristocracy can be read as a specific part of European republicanism. Republican attributes are thus supposed to have stood for an essential core of Polish political culture at that time; core that was widely accepted by different political writers irrespective of their ideological distinctions. Hence, the study aims to prove that one is able to find the grounds of Polish "national" self-identification neither in ethnical nor in strict class traits, because concerning the question of identity, there was a crucial concept of a republic, closely linked to the peculiar values of liberty, equality and common good, which played a decisive role. In this regard, the thesis contradicts the traditional categories of Sarmatism or Sonderweg and instead of them, it introduces the concept of republican triangle as the hypothesis that is able to identify interdependence between political thought of that time and the image of Polish noble identity. Regarding methodological approaches, the study is based on the...

of Ph.D. thesis: Middle Eastern Conflict in the French Public Space (2000-2010) Václav Nekvapil, 2013 The main objective of the thesis is to analyse and typologise French social discourse on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict based on a reflection of certain opinions, interests, stances and values associated with today's Jewishness and Jewish diasporic identity. The research also contains an analysis of the official political-diplomatic discourse of both Presidents Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy. Based on the methodology of typologisation and critical discourse analysis, we distinguish three basic positions related to the debate on the abovementioned topics in the years 2000- 2010: republican, anti-imperialist and neoconservative. The thesis elaborates on attitudes of presidents of the French Fifth Republic towards Israel and how their policies have been perceived by the Jewish community. The community as such is also a matter of the research: its changing religiosity, demography, immigration of Nord African Jewry and the attitude towards Zionism and the State of Israel. The thesis follows four main thematic axes when analysing arguments of the most important speakers. First, when analysing the duty of memory (devoir de mémoire), the author carefully examines moral argumentation concerning the...

This dissertation examines the political origins of Loyalism in New York City between 1768 and 1778. Anchored by an analysis of political mobilization, this dissertation is structured into two parts. Part I has two chapters. Using a variety of private and public sources, the first chapter analyses how 9,338 mostly white male Loyalists in New York City and the counties of Kings, Queens, Suffolk and Westchester were mobilized. Chapter 1 argues that elites and British forces played a fundamental role in the broad-based mobilization of Loyalists in the province of New York. It also recognises that colonists signed Loyalist documents for many different reasons. The second chapter of Part I is a large-scale prosopographical analysis of the 9,338 identified Loyalists. This analysis was based on a diverse range of sources. This analysis shows that a majority of the province’s Loyalist population were artisans aged between 22 and 56 years of age. Part II of this dissertation examines political mobilization in New York City between 1768 and 1775. In three chapters, Part II illustrates how elite and non-elite white male New Yorkers coalesced into two distinct groups. Chapter 3 concentrates on the emergence of the DeLanceys as a political force in New York, Chapter 4 on their mobilization and coalescence into ‘the Friends to Liberty and Trade’, or ‘the Club’, and Chapter 5 examines the political origins of what became Loyalism by studying the social networks of three members of ‘the Club’. By incorporating an interdisciplinary methodology, Part II illustrates that members of ‘the Club’ developed ties with one another that transcended their political origins. It argues that the partisanship of New York City led members of ‘the Club’ to adopt inward-looking characteristics that affected who they interacted with on an everyday basis. A large proportion of ‘the Club’’s members became Loyalists in the American Revolution. This dissertation argues that it was the partisanship that they developed during the late 1760s and early 1770s that defined their allegiance.