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SUMMARY:Political Thought\, Time and History: An International Conference 
  - Speaker to be confirmed
DTSTART:20180510T083000Z
DTEND:20180510T163000Z
UID:TALK94552@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Professor John Robertson
DESCRIPTION:*POLITICAL THOUGHT\, TIME\, AND HISTORY*\n\n*An International 
 Conference*\n\n*Clare College\, University of Cambridge*\n\n*Thursday 10 a
 nd Friday 11 May 2018*\n\n*Registration is now open*: http://onlinesales.a
 dmin.cam.ac.uk/conferences-and-events/history/political-thought-time-and-h
 istory/political-thought-time-and-history\n\nIt is easy to assume that pol
 itical thought is bound up with time and history.  To most historians\, ti
 me and history are obvious dimensions of politics\; politics occur in cont
 exts which are temporal and historical\, and must be studied by reference 
 to the evidence provided by those contexts.  Periodically historians have 
 questioned whether temporality should be regarded as uniform\; recently\, 
 there has been much interest in the thesis that ‘modernity’ entailed a
  new understanding of time.  But whether that understanding\, and the unde
 rstandings of time in pre-modern eras\, are thought of as belonging to con
 temporaries and shared by all those who thought about politics\, or are co
 nceived rather as heuristic models\, is often unclear.  The debate hovers 
 uncertainly between intellectual history and historical methodology. \n\nP
 olitical philosophers\, however\, have never taken time and history for gr
 anted.  Whether temporality is a necessary or normative foundation for the
  concept of the civitas\, the state\, whether political concepts require t
 o be inserted into a historical narrative to be effective are questions to
  which they have returned very different answers.  A Machiavelli might hol
 d politics governed by an inherently temporal ‘necessity’\, and insist
  that political agency be assessed in its specific historical outcomes.  B
 ut a Hobbes or a Rousseau would create a foundation for the state which de
 liberately limited the scope for time to make a difference\, and which wou
 ld be valid independent of historical circumstance.  A similar division ma
 y be found among the jurists.  Exponents of customary law argued from pres
 cription\, while Roman jurists explored the adaptability of concepts codif
 ied for the inhabitants of the Roman Empire to the post-Roman world of mul
 tiple kingdoms and city-states.  But other jurists set aside time by prefe
 rring first principles to prescription\, or by making historical examples 
 support accounts of natural law as the universal\, supratemporal embodimen
 t of civilised sociability.  Viewed as the study of ‘languages’\, the 
 history of political thought has found itself studying many languages to w
 hich time and history are essential – but many too which diminish or exc
 lude them.  \n\nThe aim of this conference will be to explore the variety 
 of engagements with time and history found in political thinkers\, the bet
 ter to understand (and\, perhaps\, to explain) why political philosophy ha
 s been unable to take these concepts for granted.  Themes of individual se
 ssions will include Time and the State\, the temporal and historical persp
 ectives available to political thinkers following the fall of the Roman Em
 pire\, time in customary and Roman legal traditions\, the temporalities of
  civil and sacred history in the early modern period\, the conceptual stat
 us of Enlightenment ‘stadial history’ and what it contributed to the u
 nderstanding of society and government\, the time of ‘modern’ politics
 \, in the nineteenth and again in the twentieth centuries\, and whether a 
 political thought ‘global’ in time and history is conceivable.  It wil
 l end with a reassessment of time in the history of political thought itse
 lf: what understandings of time should govern our engagement with the poli
 tical and legal thought of the past\, whether remote or still close at han
 d?  Must they be adapted if the history of political thought is\, as many 
 of its foremost practitioners have hoped\, to enhance political philosophy
  itself?  The conference is organised under the aegis of the Cambridge Cen
 tre for Political Thought and the University’s Faculty of History.\n\n\n
 Full details and programme available here: www.polthought.cam.ac.uk/future
 -events/conf2018-page
LOCATION:Clare College\, Cambridge University
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