The study of the political theory of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is closely linked to the notion of the social contract. These theories adopt, in general, a logical rather than philological methodology and thus result in a suspension of temporal and geographical coordinates, a suspension that also characterises utopian writings. The authors of the political philosophy of the social contract, in other words, are "situationally transcendent", in the words Karl Mannheim used to refer to utopianism. The present study analyses the writings ot three classic thinkers of the political philosophy of the social contract, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, from the point of view of utopian studies. Attention is focused in particular on the nature of the social contract as a single constitutive act which indicates a radical passing from one state to another, from the state of nature to political and civil society. The political notion of the social contract thus reveals itself as an important theoretical basis for the radical constructivism typical of utopian thought.

"L'utopia et le contrat social" / P. Leech. - STAMPA. - (2008), pp. 477-485.

"L'utopia et le contrat social"

LEECH, JOHN PATRICK
2008

Abstract

The study of the political theory of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is closely linked to the notion of the social contract. These theories adopt, in general, a logical rather than philological methodology and thus result in a suspension of temporal and geographical coordinates, a suspension that also characterises utopian writings. The authors of the political philosophy of the social contract, in other words, are "situationally transcendent", in the words Karl Mannheim used to refer to utopianism. The present study analyses the writings ot three classic thinkers of the political philosophy of the social contract, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, from the point of view of utopian studies. Attention is focused in particular on the nature of the social contract as a single constitutive act which indicates a radical passing from one state to another, from the state of nature to political and civil society. The political notion of the social contract thus reveals itself as an important theoretical basis for the radical constructivism typical of utopian thought.
2008
Histoire transnationale de l'utopie littéraire et de l'utopisme
477
485
"L'utopia et le contrat social" / P. Leech. - STAMPA. - (2008), pp. 477-485.
P. Leech
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11585/63518
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