/lit/ - Literature

>>14945708
Here Here! I've learned so much from this place, like... uhh.... well, nevermind that! here's to another five!

Diplomacy is a good realist history of international relations from Richelieu to The Cold War.

>>14310352
i read it a while back. some of the case studies are fascinating and absolutely hilarious at times, my favourite was 'Dora'. Freud is difficult to judge, because i feel we consider much of what he says as ridiculous precisely because it is so taboo, even now. My opinion was that he was broadly correct by specifically incorrect. anyway, a lot of the works are very interesting regardless, especially the aforementioned case studies as well as a few others (i really liked the essay on da vinci). I guess i'd just say stick with it even if he seems nuts at times. plus, he is very influential in continental philosophy so you'll need to know him if you want to go down that path.

Some Philosophy of Law
On Liberty - Mill
The Concept of Law - HLA Hart
Law's Empire - Dworkin
Taking Rights Seriously - Dworkin
Natural Law and Natural Rights - Finnis
Pure Theory of Law - Kelsen
The Authority of Law - Raz
The Enforcement of Morals - Devlin

>>12588745
Oh i'm not really looking for recommendations right now, i have a long reading list to work through already. I'm sure the pictures of your library will be all the help i need when i arrive at a specific topic, so a belated thanks for that thread.

The presumption that the government is working on behalf of the citizens is the core ideological underpinning of popular government. Whereas Louis XIV may have considered the most important precepts of government the attainment of prestige and power for the Crown (that is, himself), and consequentially the whole of France (as France was the Crown), he was able to do so because his rule wasn't founded on the presumption of representing the people's interests, only his own. Monarchy is a non-popular form of government. Of course, there were still ideologies—the divine right of kings, the power of tradition—which secured his legitimacy, these ideologies were not centered around the people. In rolls the Glorious, American, and French Revolutions, which are really a decisive turning point in the concept of government. It is this time when you hear concepts such as "the rights of man," "the popular will," "the equality of man," "natural rights," ect.; there is a distinct movement towards an ideology which places the people at centre stage, replacing religious foundations of power with natural rights-based governments (let’s not talk about what those natural rights are founded on wink wink). Law over Crown, Man over God—this was the birth of Humanism, the shift from Civitas Dei to Civitas Terrena. Of course, the heart of Christian ethics continues to beat softly in western civilisation, it was simply no longer the explicit foundation of legitmacy. The Humanistic shift was heavily motivated from a desire to break down the structural beliefs of natural aristocracies, natural law, or any kind of formal distinction in the superiority of certain people and the right to rule, which led to a strong belief in equality. So now we have a government "for the people, by the people," what ought the goals of such a society be?
Enter Bentham
Aside from gifting history his embalmed corpse and the concept of the Panopticon, he also formulated a popular ethic for the popular age: Utilitarianism. "The greatest happiness for the greatest number," you couldn't find a more Humanistic concept. Tempered to fit into the rights-based societies by John Stuart Mill (The unfortunate subject of Bentham's child-rearing experiment), the Idea of public happiness became a core principle of popular government. At this point the industrial revolution is really heating up, and a spectre began to haunt Europe; The spectre of Communism! Now, while Napoleon's conquests had done a great deal to spread the spirit of the revolution, entrenched monarchies and aristocracies were still holding out in many continental countries (and in Britain for that matter), and the common citizen, for all his rights, was hardly living the utilitarian ideal. Here the worker, here the pleb, here the downtrodden, yearning to be free, were awakened to the power they hold if only they work collectively; here the birth of trade unionism and a further focus on the welfare of all in society.