Compromise
Compromise
This book offers for the first time a conceptual history of compromise. Alin Fumurescu combines contextual historical analysis of daily parlance and a survey of the usage of the word from the end of the sixteenth century to the beginning of the eighteenth century in both French and English with an analysis of canonical texts in the history of political thought. This book fills a significant gap in the literature about compromise and demonstrates the connection between different understandings of compromise and corresponding differences in understandings of political representation. In addition, Fumurescu addresses two controversial contemporary debates about when compromise is beneficial and when it should be avoided at all costs. A better understanding of the genealogy of compromise offers new venues for rethinking basic assumptions regarding political representation and the relationship between individuals and politics.
- Offers for the first time a conceptual history of compromise
- Comparatively surveys the usages of compromise in France and Great Britain during the seventeenth century, showing how the positive and negative meanings of compromise evolved from different understandings of representation and self-representation
- Addresses two controversial contemporary debates about when compromise is beneficial and when it should be avoided at all costs
Reviews & endorsements
"Fumerescu has written one of the most interesting books of political theory in a long time … Writing with wit, depth, and an astonishing command of history and philosophy … Fumurescu investigates not only the etymology of the word [compromise] but the causes of its various shifts in meaning and the intellectual and practical consequences of those changes … a startling interesting story, and no one has ever told it better, for Fumurescu is doing more than merely regaling readers: this is both serious history and serious political theory … Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduate, graduate, research, and professional collections."
M. Berheide, Choice
Product details
February 2013Hardback
9781107029439
308 pages
229 × 152 × 19 mm
0.58kg
Available
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Table of Contents
- 1. Introduction: 'in politics we have an art...'
- 2. No compromise about compromise
- 3. The genealogy of compromise and its vagaries
- 4. The dialectic of the individual
- 5. Compromise and centripetal individualism
- 6. Compromise and centrifugal individualism
- 7. The forgotten road of representation: continental contractarian theories
- 8. The British contract as com-promise
- 9. Conclusions: compromising the art of compromise - the one-dimensional man.
