Political Philosophy in Gulliver’s Travels: Shocked by The Just Society

Description

This book analyzes Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels from a political philosophy perspective. When authors have focused on politics in Swift’s writings, this has usually meant a study of how Swift located himself on issues of his day such as church and state, and Ireland. Robertson claims by contrast that Gulliver’s Travels is fundamentally a book about the “ancients” (e.g. Plato, Aristotle), and the “moderns” (science and technology), and their contrasting views about the human condition. The claim that the Travels is “a kind of prolegomena” to political philosophy leaves open the possibility that it does not achieve, or seek to achieve, a fusion of various teachings but rather uses the device of alien societies to point us to uncomfortable aspects of political philosophy’s “larger questions” we are prone to ignore.  Swift, Robertson argues, draws our attention to some version of the classical republic, as idealized in Aristotle’s political writings and in Plato’s Republic, as opposed to a modern regime which, at its best or most intellectual, emphasizes modern science and technology in combination as a way to improve the human condition. Series Editors’ Preface Acknowledgments Praise for Political Philosophy in Gulliver’s Travels Contents 1 Introduction Gulliver’s Travels Today Reading Swift: A Modest Proposal, Tale of a Tub and Other Writings Other Prequels to the Travels: Ancients and Moderns Battle of the Books and Tale of a Tub Approaches to Gulliver’s Travels 2 Little People and Big People Big and Small Bodies Souls and Statesmanship Where Are Big Souls Found? The Transition to the Third Voyage 3 Nameless Moderns: Science, Miracles and Faith A First Look at Modern Science The Promise or Prospect of Miracles Medicine, the Body and Politics The Need to Return to the Ancients 4 A Realistic Utopia, and Human Passions Old Lilliput Swift’s Realistic Utopia The Upper Classes and Liberal Education 5 Heroic Ancients Speaking With the Dead Brutus and Others: Heroes and Citizenship Aristotle vs. The Moderns Other Afterlives 6 Rational Horses and Humans Cruel Humanitarians and Xenophobic Citizens Houyhnhnms vs. Yahoos Plausible Cosmologies Yahoos and Modern Europeans 7 European Imperialism and the Bible Types of Animal and Human Being People of the Book 8 What We Can Learn What Do the Houyhnhnms Learn? The Master: Reason, Enlightenment and Physics Sources Index