Political Philosophy In Gullivers Travels Shocked By The Just Society Lloyd W Robertson by Lloyd W. Robertson 9783030988524, 303098852X instant download after payment.

This book analyzes Jonathan Swift’sGulliver’s Travelsfrom 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 thatGulliver’s Travelsis 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 theTravelsis “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’sRepublic, 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.