Overview
Covenants without Swords examines an enduring tension within liberal theory: that between many liberals' professed commitment to universal equality on the one hand, and their historic support for the politics of hierarchy and empire on the other. It does so by examining the work of two extremely influential British liberals and internationalists, Gilbert Murray and Alfred Zimmern. Jeanne Morefield mounts a forceful challenge to disciplinary boundaries by arguing that this tension, on both the domestic and international levels, is best understood as frequently arising from the same, liberal reformist political aim--namely, the aim of fashioning a socially conscious liberalism that ultimately reifies putatively natural, preliberal notions of paternalistic order. Morefield also questions conventional analyses of interwar thought by resurrecting the work of Murray and Zimmern, and by linking their approaches to liberal internationalism with the ossified notion of sovereignty that continues to trouble international politics to this day.Ultimately, Morefield argues, these two thinkers' drift toward conservative and imperialist understandings of international order was the result of a more general difficulty still faced by liberals today: how to adequately define community in liberal terms without sacrificing these terms themselves. Moreover, Covenants without Swords suggests that Murray and Zimmern's work offers a cautionary historical example for the cadre of post-September 11th ""new imperialists"" who believe it possible to combine a liberal commitment to equality with an American Empire.
Full Product Details
Author: Jeanne Morefield
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Imprint: Princeton University Press
Dimensions:
Width: 15.20cm
, Height: 1.50cm
, Length: 23.50cm
Weight: 0.397kg
ISBN: 9780691171401
ISBN 10: 0691171408
Pages: 280
Publication Date: 28 June 2016
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
College/higher education
,
Professional & Vocational
,
Tertiary & Higher Education
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Manufactured on demand
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.
Language: English
Reviews
"""Morefield has provided a sure-handed and tightly argued account of a body of liberal thought whose failings had unfortunate effects on world politics and whose paradoxes continue to be instructive.""--Jennifer Pitts, Perspectives on Politics"
Morefield has provided a sure-handed and tightly argued account of a body of liberal thought whose failings had unfortunate effects on world politics and whose paradoxes continue to be instructive. --Jennifer Pitts, Perspectives on Politics
Author Information
Jeanne Morefield is associate professor of political theory at the University of Oxford, and a fellow at New College, Oxford.
