The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (234 page)

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

Rhetoric is the persuasive use of language. Until the eighteenth century its study was one of the central disciplines in European universities alongside theology, natural and moral sciences, and law. Thereafter, empiricist and positivist methods of social inquiry led to its eclipse, on the ground that language, scientifically used, was no more than a transparent medium by which knowledge of the world gained by experience was mediated. Rhetoric, accordingly, came to be seen as the unnecessary or misleading embellishment and corruption of language—a view which
Plato
had held of the
sophists
. With the waning of faith in modernism, serious attention once again began to be devoted to language as a means to power. This was especially evident in the work of
Nietzsche
, but was also strongly implied in the revival of
hermeneutics
and the later work of Ludwig Wittgenstein on forms of life and the necessarily public character of language.
CJ 

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

(1881–1953)
English Quaker scientist; pioneer of scientific meteorology and the study of
arms races
. Studying the Anglo-German arms race in the years before the First World War, Richardson noticed that, as may happen with weather and other physical processes, English arms in one period may be a function of German arms in the last, and German arms in the next period may be a function of English arms in this period. This may lead either to catastrophe or to stable equilibrium. Richardson made numerous other contributions to the scientific study of politics, almost all unrecognized in his lifetime.

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

US term for a clause or provision added to an important bill, with no apparent link to the substance of the legislation. Although most riders would not pass into law if judged on their own merits, by attaching it to a bill that other members are reluctant to delay by tabling amendments to remove the riders, or the President to lose by invoking his veto, the measure may succeed. In many state legislatures the governor possesses a line-
item veto
in order to a prevent riders attached to a bill becoming law.

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

More a slogan than a precisely defined term.
Hobbes
argued that each human being has a fundamental duty of self-preservation, and hence a natural right to do whatever conduces to self-preservation. In Hobbes's social contract, however, rational individuals hand over all their rights to the person or body they nominate as their sovereign, all of whose actions they are thereby deemed to authorize. Hobbes's absolutism has just one exception: that, as the purpose of signing the social contract was to preserve oneself, the Sovereign cannot order a subject to kill him- or herself.
Locke
described civil society as an association for the ‘mutual Preservation of their Lives, Liberties, and Properties’, and this assertion is the ancestor of the claim in the American Declaration of Independence that: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty & the pursuit of happiness.’ Despite this high backing, the right to life is not an absolute right. Both Britain and America have had provision for capital punishment: Britain until 1967, and many US states to the present day. Attempts to have capital punishment declared unconstitutional have failed. Both countries have had provision for military conscription. Hobbes recognized that his political theory did not grant a right to life guaranteed by discussing the biblical story of Uriah the Hittite, whom King David sent to the wars in the (correct) expectation that Uriah would be killed, as David was having an affair with Uriah's wife. Hobbes insisted that David had not violated Uriah's rights, which makes it hard to see what rights Uriah had.
The right to life is also used as a slogan in contemporary argument about abortion ( see also
pro-life
) and euthanasia. ‘Right to Life’ is shorthand for the views of those militantly opposed to abortion, especially in the United States, because they argue that the foetus has an unconditional right to life. Those who favour euthanasia argue that if one has a right to one's life, one has a right to choose to end it. One might expect an association between opposing abortion and favouring euthanasia. However, the association tends the other way, partly because militant anti-abortionists are often
Christian fundamentalists
, who are among those who think that the taking of the life of an unborn foetus and of someone who wishes to die are equally forbidden.

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search