Events

On April 4, at 15:00, at Book House Ligamus of Ilia State University, at the invitation of Iliauni Social and Cultural Research Institute, Research Associate in history and politics at the University of Cambridge, Thomas Hopkins, will deliver the public lecture: Political Theory and Its History.

Why do we need to learn the history of political thought? Obviously, for the purposes of getting a better understanding of politics. The vast majority of modern philosophers cannot stand a temptation of defining politics as the realm of applied ethics. In case of such an approach, the purpose of theory proves to be identification of “norms.” As for practical politics, its aim appears to be to make the world compatible with the programme devised by the theory. When it comes to the history of political thought, it should be noted that it calls upon us to cast a skeptic glace upon this maneuver.

Thomas Hopkins’ lecture will focus your attention on the major changes having taken place in the methodology of political thought in 1960s and will pay close attention to the activities performed by the so called “School of Cambridge.”

Regarding the speaker:
Historian of politics, Thomas Hopkins, has delivered lectures in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge since 2015; at the same time, he has been a bye-fellow in History and Politics at Christ’s College, University of Cambridge.
In 2014-2015, he taught the history of political thought at the University of London.
In 2011, at Christ's College of the University of Cambridge, Thomas Hopkins defended his PHD thesis in the field of history, with the title: "Say and Sismondi on the political economy of post-revolutionary. Europe."
In 2005-2006, Hopkins studied at the same university on the Master's programme of philosophy with special emphasis on political thought and intellectual history.

Selected publications:

2015 ‘The Limits of “Cosmopolitical Economy”: Smith, List and the Paradox of Peace through Trade’, in T. Hippler and M. Vec, eds, Paradoxes of Peace in Nineteenth-Century Europe, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 77-91.
2014, "Ordering the World in the Nineteenth Century'; ‘Property and Poverty: Perspectives on the nineteenth-century Social Question’; ‘Before Socialism: Political economy and the Social Question in nineteenth-century France’, in M. Koskenniemi and B. Stråth, eds., Europe 1815-1914: Creating Community and Ordering the World, (Helsinki: University of Helsinki, 2014), pp. 33-43, 84-92, 93-106.
2016, Industrial Civilization: Political Thought in Post-Revolutionary France (monograph in preparation, estimated completion late 2016).

Date and time: April 4, 15:00
Venue:  Book House Ligamus of Ilia State University, #32 Ilia Chavchavadze Ave.

The lecture is free and everyone is welcome to attend.