Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- Introduction: The Many Different Faces of Nostalgia – Exploring a Multifaceted and Multidisciplinary Emotion
- 1 Philosophy and Nostalgia: ‘Rooting’ within the Nostalgic Condition
- 2 History and Nostalgia: Historicizing a Multifaceted Emotion
- 3 Political Theory and Nostalgia: The Power of the Past in the History of Political Thought
- 4 Sociology and Nostalgia: Micro-, Meso-and Macro-level Dimensions of an Ambiguous Emotion
- 5 Psychology and Nostalgia: Towards a Functional Approach
- 6 Anthropology and Nostalgia: Between Hegemonic and Emancipatory Projections of the Past
- 7 Media Studies and Nostalgia: Media Philosophy and Nostalgizing in Times of Crisis
- 8 Marketing and Nostalgia: Unpacking the Past and Future of Marketing and Consumer Research on Nostalgia
- 9 Literature and Nostalgia: Vestiges of Paradise
- 10 Architecture and Nostalgia: The End of History, the End of the Future and the Prospect of Nostalgia
- Postscript: On Nostalgia of the Future and the Future of Nostalgia – Some Scattered Concluding Observations
- Index
3 - Political Theory and Nostalgia: The Power of the Past in the History of Political Thought
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 May 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- Introduction: The Many Different Faces of Nostalgia – Exploring a Multifaceted and Multidisciplinary Emotion
- 1 Philosophy and Nostalgia: ‘Rooting’ within the Nostalgic Condition
- 2 History and Nostalgia: Historicizing a Multifaceted Emotion
- 3 Political Theory and Nostalgia: The Power of the Past in the History of Political Thought
- 4 Sociology and Nostalgia: Micro-, Meso-and Macro-level Dimensions of an Ambiguous Emotion
- 5 Psychology and Nostalgia: Towards a Functional Approach
- 6 Anthropology and Nostalgia: Between Hegemonic and Emancipatory Projections of the Past
- 7 Media Studies and Nostalgia: Media Philosophy and Nostalgizing in Times of Crisis
- 8 Marketing and Nostalgia: Unpacking the Past and Future of Marketing and Consumer Research on Nostalgia
- 9 Literature and Nostalgia: Vestiges of Paradise
- 10 Architecture and Nostalgia: The End of History, the End of the Future and the Prospect of Nostalgia
- Postscript: On Nostalgia of the Future and the Future of Nostalgia – Some Scattered Concluding Observations
- Index
Summary
Introduction
I open this consideration of nostalgia and political theory with two passages from the history of political thought, and one from contemporary American politics. First, from Livy's History of Rome:
The subjects to which I would ask each of my readers to devote his earnest attention are these: the life and morals of the community; the men and the qualities by which through domestic policy and foreign war dominion was won and extended. Then as the standard of morality gradually lowers, let him follow the decay of the national character, observing how at first it slowly sinks, then slips downward more and more rapidly, and finally begins to plunge into headlong ruin, until he reaches these days, in which we can bear neither our diseases nor their remedies. (Livy 1912: Preface)
Livy thus introduces and frames his monumental work by contrasting a virtuous past with a degenerate present ‘in which we can bear neither our diseases nor their remedies’.
Second – continuing with the theme of Livy – from Niccolò Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy:
Men always praise (but not always reasonably) the ancient times and find fault with the present; and they are such partisans of things past, that they celebrate not only that age which has been recalled to their memory by known writers, but those also (being now old) which they remember having seen in their youth. (Machiavelli 1996: 123)
Here, Machiavelli distinguishes between two phenomena that ‘men … celebrate’: ‘the ancient times’, or ‘that age which has been recalled to their memory by known writers’ (in other words, times of which they can have no direct knowledge, but must rely on history books), and a past that they have, at least purportedly, experienced first hand; in other words, that ‘(being now old) they remember having seen in their youth’.
Third, to come closer to the present day, the 45th President of the United States: ‘When we were all younger – many of you are my age and many of you are younger – but when we were all younger we didn't lose so much, right? We don't win anymore. As a country, we don't win’ (Donald Trump, quoted in Johnson and Del Real 2016).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Intimations of NostalgiaMultidisciplinary Explorations of an Enduring Emotion, pp. 70 - 88Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2021