Backes - Political extremes a conceptual history from antiquity to the present

Political Extremes

The Western tradition of the constitutional state, with its ancient roots, defines political extremes as the epitome of that which must be absolutely rejected. It highlights tyranny, despotism, despotic rule, non-autonomy, ruthless enforcing of interests as extreme, contrasting this with a virtuous mean which guarantees moderation. In this volume, the culmination of twenty years of extensive research, Uwe Backes provides a conceptual history of the notions extreme and extremism from antiquity to the present day.

The terminological history of political extremes has been related for more than two millennia with the term mesots used in Aristotelian ethics and the theory of mixed constitution. Both doctrines influenced the republicanism of the North Italian city-states and later the United States of America as well as British parliamentarism. The positions of moderation and extremes were not joined until the course of the French Revolution with the distinction of right-and left-wing, and this is how it still exists today in the intellectualpolitical geography. This unique source-based study reconstructs these developments from ancient times to the present.

Tracing the history of the concept of political extremism from Ancient Greece to the present day, this is an invaluable resource for scholars of democracy, extremism and political sociology.

Uwe Backes is Deputy Director of the Hannah Arendt Institute for Research on Totalitarianism and teaches political science at the Technical University of Dresden, Saxony.

Political Extremes

A conceptual history from antiquity to the present

Uwe Backes

LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published in German in 2006 by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

First published in English in 2010 by Routledge
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2010 Uwe Backes

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Backes, Uwe, 1960
[Politische Extreme. English]
Political extremes : a conceptual history from antiquity to the present /
Uwe Backes.
p. cm. (Routledge studies in extremism and democracy)
Originally published in German: Gttingen : Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
2006.
1. Right and left (Political science)History. 2. Human rightsHistory.
3. ConservatismHistory. 4. RadicalismHistory. 5. DemocracyHistory.
I. Title.
JC571.B28 2009
320.509dc22 2009017222

ISBN 0-203-86725-4 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 978-0-415-47352-1 (hbk)

ISBN 978-0-203-86725-9 (ebk)