Introduction

Abstract

This book argues that we should not be too quick to dismantle the canon of Western political thought as it presently stands. It is argued that in order to demonstrate a genuine respect for a diversity of histories of political thought, teachers of political theory do well to acknowledge a plurality of canons each representing a particular history, epistemic community, or intergenerational struggle. To make the case for preserving the traditional canon of Western political thought whilst valuing (and teaching) rival, even anti-canonical canons, however, the following chapters examine the important—but overlooked—notion of influence within debates surrounding tradition, originality, and canonicity more generally. Two key interrelated themes, therefore, converge throughout: the first is the meaning of influence at a theoretical level and secondly, the role that such an understanding of influence plays in ongoing controversies surrounding the teaching of the Western canon of political thought in a Higher Education setting. Here, theory does (hopefully) meet practice.

If ever we should find ourselves disposed not to admire those writers or artists, Livy and Virgil for instance, Raphael or Michael Angelo, whom all the learned had admired, [we ought] not to follow our own fancies, but to study them until we know how and what we ought to admire; and if we cannot arrive at this combination of admiration with knowledge, rather to believe that we are dull, than that the rest of the world has been imposed on.

—Edmund Burke, An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs, in Consequence of Some Late Discussions in Parliament, Relative to the Reflections on the French Revolution (1791)