Political Philosophy in Gullivers Travels

This book analyzes Jonathan Swifts Gullivers Travels from a political philosophy perspective. When authors have focused on politics in Swifts writings, this has usually meant a study of how Swift located himself on issues of his day such as church and state, and Ireland. Robertson claims by contrast that Gullivers Travels is fundamentally a book about the ancients (e.g. Plato, Aristotle), and the moderns (science and technology), and their contrasting views about the human condition. The claim that the Travels is a kind of prolegomena to political philosophy leaves open the possibility that it does not achieve, or seek to achieve, a fusion of various teachings but rather uses the device of alien societies to point us to uncomfortable aspects of political philosophys larger questions we are prone to ignore. Swift, Robertson argues, draws our attention to some version of the classical republic, as idealized in Aristotles political writings andin Platos Republic, as opposed to a modern regime which, at its best or most intellectual, emphasizes modern science and technology in combination as a way to improve the human condition.