Civic Republicanism
Other areas of interest of his are political theory and the history of political thought, in particular the political tradition of civic republicanism.
This old political doctrine has enjoyed a revival since the 1960s. Authors such as Quentin Skinner, J.G.A. Pocock and more recently Philip Pettit have been pivotal in this effort of recovering and up-dating civic republicanism to meet contemporary demands.
In Virtude e Democracia, which was recently translated into Spanish, he tries to conciliate a critical re-examination of Habermas’s political thinking with a historically minded reconstruction of the civic republican tradition. The result is an attempt to show the limitations of “presentism” (to read ancient texts in search of answers to contemporary questions) as a methodological basis for theory construction, an insight that still inspires much of his work to this day.
References
Virtude e Democracia (ICS, 2004)
Virtud e Democracia (Biblioteca Nueva, 2009)
Bringing Republican Ideas Back Home: The Dewey-Laski Connection. History of European Ideas Vol. 35, 3, 360-368. [online]