Scobbie, Iain --- "‘The Holiness of the Heart’s Affection’: Philip Allott’s Theory of Social Idealism" [2011] ELECD 576; in Orakhelashvili, Alexander (ed), "Research Handbook on the Theory and History of International Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011)

Book Title: Research Handbook on the Theory and History of International Law

Editor(s): Orakhelashvili, Alexander

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848443549

Section: Chapter 7

Section Title: ‘The Holiness of the Heart’s Affection’: Philip Allott’s Theory of Social Idealism

Author(s): Scobbie, Iain

Number of pages: 29

Extract:

7 `The holiness of the heart's affection':1 Philip
Allott's theory of Social Idealism
Iain Scobbie


7.1 SETTING THE SCENE

Philip Allott has summarised the aim of his theory of Social Idealism in a pithy aphorism:

To change fundamentally the social organisation of the world by changing fundamentally the
ideas that support the social organisation of the world.2

The key features of Allott's Social Idealism are:

a belief in the capacity of the human mind to transcend itself in thought, to take power over the
human future, to choose the human future, to make the human future conform to our ideals, to
our best ideas of what we are and what we might be.3

As he has repeatedly stated, he seeks `a revolution in the mind, not in the streets'. This is
a recurring slogan in his writings. These comprise his monograph Eunomia,4 numerous

1
From John Keats's letter to Benjamin Bailey dated 22 November 1817: this phrase formed
part of the epigraph to Tom Franck's presentation at the celebratory meeting marking Philip
Allott's retirement from the University of Cambridge in May 2004, see Franck TM, The fervent
imagination and the school of hard knocks, 16 European Journal of International Law 343 (2005).
The papers presented at this meeting, and an edited transcript of the proceedings, have been pub-
lished as Philip Allott's `Eunomia' and `The health of nations', Thinking another world: `This cannot
be how the world was ...