Mon but est d’examiner en détail les arguments avancés par Vernant au début des années soixante du siècle dernier, quand il a caractérisé, selon une formule célèbre, la philosophie comme « fille de la Cité » (fille de la polis). Mon argument principal est que le concept d’isonomia, qui n’est central dans le débat politique athénien que depuis les dernières décennies du vie siècle, ne peut être aussi facilement utilisé pour rendre compte de la nouvelle conception de l’espace physique, (...) qui émerge à Milet au début de ce siècle. En tout cas, l’utilisation de modèles politiques dans la science grecque ancienne de la nature est un procédé conscient, comme je tente de le montrer en analysant certains textes célèbres comme le fragment 4 d’Alcméon et le fragment 1 d’Anaximandre. De plus, dans le cas d’Anaximandre on peut se demander si l’explanandum dans l’analogie était l’ordre du monde ou plutôt celui de la polis. (shrink)

This book argues that political philosophy is central to early Stoic philosophy, and is deeply tied to the Stoics' conceptions of reason and wisdom. Broad in scope, it explores the Stoics' idea of the cosmic city, their notion of citizen-gods, as well as their account of the law.

The Political Philosophy of the European City offers a wide-ranging panorama of urban political culture in Europe. Its historical scope ranges from the ancient polis through Italian city-states to the ideal of “small is beautiful” in the 20th century. As a political theory, it offers an analysis of conservative, urban republicanism.

Philosophy is the quest for knowledge of the whole by a being who is himself a whole but not the whole. The quest is given with our very being. It makes us be what we are, both acting and thinking beings. It explains the constant dynamism that charges through our being whether we like it or not. Further, it incites us to know what we are in order that we might choose to be what we are. We are the only (...) beings in the universe that cannot be what we are without our own decision actually to be what we…. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:TRANSCENDENT MAN IN THE LIMITED CITY: THE POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF CHARLES N. R. McCOY ]AMES v. SCHALL, S.J. Georgetown University Washington, D. C. The history of political philosophy since the time of St. Thomas has been a history of successive failures to relate ethics to politics and of successive attempts to find a substitute for theology, either in politics itself... or in economics.... Men are today oppressed by false (...) theologies erected into political systems, and those who are not so oppressed are in risk of becoming so oppressed by an intellectual and moral inability to defend themselves. St. Thomas's political science will not give us the answers to problems of hydro-electric development or technological unemployment ; but it will give us the answer to the most vital of contemporary problems: how to secure the rational foundations of humane living. -Charles N. R. McCoy," St. Thomas and Political Science." 1 I IN WRITING ABOUT the small but rich corpus in political philosophy by Charles N. R. McCoy, the temptation is almost irresistible to call it, wittily, " The Real McCoy," or, more academically, a theoretic essay on the reasons for our " intellectual and moral inability to defend ourselves." The kind of being we are, no doubt, needs defense, needs an explication that justifies its unique givenness. Charles N. R. McCoy is not generally wellknown, though he has a small and (one hopes) growing number of admirers. The very cultural unlikelihood of his central theme, 1 On the Intelligibility of Political Philosophy: Essays of Charles N. R. McCoy, edited by James V. Schall, S.J. and John J. Schrems (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1989), p. 38. 63 64 JAMES V. SCHALL, S.J. which 1s m no sense Hegelian, that there is indeed a coherent philosophical intelligibility-a "structure "-to political philosophy, makes his work both unique, profoundly appealing, and perhaps even prophetic. McCoy was concerned to explain the transcendence of each person, each citizen, beyond the city, indeed beyond this world, without denying his exact political nature and the reasons for its limits. Man was both a political and a philosophical animal to whom more than either politics or philosophy was given. The dignity of the city was essentially revealed in its limits, in what good it could do with its own means while leaving other admitted goods untouched, in what questions it could legitimately bring up because of its experienced life, but still could not answer by itself. On reading him carefully in one's own pursuit of philosophic wisdom in an age replete with sundry mental and moral confusions, it is tempting to affirm that, at last, in political philosophy here is found a body of reflection which is indeed " the real McCoy." Here is a consistent examination of philosophic principle that accounts for the contours of the whole of the discipline in its most radical origins and clearest limits. McCoy's "reality" does not, to be sure, exist for most of the political science profession itself nor for Christian thinkers in the field of political thought. This situation is unfortunate on both counts. Political philosophy, for its part, has pursued in modern times the line of its own autonomy in rejecting the great tradition which affirmed the limited place of politics in the order of being, its position as a practical, not speculative science. Theology-itself seeking relevance in lieu of transcendence-has largely imitated this modern turn in political thought. The crisis in theology is, more than anything else, the result of a crisis in political philosophy, its evolution in modernity. Thus in a discipline in which so many of the ultimate human issues are either not confronted at all or are at best confused, in a theological environment which is itself largely infected with the theoretical deviations McCoy chronicled, this benign neglect of his work may turn out to be an advantage. McCoy's independence of these ideological movements, grounded POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF CHARLES N. R. MC COY 65 as it is in the philosophical tradition from which these movements systematically deviated, provides a new and fresh way of coming to terms with the meaning of political philosophy itself. In a spirit of... (shrink)

This paper examines the issue of Islamic political philosophy in terms of prophecy, revelation and divine law. It is important to note that philosophy, and Islamic politics are in a good relation with religion. In the present study I have developed this connection through the philosophical theories of the medieval philosopher Al-Farabi. What are the differences and similarities between philosophy and divine law, or between a philosopher and prophet? What are Al-Farabi’s most important political theories and what are the concepts (...) of virtuous city and democratic city? What is the philosophy of the Quran? Our study seeks to answer all this questions. The divine law sets the beliefs and actions of the Islamic community, while the theoretical aspects which relate to it are entrusted to the philosophers. Theology is a discipline which protects divine law and establishes the truth of a special revelation, political theology being complementary to political philosophy. Theology tries to develop a rational and coherent understanding of the divine law, to find out what is the prophecy and to differentiate the true prophets from the false ones. (shrink)

Philosophy and religion were the two important sources of knowledge for medieval Arab Muslim polymaths. Owing to the difference between the nature of philosophy and religion, the interplay between philosophy and religion often takes the form of conflict in medieval Muslim thought as exemplified by the Al-Ghazali versus Averroes (Ibn Rusd) polemic. Unlike the Al-Ghazali versus Averroes (Ibn Rushd) polemic, the interplay between philosophy and religion in the political philosophy of Abu Nasr Alfarabi takes the form of harmonious co-existence. Although, (...) for Alfarabi, religion is an inferior form of knowledge as compared to philosophy, the present article will show that philosophy and religion play equally significant roles in Alfarabi’s virtuous city and that in the absence of either philosophy or religion, the political system proposed by Alfarabi cannot exist. (shrink)

Mr. Cohen's political geography is unexpectedly topical. His conception of political philosophy is not so advanced; however Cohen's disposition is all for forward movement. Insisting perhaps too strongly upon the etymology of "political," Cohen would even have us cease doing "political philosophy"; for, he says, there are no longer any truly sovereign and autonomous states left in the world. The era of the nation-state has vanished quite as definitely into the past as the era of the city-state. We live in (...) a "polycentric" world community, under a regime of law, though the world community is not itself a sovereign state, nor are there any sovereign states that are a part of it. The members of the world community are people, obliged to support whatever international laws and agencies of international collaboration there are, and there are many of them. To assert that there is a world community is to imply that there are no sovereign national states to impose obligations equally eminent or superior. (shrink)

RESUMEN Este artículo pretende comprender la filosofía de Platón como un ejercicio esencialmente político. Esto implica, sin embargo, distinguir cómo se ejerce esta filosofía política, su sentido y alcance. Muchos estudiosos han atribuido a Platón el proyecto político que Sócrates desarrolla en la República. Sin embargo, el símil de la caverna da cuenta de la imposibilidad o, al menos, de la interna problematicidad de tal proyecto, por lo cual se sugiere que no es en el diálogo República donde se encontraría (...) la auténtica filosofía política de Platón, sino en los denominados diálogos aporéticos. En estos diálogos no se habla sobre una posible ciudad, sino que se ejercita de manera viva una política desarrollada por la dialéctica terapéutica de Sócrates, cuya tarea es desvelar la virtud mediante el desenmascaramiento de los rostros de la ciudad. ABSTRACT The following paper contends that Plato's philosophy is essentially a political activity. This imply, however, to distinguish how this political philosophy carries out, its meaning and scope. Many scholars have attributed to Plato the political project, which Socrates develops in the dialogue Republic. Nevertheless, the simile of the cave reveals the impossibility of such a project or, at least, the serious problems that lie behind it. So, I suggest, that is not in the dialogue Republic where it finds Plato's authentic political philosophy, but in the so-called aporetic dialogues. In these dialogues it does not discuss about a possible city, but it exercises in a lively way a politics builted by Socrates' dialectic therapy, whose task is unveiling the virtue through the unmasking the faces of the city. (shrink)

This small book explores the political thought of Lucretius, by analysing De rerum natura. Nichols does not move immediately to the last section of Book V, which discusses clearly political phenomena; rather he locates that section within the place it has in the entire poem. Writing in the Straussian tradition, Nichols analyses not only the sections of the poem relevant to the political enterprise, but discusses the form and movement of the poem as a whole. Chapter 1 asks how we (...) can take such an apparently antipolitical and antireligious tradition—the Epicurean—as serious political philosophy, answering that the Epicurean-Lucretian materialist atomism, and its consequences for our understanding of the whole of things, represents a fundamental philosophic alternative to the Socratic-idealist political tradition. The traditions agree, though, on the primacy of philosophy for genuine human fulfillment. Chapter 2 elucidates Lucretius’ non-Epicurean choice of a poetic medium for his philosophy. Nichols ties it both to the need for beauty to conceal Lucretius’ bitter doctrine of the whole of things until Epicurean philosophy can replace politics and religion, and also to poetry’s "psychagogic utility." These claims are often made of Plato’s use of poetry. It is thus unfortunate that Nichols does not discuss the differences and similarities between Plato’s and Lucretius’ use of poetry, because Plato’s political project, and hence his dramatic philosophical presentations, seems essential to his philosophy, whereas "The element of poetry does not arise naturally or automatically from the Epicurean doctrine." Chapter 3 describes the character of the poem as a whole. Nichols works through the development from the first two Epicurean metaphysical principles to the Lucretian teaching which opposes the fear of death and the chains of love. This teaching does not rest on the overcoming of false religious fears but rather on not attributing "something more than belongs to our mortal condition to oneself or to another." It is this thesis in its metaphysical, theological, and political dimensions that is the core of Nichols’ reading of Lucretius. Chapter 4 deals specifically with Lucretius’ political concerns. Its two themes are Lucretius’ evaluation of the development of current political society, and his response to the bitter truth about man’s relationship to a thoroughly nonteleological universe. Both themes are, to say the least, bleak. traces the "natural" development of political society out of primitive association and through pre-political life. While this development is "natural," and in a way mandated by human desires, Nichols is clear that "... the most striking aspect of Lucretius’ treatment of political society is his depreciation of political life... There is no indication that Lucretius thinks the city achieves any other good purpose". describes the tension between religion and politics, and philosophy. The former try to replace or control fears and excess desires by other fears and desires. "Only philosophy" "can purge a man’s heart of unnecessary desires and thus enable him to live well without fear...." Chapter 5 compares Lucretius with Hobbes, Montesquieu, and Rousseau: "... all three share a hopefulness for fundamental improvements in man’s lot that sets them apart from Lucretius...." Nichols’ book presents a consistent picture of Lucretius’ work as a whole, and of the interrelationship of themes in it which lie beyond the domain of politics.—J.R. (shrink)

In this work, Muhsin Mahdi--widely regarded as the preeminent scholar of Islamic political thought--distills more than four decades of research to offer an authoritative analysis of the work of Alfarabi, the founder of Islamic political philosophy. Mahdi, who also brought to light writings of Alfarabi that had long been presumed lost or were not even known, presents this great thinker as his contemporaries would have seen him: as a philosopher who sought to lay the foundations for a new understanding of (...) revealed religion and its relation to the tradition of political philosophy. Beginning with a survey of Islamic philosophy and a discussion of its historical background, Mahdi considers the interrelated spheres of philosophy, political thought, theology, and jurisprudence of the time. He then turns to Alfarabi's concept of "the virtuous city," and concludes with an in-depth analysis of the trilogy, Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. This philosophical engagement with the writings of and about Alfarabi will be essential reading for anyone interested in medieval political philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Platonopolis: Platonic Political Philosophy in Late AntiquityMichael F. WagnerDominic J. O'Meara. Platonopolis: Platonic Political Philosophy in Late Antiquity. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003. Pp. xi + 249. Cloth, $55.00.Porphyry tells of Plotinus's failed petition to emperor Gallienus to (re)establish a "city of philosophers" conformed to Plato's laws, named Platonopolis (Vit. Plo.12). O'Meara here articulates primary themes and developments in philosophical political thought in the classical Neoplatonic period, from Plotinus's (...) day in the mid-third century into the sixth century. Concurrently, he addresses head on "the conventional view that the Platonist philosophers of Late Antiquity had no political philosophy" (3). This view exemplifies the more general perspective that the Neoplatonists were simply disinterested in this-worldly affairs in lieu of "an immaterial world... our true 'homeland,' where we can at last attain the good we desire" (3). Consequently, O'Meara provides both a unique study of an important [End Page 205] topic and a compelling case for a more complete, balanced understanding of Neoplatonic other-worldly-ness. O'Meara's study covers key figures from four main groups of (neo)Platonists: Plotinus and his students; the schools in Syria and Asia Minor inspired by Iamblichus; the Athenian school (Plutarch, Proclus, Damascius et al.); and the Alexandrian school (Hyapatia, Philoponus, Olympiodorus et al.). He organizes his investigation (chapters) into three Parts.The pivotal concept in O'Meara's two-pronged endeavor is divinization - "assimilation and unification, as far as possible, to god" (31, Proclus) - a concept whose meaning for classical Neoplatonists ranges from "becoming a god" to "imitating some form of divine life, in one way or another" (31). Part I focuses on the Neoplatonists' shared association of a human soul's divinization with virtue-osity [my jargon], beginning with Plotinus's distinction between political virtue(s) and purification—or purificatory virtue(s). O'Meara emphasizes the relevance of the resulting "scale of virtues" to a life of continued activity—for example explicating Plotinus's denial that a "purified" soul is somehow exempt from the rightness-of-acting expected of the politically virtuous soul: rather, "reaching higher principles and different measures he will act [directly, immediately] according to these" (43, En. I,2,7).Another organizing theme as O'Meara's investigations proceed beyond Plotinus is the significance of the increasing complexities of particular Neoplatonic metaphysical systems, and so also of their moral systems - e.g. their "scales of virtue." Part I also articulates related attempts (beginning with Porphyry and Iamblichus) to articulate programs of moral and philosophical study - i.e. a related "scale of sciences." Of special note here are proposals by some Neoplatonists to divide the "practical sciences" associated on this scale with political virtuousness into legislative science(s) and judicial science (56). Implicit in the Neoplatonic scale(s) of virtue(s) was the thesis that as one progresses towards divinization "lower" virtue-osity is not transcended in the sense of lost or dismissed but rather it is included or incorporated into a higher form. Arguably, "lower" sciences are likewise not merely aids or stepping-stones towards something "higher," but genuine topoi of study and knowledge in their own right.Part II is the true heart of O'Meara's outstanding scholarly and philosophical inquiry. Here is where he fulfills his intent to discern a substantive tradition of political philosophy and to articulate its key themes and concepts. Though he associates this part of his investigation with Plato's conceit of the philosopher's return to the cave, he immediately parses this "descent" as a "divinization of political life through philosophy" (71). He articulates various Neoplatonists' approaches to questions inspired by Plato's cave allegory—e.g. Is the philosopher socially obligated to "return"? Could s/he then still be happy? (His investigation here does seem to overlook Neoplatonic conceptions of choice, volition, or will as these might pertain to such questions.) O'Meara recognizes, however, that the more fundamental link between Neoplatonic metaphysics and Neoplatonic ethical-political thought derives from Plotinus's conception "of fecundity, of an [overflowing] abundance" (74) in his highest One, and so in a soul assimilated to It. In Proclus's formulation: "that which... (shrink)

Public deliberation, highly valued by many African societies, becomes the cornerstone of a new system of African political philosophy in this brilliant, highly original study. In Deliberative Agency, philosopher Uchenna Okeja offers a way to construct a new political center by building it around the ubiquitous African practice of public deliberation, a widely accepted means to resolve legal matters, reconcile feuding groups, and reestablish harmony. In cities, hometown associations and voluntary organizations carry out the task of fostering deliberation among African (...) groups for different reasons. In some instances, the deliberation aims to settle disputes. In others, the aim is to decide the best action to take to address unfortunate incidents such as death. Through a measured, comparative analysis, Deliberative Agency argues that the best way to reimagine and harness the idea of public deliberation, based on current experiences in Africa, is to see it as performance of agency. Building a new political center around the practice places agency at the core of a new political life in Africa. (shrink)

SummaryJerusalem is the holy city for Leo Strauss. It is the symbol of Judaism; moreover it is a root of Western culture together with Athens. But it would be wrong to label Strauss' philosophical thought with such definitions as ‘Jewish philosophy’. Therefore it is surprising that many contemporary interpreters strive to find a confessional or religious foundation in Strauss' thought. On the contrary, many of Strauss's texts testify his choice in favour of Athens, i.e., of philosophy. Yet the choice of (...) Athens does not imply a rejection of Jerusalem. Strauss is convinced that Jerusalem plays a central role in Western civilisation and considers the indifference to religion and the ideologisation of philosophy completed in the modern age as causes of Western crisis, i.e., of contemporary nihilism. Philosophy and religion are forced to live side by side (like philosophy and politics) because neither reason nor revelation can express the ultimate word on the good and the just, i.e., on truth. (shrink)

The Politics of Heaven and Hell makes an invaluable contribution to the understanding of classical, medieval, and modern political philosophy, while explaining the profound problem with modernity. Christianity 'freed men from the overwhelming burden of ever thinking that their salvation will ultimately come from the political order', writes Fr. James Schall, S.J. Modernity, on the other hand, is a perversion of Christianity, which tries to achieve man's salvation in this world. It does this by politicizing everything, which results in the (...) absolute state: 'The distance from the City of God to the Leviathan is not at all far once the City of God is relocated on earth.' The best defense against this tyranny is 'the adequate description of the highest things, of what is beyond politics'"--Inside jacket. (shrink)

In Mabādi’ ārā’ ahl al-madīna al-fādila as well as other major political writings of al-Fārābī, politics is accompanied by metaphysics. However, the co-existence of politics and Neoplatonic metaphysics in al-Fārābī is usually refuted on the basis of two major arguments: one, the Neoplatonic argument, which denies al-Fārābī’s politics; and two, the Straussian argument, which denies al-Fārābī’s Neoplatonic metaphysics. However, this article would show that the two arguments against the co-existence of politics and Neoplatonic metaphysics in al-Fārābī are faulty, and that (...) politics and Neoplatonic metaphysics certainly co-exist in al-Fārābī’s philosophical thought. It would be shown that, in fact, Neoplatonic metaphysics plays an important role in al-Fārābī’s politics and distinguishes his theory of the virtuous city from that of Plato’s Republic. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Politics and the Earthly City in Augustine's City of God by Veronica Roberts OgleAaron C. EbertPolitics and the Earthly City in Augustine's City of God by Veronica Roberts Ogle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), x + 201 pp.Politics is not a word in Augustine's lexicon—at least, it's not something he speaks of, in the abstract, in his great work of political theology, the City of God. This curious (...) omission from Augustine's late magnum opus et arduum has given rise to many a divergent reading of his political thought. Lacking an express account of the very term in question, his politics can seem to admit of a wide range of interpretations. On one side of the spectrum, it has been described as anticipating the religious neutrality of modern liberalism. On the other side, it has been interpreted as consolidating politics into religion by transposing political philosophy into the key of ecclesiology and making the Church the new realm of politics.1 In her elegantly written and insightful new book, which builds on the work of her 2014 dissertation at the University of Notre Dame and on a few published articles, Veronica Roberts Ogle charts a new interpretive path for reading Augustine on politics. She does this by means of two principal interventions.The first is by elucidating City of God's rhetorical purpose, what Ogle calls its "psychagogic character" (6). Psychagogy, "the art of leading [agô] souls [psychai] to a state of health," was the rhetorical aim and genre of much ancient philosophy (3). It took its cue from the philosopher's perception that his readers were sick with the disease of unhealthy attachment to the things of the world. Philosophers were physicians of the soul: they applied "the medicinal art of contraries" to their sick patients. This meant that their literary curatives often met patients/readers with the bitter taste of a poison (4). But—and this is the crucial point for Ogle—the poison was given for the purpose of health. What this means for Augustine's City of God, Ogle argues, is that we ought not take the work's biting and at-times-venomous rhetoric as evidence that Augustine is trying to poison his reader's vision of politics. Rather, he is trying to cure them of their attachment to the myths and delusions of politics-according-to-Rome and, instead, "to help us see the world, even the political world, anew: as part of a created order that is good, but that points beyond itself all the same" (4). Augustine's descriptions of Rome—indeed his frequent equations of Rome with the civitas [End Page 1426] terrena—are indeed meant to shock. But, so Ogle argues, they are meant to shock us out of destructive attachments so that we can learn to make the right attachments, first to Christ, and then, through Christ, to our earthly communities as pilgrims. City of God's pessimistic rhetoric is not Augustine simply denouncing the natural project of politics. It is a bitter medicine for a people deathly ill with an addiction to earthly glory.The second intervention of Ogle's book lies in its attention to what she calls City of God's "sacramental ethos" (5). This, I would argue, is the book's most important contribution. It is also the insight on which the heart of the book's argument depends. Sacraments, for Augustine, are signs that point us to God. Understood in this broad sense, the whole created order—that is, everything that is not God—has the quality of a sacrament by virtue of its very existence. This is connected closely to Augustine's understanding of evil as privatio boni: all that exists, to the extent that it exists, is good; and all that exists is, by nature, a sign (signum) pointing beyond itself to the Lord.These are not new insights into Augustine's doctrine of creation, but Ogle's application of them to the question of politics and the earthly city is suggestive. For what emerges is a new account of the relationship between politics and the earthly city. The whole created order... (shrink)

This paper explores Sean Kirkland’s thesis that relation is the fundamental concept in Aristotelian political philosophy. While substance is prior to relation in Aristotle’s metaphysics, Kirkland argues that since the human exists only in the context of a city which is defined by the essential diversity of views on the human good, relation precedes substantial unity in politics. I argue that the priority of the substantial unity of the city should not be seen to threaten the importance of political relations. (...) Already in his theoretical ontology, Aristotle sees relation as absolutely essential and integral to the identity and existence of any mortal individual. Because of the essentially dynamic and relational activity of any mortal substance, the city as political substance must include and preserve deep diversity and difference within itself. The priority of the substantial over the relational, which makes possible the constitutive power of relations in the life of substances, is as operative in politics as it is in metaphysics. (shrink)

This paper explores Sean Kirkland’s thesis that relation is the fundamental concept in Aristotelian political philosophy. While substance is prior to relation in Aristotle’s metaphysics, Kirkland argues that since the human exists only in the context of a city which is defined by the essential diversity of views on the human good, relation precedes substantial unity in politics. I argue that the priority of the substantial unity of the city should not be seen to threaten the importance of political relations. (...) Already in his theoretical ontology, Aristotle sees relation as absolutely essential and integral to the identity and existence of any mortal individual. Because of the essentially dynamic and relational activity of any mortal substance, the city as political substance must include and preserve deep diversity and difference within itself. The priority of the substantial over the relational, which makes possible the constitutive power of relations in the life of substances, is as operative in politics as it is in metaphysics. (shrink)

This article re-exams the old tension between the philosopher and the city. Reading Ibn Bājja’s Governance of the Solitary and Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra against the background of Plato’s Republic, I argue that they both embrace several key aspects of Platonic political philosophy: the assumption that philosophical natures can grow spontaneously in sick cities, the ideal of the philosopher legislator and the correlative project of founding a virtuous new regime. Yet in preparation for this final task, each prescribes a regimen (...) of solitude for philosophers, so that they might preserve their own health and autonomy. While this spiritual exercise at first appears merely temporary and provisional—aimed at the cultivation of a philosopher ruler and the eventual establishment of a healthy political regime —I argue that both Ibn Bājja and Zarathustra ultimately abandon their Platonic ambitions and opt instead for the apolitical contemplative life. (shrink)

A model is “any representation or concept that helps us to understand the world whenever common sense or direct observations are inadequate.” Common sense and direct observation often prove inadequate to the complexities of the twenty-first-century cities. Thus, models abound in urban life and governance. However, a model is not only a tool for control but a way of defining a situation. Framing the city so as to render it susceptible to interpretation and intervention is an exercise not merely with (...) scientific or technological value but with rhetorical power. The tradition of comprehensive urban models, beginning with the advent of computers and culminating in the self-analyzing “smart city,” I argue, sidelines this rhetorical power in favor of a tone of scientific authority that, while justifiable in technical domains, does not legitimately scale to the level of a political community. Making good on the civic potential of Big Data thus requires recontextualizing properly scientific enterprises within an adequate political philosophy of the city, allowing for the construction of cultural urban models that set human freedom at the core of its inner workings. (shrink)

This book is the first to interpret and reflect on Augustine's seminal argument concerning humility and pride, especially in politics and philosophy, in The City of God. Mary Keys shows how contemporary readers have much to gain from engaging Augustine's lengthy argument on behalf of virtuous humility. She also demonstrates how a deeper understanding of the classical and Christian philosophical-rhetorical modes of discourse in The City of God enables readers to appreciate and evaluate Augustine's nuanced case for humility in politics, (...) philosophy, and religion. Comprised of a series of interpretive essays and commentaries following Augustine's own order of segments and themes in The City of God, Keys' volume unpacks the author's complex text and elucidates its challenge, meaning, and importance for contemporary readers. It also illuminates a central, yet easily underestimated theme with perennial relevance in a classic work of political thought and religion. (shrink)

Josh Wilburn examines the relationship between Plato's views on psychology and his political philosophy. Focusing on his reflections on the spirited part of the tripartite soul, or thumos, and spirited motivation, he explores the social and political challenges that occupy Plato throughout his works.

Many interpreters of Plato's Laws have seen the introduction of the ‘nocturnal council’ towards the end of that dialogue as a return to the sort of philosophic dictatorship allegedly recommended in the Republic and thus as a betrayal of the principle of the rule of law evinced in most of the Laws. This paper defends the consistency of the council with the larger programme of the Laws by showing that its function is philosophic discussion and not rule. Its influence will (...) be the influence of philosophy on its members, who already occupy political offices in the city, and not direct rule as a body. In this way, the council provides a point of entry for the transpolitical good of philosophy into the city and thus offers an essentially legal regime the means of transcending some of its characteristic limitations. It also points to larger themes in Plato's political philosophy. (shrink)

Plato and the City is a general introduction to Plato's political thought. It covers the main periods of Platonic thought, examining those dialogues that best show how Plato makes the city's unity the aim of politics and then makes the quest for that unity the aim of philosophy. From the psychological model to the physiological definition, the reader can traverse the whole of Plato's oeuvre, and understand it as a political philosophy. The book is designed to be an undergraduate textbook (...) but will also be of interest to scholars. It is the first English translation of Platon et la cité, published in French by Presses Universitaires de France in 1997 as part of the series Philosophies, and offers English-speaking readers access to a more unifying continental European reading of Plato than is common in UK or North American scholarship. (shrink)

François Laruelle has been developing his project of non-philosophy since the 1970s. Throughout this time he has aimed at nothing less than the discovery and development of a new form of thinking that draws its material from philosophy and related disciplines, but uses them in inventive new ways that are seen as heretical by standard philosophical approaches. The contributions to this volume highlight Laruelle’s own distinctive approach to the history of thought and bring together researchers in the Anglophone and Francophone (...) world who have taken up the project of non-philosophy in their own way, developing new heresies, sometimes even in relation to non-philosophy itself. The contributions here show the scope of non-philosophy with essays on gender, science, religion, politics, animals, and the history of philosophy. They are all brought together, not in a city of intellectuals bound together by law, but within a city of heretics bound together only by their status as stranger. This book was originally published as a special issue of _Angelaki. _. (shrink)

In Mabādi’ ārā’ ahl al-madīna al-fādila as well as other major political writings of al-Fārābī, politics is accompanied by metaphysics. However, the co-existence of politics and Neoplatonic metaphysics in al-Fārābī is usually refuted on the basis of two major arguments: one, the Neoplatonic argument, which denies al-Fārābī’s politics; and two, the Straussian argument, which denies al-Fārābī’s Neoplatonic metaphysics. However, this article would show that the two arguments against the co-existence of politics and Neoplatonic metaphysics in al-Fārābī are faulty, and that (...) politics and Neoplatonic metaphysics certainly co-exist in al-Fārābī’s philosophical thought. It would be shown that, in fact, Neoplatonic metaphysics plays an important role in al-Fārābī’s politics and distinguishes his theory of the virtuous city from that of Plato’s Republic. (shrink)

This is an exploration of the political thought of the American transcendentalists focusing on Emerson, Thoreau, and Fuller. They were writing at a time when the American state was thought of as sacred, the two cities of Augustine, the City of God and the City of Man, combined as one. Indeed the Augustinian metaphor was a powerful one, frequently invoked in this period. American republican democracy in the City of Man enabled citizens through their participation in the state to achieve (...) something close to the spiritual status of the City of God. The transcendentalists, with their emphasis on the importance of individual freedom, did not accept this analysis, according to Daniel Malachuk. They looked at American democracy and saw much that did not support individual pursuit of goodness nor a society that approached the status of the City of God. For example, the continued existence of slavery hardly fit with a godly place. Malachuk argues that the separation between the City of God and the City of Man remains important to transcendentalists who thought that individuals needed to be given space by the state to pursue their individual development. (shrink)

A compelling conversation between African American political intellectuals And The canon of western political philosophy.

It is often held that according to Aristotle the city is a natural organism. One major reason for this organic interpretation is no doubt that Aristotle describes the relationship between the individual and the city as a part-whole relationship, seemingly the same relationship that holds between the parts of a natural organism and the organism itself. Moreover, some scholars (most notably Jonathan Barnes) believe this view of the city led Aristotle to accept an implicit totalitarianism. I argue, however, that an (...) investigation of the various ways Aristotle describes parts and wholes reveals that for Aristotle the city has a unity (and thus a nature) quite different from that of a natural organism. (shrink)

Minimally, Aristotle's account of the 'city' is isomorphic with his metaphysical doctrine of substance and teleological conception of nature. Maximally, his political theory depends on it. Part I explains what this means. Part II discusses the significant consequences the notion of a 'substantial city' has for Aristotle's political theory. Part III suggests how this notion can be deployed to address the notorious question of whether the Politics forms a unified whole, or whether Books 4, 5 and 6 -- the 'realist' (...) or empirical books -- simply cannot be reconciled with Books 1, 2, 3, 7 and 8, the more 'idealist' or even 'Platonist' side of the work. (shrink)

Minimally, Aristotle’s account of the ‘city’ is isomorphic with his metaphysical doctrine of substance and teleological conception of nature. Maximally, his political theory depends on it. Part I explains what this means. Part II discusses the significant consequences the notion of a ‘substantial city’ has for Aristotle’s political theory. Part III suggests how this notion can be deployed to address the notorious question of whether the Politics forms a unified whole, or whether Books 4, 5 and 6 — the ‘realist’ (...) or empirical books—simply cannot be reconciled with Books 1, 2, 3, 7 and 8, the more ‘idealist’ or even ‘Platonist’ side of the work. (shrink)

Plato and the City is a general introduction to Plato's political thought. It covers the main periods of Platonic thought, examining those dialogues that best show how Plato makes the city's unity the aim of politics and then makes the quest for that unity the aim of philosophy. From the psychological model to the physiological definition, the reader can traverse the whole of Plato's oeuvre, and understand it as a political philosophy. The book is designed to be an undergraduate textbook (...) but will also be of interest to scholars. It is the first English translation of Platon et la cité, published in French by Presses Universitaires de France in 1997 as part of the series Philosophies, and offers English-speaking readers access to a more unifying continental European reading of Plato than is common in UK or North American scholarship. (shrink)

In his political treatise, Mabadi ara ahl al-madina al-fadhila, Abu Nasr Alfarabi, the medieval Muslim philosopher, proposes a theory of virtuous city which, according to prominent scholars, is modeled on Plato’s utopia of the Republic. No doubt that Alfarabi was well-versed in the philosophy of Plato and the basic framework of his theory of city is platonic. However, his theory of city is not an exact reproduction of the Republic’s theory and, despite glaring similarities, the two theories do differ in (...) many aspects. In both, Alfarabi’s Mabadi ara ahl al-madina al-fadhila and Plato’s Republic, the theory of virtuous city is accompanied by a theory of the soul. Since the theory of soul plays a foundational role in both theories of the virtuous city, the present article intends to provide an explanation for the differences between the two theories of the city in terms of the differences between the two theories of the soul. (shrink)

Recasts Plutarch's Lives as a work of political philosophy emerging from the imperial encounter of Greece and Rome.

The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of the City is an outstanding reference source to this exciting subject and the first collection of its kind. Comprising 40 chapters by a team of international contributors, the Handbook is divided into clear sections addressing the following central topics: -/- • Historical Philosophical Engagements with Cities -/- • Modern and Contemporary Philosophical Theories of the City -/- • Urban Aesthetics -/- • Urban Politics -/- • Citizenship -/- • Urban Environments and the Creation/Destruction of (...) Place. -/- The concluding section, Urban Engagements, contains interviews with philosophers discussing their engagement with students and the wider public on issues and initiatives including experiential learning, civic and community engagement, disability rights and access, environmental degradation, professional diversity, social justice, and globalization. -/- Essential reading for students and researchers in environmental philosophy, aesthetics, and political philosophy, The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of the City is also a useful resource for those in related fields, such as geography, urban studies, sociology, and political science. (shrink)

In this volume, Veronica Roberts Ogle offers a new reading of Augustine's political thought as it is presented in City of God. Focusing on the relationship between politics and the earthly city, she argues that a precise understanding of Augustine's vision can only be reached through a careful consideration of the work's rhetorical strategy and sacramental worldview. Ogle draws on Christian theology and political thought, moral philosophy, and semiotic theory to make her argument. Laying out Augustine's understanding of the earthly (...) city, she proceeds by tracing out his rhetorical strategy and concludes by articulating his sacramental vision and the place of politics within it. Ogle thus suggests a new way of determining the status of politics in Augustine's thought. Her study clarifies seemingly contradictory passages in his text, highlights the nuance of his position, and captures the unity of his vision as presented in City of God. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr. ed. by Tommie Shelby and Brandon M. TerryErin R. PinedaTommie Shelby and Brandon M. Terry, editors. To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2020. Pp. 464. Paperback, $20.00.In the summer of 2020, as cities across the globe erupted in protest (...) after the murder of George Floyd, references to Martin Luther King, Jr. abounded: while a familiar cast of politicians evoked his memory to scold riotous protestors, others issued King's rejoinder that "the riot is the language of the unheard" (King, "The Other America," 1967). Many such invocations no doubt smacked of the "ritual celebration" and "intellectual marginalization" [End Page 339] that, as Tommie Shelby and Brandon M. Terry observe, have long marked King's reception as a political thinker (2). But in another sense, the seemingly inevitable return to King points to the significant stakes of taking his thought seriously and the political danger of laying claim to interpretive mastery. Struggles over King's legacy and the terms of his thought are not just about King but form part of the discursive terrain on which struggles over the demands of racial justice and the means of transformative collective action are waged.Shelby and Terry's ambitious, illuminating volume, To Shape a New World, first published in 2018 (timed to mark the fiftieth anniversary of King's assassination) and released as paperback in 2020 (amidst the George Floyd uprisings), invites us to take King seriously in just this sense: with an acute sensitivity to the stakes and an embrace of an interpretive pluralism that refuses the certainty of a singular, definitive reading. The collection facilitates rigorous engagement with King's thought in its own time and place but also presses the question of what we ought to do with it in this current "age of impunity and mendacity," standing amid the "unraveling" edges of "American empire," as Cornel West puts it (331). In posing and answering this question across its fifteen essays, the collection seeks to do justice to King as both a political philosopher and a political activist—a religious and political thinker whose philosophies were worked out not only behind the pulpit or within the academy, but also (and perhaps primarily) in concert with others on the field of political action. Indeed, one of its primary contributions is to challenge mainstream presumptions about what counts as political philosophy—its boundaries as a genre as well as the spaces where we imagine political philosophizing to happen and the figures we position as its primary producers.The volume is organized into four sections. The first, "Traditions," is devoted to exploring some of King's diverse intellectual influences. Here, the emphasis is less on making the case for particular traditions as the essential ones, and more on exploring the use of different interpretive lenses for shedding new light on his ideas. Three essays put King in context with thinkers he directly engaged: Robert Gooding-Williams places him in conversation with W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington to reveal the structure of King's account of dignity amid the constraints of racial injustice; Bernard Boxill shows how King's theory of civil disobedience builds on—and collectivizes—Frederick Douglass's account of comparative freedom; and Karuna Mantena explores the theory of nonviolent action that King, through figures like Benjamin Mays and Howard Thurman, adopted and adapted from Gandhi. In contrast, Paul Taylor argues that we should read King in the company of moral perfectionists Stanley Cavell and Christopher Lebron—as showing us how practices of self-criticism, self-transformation, and experimentation enable "citizens to remain dissatisfied with things as they stand" while remaining "open to the possibility that justice will require reconstructing both society and the self" (41).In the next section, contributors turn their attention to King's "Ideals"—the ethical and political imperatives that shape the ends and means of the struggle for a new world. Like Mantena, Martha Nussbaum reads King alongside Gandhi to focus on King's insistence on channeling righteous... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Weeds: Cultivating the Imagination in Medieval Arabic Political PhilosophyMichael S. KochinAny reader of Plato’s dialogues in their entirety feels the constant tug of two very different solar motions. In the Laws the young field-legates (agronomoi) of the city move in a twelve-month cycle through each of the divisions of the city’s territory (Laws 760) in obedience to the law and the gods of the city. Socrates, too, moves through (...) the city, questioning each citizen about the beliefs concerning the virtues implanted by the city’s laws and myths. Socrates, like the field-legates, moves in “obedience” to the command of the sun-god Apollo, a command that Socrates claims to have received through the god’s oracle at Delphi.1 To live in the light of the sun of reason is only possible within a city totally ordered in imitation of heavenly order—so speaks the Laws.2 To follow the sun is to move in opposition to the shadows of artificial light that dominate all actual and even possible cities—so speaks the Apology and, more explicitly, the Republic.Our learned prejudices about these two solar motions lead us to divide Plato’s thought into periods of composition. Socratic heliotropy belongs to the dialogues of Plato’s earlier period, especially the earliest, the Apology, scholars believe; the city itself in seasonal motion belongs to the dialogues of Plato’s later period, and especially the latest, his Laws. The Republic, which describes the best city as an artificially lighted cave, whose inhabitants ought nonetheless to be ruled by the philosopher-king who has, at least momentarily, seen the sun, belongs to Plato’s middle period. [End Page 399]Whatever the merits of this family of readings as interpretations of Plato, 3 they use a scholar’s device to avoid coming to terms with a genuine tension. The two modes of solar motion represent two different modes of relating philosophy to politics, even under their modern guises of theory and practice. Either the philosopher is to bring the political into rational order, or he is to bring his own life into rational order against the disorders and deliberate confusions of the political. Either the philosopher is to weed the fields of the city of disorderly weeds, or he himself is a weed or, more politely, a wildflower, pushing up toward the sun through the broken asphalt of politics.Plato himself seems to resolve this tension by distinguishing between the philosopher’s duties in the best city and in other cities. As Socrates says in the Republic:Observe, then, Glaucon, that we won’t be doing injustice to the philosophers who grow up among us, but we will say just things to them, when we compel them to care and guard for the others. For we will say that those who are of their sort who grow up in the other cities fittingly do not share in the labors therein. For they grew in them spontaneously though the regime in each did not intend it, and the spontaneously grown has a just claim not to be eager to repay the cost of its nurture to anybody, since it owes [its] nurture to nobody. But you we reared up, just as in hives, as leaders and kings for yourselves and the rest of the city, and you have been educated better and more perfectly than those and are more able to have a share of both [philosophy and rule]. Each of you must then go down in turn to the common dwelling of the others and accustom yourself to the shadows there. For when you are accustomed, you will see in a myriad ways better than those there, and you will know the images, that they are images and of what they are images, on account of your having seen the true things that concern the beautiful, the just and the good. 4Yet Plato’s Socrates availed himself only partially of the just claim of the philosopher in an actual city that contributed nothing to his nurture. While Socrates took only a minimal part in the official business of the city, he never hesitated to [End... (shrink)

This essay discusses Walter Benjamin's development of 'dream' as a model for understanding 19th- and 20th-century urban culture. Following Bergson and surrealist poetics, Benjamin used 'dream' in the 1920s as an heuristic analogy for investigating child hood memories, kitsch art and literature; during the early 1930s, he also developed it into an historiographic concept for studying 19th- century Parisian culture. Benjamin's interpretative use of the dream cuts across Ricoeur's distinction between the hermeneutics of 'recol lection' and the hermeneutics of 'suspicion'. (...) The political dream analyst seeks to discharge the 'fatal powers' of the ideological dream, while at the same time fostering the experience of waking in which dream elements may recollectively be grasped. Benjamin extends this dialectic of dreaming, interpreting and waking to the relation between historical epochs and the tasks of the materialist historian. Puzzling out the recent past's dreamlike rebuses may serve in the task of a present historical awakening. Key Words: Walter Benjamin • city • dream • hermeneutics • surrealism. (shrink)

Two contrasting conceptions of politics have divided contemporary Christian political ethics, particularly Protestant political ethics in the United States. The first construes politics as a matter of statecraft that uses power to achieve social order and justice; a second views politics as an exercise in soulcraft intended to cultivate virtuous people. After identifying this divide by considering the work of Reinhold Niebuhr and Stanley Hauerwas, this essay reconceives politics within a broadly Augustinian eschatology that demonstrates the necessity of both statecraft (...) and soulcraft and specifies the relation between them, arguing that Martin Luther King Jr. exemplified such a political ethic. (shrink)

God and the City, based on the Aquinas Lecture delivered at the University of Dallas in 2022, aims to think about politics ontologically. In other words, it seeks to reflect on, not some political theory or other, nor on the legitimacy of political action or the distinctiveness of particular regimes, but on the nature of political order as such, and how this order implicates the fundamental questions of existence, those concerning man, being, and God. Aristotle, and Aquinas after him, identified (...) metaphysics and politics as "architectonic" sciences, since each concerns in some respect the whole of reality, of which the particular sciences study a part. Chapter one of this book argues that, just as metaphysics, in studying being as a whole, cannot but address the question of God in some respect, so too does politics, the ordering of human life as a whole, necessarily implicate the existence of God. In this regard, the modern liberal project has deluded itself in attempting to render religion a private, rather than a genuinely political, matter. We cannot organize human existence without making some claim, whether implicitly or explicitly, about the nature of God and God's relation to the world. The second chapter approaches this theme from the anthropological dimension. As Plato affirmed, the "city is the soul writ large": if man is religious by nature, he cannot be properly understood, and the human good cannot be properly secured and fostered, if the "God question" is "bracketed out" of the properly political order. Moreover, if we fail to recognize the essentially political dimension of relation to God, we will be unable properly to grasp the presence of God in the (ecclesial and sacramental) Body of Christ: God cannot be real in the Church as Church unless he is also real in the city as city (and vice versa). In his De regno, Aquinas famously affirms that "the king is to be in the kingdom what the soul is in the body and what God is in the world." Chapter three offers a careful study of the body-soul relationship in order to illuminate, on the one hand, the nature of political authority, and, on the other, the precise way that God is present in human community. (shrink)

De las muchas virtudes que caben reconocerse en el pensamiento de Cornelius Castoriadis nunca podrá eludirse el valor de su singular aproximación a lo que vino en denominarse “la experiencia griega”. En este artículo trataremos de acompañar su original lectura de la Grecia antigua, retomando la pertinencia y la exactitud con la que Castoriadis se sirvió de la pólis griega para justificar algunos matices velados de nuestras intuiciones políticas. En nuestra exposición trataremos de alinearnos con su original perspectiva, sirviéndonos esencialmente (...) del uso y la recuperación del ápeiron y sus distintas interpretaciones, en Anaximandro, en Aristóteles y, naturalmente, en el propio pensamiento de Cornelius Castoriadis. La conclusión de nuestro planteamiento -y quizá este gesto no sea más que un homenaje velado- aspirará a disentir de alguna de sus propuestas sin por ello dejar de reconocer la originalidad, la valentía y la vigencia de su aportación como lector de la experiencia griega. (shrink)