In Pro Murena, Cicero argues that Cato’s rigid philosophical comportment to politics reflects a mistaken understanding both of philosophy and of politics. By implication, he suggests that there is an approach to philosophy that is compatible with political leadership. Specifically, he argues that a thoroughgoing commitment to the philosophy of the Platonic Academy (i.e., Academic Philosophy) is entirely compatible with a thoroughgoing commitment to political leadership in the late Roman Republic. This essay looks at the most famous treatment of philosophical (...) leadership in the Platonic corpus, the philosopher ruler of the Republic, and asks to what extent Cicero’s depiction of politics and philosophy is consonant with that account. (shrink)

THE MOST SACRED FREEDOM includes eight essays that were first presented at the 2014 A.V. Elliott Conference on Great Books and Ideas, the seventh annual conference sponsored by Mercer Universitys Thomas C. and Ramona E. McDonald Center for Americas Founding Principles. Together, these essays explore the great principle of religious liberty by charting its development in the Western tradition and reconsidering its place at Americas founding. The book begins with a comparison between the flood accounts in Genesis and the Mesopotamian (...) Atra-Has's and advances all the way to the 2014 Supreme Court case Burwell v. Hobby Lobby. The intervening chapters examine the contributions of figures such as Emperor Julian, Roger Williams, Cecilius Calvert, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and the American Founders. Contributors to the volume are Steven Grosby, Jeremiah H. Russell, Maura Jane Farrelly, Daniel Cullen, John Witte, Jr., Scott Yenor, David Ramsey, and Michael Novak. (shrink)

Based on the 2019 A.V. Elliott Conference on Great Books and Ideas at Mercer University, eleven scholars take up some of the complex questions that emerge when one considers carefully how Plato presents democracy and liberty in the dialogues, particularly in terms of the threats they seem to pose to justice and philosophy. When Athens lost the Peloponnesian War, the Athenian people also lost their democratic constitution for a brief but brutal time. Plato wrote his dialogues and founded his Academy (...) in the early days of Athens's newly restored democratic regime, the regime that executed Socrates. But, he set most of the dialogues in the days leading up to Athens's downfall. Plato presents Socrates as so deeply committed to Athens that he would not consider living anywhere else, even when the Athenians intend to execute him. The authors whose essays are collected in this volume explore these tensions deeply and with great attention to the subtleties and complexities of Plato's texts. (shrink)

Michel de Montaigne begins his magisterial ESSAIS by telling his readers that he, himself, is the matter of his book. He says that he has written himself so that after death he could remain in the world with those who knew and loved him. Montaignes intimate project, meant to be read by friends, has emerged as one of the most surprising and compelling accounts of the human condition ever written. Although Montaigne famously retired from public life to write his essais, (...) neither his concerns nor the activities recounted in ESSAIS is purely private. This volume of essays, based on papers presented at The A.V. Elliott Conference for Great Books and Ideas sponsored by Mercer Universitys McDonald Center for Americas Founding Principles, focuses on the outward oriented political philosophy of Montaigne. Contributors include Ann Hartle, Daniel Cullen, Christine Henderson, Eduardo Velasquez, Kevin Honeycutt, and Christopher Edelman. (shrink)

It is conventional to argue that the city-soul analogy of Plato’s Republic dominates Books ii through iv and viii through x but is absent in Books v through vii. We argue that the analogy remains operative in Books v through vii and that its role there, especially as it is played out in the motif of the three waves, illuminates its function in the dialogue as a whole, particularly with respect to the questions: What are the natural dispositions of soul (...) necessary for philosophy? What are the necessary and sufficient conditions for philosophical education? (shrink)

This study is an in-depth examination of the allure of Cartesianism. Its central focus is to uncover the grounds of Cartesianism in the will, and to show how such a grounding accounts for Descartes' immediate popularity and expansive influence. Cartesianism is generally taken to be a species of rationalism or foundationalism. However, it is essential to understanding Cartesianism to see that it has its foundations in an act of pure will. ;This rarely discussed aspect of the grounds of Descartes' method (...) determines every aspect of Cartesianism and is most accessible in the Discourse on Method. However, this is one of the only studies to examine The Rules for the Direction of the Mind from the perspective of Cartesian willfulness. Enumeration operates in The Rules in lieu of prudence and memory, making it appear that the method can be successful without a moment of judgment and concealing the shortcomings of the method which Descartes was not yet ready to admit as clearly as he would later in the Discourse. ;Vico was perhaps the first philosopher to appreciate the foundation of Cartesianism in the will. He was certainly the first to articulate the implications of this facet of Cartesianism in detail. The significance of the primacy of the will at the inception of Cartesianism is that a philosophical comportment to the world, oriented to an apprehension and articulation of the truth of the whole is sacrificed for the possibility of certainty and mastery. Vico defends the traditional project of philosophy against the Cartesian attempt to redefine the paradigm, and he does so in modern terms, in direct response to Descartes. ;Grounded in pure willfulness, Cartesian modernism engendered a myriad of constructivist projects which has polarized the history and field of philosophy. Those who pursue the Cartesian ideal without a sense of irony do so at the expense of a belief to the intelligibility of their experience, for their studies take place in abstract, imaginary, and hypothetical realms. Post-moderns, who have rejected Cartesian method, also abandon the possibility of the intelligibility of their experience for they are unable to fathom non-Cartesian forms of intelligibility. The only philosophical response to Cartesianism in the modern era is to understand it well enough to recognize its influence on our understanding, and try to transcend that influence. (shrink)

Plato's most magisterial dialogue, the Republic, takes up the question "what is justice," and its central image is an imaginary city constructed in speech designed to aid in this inquiry. In Book V of the Republic, Socrates tells his interlocutors that they have completed the "Male Drama," of the city in speech and that it is now time for them to take up the "Female." The "Female Drama" is Socrates name for the action of the central books of the Republic: (...) V-VII. Much has been made of what this transition in the Republic signifies for political questions. The Republic is not only concerned with politics or political justice, however. Like all of the images and arguments in the Republic, the Female Drama of the city in speech has meaning both for political and individual justice, but there has been no systematic inquiry into the central books of the Republic for their meaning for individual justice. That is the ambition of this book. On the level of moral psychology, Thomas argues that while the Male Drama of Books II-IV presents images of fully formed versions of the psychological activities that come together to define justice in a human life, the Female Drama explores the modes of potentiality and becoming necessary for those psychological activities to come into being. More specifically, Books V-VII explore the three modes of potentiality necessary for the development of justice: genesis, trophe, and paideia. (shrink)