Citizenship implies exclusion of non-members. In a world of gross inequalities, poverty, and forced migration, citizenship in rich and safe Northern states increasingly is a privilege, and the exclusion of billions of desperately poor and uprooted is a scandal. In Citizenship and Exclusion, distinguished moral and political philosophers, historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and political scientists from America, Australia, and Europe try to understand these complex problems in a comparative and interdisciplinary way. They criticize existing institutions and policies and look for alternatives (...) more in line with principles and constitutions of liberal democratic welfare stated, like permissive refugee and asylum policies, fair immigration policies, easy naturalization, and multi-ethnic and trans-national concepts and practices of citizenship. (shrink)

Alexandre Kojve (1902-1968) was Hegel's most famous interpreter, reading Hegel through the eyes of Marx and Heidegger simultaneously. The result was a wild if not hypnotic mlange of ideas. In this book, Drury reveals the nature of Kojve's Hegelianism and the extraordinary influence it has had on French postmodernists on the left (Raymond Queneau, Georges Bataille, and Michel Foucault) and American postmodernists on the right (Leo Strauss, Allan Bloom, and Francis Fukuyama). According to Drury, Kojve followed Hegel in thinking that (...) reason has triumphed in the course of history, but it is a cold, soulless, instrumental, and uninspired rationalism that has conquered and disenchanted the world. Drury maintains that Kojve's conception of modernity as the fateful triumph of this arid rationality is the cornerstone of postmodern thought. Kojve's picture of the world gives birth to a dark romanticism that manifests itself in a profound nostalgia for what reason has banished - myth, madness, disorder, spontaneity, instinct, passion, and virility. In Drury's view, these ideas romanticize the gratuitous violence and irrationalism that characterize the postmodern world. (shrink)

In 1980, Ronald Reagan was elected President of the United States for his first term and the conservative revolution that was slowly developing in the United States finally emerged in full-throated roar. Who provoked the conservative revolution? Shadia Drury provides a fascinating answer to the question as she looks at the work of Leo Strauss, a seemingly reclusive German Jewish emigré and scholar, who was one of the most influential individuals in the conservative movement, a man widely seen as the (...) godfather of the Republican party’s failed “Contract With America.” Among his students were individuals such as Alan Bloom, author of The Closing of the American Mind. Strauss influenced the work of Irving Kristol, Gertrude Himmelfarb and William Kristol, as well as Chief Justice Clarence Thomas and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. Drury delves deeply into Strauss’s work at the University of Chicago where he taught his students that, if they truly loved America, they must save her from her fateful enchantment with liberalism. Leo Strauss and the American Right is a fascinating piece of work that anyone interested in understanding our current political situation will want to read. (shrink)

In this startling book, Drury overturns the long-standing reputation of Thomas Aquinas as the most moderate and rational exponent of the Christian faith. She reveals Aquinas to be one of the most zealous Dominicans or Hounds of the Lord—an ardent defender of papal supremacy, the Inquisition, and the persecution of Jews. Despite her unstinting criticism, Drury sets out to retrieve the rationalism and naturalism that Aquinas failed to reconcile with his faith.

This collection by some of the leading scholars of Strauss's work is the first devoted to Strauss's thought regarding education. It seeks to address his conception of education as it applies to a range of his most important concepts, such as his views on the importance of revelation, his critique of modern democracy and the importance of modern classical education.

The purpose of this paper is to show that the ‘simple natures’ which appear in the Regulae are those very ‘modes’ and ‘attributes’ of ‘substance’ which appear in all of Descartes’ later works. Contrary to the opinions of some critics, I hope to show that simple natures were not discarded by Descartes for being inconsistent with his later philosophy; that is, if they were discarded at all! I also hope to show that simple natures do not have such a “wide (...) berth” that they are inadequate in dealing with Descartes’ “mature philosophy”. On the contrary, I hope to make it sufficiently clear that they are indispensable for our understanding of the relationship between his epistemology and ontology.Descartes’ account of ‘simple natures’ is of utmost importance to his epistemology. His account of ‘substance’ constitutes the very essence of his ontology. We shall see that while ‘simple natures’ are all we can know, ‘ substance’ is all that exists. Hence the relationship of simple natures to substance should aid us in understanding the relationship of thought to being. This relationship serves to illustrate the correspondence between knowledge and existence which is the hallmark of Cartesian thought. (shrink)