This dissertation is a study of the nature and development of "modern" political thought, typical features of which include the "state of nature" and "social contract." Specifically, I argue that modern thought is constructive, which is to say that thinking is seen as, at least to some extent, generative of its objects. I focus primarily on Hobbes and Marx as liminal thinkers in the development of modern political thought. I begin with a (...) discussion of the nature of construction in modern thought generally, and in Hobbes specifically. I then ground the claim that Hobbes's texts are originary for modern political thought in two ways. First, I show how many of the methodological principles explicitly adopted by Hobbes are implicitly assumed by Locke. Then, I differentiate Hobbesian metaphysical and epistemological assumptions from two alternate sets of assumptions which Hobbes viewed himself as opposing: Machiavellian virtu; and Christian, medieval neo-Platonism. I then read Hobbes's texts in their relation to Bacon's usage of construction and Hobbes's own development of the social contract. I then transition, via Hegel, to a study of Marx. After providing an account of Marx's early reaction to Hegel, I attempt to show that many of the objections Marx makes to Hegelianism are also made against modern political thought in general. I thus read sections of Marx's early works to illustrate his engagement with early modern thought, and to show how he characterizes this thought as a "despotism" because of its reliance on a "manufactured originary state." I then provide readings of Marx's dissertation critique of Democritus to develop more carefully what Marx means by an atomic or originary state; and of sections of the Holy Family to explore Marx's understanding of "history," and to show how that understanding differs from Hegel's. I conclude with an extended reading of sections of Marx's 1844 Manuscripts, in order to develop more fully his critique of modern political thought, and to sketch his early understanding of what an alternative way of thinking politics might incorporate. (shrink)

A review of Qu. Skinner’s The Foundations of Modern Political Thought (1978), emphasizing Skinner’s two main interpretative tenets: the importance of the roman stoic sources for Renaissance political thought, and the significance of roman right and of late scholastic moral and political philosophy (which developed the idea of social contract) for the Reform.

v.1. The Renaissance -- v. 2. The age of reformation.

The relationship between technology, philosophy, and politics is both contentious and vital to our understanding of human nature and the ways human beings interact with one another in society; Francis Bacon outlined the wild potential and great danger of this relationship. Francis Bacon's New Atlantis in the Foundation of Modern Political Thought explores Bacon’s role as a founder of modern political science and the place of his New Atlantis in the founding of modern (...) class='Hi'>political thought. (shrink)

This paper considers Niccolò Machiavelli’s contribution to a theory of constituent power. Modern authors who have analysed the concept of constituent power generally agree on its ambiguous, paradoxical and apparently contradictory essence. With few exceptions, Machiavelli is absent from both the historical reconstructions of and the theoretical debates on the origin of constituent power. My argument is built around two main theses: reintroducing Machiavelli to the debate on constituent power offers an original response to the theoretical fallacies and inconsistencies (...) identified by modern scholars. In particular, Machiavelli’s philosophy contributes to the comprehension of constituent power as a living force within social order. My second thesis is that by tracing the source of constituent power back to Machiavelli, we can overcome the main theoretical problem implied by this concept, namely the problem of the priority of the factual or the juridical, by providing a vision that emphasises their immanent coexistence. (shrink)

SummaryThe foundations of modern international thought were constructed out of diverse idioms and disciplines. In his impressive book, Foundations of Modern International Thought, David Armitage focuses on the normative idioms of natural law and political philosophy from the Anglophone world, from Hobbes and Locke to Burke and Bentham. I focus on parallel developments in the empirically-oriented disciplines of history and historiography to trace the emergence of histories of the states-system in the Italian- and (...) German-speaking worlds, from Bruni and Sarpi to Pufendorf and Heeren. Taking seriously Armitage's remark that ‘the pivotal moments in the formation of modern international thought were often points of retrospective reconstruction’, I argue that the historical disciplines supplied another significant intellectual context in which the modern world could be imagined as ‘a world of states’. (shrink)

A radical reinterpretation of Adam Smith that challenges economists, moral philosophers, political theorists, and intellectual historians to rethink him—and why he matters Adam Smith has long been recognized as the father of modern economics. More recently, scholars have emphasized his standing as a moral philosopher—one who was prepared to critique markets as well as to praise them. But Smith’s contributions to political theory are still underappreciated and relatively neglected. In this bold, revisionary book, Paul Sagar argues that (...) not only have the fundamentals of Smith’s political thought been widely misunderstood, but that once we understand them correctly, our estimations of Smith as economist and as moral philosopher must radically change. Rather than seeing Smith either as the prophet of the free market, or as a moralist who thought the dangers of commerce lay primarily in the corrupting effects of trade, Sagar shows why Smith is more thoroughly a political thinker who made major contributions to the history of political thought. Smith, Sagar argues, saw war, not commerce, as the engine of political change and he was centrally concerned with the political, not moral, dimensions of—and threats to—commercial societies. In this light, the true contours and power of Smith’s foundational contributions to western political thought emerge as never before. Offering major reinterpretations of Smith’s political, moral, and economic ideas, Adam Smith Reconsidered seeks to revolutionize how he is understood. In doing so, it recovers Smith’s original way of doing political theory, one rooted in the importance of history and the necessity of maintaining a realist sensibility, and from which we still have much to learn. (shrink)

The question of Calvin's influence on modern political thought is a mine that has been so thoroughly worked that one would have expected it by now to be exhausted. Yet Ralph Hancock has not only uncovered and dug out a new vein of ore, but managed to show that some of the ore previously extracted contains a sizeable admixture of fool's gold. To specialists in intellectual history this is doubtless a significant accomplishment; others may see it as (...) the sort of modest contribution characteristic of a decent doctoral dissertation. (shrink)

The Souls of Black Folk is Du Bois’s outstanding contribution to modern political theory. It is his still influential answer to the question, “What kind of politics should African Americans conduct to counter white supremacy?” Here, in a major addition to American studies and the first book-length philosophical treatment of Du Bois’s thought, Robert Gooding-Williams examines the conceptual foundations of Du Bois’s interpretation of black politics. For Du Bois, writing in a segregated America, a politics capable (...) of countering Jim Crow had to uplift the black masses while heeding the ethos of the black folk: it had to be a politics of modernizing “self-realization” that expressed a collective spiritual identity. Highlighting Du Bois’s adaptations of Gustav Schmoller’s social thought, the German debate over the Geisteswissenschaften, and William Wordsworth’s poetry, Gooding-Williams reconstructs Souls’ defense of this “politics of expressive self-realization,” and then examines it critically, bringing it into dialogue with the picture of African American politics that Frederick Douglass sketches in My Bondage and My Freedom. Through a novel reading of Douglass, Gooding-Williams characterizes the limitations of Du Bois’s thought and questions the authority it still exerts in ongoing debates about black leadership, black identity, and the black underclass. Coming to Bondage and then to these debates by looking backward and then forward from Souls, Gooding-Williams lets Souls serve him as a productive hermeneutical lens for exploring Afro-Modern political thought in America. (shrink)

In Foundations of Modern International Thought, David Armitage provides a genealogy of the multiple foundations of international political thought. But he also enables political theorists to reflect on the nature of the pluralisation of our concepts: that is, the way various components come together in particular circumstances to form a concept that either becomes dominant or is rendered to the margins. Armitage claims that concepts can ‘never entirely escape their origins’. In this paper (...) I explore this claim from the perspective of contemporary debates about the nature of cosmopolitan political thought. (shrink)

Introduction : situating oakeshott -- Language, practice, and individual agency -- Individuality between tradition and contingency -- Imagining the modern state -- Towards a conversational democratic ethos -- Conclusion : hearing voices.

Annabel Brett and James Tully, ed., Rethinking the Foundations of Modern Political Thought, and D. N. DeLuna, ed., The Political Imagination in History: Essays Concerning J. G. A. Pocock.

The article discusses the relationship of the axiological foundations of modern bioethics with casual and even incidental effects of the activity of scholars in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The author examine the ability of humanists to influence the formation of values system as well as the possibility of instrumentalizing these values in social practices. The study determines the entire causal complex that led to the formation of a special tradition of non-religious substantiation of values associated (...) with the teaching and study of ancient languages in the context of the functioning of political and legal institutions and cultural and historical traditions of European states. The author considers the origins and meaning of humanism and the gradual change of its content as well as the transformation of humanistic experience into a tool of constructing ideals and values and an element of social technology. A special place is given to the analysis of attempts to form meta-ethics and bioethics within the framework of the value system of post-Soviet Russian society and the role of humanistic ideas in this process. On the example of the development of modern European philosophical thought, the controversial and problematic nature of various interpretations of humanism is shown, and the thesis of the historical conditionality of the ideals of humanism and its connection with some certain paradigms of metaphysic is confirmed. The central theme of the article is the problem of the relationship between the historical and conceptual, conditional and unconditional, contextual and universal in the heritage of the late medieval humanism. Technologization paths and contexts for the interpretation of humanistic ideas in modern Russia are outlined. The paper determines the ways of harmonization of humanitarian values and the system of their social and legal legitimation. On the example of the educational policy of higher education in recent decades, achievements and failures in the process of forming a new value system are analyzed. This value system could be used as a basis for legislative practice and state policy that would allow determining the basis of modern bioethics, which is of great importance for the development of Russian society and further improvement of the moral and legal foundations of its existence. (shrink)

Fear, which has always been one of the most powerful of human passions, has grown in importance during modernity. First with Machiavelli and later especially with Hobbes, fear has become one of the foundational ideas of modern political philosophy. If fear, especially fear of death, does indeed occupy a central place in the foundation of modern politics, then it is necessary to study carefully the implications and consequences of the transhumanist attempt to overcome death. Among the main (...) aspirations of transhumanism is the search for almost infinite longevity and, eventually, the total abolition of aging. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the specific role that fear of death has played in modern political philosophy to understand the possible effects that an eventual overcoming of death would have, albeit partial, as wanted by transhumanists. While the possibility of achieving immortality seems unlikely, this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t study what’s behind this transhumanist aspiration. In this way, transhumanism seems the final consequence of modern development, since it’s in continuity with the modern attempt to respond to the fear of death, but it does so by trying an ultimate solution to it through the elimination of death, at least by sickness and old age. In this paper, we will review the role of fear of death in the founding of modern political philosophy by Machiavelli and Hobbes, and then we will analyse the transhumanist attempt to overcome death as a consequence of this fear and its possible political effects. (shrink)

Introduction: in search of a Jewish renaissance -- Jewish philosophy: humanist roots of a contradiction in terms -- The prophetic-poetic dimension of philosophy: the ars poetica and Immanuel of Rome -- Leone Ebreo's concept of Jewish philosophy -- Conceptions of history: Azariah de Rossi -- Scientific thought and the exegetical mind, with an essay on the life and works of Rabbi Judah Loew -- Mathematical and biblical exegesis: Jewish sources of Athanasius Kircher's musical theory -- Creating geographical and (...) class='Hi'>political utopias: the ten lost tribes and the east -- Ceremonial law: history of a philosophical-political concept -- The city and the ghetto: Simone Luzzatto and the development of Jewish political thought -- Body of conversion and immortality of the soul: Sara Copio Sullam, the 'Beautiful Jewess'. (shrink)

"Darkness from vain philosophy" -- Hobbes's natural philosophy -- Religion and theology I: "of religion" -- Religion and theology II: Hobbes's natural theology -- Religion and theology III: Hobbes's confrontation with the Bible -- Hobbes's political philosophy I: man and morality -- Hobbes's political philosophy II: the Hobbesian commonwealth -- Appendix: the engraved title page of Leviathan.

[full article, abstract in English; abstract in Lithuanian] Modern revolution as the beginning of founding a new political order has to confront the vicious circle inhered in all beginnings: in so far as it is the beginning, where does its principle come from? Or, if there is no principle, how could the beginning establish one? Set in the context of modern political experience, the aporia is equal to the problem of how modern politics to be (...) self-grounded or how to reestablish political authority in modernity? By an exploration into the relevant writings of Hannah Arendt, the article tries to investigate the vicious circle of beginning and principle in the political realm, and to point out that Arendt has told a story about the mutual generating of beginning and principle, turning the so-called vicious circle into a hermeneutic circle, in which those implicit principles become explicit through the performance of founding actions. (shrink)

Plato’s doctrine of the ideal state is the first form of political philosophy in the written history for European thought. The influence of Plato on the formation of political philosophy cannot be overestimated, since its further development in one way or another was based on the discourse and methodology that was set by his dialogues. This study aims to identify common discourses and dialectical foundations of the most influential modern schools of political philosophy converging (...) in the ideas of Plato. Also, the study is aimed at identifying the main forms in which the philosophical ideas of Plato function in modern political philosophy in an explicit and implicit way. The contribution of the research and its novelty lies in the disclosure of the implicitly immanent features that connect political philosophy with the ideas of Plato as its primary source. (shrink)

In the early twentieth century, China was on the brink of change. Different ideologies - those of radicalism, conservatism, liberalism, and social democracy - were much debated in political and intellectual circles. Whereas previous works have analyzed these trends in isolation, Edmund S. K. Fung shows how they related to one another and how intellectuals in China engaged according to their cultural and political persuasions. The author argues that it is this interrelatedness and interplay between different schools of (...) thought that are central to the understanding of Chinese modernity, for many of the debates that began in the Republican era still resonate in China today. The book charts the development of these ideologies and explores the work and influence of the intellectuals who were associated with them. In its challenge to previous scholarship and the breadth of its approach, the book makes a major contribution to the study of Chinese political philosophy and intellectual history. (shrink)

The first book of a projected two-volume set which construes the diverse tendencies of contemporary political thought within the tradition of classical political philosophy. In two very closely argued sections, Brecht examines the degree to which modern logic and scientific method may be said to necessitate "scientific value relativism," and the actual rise of relativism among Europeans and Americans of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The final section, "At the Borderline of Metaphysics,"- is an eloquent (...) argument designed to demonstrate the relevance of belief in God to the question of universal values. Brecht's challenging thesis is developed with unusual care and vast scholarship.--K. R. D. (shrink)

Mass ideology is unique to modern society and rooted in early modern philosophy. Traditionally, knowledge had been viewed as resting on metaphysics. Rejecting metaphysical truth evoked questions about the source of "truth." For nineteenth-century ideologists, "truth" comes either from dominating classes in a progressively determined history or from a post-Copernican freedom of the superior man to create it. In From Physics to Politics Robert C. Trundle, Jr. uncovers the relation of modern philosophy to political ideology. And (...) in rooting truth in human nature and Nature by modal reasoning, he resolves the problem of politicized truth. Our concepts of scientific truth, logic, and necessity are essentially connected. Modern philosophy restricts our understanding of necessity to the political dreams and aspirations of Enlightenment intellectuals. As a result, these intellectuals refuse to acknowledge as factual or meaningful whatever is not intelligible within the practical goals of establishing science as a system of enlightened ideas. The effect of these ideas is that in our time metaphysical principles, speculative truths, our understanding of science, and the nature of logic have become subordinated to ideological dreams. Fascism, Nazism, Marxism, political correctness, and moral relativism are not historical aberrations but essential consequences. Trundle's work is groundbreaking and daring, and his underlying thesis demonstrates why scientific truth demands a modal defense. The defense not only integrates science, ethics, and politics, but shows how "truth" may be ascribed to moral and scientific principles in contrast to a modern philosophical tradition. Since this tradition is the origin of political ideology, it has led to an irrational politicization of truth. The book will appeal particularly to those interested in political history, histories of philosophy, the philosophy of sciences, and ethics. Robert C. Trundle, Jr. is a member of the New York Academy of Sciences and the Scientific Research Society of Sigma Xi, an affiliate scholar for Idealistic Studies, and has served as reader for University de Laval's Laval Theologique et Philosphique. His publications include over three dozen articles in Res Publica, Logique et Analyse, Thought, Philosphy in Science, and New Horizons in the Philosophy of Science. His books include Beyond Absurdity (with R. Puligandla), Ancient Greek Philosophy, and Medieval Reasoning. He is currently professor in the department of social sciences and philosophy at Northern Kentucky University. (shrink)

Introduction: The politics of construction -- A genealogical context of modern political thought -- More geometrico -- Nominalism redux -- The state of nature -- Constructing politics -- Conclusion: From erasing nature to producing the multitude.

The critical reception of Kristeva's writings has largely been in the field of feminist thought, literary studies and social theory. Her thought has been appreciated or abandoned on the grounds of its argument that the concepts and practices of 'psychoanalysis' and 'literature' present the truth of modern social and political relations - in distinction from and criticism of philosophical 'system' . The thesis implicitly challenges this general reception of Ithought. It presents a systematic reading (...) of Kristeva's writings and discloses the Hegelian ambition of her analysis of the 'subject' in social and political relations. The main object of the thesis is to establish the philosophical foundations of Kristeva's 'return to Freud' in the philosophy of law from Kant to Hegel. The thesis presents the significance and limitation of her engagement with German idealism, and the consequences of that limited engagement for the ambition of Kristeva's oeuvre. The meaning of the speculative philosophy of law is recovered from its premature reduction in the developments of, and departures from, her thought in contemporary critical engagements with French and German philosophy. (shrink)

This important new work is a major analysis of the foundation of Eric Voegelin's political science.

In the last two centuries, our world would have been a safer place if philosophers such as Rousseau, Marx, and Nietzsche had not given intellectual encouragement to the radical ideologies of Jacobins, Stalinists, and fascists. Maybe the world would have been better off, from the standpoint of sound practice, if philosophers had engaged in only modest, decent theory, as did John Stuart Mill. Yet, as Ronald Beiner contends, the point of theory is not to think safe thoughts; the point is (...) to open intellectual horizons. In Philosophy in a Time of Lost Spirit, Beiner reflects on the dualism of theory and practice. The purpose of the theorist is not to offer sensible guidance on the conduct of social life but to test the boundaries of our vision of social order. Whereas the liberal citizen should embody the practical virtues of prudence and moderation, the theorist should be radical, probing, and immoderate. Looking back at the liberal-communitarian debate of the 1980s, Beiner recognizes that the antidote to our spiritless times lies neither in the embrace of community over individualism nor of individualism over community: both individual and community need to be submitted to radical questioning. It is by exposing ourselves to the challenge of fearless thinking encountered at the philosophical extremities that we are most likely to understand our own world at a deeper level. In this collection of essays and reviews, Ronald Beiner helps us to think critically about the thought-worlds of our foremost contemporary thinkers, including Hannah Arendt, Allan Bloom, Michel Foucault, Hans-Georg Gadamer, J¦rgen Habermas, Will Kymlicka, Christopher Lasch, Richard Rorty, Judith Shklar, Leo Strauss, Charles Taylor, and Michael Walzer. (shrink)

This work by an accomplished and respected comparative philosopher criticizes the Western ideology of individualism from the perspective of a Confucian morality of the family. Individualism is a name for the Enlightenment era ideology of the autonomous individual. The philosophical pillars of this ideology are Locke and especially Kant, and it runs through practically all modern moral philosophy. It is the moral psychology of classical liberalism, no less than of its libertarian and communitarian critics. They are different politically, but (...) ontologically of a piece. Individual selves—rational, calculating, selfish, autonomous—are what we are. Rosemont thinks this ideology is philosophically wrong, morally, politically, and ecologically destructive, but also optional. We sometimes feel painted into a corner where the only alternatives seem to be unrestrained freedom or totalitarian dictatorship. Moral philosophy still awaits the end of the Cold War. It would be good for people to understand that there are more options. Rosemont thinks Confucianism is one of them—a Confucianism for post-modern or even post-Western Westerners, with an ideology of the family that Rosemont thinks is more amenable than indigenous alternatives to our moral and ecological crises. “The vision of classical Confucianism can be reclaimed today with its integrity basically intact.” Rosemont advances two points. First, Confucian moral psychology conceives of the person as the bearer of roles. We are our roles as the onion is its leaves, without a an essential core self. Placing roles at the center of moral psychology eliminates the value of impersonal rules or universal principles. There are many ways to be a good father, teacher, friend, or son. Moral decency acquires an almost aesthetic quality, as our approach to roles (our own and those of others) expresses such qualities as zest, grace, or tenderness. His second point is that the moral center of Confucian philosophy is the family. The family is largely ignored in Western ethical tradition. Plato wanted to eliminate family life for his guardians. Kant, Bentham, and Mill have nothing useful to say about the family. For Rosemont the family is the first and best school for morality. It is there, if at all, that we learn to love, trust, cooperate, and obey. Rosemont’s best pages describe the important Confucian concept of family reverence (xiao). The gist is unswerving loyalty to parents, obligations extending even beyond death. It is easy for Western people to misunderstand that. Confucian tradition has a carefully worked out idea of filial reverence, and it should not be dismissed with a label (paternalistic, dogmatic, Asiatic). Obedience is expected, but not servility. In the inter-generational family, the child obeys the parents, but also sees parents obeying grandparents. Remonstrance is expected when appropriate. Deference motivated by gratitude can be genuinely appreciative without fawning, and dissent can remain respectful and polite. Rosemont believes that filial reverence is a way of life as open to anyone today as it was to Chinese two thousand years ago. Confucianism is a relentlessly secular philosophy. It entails practically no theological or metaphysical commitments, and contains little if anything to offend modern scientific sensibilities. This moral philosophy is at once remote (from individualism) and close, familiar, a fairly straightforward account of how we actually live our lives. Rosemont carefully argues that Confucian ideas of family are flexible enough to accommodate progressive ideals, and may even be our best hope against sexism, racism, homophobia, and other anti-humanistic altitudes and behaviors. He urges this version of Confucianism as a human-centered spirituality for a global civilization suspicious of discredited universalism. All cultures are made of families. How alien can they be? Respect for and accommodation with diversity begins in the family, when people learn from infancy to enjoy contributing to the well-being of others. While it would be wrong to expect Western people to abandon their Greek or Abrahamic heritage, those values might be reordered in light of Confucian thought, which deserves to be better understood in the West. A traditional Confucian might be baffled and dismayed by things that pass for normal in modern families, but our families could be better at what they have to be anyway by absorbing Confucian wisdom. There is a growing body of literature on Confucianism and virtue ethics. It is worth noting that Rosemont’s thought is probably the leading alternative to this paradigm in comparative moral philosophy. He takes an uncompromisingly critical attitude toward this particular effort to build a bridge from West to East by attributing to the Confucians a Western virtue ethics, which is, he thinks, objectionably individualistic in all its usual forms. (shrink)

Originally published: Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989. With new pref.

The authority of the social : a pragmatic ethos of enquiry -- Rorty and continental political thought : ontology, naturalism and history -- Theorizing after foundations : ontology, language, and heidegger -- Reconstructing naturalism : pragmatic or ontological? -- History and modernity : self-assertion and critical reflexivity -- Rorty's insights for contemporary political theory : pragmatic socio- -- Political criticism -- Pragmatic political thinking : Rorty in contemporary critical social theory -- Rorty and (...) class='Hi'>political theory : how pragmatism constrains and enables political -- Thinking. (shrink)

The Franciscan William of Ockham (c.1285-c.1347) was the greatest theologian and philosopher of the first half of the fourteenth century. Spurred on by the activities of a papacy which he saw as destroying the very foundations of his Order, he devoted the last part of his life to examining the extent of papal power over Christians and its relationship to the secular government of people. On the Power of Emperors and Popes (1347) is his last work. Short, passionate and (...) lucid, it represents a distillation of his thought on these questions and forms an excellent and accessible introduction to his political thought as a whole. The extensive new annotations to the text bring to light the range of sources on which Ockham drew, while the new introduction places the work in its historical context and relates it to other works of medieval Franciscan political discourse. Translated here into English for the first time, the work will be of interest to all students and researchers in the field of medieval political thought. --the first English translation of Ockham's classic work, plus extensive new introduction, textual annotation, and bibliography --modern editorial apparatus connects the work with the whole body of Ockham's political thought --the new annotation provides historical and intellectual context and translations of Ockham's source references. (shrink)

Secularism is usually thought to contain the project of self-deification, in which humans attack God’s authority in order to take his place, freed from all constraints. Julie E. Cooper overturns this conception through an incisive analysis of the early modern justifications for secular politics. While she agrees that secularism is a means of empowerment, she argues that we have misunderstood the sources of secular empowerment and the kinds of strength to which it aspires. Contemporary understandings of secularism, Cooper (...) contends, have been shaped by a limited understanding of it as a shift from vulnerability to power. But the works of the foundational thinkers of secularism tell a different story. Analyzing the writings of Hobbes, Spinoza, and Rousseau at the moment of secularity’s inception, she shows that all three understood that acknowledging one’s limitations was a condition of successful self-rule. And while all three invited humans to collectively build and sustain a political world, their invitations did not amount to self-deification. Cooper establishes that secular politics as originally conceived does not require a choice between power and vulnerability. Rather, it challenges us—today as then—to reconcile them both as essential components of our humanity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Social Justice and Subsidiarity: Luigi Taparelli and the Origins of Modern Catholic Social Thought by Thomas C. BehrPatrick Auer JonesSocial Justice and Subsidiarity: Luigi Taparelli and the Origins of Modern Catholic Social Thought by Thomas C. Behr (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2019), ix + 259 pp.The status of Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum as the origin point of what has come to (...) be called Catholic Social Teaching (CST), or Catholic social doctrine, has been reinforced on the magisterial level by the commemorations of the encyclical by Pius XI, Paul VI, and John Paul II. It should be noted, then, that the tradition of CST is comparatively recent. Indeed, it is nearly coextensive with the twentieth-century. Nevertheless, this short tradition already calls for a ressourcement. As Russell Hittinger has pointed out, reflections on CST often move swiftly to the particulars of social issues without an adequate grasp even of its basic concepts: subsidiarity, solidarity, the common good, and the dignity of the person. Further, historical [End Page 1101] developments have had dramatic impact upon the ways in which these principles have been received and developed in the course of this young tradition.In his book Social Justice and Subsidiarity: Luigi Taparelli and the Origins of Modern Catholic Social Thought, Thomas C. Behr provides a major contribution to just such a ressourcement. He does this by presenting an introduction to the thought of the Jesuit scholar whose revival of Thomistic thought in a modern register formed the basis for Leonine social teaching. As Behr explains, Taparelli has remained a somewhat hidden figure in accounts of the genesis and development of CST. He goes unmentioned in the major social encyclicals of Leo and Pius, despite the fact that Leo himself was Taparelli's student. Because of his rhetorically and philosophically potent critique of Enlightenment thought and its effect on mid-nineteenth-century Europe, available to a popular audience through his frequent contributions to the Jesuit periodical La Civiltà Cattolica, Taparelli's name carried baggage for a Church that sought to move beyond the posture of reaction to liberal political orders.However, as Behr shows in the introduction, Taparelli hardly rejected the methods and insights of modern political thought tout court. Behr describes Taparelli's system as a "realist social science." This terminology speaks to the promise which Taparelli found in the sociological analysis of Montesquieu in particular. Though Taparelli judged that Montesquieu held a questionable preference for a republican political form, he greatly admired Montesquieu's ability to, as Behr puts it, "bring political theory into relationship with social theory and historical contingency" (8). Though Taparelli was not familiar with the work of Alexis De Tocqueville, Behr also notes the resonances between Taparelli's work and Tocqueville's political sociology and defense of "intermediary institutions." Yet Taparelli makes up for what the sociological approaches of Montesquieu and Tocqueville lack in the way of natural, teleological principles of politics. Behr alerts the reader from the very beginning of his work that, in approaching Taparelli, he will not find a simple recapitulation of Thomas, but rather a creative approach to political thought which aims to set what is worthy in the modern empirical methodologies on firmer foundations through the recovery of Thomistic-Aristotelian principles.In chapter 1, "Taparelli and the Age of Ideology," Behr situates Taparelli within the political conflicts of the early nineteenth century. Behr sets the scene for Taparelli's renovated Scholasticism by explaining the opposition between Catholic traditionalism (represented especially by Joseph De Maistre and Donoso Cortés) and Catholic liberalism (represented especially by Henri Dominique Lacordaire and his more radical associate Felicité de Lammenais). While the Catholic liberals aimed to convince both [End Page 1102] the ecclesiastical hierarchy and the anticlerical, postrevolutionary governments of Europe that Christianity upheld liberal and republican ideals, the traditionalists argued that Europe's moral and political derangement was the result of a rejection of the norms of tradition—especially of papal and monarchical authority. Remarkably, Taparelli entered neither of these camps. In the opening chapter, Behr stimulates the contemporary reader's interest by showing how Taparelli responded to a crisis of ideologies—progressive and... (shrink)

This article explores the intellectual relations between Carl Schmitt and the German historian Reinhart Koselleck with a focus on the inspiration that Koselleck found in Schmitt's work in the early 1950s. The article goes beyond earlier contributions in the field by illuminating how the most important discursive features that Koselleck drew from Schmitt were utilized toward a very independent intellectual project. This project concerned an attempt to revise modern political thought by means of outlining a new concept (...) of history. Koselleck's concept of history was to depart from all utopian notions of history as a singular, unified and goal-directed process. Instead, it aimed to outline certain fundamental existential structures of the human condition and to take account of the social relations existing among human beings in order to understand (historically) and contain (politically) the potential conflict in human societies. Hence Koselleck believed that his new concept of history would lead to a more responsible foundation of political order and decision making. Following an analysis of how Koselleck developed his project in a dialogue with the work of Schmitt and a number of other scholars, first of all Friedrich Meinecke and Martin Heidegger, the article presents a brief perspective on how his new concept of history was received in the 1950s and on how it came to provide his work with a certain analytical, thematic and argumentative unity. (shrink)

Originally published in 1963, this classic book is a rethinking of the history of Western political philosophy. Charles N. R. McCoy contrasts classical-medieval principles against the "hypotheses" at the root of modern liberalism and modern conservativism. In Part I, "The Classical Christian Tradition from Plato to Aquinas," the author lays the foundation for a philosophical "structure" capable of producing "constitutional liberty." Part II, "The Modern Theory of Politics from Machiavelli to Marx," attempts to show, beginning with (...) Machiavelli, the reversal and destruction of the pre-modern "structure" postulated in Part I. McCoy stresses the great contributions of Aristotle to political thought found in his more familiar Ethics and Politics, but also includes key insights drawn from Metaphysics and Physics. These contributions are developed and perfected, McCoy argues, by Augustine and Aquinas. Two other important features include McCoy's epistemological insights into Plato's work that will be new to many readers and the author's juxtaposition of traditional natural law with "the modernized theory of natural law." The modern account of autonomous natural law, in McCoy's view, helps explain the totalitarian direction of key aspects of modern political thought. This classic volume on the origins of modern philosophical thought remains a standard in the field. (shrink)