bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Immigration and American Catholic Intellectual Life
Authors: Gleason Philip
Published: August 2009

Relatively little has been added in the past two or three years to the discussion of Catholic intellectual life in the United States which reached a climax following the publication of Msgr. John Tracy Ellis's essay on the subject in 1955. No doubt one reason is that the subject appeared to be very nearly exhausted—or at least the reader of Catholic journals was faced with exhaustion if he tried to keep abreast of the discussion. A volume of readings entitled American Catholicism and the Intellectual Ideal contains excerpts from forty-six books and articles published in the years 1955–1958 alone. Interest flagged somewhat in the early 1960's, but two recent developments may serve to quicken it: one is the publication of Richard Hofstadter's general study, Anti-intellectualism in American Life, which includes a brief treatment of the Catholic aspects of anti-intellectualism; the other is the publication by Reverend Andrew M. Greeley of the results of a survey of the academic experience and career plans of 35,000 college graduates of the class of 1961.
The Soviet Citizen Views the World
Authors: Mosely Philip E.
Published: August 2009

How the Soviet citizen views the world, and how he will view it five or ten years from now, is a crucial question. It may determine whether we, and all people, can live in relative peace on this planet, or whether mankind will end up making our globe more or less uninhabitable. The new weapons which science and technology have provided make it all the more urgent to understand the thoughts and purposes of a people and its leaders who wield such great power.
A. J. P. Taylor and History
Authors: Segel Edward B.
Published: August 2009

A. J. P. Taylor's reputation among his fellow historians, like his writings, is marked by paradoxes and contradictions. There is respect for his learning, envy of his brilliance, admiration for his originality, and irritation, if not downright indignation, at his alleged vices. In private, his close friends assure you of his very great qualities as a historian, only to grumble at his absurdities as a showman. In public, his reviewers, even when they praise his scholarship, complain of the impossibility of seeing him as a whole

There is something Shavian about A. J. P. Taylor and his place among academic historians: he is brilliant, erudite, witty, dogmatic, heretical, irritating, insufferable, and withal inescapable. He sometimes insults and always instructs his fellow-historians.…

Almost ten years have passed since this comment was made, and Taylor is no less controversial now than before. Indeed, his two latest books, The Origins of the Second World War (1961) and the Illustrated History of the First World War (1963) have only increased his notoriety among his colleagues. As for this essay, the assumption behind it is that a historian as prolific and important as Taylor deserves a comprehensive and sober analysis, and that perhaps even his eccentricity and insufferableness can be instructive.
The Failure of U Nu and the Return of the Armed Forces in Burma
Authors: Trager Frank N.
Published: August 2009

Unu, in 1947, became the Prime Minister of the Provisional Government of Burma. He retained that post after independence in 1948 and, except for seven months in 1956–1957, he had been the duly elected Prime Minister until he gave up office in September, 1958, after the serious split in the ruling party, the Anti-Fascist Peoples' Freedom League (AFPFL). From then until the third national elections of February, 1960, General Ne Win, Chief of the Burma Defense Forces, held the reins of what was called a “caretaker government”, in which he proceeded strictly according to the constitution adopted in 1947. U Nu's Party won an overwhelming victory at the polls in 1960 and once again, with almost 80 per cent parliamentary backing in the 250-man Chamber of Deputies, the more powerful chamber in the bicameral parliament, he set about to govern Burma. On March 2, 1962, General Ne Win staged a coup. He took over the government in the name of a military Revolutionary Council, arrested the previous cabinet members, and set aside Burma's constitution.
Varieties of Nationalism in Europe and Africa: Nationalism in Europe, 1848–1871
Authors: Pflanze Otto
Published: August 2009

NINETEENTH-CENTURY Europe produced two major concepts for the reorganization of society: those of Marxian socialism and liberal nationalism. Each was regarded by its exponents as a liberating force. Marxian socialists wished to free mankind from the economic exploitation of the capitalistic system, while liberal nationalists wished to free the peoples of Europe from the oppression of authoritarian empires. Both had a strong admixture of utopianism. The socialists envisioned a classless society in which men would work in equality and harmony for the common good, while liberal nationalists envisioned a world composed of nation-states based on democratic constitutions. Both sought to banish war. To the socialists war was a function of capitalism and would disappear with its abolition. To the liberal nationalists war was the product of autocratic monarchical governments, whose liquidation would introduce a new era of international peace.
Woodrow Wilson and the “Great and Solemn Referendum,” 1920
Authors: Merritt Richard L.
Published: August 2009

Several aspects of Woodrow Wilson's political thought recurred time and again in his academic writings, privately expressed opinions, official statements, and even in his actions. They formed the framework for much of his political life. One of these was his belief that, of all kinds of government, the best was that kind that was representative of and responsible to the people. Another was a concomitant of the first: a faith in the inherent ability of the people to know what was both right and good for them. Wilson also believed in the sanctity of contracts, in the duty of an honorable gentleman or an honorable government to keep pledges once made. There were, of course, many other facets of his political thought, but these three principles run like red threads through all of it. Like the tributaries of a mighty river, they converged early in 1920 to form the nucleus of one of Wilson's most daring — and tragic — plans of political action. They inspired his appeal for “a great and solemn referendum” on the League of Nations issue in the United States.
Modern Society and the Realms of Spirit
Authors: Tinder Glenn
Published: August 2009

There is a wide measure of agreement among contemporary observers that something is seriously wrong in modern industrial society. As to the exact nature of the disorder there are differences of opinion: some denounce above all a vulgarization of culture which they see as stemming from the supremacy of mass taste; others view modern men as victims of the illnesses of overorganization, with all spontaneity and uniqueness increasingly compressed within the patterns of public and private bureaucracies; still others believe that the crucial failure of present civilization in the West is that beneath the various forms of mass and organizational “togetherness,” the individual lies stranded, as it were, on the shores of nothingness, deprived of true contact with his fellowmen, with the physical world, or even with himself. Thus there is little agreement as to how the dehumanization of contemporary man is best to be described. That such dehumanization is a fact, however, is the subject of profound and widespread consensus.
Exit the Boss
Authors: Hermens F. A.
Published: August 2009

A medieval schoolman, in a disputation with an opponent, would sometimes pause and say distingue. The making of proper distinctions, however, is no easy task. Man is impatient; he wants to arrive at a conclusion immediately, and he frequently decides with a troubled heart before having given the brain its chance to clarify the issue. On the other hand, if we do take the time “to distinguish,” usually half of the battle is won.
The Presidential Election of 1952
Authors: DeSantis Vincent P.
Published: August 2009

According to widely held beliefs the Presidential election of 1952 was unique in American political history. Observers have pointed out that it was the weariest, most expensive, most intensively and bitterly fought campaign to date. Observers also emphasized that it was a personal victory for General Dwight D. Eisenhower of landslide proportions that exploded such political theories as prosperity favoring the “ins.” It is further held that “Ike” swept the electorate off its feet because he appeared as a hero and father symbol, and that his success in the South is the beginning of a real two party system in that section. These observations must be placed against a background of historical and statistical facts, before they are translated into pleasant assumptions.
Out of Catastrophe: Germany 1945–1960
Authors: Kohn Hans
Published: August 2009

TenYears after Bismarck's creation of the Reich, a Swabian philosopher, Karl Christian Planck, bitterly regretted in his posthumous Testament of a German, that “our people has now entered, similar therein to the Jewish people, its period of selfish national messianism.” Like an Old Testament prophet, he regarded the German nation-state armed to the teeth as a perversion of the true Germany. “If such a universalist people, situated in the heart of Europe, forms in sharp contrast to its preceding history a centralist nation-state and sets before its neighbor nations an example of increased armament, what can result in an age of acute nationalism but total conflict?” Planck foresaw the war of 1914, but he hoped that out of it a reformation of Germany would come. He was too optimistic; the defeat of 1918 brought no reformation but an intensification of the trends of the Bismarckian Reich. With German scholarship leading the march to the abyss, the gulf between Germany and the West grew wider during the Weimar Reich. Thus the catastrophe of 1933 came about, and this in turn led to the war of 1939. The developments after that war, however, fulfilled Planck's hope for a reformation of Germany, for the rise of a new spirit.
Russia in 1905: The View from the American Embassy
Authors: Trani Eugene P.
Published: August 2009

GeorgeVonLengerkeMeyer learned, not at all happily, that he was to be American Ambassador to St. Petersburg. This was a disappointment to himself and his family, for President Theodore Roosevelt had earlier suggested that Meyer be sent to Paris. And St. Petersburg seemed a long way off — in distance, time, culture, and atmosphere — from Paris. Nevertheless Meyer recognized that the appointment was a presidential compliment. For almost a year the President had been working to end the bloody war that had begun with the Japanese attack on the Russian naval base at Port Arthur on February 8, 1904, and had surprisingly resulted in one Japanese victory after another. Roosevelt had urged peace throughout the conflict. He quickly saw the necessity of a first-class ambassador in St. Petersburg to replace Robert S. McCormick, the Chicago businessman who was a political asset but a diplomatic failure.
The Catholic Church in Communist Poland, 1945–1955
Authors: Valkenier Elizabeth
Published: August 2009

In poland, unlike the other satellites, Communist policy toward the Church in the past ten years has been largely cautious and at times even conciliatory. There were no wholesale persecutions, no spectacular trials like those of Mindszenty or Stepinac. That is not to say that the Communists were willing to tolerate the rival claims of the Church to shape the mind and soul of the population. They merely found it wiser to pursue their goal slowly. The progress toward that goal, involving among other things the signing of a bilateral agreement, provides some insights into the course and outcome of a seemingly mild Communist policy.
President Kennedy and the Neutralization of Laos
Authors: Hill Kenneth L.
Published: August 2009

SoonAfter John F. Kennedy became President, difficult foreign policy decisions had to be made. Even before he assumed the burdens of office, he knew an early judgment would be required concerning United States policies vis-à-vis Laos. Throughout 1960, Communist forces in Laos and their allies won numerous military victories and the Laotian Royal Army was unable to check their advances. The United States and other SEATO members were understandably disturbed. They now had to contemplate a total Communist victory with all its potentially painful and embarrassing consequences. These consequences worried President-elect Kennedy and prior to his inauguration, he and his advisors began systematically examining all their policy alternatives; they found that none were really attractive.
On the Future of Germany
Authors: Gurian Waldemar
Published: August 2009

Innumerable books, pamphlets, and articles have been published trying to answer the question: What to do with Germany? The present remarks have a more modest aim. They attempt to consider the various possibilities which face a student of German politics in our time. Aristotle liked to practice a kind of discussion intended not to present solutions, but to point out the difficulties and the various aspects of a problem. I think a similar approach may be helpful for those who are bothered by the question: What after Hitler?
Lord Acton's Theory of Nationality
Authors: Massey Hector J.
Published: August 2009

The philosophical framework for Lord Acton's theory of nationality, or to be more accurate his theory of multinationality, derives both from Aristotle and from Christian thinkers of the Middle Ages and the early modern period. In Aristotle he found the view that the nature of the state is to be a plurality. Aquinas gave him “a very large element of political liberalism,” while Leibnitz contributed the idea of development, particularly the notion that development involves continuity and progress. Combining these points of view, Acton embraced a patently individualistic position, believing firmly that only the individual man possesses moral and political rights. Classes, races and states are at best chance groupings, at worst tortuous human inventions, and consequently have no inherent rights. It is “easier to find people fit to govern themselves,” according to Acton, “than people fit to govern others.”
The Secular Political Culture: Three Views
Authors: Vernon Richard
Published: August 2009

Modern politics is often said to be fundamentally secular, and many who do not say so may find the proposition too obvious to need stating. In a sense, perhaps, it is obvious; but what does it mean? No doubt it is valuable to have a term to describe a society without religion, or one in which common affairs are not religiously directed. But it is odd to suppose that the sheer absence of a characteristic can serve effectively to define a type of society; for one thing, we would need to know what kind of religion was absent, or in what respects religion was lacking, before we could assess what significance this absence could be said to have; for another, to define a society by the absence of a certain feature would seem to point to an intense preoccupation with its presence or absence, yet it is precisely thelackof preoccupation with religion that is held to characterize secular man.A fortiori, it is odd to suppose that secularity not only serves to distinguish broadly among kinds of societies—those with and without religion—but that it also determines the principal features of social and political behavior, to such an extent that one can speak of a secular political culture as a distinct and well-marked type.
The Religious Significance of Democracy in the Thought of Orestes A. Brownson
Authors: Leliaert Richard M.
Published: August 2009

Our nation's bicentennial year 1976 also marks the centennial of the death of Orestes A. Brownson (1803–1876). Throughout his life, Brownson was a lecturer and editor as well as a prolific writer on all aspects of nineteenth-century American life. His voluminous writings are of sweeping range. They include political treatises on American democracy, church-state relations, foreign policy, theological works, social commentaries on slavery, war and peace, the feminist movement, education, economic writings on the relationship between business and government, philosophical critiques of French, German, Italian and British philosophy, literary criticism and aesthetic evaluations of poetry and native American literature.
Natural Law in the Positive Laws: A Legislative or Adjudicative Issue?
Authors: Hittinger Russell
Published: August 2009

Debates over natural law routinely confuse three quite different sets of issues. First, there are the properly philosophical questions of (i) whether a natural law exists, and (ii) whether positive laws are valid completely apart from their moral specifications. Second, there are questions that properly belong to political theory. These include, (iii) how a constitution ought to allocate responsibility to make natural justice effective, and (iv) how a particular system of positive law handles this issue. Third, assuming that a judiciary is limited by written law, it can still be asked whether this necessarily prohibits judicial uses of natural law theory. Questions at these different levels are sufficiently different that what it takes to solve a question at one level does not necessarily carry over to the others. It is vain, therefore, to search for a single method that brings closure on these issues.
The Privatization of Good: An Inaugural Lecture
Authors: MacIntyre Alasdair
Published: August 2009

Alasdair MacIntyre was installed in 1989 as the first occupant of the McMahon/Hank Chair in Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. On April 18, 1990, he delivered his inaugural lecture, “The Privatization of Good,” before a large and appreciative audience in Notre Dame's Center for Continuing Education. He invited three Notre Dame colleagues to comment on his presentation: Donald P. Kommers, Professor of Law and Government, and Editor of The Review of Politics; William David Solomon, Associate Professor of Philosophy; and Richard McCormick, S.J., John A. O'Brien Professor of Christian Ethics. The following pages include the inaugural address, the remarks of two of the three commentators, and Professor Maclntyre's response. The editors wish to thank Professor MacIntyre for his cooperation in publishing his inaugural address.
Autonomy and Liberal Democracy
Authors: Lakoff Sanford
Published: August 2009

Continuing philosophic doubt concerning the moral foundations of human rights threatens to undermine the growing belief in liberal democracy. This doubt has its roots in the reaction against the Enlightenment and is evident even in John Rawls's retreat from the apparent universalism of his theory of justice. There are good grounds, however, for regarding the traditional Western belief in moral and political autonomy as a sound basis for human rights and liberal democracy.
Secrecy and Openness in Lyndon Johnson's White House: Political Style, Pluralism, and the Presidency
Authors: Barrett David M.
Published: August 2009

Two dominant characteristics of President Lyndon Johnson's political style were (1) openness to diverse views and information and (2) extreme secrecy surrounding the advisory process. The two characteristics were in tension, but inextricably linked and served serious purposes: openness brought Johnson policy proposals and political analyses from diverse, credible sources, while secrecy kept his options open until the moment of presidential decision and improved the chances of turning proposals into government policy. I reject characterological analyses which over-emphasize sub-rational causes of Johnson's inclination to secrecy and which contend that he was closed off from diverse advice. The roots of Johnson's style resemble those of post-World War II pluralists, who (like LBJ) were influenced by Franklin Roosevelt's presidency. They and Johnson saw presidents facing a deadlocked democracy and heading an unresponsive executive branch, thus only political skillful and assertive presidents could overcome that dilemma.
Household and Market: On the Origins of Moral Economic Philosophy
Authors: Booth William James
Published: August 2009

This article explores a neglected area in political philosophy and moral economic theory: the origins of normative economic theorizing in classical Greek philosophy. That theory is a critique of the market and the acquisitive life in light of an alternative location of the economy in theoikosor household oriented towards the securing of the good life. Its core elements of the well-ordered community, the good life, and of the foreignness of economic activity to these ends are analyzed here. The article concludes with a critical appraisal of this theory, and an examination of its value for political philosophers concerned to find a non-rights based approach to the economy.
Eric Voegelin's Interpretation(s) of Modernity: A Reconsideration of the Spiritual and Political Implications of Voegelin's Therapeutic Analysis
Authors: Jardine Murray
Published: August 2009

Eric Voegelin's political theory, which is often understood as “conservative,” actually contains very radical elements. An examination of Voegelin's understanding of the genesis of modernity in more detail than hitherto has been attempted shows that four apparently different accounts of modernity's origins can be isolated in Voegelin's writings. An attempt to synthesize these accounts indicates potentially radical implications for both Christian theology and Western political institutions. Such a synthesis shows that the sources of modern consciousness are inherent in orthodox Christianity, which in turn implies a fundamental reconsideration of Christian revelation and its political impact.
Taming the Father: John Locke's Critique of Patriarchal Fatherhood
Authors: Foster David
Published: August 2009

This article demonstrates the radical character of Locke's attack on patriarchalism in the TwoTreatises of Government, in part by showing that that attack implies the rejection of the natural and divine order to which patriarchalism appealed to justify itself. In this way, Locke's attack on patriarchalism, which prepared the way for his individualistic liberal politics, is also shown to be an important part of his solution to the political problem of religion. Special attention is given to Locke's disagreement with the Bible concerning the family and its place in political life.
A “Catholic Whig” Replies
Authors: Novak Michael
Published: August 2009

When the Whigs define themselves as the Party of Liberty, furthermore, they define liberty in a special way. They do not mean libertinism or any other disordered form of liberty, such as a supposed “liberty to do whatever one feels like doing.” For them, a liberty undirected by reflection and choice is slavery. For them, liberty must be achieved through a self-mastery that nourishes reflection and choice. Such self-mastery is won by slowly gaining dominion over appetite, passion, ignorance, and whim. For them, the enabling agent and protector of liberty is virtue—indeed, a full quiver of virtues. (This Hemisphere of Liberty, 1992, pp. 9–10)
Was Alexander Hamilton a Machiavellian Statesman?
Authors: Walling Karl
Published: August 2009

Many important scholars have seen significant similarities in the political thought of Alexander Hamilton and Niccolo Machiavelli, but the only two references to Machiavelli in Hamilton's papers suggest deep misgivings about the kinds of politics we now call Machiavellian. This essay attempts to clarify Hamilton's ambiguous relation to the sage Florentine by focussing on the problem of waging war effectively and remaining free at the same time in the thought of both statesmen. Although Hamilton understood at least as well as Machiavelli the necessity of dynamicvirtùin princes and civic virtue in free citizens, he sought to establish a new order of the ages, a republican empire, which would supply an effectual moral alternative to the genuine Machiavellian regimes of his day.
God, Woman, and Morality: The Democratic Family in the New Political Science of Alexis de Tocqueville
Authors: Mathie William
Published: August 2009

Tocqueville says that the superiority of American women is the chief cause of the power and prosperity of American democracy. That superiority is the result of an education that treats women as capable of freedom, but the use of that freedom is to maintain the bonds that restrict women to the household. The present article examines the role of the family and women in the new political science Tocqueville thought necessary for the defence of democratic liberty. It is argued that as the primary influence of democracy upon the family for Tocqueville has been to eliminate the authority of fathers who were the “arbiters of mores” and thereby the defenders of liberty in aristocracy, so democratic liberty depends for him above all upon the new role of women as the makers of mores. Through the agency of women, otherwise fragile religion constitutes an effective limit to the authority of the majority, but what makes it possible for religion to operate through women is their exclusion from the world of commerce, and what maintains this exclusion is the strict conjugal morality that women themselves defend in America. How far the role of women as guardians of democratic liberty might be justified is shown to depend for Tocqueville upon arguments for it that are other than those commonly accepted by American men.
Aristotle and the Republican Paradigm: A Reconsideration of Pocock'sMachiavellian Moment
Authors: Nadon Christopher
Published: August 2009

J. G. A. Pocock'sMachiavellian Momenthas become an authoritative source for our understanding of the republican tradition, the place Aristotle holds as its founder, and its adversarial relation to liberalism. In this article it is argued that Pocock exaggerates the republican character of Aristotle's thought in a way that ignores the extent to which stability and prosperity, as opposed to the kind of virtue fostered by political participation, are among the chief practical ends of thePolitics. This suggests that Pocock's strict opposition between republican and liberal “paradigms” is an artificial and distorting imposition on the tradition, one more apt to limit than to broaden our understanding of the fundamental alternatives it contains.
Technology and Social Change
Authors: Davisson William I.
Published: August 2009

We live in a world of constant change. Western society as opposed to Eastern society has always been characterized by change, though perhaps today Eastern societies such as China and Japan are changing faster than we of the West.

Our folklore in America pictures the “new” world that Rip van Winkle found when he awakened. Every day we listen for the news. What's new in the world? We have a newspaper. We have newscasters on the media. We greet each other with, “What's new?” Our scientists set out for New Worlds to conquer. We have New Math and Art Nouveau. We change washing machine models every year. We change dress and hair styles. In most cases anything 100 years old is fit only for discard. We tear down our old buildings and move to the suburbs. Things change so fast we don't have time or the inclination or the ability to evaluate whether it was really necessary to have a new style of car or washing machine or a new design for the detergent box. We are driven by maximizing of profits, by being efficient, and by moving people and things.
From Counterculture to Anticulture
Authors: Costello Donald P.
Published: August 2009

Three films circumscribe the counterculture of the last decade. These three films have as their subject the counterculture, and they themselves became cultural events. Woodstock, Easy Rider, and A Clockwork Orange: they define, warn, and predict. Woodstock (the event) and Woodstock (the film, which became the event for millions of the young) defined the counterculture of the 1960's. Of course, that definition did not begin the phenomenon of a youth culture that runs counter. Nor was Woodstock the first description of it. Anthony Burgess wrote his counterculture novel A Clockwork Orange over 10 years ago, and he has told us in a June 8, 1972, Rolling Stone article that he planned the book nearly 30 years ago. The droogs in that novel were some version of Teddy Boys or greasers or hipsters projected into an apocalyptic future: “The work merely describes certain tendencies I observed in Anglo-American society in 1961 (and even earlier).” Some of those tendencies, and several others, were exposed by the counterculture itself in Easy Rider, just before Woodstock. But Woodstock purified and refined the counterculture—and successfully made it self-conscious, mythologized it. And thus defined it.
A Decade in the House of Irresponsibility
Authors: Fern Thomas S.
Published: August 2009

Stuart hampshire has used the term “irresponsibility” to describe or set apart creative activity of an artistic sort from a code of behavior as it is defined and practiced by society. This code is a product of the society's value system and establishes what is or is not responsible behavior.
A Study of French Socialist Ideology
Authors: Lockwood Theodore D.
Published: August 2009

FrenchSocialism has suffered from ideological uncertainty for seventy-five years. Although the party has not been a disassociated, irresponsible cult, it has never had sufficient popular support to implement its ideals by democratic action. Now, in the Fifth Republic, such a prospect seems more remote than ever. More than fifty years as a single, organized party has only led to frustration, marked in the last instance by a schism over support of General de Gaulle. Why has this happened?
New Left Reverberations in the Academy: The Antipluralist Critique of Constitutionalism
Authors: Belz Herman
Published: August 2009

Every state has a constitution—a body of principles, institutions, laws, and customs that forms the framework of government—but not every state is a constitutional state. The latter is distinguished by a commitment to constitutionalism, which in essence is the idea that political life ought to be carried on according to procedures and rules that paradoxically are in some degree placed beyond politics: procedures in other words that are fundamental. Nothing so positive as a written constitution, but rather the belief that the law as the embodiment ofasociety's most important values is powerful, characterizes government under the rule of law.
On Theory of Statecraft
Authors: Tashjean John E.
Published: August 2009

Today the termpolitical theoryhas two main meanings. It means the study of great thinkers who have, more or less systematically or polemically, written on matters political. This is the sense in which the term has been used in this century, down to the “behavioral revolution.” We shall adhere to that usage. Since the “behavioral revolution,” the term has also come to mean a theory, or theories, formal or axiomatic in structure, on subjects political but not traditionally dealt with by political theory in the first sense. This kind of political thought we shall call formal (political) theory.
The Philosophy of History: A Prolegomenon to Political Philosophy
Authors: Noone John B.
Published: August 2009

TheOrganic nature of all philosophic reflection can easily be obscured by the otherwise laudable efforts of specialists in such fields as the philosophies of ethics, political theory, and art. Granting the great speculative philosophers of the past, seeking a unified view of the totality of human experience, erred though an excess of undisciplined imagination, it is questionable whether the less ambitious, piecemeal work of the analytic specialist has saved philosophy from mysticism or has so truncated it that all vital connections with a humanity in search of meaning have been severed. The tendency to compartmentalize philosophy is not limited to any area of experience but in this article I should like to restrict myself to a consideration of the consequences of separating philosophy of history from inquiries into individual and political values. In order to appreciate these consequences we must first agree on the nature of a philosophy of history and the role it plays, or should play, in determining our estimation of human values.
The European Community: What Lies Beyond the Point of No Return?
Authors: Weil Gordon L.
Published: August 2009

Each Time a crisis looms in the European Community, one hears the question: “Has the European Community passed the point of no return or will this crisis end it?”1 The Community of six states, created in Luxembourg in 1952 and expanded in Brussels in 1958, has survived each of these crises and is now reaching political maturity. The question becomes less “Will the Community survive?” and more “What kind of political and economic entity will the Community become?”
Ernst Cassirer and Political Thought
Authors: Schrems John J.
Published: August 2009

Ernst Cassirer's renown is the fame of a philosopher, not of a political theorist. Amongst his voluminous writings onlyThe Myth of the Stateis regarded as a political treatise and its precise political character is problematic. Nevertheless, the rudiments of a Cassirer political philosophy may be derived from an exposition of his understanding of culture and from an examination of his views of freedom, myth, and the state. Cassirer extolled freedom, and he sought to “combat” myth. His own fulfillment of man's “progressive self-liberation,” however, presents difficulties which are the subject matter of this essay.
The United States, Belgium, and the Congo Crisis of 1960
Authors: Kaplan Lawrence S.
Published: August 2009

Involvement in the Congo crisis of 1960 illustrates dramatically an American dilemma in foreign policy: the apparent incompatibility between the nation's emotional rejection of colonialism and the burdens of world leadership which include the consequences of anticolonialism. In 1960 the United States joined the Soviet Union in expediting the removal of the NATO partner, Belgium, from the Congo, helped to increase the power of the United Nations in the Congo at the expense of Belgian interests, and used its influence to destroy the Western-oriented regime of Moise Tshombe of secessionist Katanga. But in 1964 the United States was largely responsible for replacing the United Nations' forces in the Congo with Belgian troops; in 1965 the United States supported Tshombe's government in Leopoldville; and in 1966 and 1967 the United States joined Belgium in an uneasy vigil over the government of General Joseph Mobutu. It is not surprising that its efforts should have been interpreted by communists as American imperialism, by Africans as neocolonialism, and by many allies either as incorrigible naiveté or as hypocrisy.
The Formation of Tocqueville's Historical Thought
Authors: Gargan Edward T.
Published: August 2009

InThePreface to her account of her father's formative years Clara Misch Dilthey wrote, “My father often told me that everything that he had produced was nothing but the execution of thoughts and projects conceived in his youth.” Unlike Dilthey, Tocqueville did not have a child to whom he could confide the story of his intellectual life. Yet, if Tocqueville had had such a daughter, he might have made the same profession of indebtedness to the germinal ideas of his youth.
Liberalism and Its History
Authors: Voegelin Eric , Mary  , Algozin Keith
Published: August 2009

The task of sketching the history of liberalism, though modest, is for methodological reasons difficult. For we stand before the question of whether there is even such a thing as liberalism as a clearly definable subject and whether this subject, should it not be clearly definable, can have a history. We touch here upon a general methodological problem. Toynbee, for example, opens his great work with the question whether England has a history; he concludes that the English nation as a society is so closely related to the society of Western civilization that one cannot write an English history without going into the entire history of Western civilization. It is in this sense that there arise the questions of how liberalism is to be delimited and whether it has a history. And they arise more acutely because the case of liberalism is much more complicated than that of England. For even if some phases of English history, for example the Reformation, can be dealt with only in relation to the general European history of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, still there are long periods of isolated, specifically English history. In the case of liberalism, a narrowing of the subject to national societies — German, French, English or American — is hardly justifiable. For all the regional phases of liberalism are only parts of a common Western movement; and furthermore, this movement can only with difficulty be isolated from other movements which run parallel with it in time.
“Moral Theory” Versus Political Philosophy: Two Approaches to Justice
Authors: Schaefer David Lewis
Published: August 2009

John Rawls's bookA Theory of Justice1has been widely looked to not only as a substantive account of the meaning of justice, but also as a model of the procedure by which the requirements of justice may be determined. Rawls terms his mode of approach to justice “moral theory,” and apparently subsumes the traditional discipline of political philosophy under this more inclusive science. At the same time, he claims that his approach is Socratic in nature, and that it “goes back in its essentials to Aristotle's procedure in theNicomachean Ethics” (pp. 49, 51). “Moral theory,” from this point of view, is simply a new name for the enterprise pursued by the great political philosophers from Socrates onwards. But, surprisingly, despite the number of outstanding thinkers who devoted themselves to this enterprise, little progress was ever made in it, for the theories with which we have been left, according to Rawls, remain “primitive and have grave defects” (p. 52). It is Rawls's claim to have developed a “theory of justice” that is superior to any of those devised by previous philosophers, in that it conforms better to the dictates of men's “sense of justice” (p. 52).
The Catholic Church, “Politics,” and Violence: The Colombian Case
Authors: Levine Daniel H. , Wilde Alexander W.
Published: August 2009

The issue of politics and the Catholic Church in Latin America, relegated until recently to nineteenth-century historians, is very much alive today. On the one hand, the church as an institution is enmeshed in public controversy over human rights with repressive regimes from Paraguay to Panama, from Brazil to Chile. When it serves as a shelter for political and social dissent, it is accused by secular authorities of engaging in a “new clericalism.” On the other hand, it has been assailed by critics within for being wed to existing political powers. These radical clergy and lay people believe that the church's social presence is inevitably political, but want to change its alliances to benefit the poor and dispossessed. Furthermore, they believe that the existing order in given situations is aform of “institutionalized violence” against which the Christian response must be “counterviolence.” Such attacks from right and left occur, paradoxically, just at a time when the Latin American church has turned with unprecedented resolve to fundamental pastoral tasks. Politics has thus become a problem just as the hierarchy can claim, with considerable justification, to have eschewedthe practice of partisanship and the pursuit of power.
Whitehead on Joy in Learning
Authors: Ward Leo R.
Published: August 2009

Inhis ideas on education, Alfred North Whitehead was a man of good sense as well as of wide experience, a traditionalist and yet full of new life. Freshest and as if novel are two ideas: there should be spontaneous joy in learning: joy is its life; and although reason and logic are of course necessary, vital intuitions belong to the essence of learning.
Local Autonomies, Regional Governments and Metropolitan Areas in Italy
Authors: Evans Robert H. , Rizzi Felice
Published: August 2009

The need to introduce flexibility and diversity into an increasingly centralized and insensitive system of political and administrative controls is one of the most strongly felt problems in modern democracies. In particular, reforms must be fostered in state governmental and administrative structures to reckon with the evergrowing weight of regional units and metropolitan areas. The debate affects not only the United States but also Western Europe, witness the recent reforms in England, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, and Italy. Italy, after delaying by some twenty years the application of the 1948 constitution which called for the establishment of regional governments, has taken steps which should transform the political-administrative base of the country and may serve as guidelines for other societies where regional allegiances remain strong and where metropolitan areas outweigh rural ones in terms of financial needs and commitments. The changes, some twenty years in the works, are worthy of attention as they offer an interesting case of intrastate regionalism coupled with successful elements of micro-regionalization.
Foreigners: Insiders, Outsiders and the Ethics of Membership
Authors: Booth William James
Published: August 2009

Questions of exclusion, membership and the status of resident foreigners press upon liberal political thought and society with a particular sharpness, given the universalist underpinnings of the liberal commitment. How within the horizon of liberalism and rights discourse are we to think of the foreigner? The article suggests some reasons why we should consider suspect the cluster of notions surrounding alienage and sketches why the moral salience of the foreignness of these outsiders at our door and present among us has diminished, and thus brought under scrutiny our traditional comportment toward them. But it is not so much intended here to seek a resolution of these issues as to motivate a cluster of questions, to argue for their importance and to show the inadequacy of the treatment of them that we have inherited.
Reason, Self-Legislation and Legitimacy: Conceptions of Freedom in the Political Thought of Rousseau and Kant
Authors: Kaufman Alexander
Published: August 2009

Rousseau and Kant both argue for contractarian theories of justice. In spite of their common contractarianism, however, Rousseau and Kant argue for conceptions of legitimacy which differ markedly. The substantive differences between their accounts of legitimacy, I suggest, illustrate the political implications of disagreement regarding the status of practical reason. Rousseau, in assigning reason to a merely instrumental status, anticipates both postmodern and empiricist skepticism regarding the power of reason to ground the choice of ends. Kant is the forerunner of contemporary accounts of justice which reject such skeptical views of practical reason. Rousseau's skepticism about practical reason ties his criterion of legitimacy directly to the actual preferences of individuals. Kant's more robust conception of practical reason (1) allows him to argue for a criterion of great generality and flexibility, but (2) ties the plausibility of his account of legitimacy directly to the soundness of his conception of practical reason.
Martin Heidegger and the University as a Site for the Transformation of Human Existence
Authors: Milchman Alan , Rosenberg Alan
Published: August 2009

Martin Heidegger's rectorate (1933–1934) was characterized by an incontestable involvement with Nazism. However, neither the rectorate, nor Heidegger's ambitious project for the transformation of the university within which it was embedded, was reducible to Nazism. Indeed, Heidegger's project to transform the university dates from his earliest lecture courses at Freiburg University in 1919 and was a hallmark of his thinking long before the rise of Nazism. That project was itself linked to the long-standing dispute in German academia over the role of the university in the modern world, which involved such thinkers as Kant, Schelling, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche. Despite the entanglement with Nazism, which stamped his rectorate, Heidegger's thinking about the university as a site for the transformation of human existence is especially pertinent today.
Leo Strauss's Confrontation with Max Weber: A Search for a Genuine Social Science
Authors: Behnegar Nasser
Published: August 2009

An analysis of Leo Strauss's difficult and relatively neglected criticism of Max Weber inNatural Right and Historyreveals the fundamental difficulties that political science, and social science more generally, must overcome in order to be a genuine science. In Strauss's view, the inadequacy of the fact-value distinction, which is now widely acknowledged, compels a re-examination of Weber's denial of the possibility of valid knowledge of values. Strauss identifies the serious ground of this denial as Weber's insight that modern philosophy or science cannot refute religion. Believing that philosophy or science cannot ultimately give an account of itself that meets the challenge of religion, Weber maintained a “tragic” view of the human situation. Strauss also expresses profound doubt about the possibility of philosophy or science, but ultimately he suggests that a certain kind of study of the history of political philosophy might resolve the conflict between philosophy and divine revelation, and, therewith, the “value problem.”
The End of Revolution?
Authors: Snyder Robert S.
Published: August 2009

Revolution ushered in the modern world, but modernity has killed it. Scholars who examine the causes or contributing conditions of revolutions focus either on structure, agency, or ideas, yet an analysis of each perspective reveals that the alleged causes or conditions have declined or been eliminated. In spite of capitalism's global crisis in the late 1990s, the spread of liberalism and other factors should make revolutions unlikely to occur.
The Appeal of Innocence: Baldwin, Walzer, and the Bounds of Social Criticism
Authors: Balfour Lawrie
Published: August 2009

Racial innocence persists not only in American public life but in its democratic theory as well. An unwillingness to confront the implications of American racial history diminishes theorists' capacity to respond to the exclusion and dehumanization of African Americans in the post-civil rights era. Reading James Baldwin's social critical essays against Michael Walzer's writings on the practice of social criticism, this essay shows how a theorist whose work equips him to grapple with questions of racial injustice nonetheless evades them by constructing three sorts of boundaries: between members and nonmembers, between social critics and certain relations of power, and between the “core” of a people's experience and the brutalities of their history.
Classical Ethics and Postmodern Critique: Political Philosophy in Václav Havel and Jan Patočka
Authors: Findlay Edward F.
Published: August 2009

This article examines the ties between the work of Václav Havel and his dissident mentor Jan Patočka. Havel's political theory consists largely of an evocative, literary reformulation of a number of themes developed by Patočka, the student of Husserl and Heidegger generally recognized as the most significant Czech philosopher of the century. Insofar as Patočka's work continues to be ignored in the West, the intuitively appealing essays of Havel will themselves fail to be fully understood. This study offers an analysis of Havel's debt to Patočka, as well as an explication of the latter's political thought. With Patočka's phenomenological interpretation of ancient and contemporary thought, of Socrates and Heidegger, a bridge is built between the classical and the postmodern that seeks to ground ethics and politics without recourse to the foundationalism of metaphysical accounts of reality.