bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Response: Not So…
Authors: Stoner James R.
Published: August 2009

It was not the exquisite self-consciousness of a Henry James that I had in mind when I wondered about equality and hierarchy in Locke, but the assertive self-consciousness or—what is for Locke ultimately the same—self-interestedness of an Andrew Carnegie, as exemplified both in the acquisition and the dispersion of his fortune. After all, it was Locke's genius in chapter five of the Second Treatise to make the case for private property on different grounds than had Aristotle because he conceived of property in a different way: as the fruit, not of nature, but of human creativity, less interesting for its use in leisure than for its origin in labor. As Strauss and even Zuckert have suggested, the brilliance of Locke's argument does not eclipse its underlying contradiction, that on the one hand the initial right to acquire seems to depend on there being “enough and as good” left for others, as though man lived amidst natural plenty, while on the other hand the account of the progressive rise in value consequent to enclosure (and the post hoc justification for property rights that it implies) describes natural scarcity. Holding that “a man may deliberately contradict himself in order to indicate his thought rather than to reveal it,” Strauss takes Locke's “revolutionary” teaching about “‘dynamic’ property” to indicate his true intention:
Rorty's Nietzschean Pragmatism: A Jamesian Response
Authors: Boffetti Jason M.
Published: August 2009

Richard Rorty makes the case that Friedrich Nietzsche shared a common pragmatism with William James in order to incorporate certain Nietzschean themes into neo-pragmatism and to give his philosophy stronger pragmatic credentials. In making this connection, he establishes a version of pragmatism that rejects both epistemology and metaphysics, reduces the pragmatic theory of truth to “truth is what works,” places the Darwinian account of man at the center of the human narrative, and makes Nietzschean “self-creation” the chief end of a postmodern, post-religious liberal society. But if one reads James more faithfully (a task that Rorty rejects), it is clear that James does not succumb to the nihilism, perspectivalism, and atheism characteristic of Rorty's Nietzschean pragmatism. A more comprehensive reading of James's philosophy brings together James's pragmatism, his pluralism, and his radical empiricism. And this more complete interpretation of James's pragmatism offers a pluralistic and hopeful approach to politics that does not suffer from Nietzsche's and Rorty's nihilistic, relativistic, and antipolitical tendencies.
Disposed to Seek Their True Interests: Representation and Responsibility in Anti-Federalist Thought
Authors: Johnson Joel A.
Published: August 2009

Conventional wisdom holds that the Anti-Federalists wanted representative bodies to mirror the electorate, and that the Federalists envisioned representation as a device for refining and enlarging popular views. This characterization is accurate in a broad sense, but it overlooks an important element in Anti-Federalist thought. I argue that certain key Anti-Federalists, in particular the Federal Farmer and Melancton Smith, synthesized the “mirroring” ideal and the “refining” ideal into a theory of representation that incorporated the best features of each system. This hybrid theory, though overwhelmed in the ratification debates of 1787–88, nevertheless provides a creative alternative model for effective national union.
The Super-Powers at San Francisco
Authors: Fox William T. R.
Published: August 2009

The Charter of San Francisco is the modest end-product of the mightiest collective literary effort in history. Fifty delegations, comprising literally thousands of principal and subordinate personnel, labored feverishly for two months to achieve agreement on a constitution for the new world security organization.1 In contrast, the Covenant of the League of Nations was drafted by one of the commissions of the Peace Conference of Paris, on which there sat two representatives of each of the five major powers and one representative from each of nine of the secondary powers. This group of nineteen men met fifteen times.2

The very broad participation of the smaller powers in the San Francisco Conference is obviously not to be explained in terms of their growing influence in world politics. Although the number of prospective permanent seat-holders in die Council of the proposed world organization was the same at Paris and at San Francisco, there had been in the intervening quarter-century a reduction rather than an increase in the number of powers of greatest influence.
Nonalignment Si, Neutralism No
Authors: Shay Theodore L.
Published: August 2009

There are seventy states in the world that are not formally aligned with either of the great power alliance systems, Western or Soviet. With varying degrees of precision, each state defines its foreign policy in terms of its nonalignment. Some of these states additionally refer to their foreign policy in terms of neutralism, which they may often qualify in terms of such adjectives as “positive” or “dynamic” to indicate that they are not passive role players in world politics. Some ventures of neutralists into self-definition have resulted in considerable confusion. As an example may be cited V. K. Krishna Menon's description of India＇s policy:
Architecture and Western Civilization
Authors: Nef John U.
Published: August 2009

All aspects of the life of an age are interrelated, even when the interrelations express themselves in cross purposes and intellectual dissolution. Whether or not they embody forms and ideas worthy to be dignified by the name of architecture, the buildings of any period are an expression of it. They reflect, in varying degrees, its economic and social development, the enactments of its legislative bodies, the acts of its administrative officials, the decisions of its law courts, the character and course of its wars. They also express, again in varying degrees, its methods of education, its religious life, its natural science, its thought and its art. They are, to some extent, the expression of past traditions and works of the mind which have retained a hold on the life of the period or have been revived by its thinkers and artists, as classical antiquity has been revived again and again in Western European history since the eleventh century.
The English Domestic Political Situation
Authors: Hollis Christopher
Published: August 2009

The American settlement has created a very interesting situation in domestic English politics—a situation in which there are bound to be developments, mough no one can yet say what they will be. It is still very arguable whether the decision of the nation to return to party politics immediately after the German collapse was a wise one. There are arguments in favour of a National Government and arguments against one. An advantage of party politics is certainly that an effective opposition has an important part to play in keeping die Government up to the mark. The absence of such an Opposition in war-time does not so much matter, for then we have the enemy to perform this function of pace maker. But a National Government in peace-time certainly runs the danger of contracting fatty degeneration of the heart.
The German Professor in the Third Reich
Authors: Ritter Gerhard
Published: August 2009

As early as November 1943, in conversations with German refugees at Istanbul, I encountered again and again the question, asked with amazement: how was it possible in Hitler's Germany for me to publish such independent views on historical-political questions, as I had expressed in my writings and addresses, without suffering political persecution? After I was released from prison by the Russians at the end of April 1945, foreigners frequently asked me the same question. I shall attempt to give an answer, based simply on my own personal experience.

In November, 1944, I had been arrested by the Gestapo, not because of any statement I had made in my addresses, university lectures, or writings, but because of my friendship with Dr. Gördeler and my participation in conferences about a political-theological memoir dealing with the future reorganization of German and European politics. The Gestapo officials who arrested me all wore an SD (Security Service) on the sleeves of their uniforms.
The Labor Party in Ulster: Opposition by Cartel
Authors: Rutan Gerard F.
Published: August 2009

Almost thirty years ago Nicholas Mansergh concluded that the political parties in Northern Ireland did not fulfill the needs of the political system: that (to put his statement in more contemporary terms) the input functions, particularly that of political socialization, were enfeebled to the extent that one party constituted a permanent government while the other became an equally permanent opposition. What is more, underlying the party system and within the political society itself there existed no consensus on fundamentals: “There is no residue of political beliefs—as in Great Britain and the Free State—acceptable to both parties.”
Islamic Culture and Political Pratice in British Mandated Palestine, 1918–1948
Authors: Divine Donna Robinson
Published: August 2009

The starting point for explaining modern Palestinian political history is the assumption that Palestinians failed to organize adequately during the British Mandate (1918–1948), were defeated by the Zionist movement, and consequently dispersed from their homeland. That Palestinians did not unite politically during this crucial period in their history, nor cooperate economically, nor even band together militarily is considered corollaries of this organizational incapacity and reasons enough for their failure to achieve a national sovereignty of their own. Thus Porath notes that ultimately no Palestinian political organization could bridge the divisions of region, family, and narrow economic or political interest which encouraged the proliferation of parties and weakened the drive against Zionism. Ann Mosely Lesch calls her book on Arab politics in Palestine, “the frustration of a nationalist movement.”
The Road to Indian Autonomy
Authors: Zacharias H. C. E.
Published: August 2009

The first requisite for a clear grasp of the tragic situation in India today is the need of distinguishing between two trends, the political one of conflict between autocracy and democracy, and the nationalistic one of conflict between White and Brown. Failure to distinguish can lead to such astonishing ideas as that Gandhi fights for Democracy or that “British” is synonymous with “imperialist.”
American Catholicism and the Aggiornamento
Authors: McAvoy Thomas T.
Published: August 2009

Pope Pius XII had been better known to the people of the United States than any other pontiff. He had visited the country before his election, had manifested a personal interest in the country, and had probably shaken the hands of more Americans than any previous pontiff. The image of Pope Pius XII in the American press was of an ascetical, scholarly, and noble man who had manifested an interest in almost every phase of human existence. The image of his successor, the former Cardinal Angelo Joseph Roncalli, a short squat man of peasant origins, was quite different. As nuncio in postwar Paris he had become known to some Americans as a friendly diplomat, but he did not speak English and had never been to the United States. He was seventy-six years old and according to some had been elected by compromise between the liberals and conservatives. He quickly became famous for his smiling humility and approachableness, his readiness to go anywhere, and his manifest intention to be a very active pope. Americans soon learned of this friendliness, above all of his openness to non-Catholics and of his special desire to bring the Greek Orthodox Catholics back to union with Rome.
Machiavelli and the Problem of Political Development
Authors: Tsurutani Taketsugu
Published: August 2009

There is a striking similarity between the Italy of the cinquecento and today's developing nations. In both worlds, the chief characteristics are internal fragmentations with little or no community of interest, the all-too-frequent rise and fall of political regimes, a disharmonious relationship between government and governed, and the absence of meaningful direction. Flux and volatility are the all-pervasive features.
The Symbolism of Redemption and the Exorcism of Fortune in Machiavelli's Prince
Authors: Tarlton Charles D.
Published: August 2009

Machiavelli's Prince has been interpreted and appraised from a wide range of points of view. Attitudes have run all the way from unqualified admiration for the Princes compelling frankness and republican patriotism to shock and hatred for its obvious moral relativism. The Prince has been condemned as a piece of political opportunism, an expression of the philosophy of the antichrist, and a contributing factor to the political morality of both Napoleon and Hitler. On the other hand, it has in modern times been praised as a forthright assessment of the morality of sixteenth-century Italian political life and/or the first manifestation of a new science of politics.
Jacques Maritain and the Spanish Civil War
Authors: Doering Bernard
Published: August 2009

The 1930's posed difficult moral problems for European Catholics. First came Mussolini's questionable adventure in belated colonialism in Ethiopia. Then the war in Spain suddenly, and with piercing sharpness, posed the moral problems of civil war. For the most influential Catholic thinker of his time, Jacques Maritain, the war in Spain was a challenging difficulty. Though Maritain openly refused his allegiance to Franco, and thereby became a scandal to Catholics horrified by the Spanish republic's attacks on the official Church, his reflections on Spain gave impetus to a current of thought in Catholic circles that culminated in the declaration of the Second Vatican Council on the relations between church and state. Hence, as so often happens, a time of confusion and fraternal strife was also a time of clarification, and a time of despair broadened into a time of hope.
Hegel's Theory of Crime and Punishment
Authors: Hinchman Lewis P.
Published: August 2009

In recent times, the issues surrounding crime and punishment have seldom been discussed from the vantage point of political philosophy. Instead, they have tended to become the province of lawyers, psychologists, and specialists in ethics or the philosophy of language. Whatever the merits of their respective contributions may be, such writers usually have assumed that the basic questions of political legitimacy and the state's authority to enforce criminal law have been settled. In effect, they ask: given a state which already possesses a legitimate system of criminal justice, whom should the state punish (if it does at all), why, and under what circumstances?
Theory in Practice: Quentin Skinner's Hobbes, Reconsidered
Authors: Goodhart Michael
Published: August 2009

Quentin Skinner's method for studying the history of political thought has been widely and heatedly debated for decades. This article takes a new tack, offering a critique of Skinner's approach on the grounds he has himself established: consideration of his historical work as exemplifying the theory in practice. Three central assumptions of Skinner's method are briefly reviewed; each is then evaluated in the context of his writings on Hobbes. The analysis reveals problems and ambiguities in the specification and implementation of the method and in its underlying philosophy. The essay concludes by examining the broader practical and philosophical implications of adopting this approach to the study of political ideas: the method operationalizes a set of philosophical commitments that transforms ideological choices into questions of proper method.
Church and State in America: Toward a Biblically Derived Reformulation of Their Relationship
Authors: Roelofs H. Mark
Published: August 2009

This article begins with a critique of the orthodox American doctrine calling for the separation of church and state, especially as this doctrine has been formulated by the United States Supreme Court. This doctrine is simplistic, dualistic, and merely jurisdictional; it is also much too narrowly tied to Hobbesian-Lockean liberal prejudices and their asocial vocabularies. The predominant American religious traditions (Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish) are all, at core, biblical, and a biblically derived reformulation of American thinking on church-state relationships would differ from the orthodox tradition in three fundamental respects: (1) far from a “separation” of church and state, these would be seen as partners in a shared world of national moral experience; (2) the religious element in this combination, as much as the political, would be understood in broad, social terms, not merely those of “private conscience”; (3) in their shared world, the specific relationships between church and state would be seen in ongoing, dialectical terms rooted in their necessarily conflicting visions of the nation's past, its problems, and its promises.
World Politics in the Mid-Twentieth Century
Authors: Morgenthau Hans J.
Published: August 2009

From the end of the religious wars to the First World War, the modern state system was kept together by the intellectual and moral tradition of the Western world. That tradition imposed moral and legal limitations on the struggle for power on the international in a certatin measure, maintained order in the international community and secured the independence of its individual members. What is left of this heritage today? What kind of consensus unites the nations of the world in the period following the Second World War?
D. I. Pisarev: A Representative of Russian Nihilism
Authors: Barghoorn Frederick C.
Published: August 2009

Few movements of ideas or of public opinion have been more significant than the Russian radicalism of the 1860's, of which D. I. Pisarev (1840–1868) was the most popular and effective propagandist. Turgenev in his Fathers and Children attached to this trend die appellation of ‘nihilism.’ The Russian scholar Nestor Kotlyarevski has characterized this movement as follows: ‘The radicalism of die 60's was a complete rejection of all the previously dominant views regarding the abstract fundamentals of life and an attempt to replace these views by a new outlook based upon a materialist and utilitarian interpretation of all the problems of life and the spirit.’ The Russian intellectual movement of the 60's represents the most decisive phase in pre-Soviet Russia of that process of the ‘desertion of die intellectuals’ which Crane Brinton has singled out as an essential characteristic of a disintegrating ‘old regime.’ The revolt of die intellectuals assumed in Russia extreme and peculiar forms. A special group, almost a sect, known as the intelligentsia, developed. This group, as Berdyaev says, ‘lived in schism with its environment, which it considered evil.’
Finland Since 1939
Authors: Kalijarvi Thorsten V.
Published: August 2009

An understanding of present-day Finland is conditioned upon an understanding of Finland prior to 1939. The background for the last eight years must come from the early Middle Ages, when Finland became united with the Kingdom of Sweden and carried on more or less constant warfare on the side of that country against Russia. When, in 1809, Russia defeated Sweden in war, she forced the latter to cede Finland to her. Finland was, however, immediately granted die status of an autonomous Grand Duchy. During the century of Russian sovereignty, even though the Finns racially and linguistically differed from the Scandinavian people, they retained their old Western culture, and continued to form a part of the Scandinavian group; in short, the fact that Finland fell under Russian control for over a hundred years made very little lasting impression upon Finnish institutions and culture. In 1906, the Tsar approved the new Parliament Act whereby the old Finnish Diet of four estates was changed into a truly democratic single-chambered legislature, chosen by universal and equal suffrage.
Citizenship and State-Sponsored Physical Education: Ancient Greece and Ancient China
Authors: Wooyeal Paik , Bell Daniel A.
Published: August 2009

In ancient Greece and ancient China, small states engaged in intense military competition and incessant warfare. In such contexts, there was naturally much emphasis on the training of soldiers. One might have expected state-sponsored physical education to develop as a by-product of the need to train soldiers, but the historical record shows that ancient Greek states placed far more emphasis on physical education compared to their counterparts in ancient China. This essay attempts to (partly) explain the divergent outcomes with reference to the idea of citizenship. The first part outlines the practice and philosophy of state-sponsored physical education in ancient Greece and ancient China and addresses the question of why the two ancient civilizations should be compared in this respect. The main body of the article discusses the political differences between ancient Greece and ancient China that help to explain the different outcomes regarding state-sponsored physical education. The last part ends with some normative reflections that may be relevant for present-day societies.
The Permanent Mission: An Essay on Russia
Authors: Kohn Hans
Published: August 2009

In 1815 Friedrich Gentz noted: “Napoleon's downfall was a pure and unqualified advantage for Russia; for the rest of Europe, and especially for the states bordering on Russia, it was largely balanced by the increased strength that she secured for herself at the expense of the general equilibrium. For this great power there is virtually no further real danger; if she attacks her neighbors her greatest risk is merely diat she may fail in her purpose and have to postpone her venture to a more favorable time. The difficulty of penetrating Russia's interior is now so generally recognized that only lunacy and despair could prompt an attempt to conquer this great empire. While the other states of Europe exhausted themselves in the struggle against Napoleon, Russia who allied herself with him understood well how to extract the most solid benefits from the ephemeral union. It would be easy for her to fall upon her neighbors, for she has so many greedy ambitious reasons for trying it, and, if the expression be allowed, such substantially centrifugal habits, that war, which others regard as a necessary evil, will always be to the Russians a matter of choice, of emotion, and of speculation.“
St. Patrick and the Irish People
Authors: Bieler Ludwig
Published: August 2009

In his Life of St. Patrick Jocelin of Furness quotes an Irish saying: “The Lord gave Ireland not to Palladius, but to Patrick.” This is indeed the view of the Patrick legend from the seventh century onwards. According to this legend, Pope Celestine sent his archdeacon Palladius to Ireland to preach Christ to the Irish; but Palladius failed completely, “because nobody can take from the world that which is not given him from above.” It was his successor Patrick who laid the foundations of the Irish church.

This legend, to say the least, over-simplifies the facts. Prosper of Aquitaine, a contemporary of Palladius, distinctly tells us that Palladius was sent “to the Irish believing in Christ” as their first bishop, in other words, with orders to organize a diocese on the basis of Christian communities already existing, however sporadic the latter may have been. The legend is further contradicted by a seventh century Irish tradition which has preserved the names of three churches founded by Palladius in Leinster.
The Photian Schism in Western and Eastern Tradition
Authors: Dvornik F.
Published: August 2009

The problem of the Patriarch Photius involved one of the most tangled and bitter differences that hamper friendly relations between Eastern and Western Christianity. Since the Renaissance, Photius, a Greek scholar of the ninth century, has been venerated by philosophers and philologists alike as the genius who among others was instrumental in transmitting to later generations classical Greek and Hellenic culture. On the other hand, Photius' name has been associated with the rise of the first schism in the ninth century when, under Pope Nicholas I, Photius played a prominent part in the first clash between the papacy and the East. The result is that the same man who is venerated as a saint by the Eastern Church, and as one of the last living witnesses of the tradition of the early Christian Fathers, has been for centuries regarded by the Christian West as the father of the great schism, as a prevaricator who falsified papal letters and conciliar Acts, and as a symbol of pride and lust for ecclesiastical domination. It is evident that both views cannot be right. Hence, the history of the Patriarch still stands as the greatest stumbling block barring the way to a better understanding between eastern and western Christendom. The apparent impossibility of reconciling such contradictory estimates has left historians with the feeling that history in this case finds itself in a cul-de-sac.
Constitutional Trends in Eastern Europe, 1945–48
Authors: Black C. E.
Published: August 2009

The constitutional development of the governments of eastern Europe in modern times has varied with the particular circumstances and personalities of each national group. Yet in its broader aspects this development has revealed a remarkably uniform pattern. The minority peoples of the Habsburg, Romanov, and Ottoman empires met the challenge of alien laws and discriminatory economic conditions in the nineteenth century by adopting as their program the political principles popularized by the French revolution. By the outbreak of World War I, Serbia, Greece, Rumania, Bulgaria, and Albania had achieved an independent status, and with the exception of the last-named had established a tradition of parliamentary government and the beginnings of a liberal democracy. A new era of opportunities and problems, inaugurated by the victory of the Allies in 1918, saw the creation of the enlarged Yugoslavia and Rumania, and of the new Czecho-slovakia. Two years later, with the stabilization of Russia's western frontier, Finland, the three Baltic states, and Poland were established as independent states. Albania and Bulgaria continued with modest changes of frontier and political outlook, and took their place beside a recalcitrant Hungary and a chastened Greece.
1848: Theory and Practice of the German juste milieu
Authors: Mattheisen Donald J.
Published: August 2009

As everyone knows, the failure of the German revolution of 1848 was the loss of a great opportunity.* If the revolution had succeeded, German unification might have been consummated on a popular basis, rather than through Bismarckian authoritarianism. The result could have been a German nation-state more closely in step with the liberal-democratic age that was dawning in western Europe. Subsequent German and European history might then have been much happier than it actually turned out to be. For, by thwarting liberalism and delaying democracy, the collapse of this revolution helped to make Germany the European problem child she has been in this century.
Nietzsche and the Will to Politics
Authors: Abbey Ruth , Appel Fredrick
Published: August 2009

This article moves on two fronts. It continues the challenge to the belief that politics is not central to the concerns of Friedrich Nietzsche but questions attempts to transvalue Nietzsche into a democrat. With their illiberal and inegalitarian political views, Nietzsche's writings best serve democratic political theory in an antidotal way. The article discusses Nietzsche's aesthetic approach to political action and architectonic conception of politics. It also explores some of the qualities he believes future rulers would need and the mechanisms they could use to exercise and legitimate their power. Just as Nietzsche thinks of political action in aesthetic terms, so his own art has a political purpose for he envisages the formation of a social, cultural and political élite and hopes, through his writings, to galvanize this élite.
Metternich's Theory of European Order: A Political Agenda for “Perpetual Peace”
Authors: Sofka James R.
Published: August 2009

This article examines the foreign policy of Prince Clemens Metternich of Austria, the chief architect of the Vienna Treaty of 1815, in the light of Enlightenment political thought. Metternich is commonly considered a reactionary and practitioner of callous balance-of-power diplomacy, and this article seeks to refute this conclusion. By examining Metternich's deeply held theoretical beliefs on the nature of the European state system, and above all his Kantian belief in progress and federalism, this essay concludes that Metternich pursued a reformist, and indeed idealistic, program in international politics which cannot be divorced from late Enlightenment philosophy. His Conference System, which was designed to regulate European politics in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, represented a novel experiment in European union which remains a pressing concern in the contemporary international system.
Moral Conservatism
Authors: Simpson Evan
Published: August 2009

The study of ethics has recently become influenced by a form of moral conservatism—a critique of “modernity” with a bias towards Aristotle. It stresses the integrity of communities and their customs, a pluralistic and particularistic respect for the diversity of human groups, the poverty of utopianism and Marxism, and the inevitability of moral and political conflict. Each stress raises major issues: the priority of social goods over human rights; hermeneutical problems of understanding between communities; difficulties for societies' shaping a common future in accordance with their moral understanding; the balance between consensus and conflict in political life. These problems are addressed in an extended form of moral conservatism which defines a number of correspondences with progressive conceptions of humanity. Referring to central facts of moral psychology and possible institutions of public communication, the discussion identifies universal human purposes whose practical implications are consistent with a postmodern society in which the course of development is settled by public deliberation.
Politics of the Kingdom: Pannenberg's Anthropology
Authors: Dallmayr Fred R.
Published: August 2009

Religion is again a lively topic not only in practical-political life but also in social and political thought. The latter development is by far more surprising and intriguing than the practical-political relevance. For some time, political theory had ostensibly settled accounts with, or resolved the status of, religious belief: basically churches and religious movements were classified as one type of interest groups (or “input variables”) within a comprehensive liberal-democratic model — a model secular in character but not intolerant, within limits, of religious convictions. On the part of organized (especially Protestant) churches, the settlement was widely accepted as a means for securing both internal church autonomy and some influence in the political arena; the “social gospel” movement in particular saw faith chiefly as a leverage for advancing welfare and progress within secular society. To be sure, the optimism of the liberal settlement was severely challenged, and partly disrupted, by catastrophic events in our century as well as by radical theological criticism — a criticism highlighted in Richard Niebuhr's well-known phrase: “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.” Yet, when carried to an extreme, theological criticism had the paradoxical effect of reinforcing the secular-liberal paradigm. Once religion was radically segregated from politics or the “city of God” from the “earthly city,” the latter was left entirely to its own devices; purged of all religious and millenarian considerations social and political theory could return to business as usual.
The Formation of the Catholic Minority in the United States 1820–1860
Authors: McAvoy Thomas T.
Published: August 2009

No minority group in the United States is probably as formless and yet at the same time as rigid as the American membership of the Roman Catholic Church. The rigidity of the Catholic organization arises from the fact that there has never been a real heresy during the three centuries and more of Catholic life within the boundaries of the present United States. Even the so-called heresy of Americanism existed more in the minds of European theologians than in the Catholics of the new world. There have been divergencies among American Catholics on such questions as the application of Gregory XVI's condemnation of the slave trade, the timeliness of die declaration of papal infallibility or the extent of the papal condemnation of secret societies, but there has been no difference on the essential doctrines involved in these disputes.
The Passion of Leon Bloy
Authors: O'Malley Frank
Published: August 2009

The rationalist is the acknowledged enemy of the spirit. The enmity is notably murderous when the object is the mind that has been scripturalized, the mind that draws its sources of value and discernment and power out of the energy of the Old and New Testaments, the mind that, refusing to show cause or prove or analyze, delivers judgment and damnation with the utmost conviction, the conviction of prophetic vision, of spiritual intuition. The system-maker, inveterately hunting after a coherent method or formulation, will find none; rather he may be expected to find only a violent assertiveness indifferent to all pattern and organization. So he may cry, “Fraud!” or “Fool!” Or if he, in his pure objectivity, has to respect the visionary's evident belief in his task, he may, subsequently, summon the psycho-analyst, who, at a loss for any other explanation, may attribute the whole outpouring of the prophet's soul to a neurotic condition. But this is, I think, a cheap evasion of the responsibility of any serious examiner.
The Plight of Satellite Diplomacy
Authors: Kertesz Stephen
Published: August 2009

The recent historical process in Eastern Europe has been the reverse of the evolution in colonial matters. In other parts of the world, former colonies reached a degree of complete independence. In East Europe, formerly independent states acquired the peculiar status of semi-dependent colonies. Nazi Germany applied colonial methods in her dealings with European states and invented various categories of protectorates and semi-dependencies. One of the new categories was that of the countries known as satellite states. This meant that some countries, remaining theoretically sovereign members of the family of nations, lost their independence and particularly their freedom of action in international and domestic affairs. The satellite states were never considered by Germany as equal partners but only as more or less reliable “Hilfs-völker.” Equality and cooperation in international relations was in conceivable to the Nazi mind.
Locke on Political Obligation
Authors: Kilcullen John
Published: August 2009

Much has been written about Locke's Second Treatise, but still, I believe, the book's main line of argument has been left unclear. Some concepts need more prominence — the duty to preserve mankind, the right of war, and private judgment; others need less — consent, majority rule, and property. Locke's aim was not to show that political obligation rests upon consent: that is assumed without argument. What he set out to prove is that there are certain limits to political obligation which not even consent could set aside.
The Lessons of the First Atomic Year
Authors: Possony Stefan T.
Published: August 2009

The first year of the Atomic Age has drawn to a close. What were its achievements? What are the lessons we have to learn?

The Bikini tests were undoubtedly the single outstanding atomic event of the past year. These tests underscored the potency of the new weapon, although they fell far short of the catastrophic results freely predicted by some members of the League of Frightened Men. At the same time, they showed that, at least for navies, the problem of atomic defense is not entirely beyond solution, even though direct hits, as is the case with most other bombs, are lethal. Atomic hits are mortal over far wider area than conventional heavy bombs, but they are still weapons which can be used only against one, two, three or perhaps half a dozen ships in comparatively close formation, rather than against entire fleets. Th effectiveness of atomic attack, therefore, depends upon the number of bombs employed—a fact which also holds true for attacks against industrial or urban targets and which has found too little attention in the current discussion.
Plato's Utopianism: The Political Content of the Early Dialogues
Authors: Klosko George
Published: August 2009

One reason the political theory of Plato's Republic is widely misunderstood is that its precise relationship to the political content of the early dialogues is not generally recognized. That the political views of the Republic are frequently misconstrued seems apparent. In recent years many scholars have argued that the ideal state put forward in the work is completely “utopian.” This word is used in different senses, but the sense I will concentrate on in this paper is its bearing upon questions of political reform. As I use the term, a “utopian” political theory contains proposals that are not intended to be taken seriously in terms of political reform. When I say that the ideal state discussed in the Republic is not “utopian” as these scholars maintain, I mean that Plato designed it with political reform in mind, and that he thought seriously about how to bring it into existence. This does not, however, imply that the ideal state is likely to be realized, or that Plato ever thought it was, but only that Plato wished to bring it into existence and thought this was possible, should extraordinary good fortune bring the necessary conditions into existence.
Illiberal Liberalism: The New Property as Strategy
Authors: Levy Michael B.
Published: August 2009

In the decade spanning 1968 to 1978, the Supreme Court cited the concept of the “new property” in over forty cases concerning the rights of clients in public sector relationships. The termnew propertyfirst appeared in two law review articles written by Charles Reich in 1964 and 1965, and its primary points have since found favor with a number of political theorists. At the heart of the “new property” idea was the belief that a great many public sector benefits performed traditional functions of property and, therefore, ought to have been redefined as property in the law. Accordingly, Reich argued that public sector grants, including public assistance as well as unemployment compensation and Social Security, should lose their legal status as gratuities or charitable gifts and become instead “property” with all of the constitutional guarantees of due process that adhere to property in our system. This was a most egalitarian project indeed, with implications that went far beyond extending rights of due process. By transforming all men and women into property owners regardless of their private assets, the “new property” paved the way for a political vocabulary which wedded the particular and exclusive language of property with the universal, all-inclusive language of egalitarianism. In most respects this redefinition simply would have expanded the egalitarian direction implicit in past liberal functionalist theories of property, developments which many had already approved.
Socialism and Judaism in Moses Hess'sHoly History of Mankind
Authors: Avineri Shlomo
Published: August 2009

Moses Hess is customarily described as Karl Marx's erstwhile mentor, later colleague and eventual protagonist in the socialist movement, who in his later years surprised most of his friends in publishing in 1862 a proto-Zionist treatise,Rome and Jerusalem. In this book Hess advocated the establishment of a socialist Jewish commonwealth in Palestine as the only way to the solution of the Jewish problem. As both a colleague of Marx and a precursor of Zionism, Hess is in the unique position of being claimed, in various ways, by both the Socialist and Zionist movements.
Angola and Mozambique: Institutionalizing Social Revolution in Africa
Authors: Luke Timothy W.
Published: August 2009

In this analysis I explore the key political and military events that led to the acquisition of state power by the Movimento Popular de Libertacao (MPLA) in Angola and the Frente de Libertacao de Mocambique (FRELIMO) in Mozambique during 1975–1976. At the same time, I discuss the decisive role played by the “guerrilla counterstate,” which the MPLA and FRELIMO movements constructed out of their national liberation party organizations, as a social formation to guide the cultural and political process of rapid social change. Indeed, I argue that one can point to the MPLA's and FRELIMO's divergent experiences with administering their counterstate institutions during the struggle for national liberation as a decisive variable in accounting for their respective successes and failures at institutionalizing social revolution after independence.
The Failure of Mirabeau's Political Ideas
Authors: Chevallier J. J.
Published: August 2009

“Mirabeau and Sieyès are the two strongest minds of the Revolution,” said Talleyrand who knew both of them well. This is no doubt true. It is likewise true that Mirabeau and Sieyes were at opposite poles from each other intellectually. Sieyès was a political theorist; they called him the brain. Mirabeau, on the other hand, was the least theoretical of men. When the Estates General opened he had no draft of a Constitution; Sieyès, on the other hand, had thought of one and even several.

For the whole course of the Revolution until his death in April, 1791, Mirabeau cannot be described by an invariable formula. He cannot be classified in the pro-English school. He wrote to a minister before the Revolution: “the executive life” suited him better than “the speculative life.” Sieyès, and even Mounier, would have been wonderful professors of Constitutional Law. Not Mirabeau. His culture was enormous but disorganized. An omnivorous reader and always with pen in hand, he had made innumerable excerpts from all sorts of books, and drew upon them with no scruples about plagiarism when he wrote his own works. One must be careful to avoid the temptation, to which some have succumbed, of seeing in these plagiarisms the expression of Mirabeau's own ideas.
From Lenin to Stalin
Authors: Gurian Waldemar
Published: August 2009

The most striking peculiarity of the Soviet regime, established in Russia more than thirty years ago, is its claim to be the instrument of a necessary historical and social development It regards itself as the accelerator of the evolution of mankind towards socialism and communism. The details of this evolution are unknown—but its general direction is known to the party, the Bolshevist-Communist party of Lenin and of his successor, Stalin. Therefore, the doctrine determining Soviet policies is not only a theory, but the basis for a practice carried out by an organization. This organization, the party, determines which steps are right and correspond to the demands of the situation. For the socialistic-communist aim will not be accomplished at once and easily; it will be realized by difficult and complicated struggles whose realization requires incessant maneuvering, constant observation of existing power conditions, and careful consideration of the degree of maturity reached in the advance towards the goal.
The Social Meaning of Leisure in the Modern World
Authors: Pieper Josef
Published: August 2009

My intention is: to try to face a certain central social problem in its connection with the concept of leisure. And I hope that a solution of that problem, or at least some ways towards a solution, may become more clear and visible. This is a rather modest purpose (because problems are still not solved when a solution has become visible or even when some ways of a solution have become more clear than before).

I shall not consider the social problem from a formally sociological point of view or from a formally political point of view, but from a philosophical point of view. It shall not be spoken of in such a way that the field of vision is completely filled with it. The point-of-view does not lie so close to the concrete phenomena that our attention is occupied and consumed by their immediate impact. Philosophical consideration means that a certain subject is considered within the horizon of the total and universal reality; it belongs to the essence and nature of a really philosophical question, that not only this question itself comes into play, but that—onsidering, meditating this question—one is obliged to bring into play the totality of the world, even God and the world. In such a view the discussion loses perhaps some actual interest for the politician or for an immediately-involved man. But on the other hand, it might be that deeper possibilities of a solution become perceivable, just because the totality of the real world, especially the totality of human nature, comes into the range of vision. It might be, too, that there are social and political problems which, from the mere viewpoint of sociology and politics, cannot be solved. And perhaps this possibility is relevant to our present case. I would like to formulate the claim very modestly. In question is a sort of attempt, a proposal, to view the problem from a new and familiar standpoint. There may result an insight into the social problem—which possibly can become useful within the sphere of politics.
Natural Right and the Historical Approach
Authors: Strauss Leo
Published: August 2009

The attack on natural right in the name of history takes in most cases the following form: natural right claims to be a right that is discernible by human reason and is universally acknowledged; but history (including anthropology) teaches us that no such right exists; instead of the supposed uniformity we find an indefinite variety of notions of right or justice. Or, in other words, there cannot be natural right if there are no immutable principles of justice, but history shows us that all principles of justice are mutable. One cannot understand the meaning of the attack on natural right in the name of history, before one has realized the utter irrelevance of this argument. In the first place, “consent of all mankind” is by no means a necessary condition of the existence of natural right. Some of the greatest natural right teachers have argued that, precisely if natural right is rational, its discovery presupposes the cultivation of reason, and therefore natural right will not be known universally: one ought not even to expect any real knowledge of natural right among savages. In other words by proving diat there is no principle of justice diat has not been denied somewhere or at some time, one has not yet proven that any given denial was justified or reasonable. Furthermore, it has always been known that different notions of justice obtain at different times and in different nations. It is absurd to claim diat the discovery of a still greater number of such notions by modern students has in any way affected the fundamental issue.
The Turning-Point in French Politics: 1947
Authors: Duroselle J. B.
Published: August 2009

Anyone who lived in France in the years 1945–1946 has a confused impression of both disarray and nostalgia. In the spring of 1946 Father Danielou, S.J., addressing a small group of British teachers, who had come to France at the invitation of the “Catholic Center of French Intellectuals,” described the time aptly: between the past horrors of war and occupation and the ever-present possibility in the immediate future of other horrors still more atrocious, this period seemed to him an oasis. For a great many Frenchmen this time still evokes the disorder due to the occupation, rapid liberation, and also recalls for them the beginning of a convalescence with all the relief and well-being this implies; it is the period of agitation and illusion.