Perspectives on Political Science最新文献

{"title":"Political Reasoning and the Nation-State: A MacIntyrean Consideration of a Thomistic Debate","authors":"John Macias","doi":"10.1080/10457097.2023.2255097","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10457097.2023.2255097","url":null,"abstract":"AbstractThe Traditional Natural Law (TNL) considers the political community a good human beings desire as one of the greatest goods of practical life, while those within the New Natural Law (NNL) camp argue instead that the political community is an instrumental good. Neither side has been able to offer a decisive refutation of the other, despite each offering strong arguments supported by both philosophical argument and textual evidence. In response, I will present Alasdair MacIntyre’s approach to practical reason and political community in hopes of shedding new light on this debate. From a MacIntyrean perspective, the TNL and NNL disagreement is more apparent than real, because the two sides in fact address different objects. MacIntyre presents political community as a constitutive aspect of excellent practical reasoning, but he denies the modern nation-state can be such a community. Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Alasdair MacIntyre, “Theories of Natural Law in the Culture of Advanced Modernity,” in Common Truths: New Perspectives in Natural Law, ed. Edward B. McLean (Wilmington, Delaware: ISI Books, 200), 94. See also Alasdair MacIntyre, “Intractable Moral Disagreements,” in Intractable Disputes about the Natural Law: Alasdair MacIntyre and Critics, ed. Lawrence S. Cunningham (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009), 1–52.2 MacIntyre, “Theories of Natural Law,” 92.3 For the background of this debate, see Germain Grisez, “The First Principle of Practical Reason: A Commentary on the Summa Theologiae, 1–2, Question 94, Article 2,” in Aquinas: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Anthony Kenny (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1976), 340–382; Ralph McInerny, Aquinas on Human Action: A Theory of Practice (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1); Christopher Tollefsen, “The New Natural Law Theory,” Lyceum 10, (2008): 1–17; John Finnis, Aquinas: Moral, Political, and Legal Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); Steven Jensen, Knowing the Natural Law: From Precepts and Inclinations to Deriving Oughts (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2015); John Macias, “John Finnis and Alasdair MacIntyre on Our Knowledge of the Precepts of Natural Law,” Res Philosophica 93 (2016): 103–123; Ryan T. Anderson, editor, “Defense of the New Natural Law,” National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly (2019): 165–329.4 John Finnis, “Is Natural Law Theory Compatible with Limited Government?,” in Natural Law, Liberalism, and Morality, ed. Robert P. George (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 5.5 Finnis, Aquinas, 247.6 Ibid, 247–248.7 Michael Pakaluk, “Is the Common Good of Political Society Limited and Instrumental?” The Review of Metaphysics 55 (2001): 91.8 John Goyette, “On the Transcendence of the Political Common Good: Aquinas versus the New Natural Law Theory,” The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 13 (2013): 155.9 Goyett","PeriodicalId":55874,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Political Science","volume":"57 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135148662","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Making a Modern Political Order: The Problem of the Nation State","authors":"Matthew T. Cantirino","doi":"10.1080/10457097.2023.2251360","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10457097.2023.2251360","url":null,"abstract":"Alexis de Tocqueville, one of James J. Sheehan’s guiding lights,1 described “the real work” of the French Revolution as being “to abolish those political institutions [...] which we normally describe as feudal, in order to replace them with a more uniform and simple social and political regime based upon social equality.”2 Like Tocqueville, though, Sheehan knows the story is longer and subtler than that: the work of replacement began at least a century before 1789, unfolded in a piecemeal and sometimes half-conscious way, and continued on long after, though with increasing coherence.3 Like Tocqueville, Sheehan knows such sweeping change could not simply be the product of one single revolution, calendar year, or theorist, but that broader forces and concepts must be at play in such a transformation.","PeriodicalId":55874,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Political Science","volume":"52 1","pages":"232 - 235"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44890499","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Regime Change","authors":"Joseph M. Knippenberg","doi":"10.1080/10457097.2023.2243194","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10457097.2023.2243194","url":null,"abstract":"Patrick J. Deneen’s Regime Change is a sequel to his ambitious and provocative Why Liberalism Failed, published in 2018. If anything, it is even more ambitious and provocative than its predecessor, calling for “regime change” where the first book simply and modestly recommended “the patient encouragement of new forms of community that can serve as havens in our depersonalized political and economic order” (WLF, xv). Since they provide a clear and in some cases compelling perspective on our current cultural and political predicament, both books deserve the attention they have gotten and are getting. Deneen’s is an important and distinctive voice in our debate, one we neglect at our peril. But to attend to Deneen’s argument is not necessarily to assent to it, as I hope this review demonstrates. We might first of all ask why Deneen’s patience has been replaced by such a sense of urgency that he is willing to call for the adoption of “Machiavellian means to achieve Aristotelian ends” (RC, 167), a proposal in bold-face type in the book, and to echo Vladimir Lenin in titling the third part of the book “what is to be done.” Perhaps the political setting has changed, with the first book largely written before Donald Trump took office and the second in the middle of the Biden Administration. Perhaps some political or judicial possibilities have emerged, making “aristopopulism” conceivable in a way heretofore impossible. Perhaps the development of an embryonic multiethnic working-class coalition has opened new vistas for Deneen. Perhaps the comprehensive embrace of antiracism and intersectionality on the Left made its soft totalitarianism even more evident to those with eyes to see. Perhaps COVID made it impossible to ignore the yawning chasm between the haves, who could continue to work in the relative safety of their homes, and the have-nots, who lost their jobs or risked their health to keep them. Perhaps doors opening and doors slamming shut encouraged urgency and discouraged patience. Nevertheless, it makes more sense to attend to what Deneen actually says in the book than to speculate about events and circumstances that he does not explicitly or extensively address. While both books share a critical analysis of liberalism—developed fully in the first book and sketched in the second—Regime Change focuses its attention on the class analysis first mentioned in Why Liberalism Failed. The “new aristocracy” (WLF, 131) of the latter gets a much fuller treatment in Regime Change. Building upon the work of Charles Murray’s Coming Apart, Michael Lind’s The New Class War, and Michael Sandel’s The Tyranny of Merit, Deneen offers a well-developed account of the current iteration of the age-old conflict between “the few” and “the many,” those who in our time have successfully adapted to the placeless high-tech marketplace, embracing constant innovation, change, and creative destruction, on the one hand, and those who sought refuge—for the most part unsuccessfully—","PeriodicalId":55874,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Political Science","volume":"52 1","pages":"227 - 231"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44353001","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Raymond Aron and His Dialogues in an Age of Ideologies","authors":"W. Morrisey","doi":"10.1080/10457097.2023.2232286","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10457097.2023.2232286","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Raymond Aron understood political science not as a technical exercise of reducing politics to formulas—whether mathematical or ideological. Drawing upon the examples of Aristotle and Tocqueville, he addressed scholars and non-specialists alike as fellow citizens to be engaged in dialogues on the major public issues of their time and place. Nathan Orlando analyzes Aron’s critiques of Sartre, Hayek, and de Gaulle as examples of his practice..","PeriodicalId":55874,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Political Science","volume":"21 1","pages":"217 - 226"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139355643","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Leo Strauss and Islamic Political Thought","authors":"J. Bernstein","doi":"10.1080/10457097.2023.2228658","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10457097.2023.2228658","url":null,"abstract":"24. Sheehan, 144. 25. As Sheehan points out, this high-minded justification, though widely resonant with the populations of modern democratic nation-states, can lead to serious conflicts in the pursuit of legibility (see, for example, the mass transfer of populations in Europe following World War II, the long and bloody wars of national liberation in Algeria and Angola, or the numerous slow-burning crises in the Balkans and Eastern Europe). This is one reason the nation-state may be a “problem,” as in the subtitle of the book. 26. Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President in Address to European Youth,” transcript of speech delivered at Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels, Belgium, March 26, 2014. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-pressoffice/2014/03/26/remarks-presiden t-address-European-youth 27. Sheehan, 115–61. 28. Sheehan, 166. 29. Sheehan, 165. This is the English title of Manent’s 2001 book. 30. Pierre Manent, Democracy Without Nations? The Fate of Self-Government in Europe, trans. Paul Seaton (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2007), 14. 31. Manent, “Modern Democracy as a System of Separations,” 114. 32. Sheehan, 164.","PeriodicalId":55874,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Political Science","volume":"52 1","pages":"235 - 237"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46680748","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"George Orwell and American National Identity","authors":"J. Gibbins","doi":"10.1080/10457097.2023.2226046","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10457097.2023.2226046","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract George Orwell’s political writing was adept at capturing crises. Totalitarianism, nationalism, colonialism, class, poverty, the Cold War, and the early atomic age all cast a sinister shadow during his short lifetime. Within international relations, and coupled to his own life experiences, these dangers caused an obvious preoccupation with certain states and entities most notably the USSR, Spain, India, France, and Europe amongst others. The United States somewhat sat out of Orwell’s orbit which is paradoxical considering the country’s seismic role in a twentieth century marred by upheavals and ruin. This paper seeks to address this gap by examining what his essays, journalism, and letters tell us about how the US and specifically its national identity was fashioned. The findings concern culture and language, wealth and race, and power and empire. As such, despite America initially featuring as peripheral to his concerns, its literary prowess, economic might, and international influence all inspired Orwell to produce a number of important observations on American national identity.","PeriodicalId":55874,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Political Science","volume":"52 1","pages":"175 - 182"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45948107","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Catholic Republicanism in America","authors":"J. M. Patterson","doi":"10.1080/10457097.2023.2192633","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10457097.2023.2192633","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Recently, so-called Catholic “postliberal” conservatives have condemned the American regime as fundamentally liberal and, hence, parasitic on pre-liberal institutions. I argue that this view unduly conflates liberalism and republicanism and thereby confuses an ideology with the principles of the regime. American Catholic clergy have historically condemned liberalism in favor of a Catholic republicanism. This trend began with the political thought of Charles Carroll of Carrollton and Bishop John Carroll who advocated for republican government in conjunction with “conciliarism” in the Church. Archbishop “Dagger” John Hughes of New York condemned “nothingarianism,” an early form of liberalism, while also arguing that Irish minorities were capable of republican self-rule during the School Controversy of 1840–43. Later, during the 1880s and 1890s, Archbishop John Ireland of St. Paul, Minnesota, condemned liberalism, but also provided an alternative vision of post-Civil War racial reconciliation and of Catholic patriotism. Even as he disparaged liberalism, Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen rescued the “Americanism” condemned by Pope Leo XIII in 1899 to argue against totalitarian states of the twentieth century, while, at the same time, Fr. John Courtney Murray, no liberal, sought a religious truce in America in favor of common political action in areas of agreement. In short, these clergy opposed liberalism, but they couched their opposition in terms of support of the American Republic, often arguing that the Catholic Church, especially in parochial schooling, provided the best foundation for good government. However, the recent decline of hierarchical support of Catholic republicanism has led to the present disillusionment of American Catholics, who are at risk of turning to reactionary politics to their own peril.","PeriodicalId":55874,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Political Science","volume":"52 1","pages":"106 - 118"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46374004","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Shakespeare Winces Not: On Inclusion in Liberal Education","authors":"David N. Levy","doi":"10.1080/10457097.2023.2218144","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10457097.2023.2218144","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract It is commonly held that the traditional European classics or Great Books cannot constitute the basis of an inclusive liberal education because they do not reflect the diverse cultural identities of contemporary students. This essay argues for a return to the older view, memorably expressed by W.E.B. Du Bois, that the classics are radically inclusive because they speak to a common human identity. This view is best understood in light of the ancient Greek distinction between physis (nature) and nomos (custom or law). Greek philosophic universalism has shown an ability to transcend profound cultural differences, such as those separating Alfarabi from Maimonides, or Shakespeare from Du Bois. The essay rebuts the frequently heard objections that the universalism of the classics is really a mask for white male hegemony and that it fails to do justice to the unique personal experiences of the oppressed and marginalized. The essay affirms that education must be particularistic as well as universalistic, but it argues that the universalism of the classics remains the key to the most perfect form of inclusion, namely, the friendship of those seeking the truth.","PeriodicalId":55874,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Political Science","volume":"52 1","pages":"208 - 216"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49158797","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Post-Liberalism: The Problem of Political Form and Regime","authors":"Nathan Gibbs","doi":"10.1080/10457097.2023.2218140","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10457097.2023.2218140","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The application of Thomistic Aristotelian principles to contemporary constitutionalism has involved many shifts and transformations: from postwar Christian democracy to post-liberalism. In order to evaluate these changing assessments, the article discusses and compares the work of Pierre Manent and John Milbank who provide a useful long term historical perspective on the relevant issues. The article explores how Manet’s emphasis on the theologico-political problem seems inescapable in one form of another in appraising the origin, development and the future of the liberal regime as well as any possible alternatives. Nevertheless, Milbank’s work points to more fruitful post-liberal institutional forms capable of sustaining an Aristotelian conception of political association. Despite this, the theologico-political problem arguably still affects how such political structures are to be thought and developed with tensions involving the realization of cardinal and supernatural virtues intrinsic to the balances that need to be struck.","PeriodicalId":55874,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Political Science","volume":"52 1","pages":"165 - 174"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46157518","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Alexander Wendt’s “Social Theory of International Politics”: A Realist Critique","authors":"Kacper Grass","doi":"10.1080/10457097.2023.2218138","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10457097.2023.2218138","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Since its publication, Alexander Wendt’s Social Theory of International Politics has become nearly synonymous with the constructivist school in the study of International Relations. Despite its innovative methodological approaches and bold challenges to neorealism’s hegemonic prevalence in the field, Wendt’s social theory faces issues on both theoretical and empirical grounds. With respect to the former, this critical evaluation of the social theory focuses primarily on Wendt’s neglect of causal questions in the examination of state formation as well as his omission of the psychological and sociological levels of analysis in the examination of cultural development. With respect to the latter, the evaluation focuses on instances in which the historical record contradicts Wendt’s proposed distinction between the Hobbesian culture of the past and the Lockean culture of the present as well as on instances in which international socialization and the establishment of commonly observed ideas and norms have not proven effective in preventing the exercise of power politics among states.","PeriodicalId":55874,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Political Science","volume":"52 1","pages":"145 - 150"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46351444","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}