The difference between legal terms such as “person” and “human being” represents more than a question of standing or mere semantics. Within liberal democratic societies, such as the United States and Canada, such distinctions may indicate substantive differences regarding fundamental concepts such as citizenship, membership in society, and the scope and essential nature of rights and liberties. In particular, judicial decisions regarding abortion have relied upon such distinctions in order to articulate some of the fundamental issues upon which such controversies are based.
The Roman Catholic Church was famously late to embrace the right to religious freedom. Some have plausibly argued that when the Second Vatican Council, in 1965, overwhelmingly adopted the Declaration on Religious Freedom - known by the first two words of its official, Latin version: Dignitatis Humanae - the Church betrayed one of its most traditional and established theological teachings. Did the Church, at Vatican II, capitulate to, or at least compromise with, "liberalism?" The right to religious freedom, according to international law, rests in part on respect for the "inherent dignity" of every human being. Thus there is a prima facie link between the liberal-democratic justification and the Church's 1965 justification. But as I argue in this essay, the appeal to human dignity is not an exclusive preserve of modern liberal democracy. Indeed, we can imagine a government that refuses to affirm the right to religious freedom because it wishes to save souls, and this precisely out of respect for human dignity of every human being. Such a view was proclaimed by the the pre-Vatican II Church. Thus the appeal to human dignity is not evidence of a fundamental shift by the Church. What then does account for the Church's undeniable U-turn - its undeniable change of direction? Respect for human dignity by itself cannot provide the fundamental justification for the right to religious freedom. Another ingredient is needed: distrust, born of long historical experience, of government competence to adjudicate contested questions of religious truth. The Church in Dignitatis Humanae finally came to accept this lesson of history - a lesson available to believers of various faiths, including Catholics, as well as to nonbelievers.
Alexis de Tocqueville's account of the formation of the American regime identifies two constitutive moments: the Puritan colonization and the Revolution and the Constitution (1775–1789). Contrary to historians of the day, Tocqueville gave as much credit to the Puritans as to the Founders. Yet far from being a pure history, Tocqueville's narrative also had the purpose of promoting a new political foundation that replaced the philosophical doctrine of natural rights with an account based on “Customary History.” Tocqueville's approach was intended to further a great theoretical project inaugurated by Montesquieu that offered an alternative model to the mainstream Enlightenment position for how political philosophy should enter into and influence political life. This article analyzes the two-founding thesis, explores the underlying theoretical project on foundations of Tocqueville and Montesquieu, and presents and assesses the debate on the merits of attempting to change the political foundation of the American regime.
During a 1957 Notre Dame conference entitled "What America stands for", Karl De Schweinitz, Jr. examined the "contemporary problems of the American economy'. Journal Article
This article challenges the view that Aristotle's Poetics provides a defense against Plato's assault on poetry. I argue that Aristotle's discussion of poetry is at least as critical of the poetic depiction of the city and the gods as is the Platonic account. In the Poetics Aristotle does break with Plato in order to establish poetry's independence from philosophy. Aristotle's account of poetry as an independent activity should not, however, be read as a defense of poetry against Plato's subordination of poetry to philosophy. Instead, it is argued that Aristotle establishes poetry's independence from philosophy as a corrective to Plato's resort to poetry, thereby establishing that philosophy is completely autonomous from poetry.
The article considers Machiavelli's terza rima poems on Ingratitude, Ambition, Fortune and Occasion, generally called I Capitoli, in the context of Renaissance hermeticism, cabbala, erotic magic, and astrology. It argues that these poems, taken together and read as a whole, reveal Machiavelli's playful yet subversive cosmology that ousts the old gods by instituting a new theogony. At the same time, I Capitoli, addressed and dedicated to his friends, discloses Machiavelli's own ambitions and desires, delineating the subtle link between Niccolò the poet and Niccolò the prophet and benefactor. Yes Yes
This paper examines what is involved in using comparative methods within political theory and whether there should be such a sub-field as "comparative political theory." It argues that "political theory" consists of multiple kinds of activities which are either primarily "scholarly" or "engaged." It is easy to imagine how scholarly forms of political theory can, and have been, comparative. The paper critiques, however, existing calls for the creation of "comparative political theory" (CPT) sub-field focused on the study of "non-Western" texts. CPT needs to explain why it is not merely "expanding the canon" to include non-Western texts and why a certain non-Western text is "alien," thus justifying the moniker "comparative." I argue, systematically though 10 discrete theses, that the strongest warrant for an "engaged" comparative political theory is the first-order evaluation of the implication of the contestations of norms, values and principles between distinct and coherent doctrines of thought.
Contemporary theorists critical of the current vogue for compassion might like to turn to Friedrich Nietzsche as an obvious ally in their opposition to the sentiment. Yet this essay argues that Nietzsche's critique of compassion is not entirely critical, and that the endorsement of one's sympathetic feelings is actually a natural outgrowth of Nietzsche's immoralist ethics. Nietzsche understands the tendency to share in the suffering of their inferiors as a distinctive vulnerability of the spiritually strong and healthy. Their compassion, however, is an essential element of the imaginative creativity that Nietzsche holds to be the goal of human existence. Although shared suffering may prove debilitating for some, great individuals must come to affirm their compassion as necessary in achieving accurate knowledge of the human condition. Government Accepted Manuscript
The strategy for coping with value pluralism that Rawls has proposed is to permit political decisions, at least with respect to basic rights, to depend only on those goods that can be inferred from the bare requirements of respectful relations between persons. His account offers such a parsimonious conception of the good that it cannot cognize some atrocities. I focus on one extreme human rights case: the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM), which, it is well established, violates basic human rights. Doubtless Rawls was appalled by the practice. Yet his theory cannot generate a basis for condemning it. A satisfactory conception of human rights must draw upon some normative source beyond that offered by constructivism.
Ronald Dworkin has criticized traditional theories of constitutional original intent by arguing that the constitutional text embodies multiple layers of intention. Abstract principles are among these layers of constitutional intent, and those principles should be the primary focus of a method of constitutional interpretation concerned with fidelity to the Constitution and the intentions of the Founders. This article argues that Dworkin's reconceptualization of originalism is theoretically flawed. It may be possible to construct a normative theory requiring that the judiciary always enforce abstract constitutional principles in accord with current substantive ideals. Such a theory, however, cannot be reconciled with or be required by an originalist interpretive method primarily committed to fidelity to founding intent.
It is as the author of the Ensayo Sobre El Catolicismo, El Liberalismo Y El Socialismo that Juan Donoso Cortés, first Marquis of Valdegamas, is best known. Donoso's reputation as a spokesman of the forces of counter-revolution grew steadily after 1848, and by the time the Ensayo appeared in 1851 he had, so to speak, a readymade audience of both friendly and adverse critics scattered throughout the continent of Europe. But the dramatic clashes of opinion with which the work was received extended its fame beyond the expected limits. For in the Ensayo Donoso not only attacked liberalism and socialism, but, perhaps without meaning to do so, he also offered a challenge to an important segment of Catholic thought and opinion, namely the Catholic liberals. The result was that the conservative publicist who was accustomed to being attacked from the Liberal benches in parliament and by the liberal press in Spain now found his severest critics in a Catholic group which included Bishop Dupanloup of Orléans and whose spokesman was the Abbé Gaduel. Of them Donoso complained to Pius IX that they were “prelates who had turned themselves into journalists.”
I suggest that Locke's educational paradigm offers the theory of governance the Two Treatises lack. In these pages is the key to Lockean politics: the realization that a self-governing polity requires self-governing citizens, and these citizens, as he suggested in the Essay and explains in the Education, are made rather than found, constructed from the ground up by discipline. Through early and careful practices of education, they are enmeshed in a net of habit and custom that naturalizes the moral commitments they are taught, rendering the process, and the artifice, invisible. Locke entangles his subjects in an architecture of power of which they become the bearers.
Despite the Supreme Court's repeated invocations of America's Founding Fathers for First Amendment religion jurisprudence, George Washington's political thought regarding religious freedom has received almost no scholarly attention. This is unfortunate, for Washington's words and actions speak to contemporary Establishment Clause and Free Exercise issues. Washington, moreover, offers an alternative to Jefferson's and Madison's approach to church-state matters. The scholarly exclusion of Washington thus has led to a narrow view of the Founders' thought on religious liberty. This article sets forth Washington's understanding of the right to religious liberty. It pays particular attention to Washington's disagreement with Madison on the propriety of government support of religion. It also draws attention to the limits Washington placed on an individual's right to religious free exercise by focusing on how Washington dealt with Quaker claims for religious exemptions from military service.Individuals entering into society, must give up a share of liberty to preserve the rest. The magnitude of the sacrifice must depend as well on situation and circumstance, as on the object to be obtained. It is at all times difficult to draw with precision the line between those rights which must be surrendered, and those which may be reserved.
—G. Washington, Letter submitting the proposed constitution to the President of Congress 17 September 1787
This article looks at Kant's attitude to political change by examining closely the contrast he draws between palingenesis and metamorphosis in his doctrine of right (1797). The article attempts to explain why Kant prefers the use of metamorphosis as an analogy and looks closely at his objections to the use of palingenesis. Here Kant's treatment of palingenesis is compared with the use of the term made by the eighteenth-century Genevan biologist Charles Bonnet. It is suggested that Kant's rejection of rebellion and revolution is connected to his advocacy of gradual, organic change as conveyed in the notion of metamorphosis. This notion is explored according to eighteenth-century and present scientific understandings of the term. The conclusion stresses the merits of Kant's approach to political change, and indicates why it might be superior to the conservative and revolutionary alternatives.
POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY - ManentPierre: A World Beyond Politics? A Defense of the Nation-State (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2006. Pp. 206. $35.00, hardback.) - Volume 69 Issue 4 - Paul Seaton
Karl Marx as Philosopher - TuckerRobert C.: Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1961. Pp. 263. Cloth $5.50, paper $1.75.) (The book was originally announced under the title: The Alienated World of Karl Marx.) - Volume 24 Issue 4 - N. Lobkowicz
The Greek Political Labyrinth - *LeggKeith R.: Politics in Modern Greece. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1969. Pp. 367. $10.00.) - Volume 33 Issue 1 - William W. McGrew
Paton and Clayton - PatonAlan: Apartheid and the Archbishop: The Life and Times of Geoffrey Clayton. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1973. Pp. 311. $10.00.) - Volume 37 Issue 3 - A. Peter Walshe
