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When it originally appeared, A New Birth of Freedom represented a milestone in Lincoln studies, the culmination of over a half a century of study and reflection by one of America's foremost scholars of American politics. Now reissued on the centenary of Jaffa’s birth with a new foreword by the esteemed Lincoln scholar Allen Guelzo, this long-awaited sequel to Jaffa’s earlier classic, Crisis of the House Divided, offers a piercing examination of the political thought of Abraham Lincoln and the themes of self-government, equality, and statesmanship on the eve of the Civil War. “Four decades ago, Harry Jaffa offered powerful insights on the Lincoln-Douglas debates in his Crisis of the Hou...
Leo Strauss's connection with Martin Heidegger and Carl Schmitt suggests a troubling proximity to National Socialism but a serious critique of Strauss must begin with F. H. Jacobi. While writing his dissertation on this apparently Christian opponent of the Enlightenment, Strauss discovered the tactical principles that would characterize his lifework: writing between the lines, a faith-based critique of rationalism, the deliberate secularization of religious language for irreligious purposes, and an "all or nothing" antagonism to middling solutions. Especially the latter is distinctive of his Zionist writings in the 1920s where Strauss engaged in an ongoing polemic against Cultural Zionism, a...
This book offers a new way of understanding the role of the mediator in teaching parties the interrelationship between sustainable peace, forgiveness, and international justice. It argues that the arrival of social media presents new opportunities for reaching sustainable peace agreements, through their use in gathering the detailed information that can match victims and perpetrators of past atrocities. The author aims to advance a more expansive understanding of the subjects and limitations of making peace in the shadow of international law by examining the concepts of mediation and forgiveness that exist alongside law. To that end, the book offers an account of the role of the mediator tha...
Sometimes called the “literature of ideas,” science fiction is a natural medium for normative political philosophy. Science fiction’s focus on technology, space and time travel, non-human lifeforms, and parallel universes cannot help but invoke the perennial questions of political life, including the nature of a just social order and who should rule; freedom, free will, and autonomy; and the advantages and disadvantages of progress. Rather than offering a reading of a work inspired by a particular thinker or tradition, each chapter presents a careful reading of a classic or contemporary work in the genre (a novel, short story, film, or television series) to illustrate and explore the themes and concepts of political philosophy.
Since its publication in 1952, Leo Strauss's Persecution and the Art of Writing has stirred considerable controversy, particularly among historians concerned with early modern philosophy. On the one hand, several scholars share his view that it would be inadequate to generally take at face value the explicit message of texts which were composed in an era in which severe sanctions were imposed on those who entertained deviating views. ‘Reading between the lines’ therefore seems to be the appropriate hermeneutical approach. On the other hand, the risks of such an interpretative maxim are more than obvious, as it might come up to an unlimited license to ascribe heterodox doctrines to early modern philosophers whose manifest teachings were in harmony with the orthodox positions of their time. The conributions to this volume both address these methodological issues and discuss paradigmatic cases of authors who might indeed be candidates for a Straussian ‘reading between the lines’: Hobbes, Spinoza, and Bayle.
***NOW IN PAPERBACK*** School violence has become our new American horror story, but it also has its roots in the way it comments on western values with respect to violence, shame, mental illness, suicide, humanity, and the virtual. Beyond Columbine: School Violence and the Virtual offers a series of readings of school shooting episodes in the United States as well as similar cases in Finland, Germany, and Norway, among others and their relatedness. The book expands the author's central premise from her earlier book Failure to Hold, which explores the hidden curriculum of American culture that is rooted in perceived inequality and the shame, rage, and violence that it provokes. In doing so, ...
The Roots of Contemporary Imperialism argues that the presence of George W. Bush and the issues that accompanied his presidency, such as popular repression and business domination, are not the result of an authoritarian regression of U.S. politics but rather represent the continuation of an approach that came into existence during the age of the Founding Fathers. The creation of the federal presidential republic, whose main purpose was not as much to preserve the balance of power between the various branches of government as to hinder any radical changes in society, shows how the Fathers' main concern was not people's freedom but to devise constitutional mechanisms intended to defend the properties, wealth, and privileges of economic elites. In the author's view, Barack Obama's recent election as the nominee of one of the two wings of the single "business party," despite the rhetoric about "change" and "hope," followed exactly the same pattern. Book jacket.
Leo Strauss's readings of historical figures in the philosophical tradition have been justly well explored; however, his relation to contemporary thinkers has not enjoyed the same coverage. In Leo Strauss and Contemporary Thought, an international group of scholars examines the possible conversations between Strauss and figures such as Walter Benjamin, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Charles Taylor, and Hans Blumenberg. The contributors examine topics including religious liberty, the political function of comedy, law, and the relation between the Ancients and the Moderns, and bring Strauss into many new and original discussions that will be of use to those interested in the thought of Strauss, the history of philosophy and political theory, and contemporary continental thought.