Pub Date : 2023-03-29DOI: 10.1080/10457097.2023.2183017
Gregory M. Collins
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Pub Date : 2023-03-29DOI: 10.1080/10457097.2023.2183020
J. McNerney
The Economist’s cover page (15 July 2017) led with the headline ‘China’s Conscience.’ The leader article ran ‘The suffering of a remarkable political prisoner holds a message for China and the West.’ Liu Xiaobo was an academic, author and literary critic specializing in Chinese literature. His crime was to write ‘words.’ On June 26th, 2017, the prison authorities announced that he was being transferred from prison to a nearby hospital. His wife and family pleaded to them to allow him go abroad for special medical treatment. All to no avail. American and German doctors were eventually at the last minute permitted to visit him, but it was all too late. Use of words is not maybe a popular notion of a revolutionary’s identikit. But it has a message for us about the ‘power of words.’ Obviously, the Chinese authorities were not afraid of Liu because of fear of an armed insurrection. They were far more frightened of what he wrote, scared of the sway of words themselves. In the final statement he prepared during his trial on December 23, 2009, he remarked how
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Pub Date : 2023-02-14DOI: 10.1080/10457097.2023.2176104
G. Mcaleer
Smith, argues Sagar, is more concerned with politics than morality, his work attuned to political struggles generating our ways of life and value orders. It remains commonplace to meet academics who still view Adam Smith as an egoist, a theorist of self-interest. [Extracted from the article] Copyright of Perspectives on Political Science is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)
{"title":"Adam Smith Reconsidered: History, Liberty, and the Foundations of Modern Politics","authors":"G. Mcaleer","doi":"10.1080/10457097.2023.2176104","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10457097.2023.2176104","url":null,"abstract":"Smith, argues Sagar, is more concerned with politics than morality, his work attuned to political struggles generating our ways of life and value orders. It remains commonplace to meet academics who still view Adam Smith as an egoist, a theorist of self-interest. [Extracted from the article] Copyright of Perspectives on Political Science is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)","PeriodicalId":55874,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Political Science","volume":"52 1","pages":"89 - 91"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-02-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48556182","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}
Pub Date : 2023-02-01DOI: 10.1080/10457097.2023.2170645
J. Bernstein
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Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/10457097.2022.2140562
Linda R. Rabieh
Leo Strauss on Democracy, Technology, and Liberal Education is an invaluable source of historical learning and philosophic guidance. Timothy W. Burns provides us with an in-depth and careful study of four important writings by Leo Strauss that examine the challenges faced by modern democracy and the ways in which liberal education can supply a modest remedy. According to Burns, Strauss understands the problems facing modern democracy to be rooted in the ascendancy of technology as the ultimate political aim, which prioritizes acquiring the means to pursue whatever ends we happen to desire rather than the good life itself (9). Subsequent developments in the service of this goal have led to our present situation, which Strauss characterizes as “hardly more than the interplay of mass taste with high grade but strictly speaking unprincipled efficiency” (13; see also 35, 69, 75–78). Burns sharpens his analysis of Strauss by comparing Strauss’s understanding of technology with that of Heidegger. In contrast to Heidegger’s argument for a “new thinking” to address modernity’s ills, Strauss looks to an older thinking from which he gleans an argument for liberal education, which he describes as the cultivation of “an aristocracy within democracy,” i.e., a class within society whose thinking is informed by both serious education in tradition and the study of the Great Books (15; see also 21, 84, 166). Although Burns’s book addresses many aspects of Strauss’s account of the way in which technology came to dominate politics and shape our modern world, I will focus on the thread throughout these essays that explains what Strauss means by liberal education and why it is needed today. Burns begins with Strauss’s essay, “What is Liberal Education?” to explain why an “aristocracy within a democracy” should be the aim of liberal education. Strauss’s goal, according to Burns, is not to establish a ruling class or elite within democracy but to found an aristocracy within the “sub-political ‘cultural’ sphere of democracy” with a view to “cultivating habits of mind and heart needed by democracy, which cannot ... sustain itself on the thin, commercial gruel of mass culture” (22). Strauss here confines himself to arguing that this means “reminding” members of mass democracy “of human greatness.” Burns draws out this suggestion more fully by discussing Strauss’s comments elsewhere about Churchill’s greatness which provides an antidote to the moral distortions created by “positivist, value-free” social science (23). But having pointed to one element of liberal education needed by modern democracies, Strauss then raises a complication with its practice today when he considers the way the Greek political philosophers understood the education of the “perfect gentleman.” The education of the gentleman was different from that of the philosopher and rooted in “authoritative traditions.” Still, since those traditions also formed a part of a pre-philosophic study (32), ancient phi
利奥·施特劳斯论民主、技术和博雅教育是历史学习和哲学指导的宝贵资源。蒂莫西·w·伯恩斯(Timothy W. Burns)为我们提供了对利奥·施特劳斯(Leo Strauss)的四篇重要著作的深入细致的研究,这些著作审视了现代民主所面临的挑战,以及自由教育可以提供适度补救的方式。根据伯恩斯的观点,施特劳斯认为,现代民主所面临的问题根源于作为最终政治目标的技术优势,它优先考虑获得追求我们碰巧渴望的任何目标的手段,而不是美好生活本身(9)。为实现这一目标而进行的后续发展导致了我们目前的状况。施特劳斯将其描述为“几乎不超过大众品味与高品位的相互作用,但严格来说是无原则的效率”(13;另见35、69、75-78)。伯恩斯通过比较施特劳斯对技术的理解与海德格尔的理解,加深了他对施特劳斯的分析。与海德格尔提出的“新思维”来解决现代性弊病的论点相反,施特劳斯着眼于一种更古老的思想,从中他收集了一种关于自由教育的论点,他将其描述为“民主中的贵族”的培养,即社会中的一个阶级,其思想受到传统的严肃教育和对名著的研究的影响(15;另见21、84、166)。虽然伯恩斯的书涉及了施特劳斯关于技术如何支配政治和塑造我们现代世界的许多方面,但我将把重点放在贯穿这些文章的主线上,即解释施特劳斯所说的自由教育是什么意思,以及为什么今天需要自由教育。伯恩斯以施特劳斯的文章《什么是博雅教育?》来解释为什么“民主中的贵族”应该是通识教育的目标。根据伯恩斯的说法,施特劳斯的目标不是在民主内部建立一个统治阶级或精英,而是在“民主的亚政治‘文化’领域”内建立一个贵族,以期“培养民主所需要的思想和心灵的习惯,而这些习惯不能……依靠稀薄的大众文化商业粥来维持自身”(22)。施特劳斯在这里把自己局限于认为,这意味着“提醒”大众民主的成员“人类的伟大”。伯恩斯通过讨论施特劳斯在其他地方对丘吉尔伟大的评论,更充分地提出了这一建议,这为“实证主义的、价值自由的”社会科学造成的道德扭曲提供了一剂解药(23)。但是,在指出现代民主国家所需要的自由教育的一个要素之后,施特劳斯在考虑希腊政治哲学家理解“完美绅士”教育的方式时,提出了一个与今天的实践有关的复杂问题。绅士的教育不同于哲学家的教育,根植于“权威传统”。尽管如此,由于这些传统也构成了前哲学研究的一部分(32),古代哲学家对它们表示同情,认为它们不仅是哲学的重要准备,也是绅士生活的必要支持(35)。然而,他们对宗教的态度与“积极破坏传统,尤其是圣经传统”的现代哲学形成鲜明对比(33)。即使施特劳斯指出了“伟大的提醒”对于唤醒自由社会的卓越意识的重要性,他似乎也质疑这是否足以对抗一种丰富传统的枯萎,这种传统为贵族的严肃道德和政治推理提供了母体。在《博雅教育与责任》一书中,伯恩斯更全面地阐述了博雅教育的原意,而且通过对“现代哲学科学工程”含义的讨论,阐明了博雅教育在我们这个时代的目标。伯恩斯首先发展了施特劳斯关于哲学目标与政治生活目标之间差异的讨论,根据古人的说法。而哲学家寻求的是对整体的认识,这种认识是伴随着认识的
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Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/10457097.2022.2140563
James R. Stoner
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Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/10457097.2022.2139999
B. Frost
This symposium originated in an “Author Meets Critics” panel at the New England Political Science Association Annual Meeting, Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in April 2022. We approached Daniel J. Mahoney, editor of this journal, to see if he might be interested in publishing a revised and expanded version of the proceedings
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Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/10457097.2022.2155448
Carl Eric Scott
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Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/10457097.2022.2154580
C. Brophy
Abstract Nietzsche’s 1864 student essay, “On the Relationship of the Speech of Alcibiades to the Rest of the Speeches in Plato’s Symposium” uses the image of a knot (Knoten) to capture the dynamic tension between the speculative orientation of Socrates and the practical orientation of Alcibiades, that is, between theory and life. This image of the “knot” as a dynamic tension between philosophical principles is a forerunner of the position Nietzsche will develop in his account of the “theoretical man” in The Birth of Tragedy (1872) and the 1874 “untimely meditation” on history and life. In this early essay, Nietzsche offers not merely an exposition of the Platonic dialogue, but a philosophical contribution of his own that clearly favors the orientation of Alcibiades. Developing the ideas of some recent commentators, I argue that Nietzsche’s image of the dynamic “knot” in his early interpretation of the Symposium is a key to the subtlety of his own philosophical position, which recognizes a real tension, rather than a mere opposition, between the orientation of Socrates to theory and of Alcibiades to life.
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Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/10457097.2022.2140564
T. Burns
I am grateful to all four commentators on my book for their very thoughtful comments, to Bryan-Paul Frost for organizing this symposium, and to Daniel Mahoney, Editor of Perspectives on Political Science, for generously agreeing to publish it. Frost finds it disappointing that Strauss cites only Churchill as evidence of greatness within liberal democracy, and puzzling that I would contrast his doing so with Tocqueville, who presents greatness as belonging to the past; he notes that Strauss praises, after all, Churchill’s book on his illustrious ancestor Malborough. As to the first of these: Strauss presents the example of Churchill’s greatness as capable of beginning an ascent out of the historicist reasoning that plagued German youth. He does the same, 23 years later, for Americans raised on the fact-value distinction, whom he encouraged to begin to be directed by their natural political reasoning. As to the second: Churchill’s book on Malborough is on a statesman who had already confronted modernity’s changed circumstances and thereby shown the way to the required political reasoning in those circumstances. Yet Frost wonders if Churchill could have offered such an example to German youth, since he was “the very person against whom post-World War I German nihilists raged and loathed.” Frost conflates Nazi leaders and their attacks on Churchill after 1939 with the German nihilistic youth and their teachers. Strauss, though, distinguishes them: “the defeat of National Socialism will not necessarily mean the end of German nihilism. For that nihilism has deeper roots than the preachings of Hitler, Germany’s defeat in the World War and all that.” Strauss aims to understand “the singular success, not of Hitler, but of those writers” who “knowingly or ignorantly paved the way for Hitler (Spengler, Moeller van den Bruck, Carl Schmitt, Ernst Jünger, Heidegger).”1 Turning to the question of technology, Frost claims that “there was one area where Strauss (following Machiavelli) agreed that science was absolutely needed and could not be ignored: the military (6–7).... But how,” he continues, “can you have the salutary effects of the one (a modern military) without the dire effects of the other (rampant technology)? Interestingly, Strauss says that you can.” These objections are based on a simple misreading of Strauss’s texts. Strauss does not agree that “science was absolutely needed and could not be ignored” in “the military.” He distinguishes mere military innovation from “the deployment of theoretical science in the conquest of nature” in such innovation, as I quote him saying on page 8 of my book. Citing this deployment as crucial, Strauss rejects the claim that mere military innovation made all modern technology “fated.” Nor does Strauss imply that one can have advanced military technology without technology being used in every other area of life. Frost also complains about “a relative paucity of classical sources to demonstrate” that “the ancients und
我要感谢我的书的四位评论员,感谢他们非常周到的评论,感谢布莱恩-保罗·弗弗斯特组织了这次研讨会,感谢丹尼尔·马奥尼,《政治学观点》的编辑,感谢他慷慨地同意出版这本书。弗罗斯特发现施特劳斯只引用丘吉尔作为自由民主中的伟大的证据是令人失望的,我将他的做法与托克维尔进行对比是令人困惑的,托克维尔认为伟大属于过去;他指出,毕竟,施特劳斯赞扬了丘吉尔关于他杰出的祖先马尔伯勒的书。至于第一点:施特劳斯以丘吉尔的伟大为例,说明他有能力开始摆脱困扰德国青年的历史主义推理。23年后,他对在事实-价值区分中长大的美国人也做了同样的事情,他鼓励他们开始按照自己天生的政治推理来行事。至于第二点:丘吉尔关于马尔堡的书是关于一位政治家的,他已经面对了现代性变化的环境,从而为在这些环境中进行必要的政治推理指明了道路。然而弗罗斯特想知道丘吉尔是否能为德国青年树立这样一个榜样,因为他“正是第一次世界大战后德国虚无主义者怒斥和憎恨的人”。弗罗斯特把纳粹领导人和他们在1939年后对丘吉尔的攻击与德国虚无主义青年和他们的老师混为一谈。然而,施特劳斯区分了它们:“国家社会主义的失败并不一定意味着德国虚无主义的终结。因为这种虚无主义比希特勒的说教、德国在第二次世界大战中的失败等等都有更深的根源。”施特劳斯旨在理解“奇异的成功,而不是希特勒,但是这些作家”谁“故意或无知地为希特勒铺平了道路(斯宾格勒,Moeller van den勃拉克,卡尔•施密特恩斯特荣格尔,海德格尔)。1在谈到技术问题时,弗罗斯特声称“有一个领域施特劳斯(追随马基雅维利)同意科学是绝对需要的,不能被忽视:军事(6-7)....。但是,”他继续说道,“你如何才能既拥有前者(现代化军队)的有益影响,又不受后者(猖獗的科技)的可怕影响呢?有趣的是,施特劳斯说你可以。”这些反对意见是基于对施特劳斯文本的简单误读。施特劳斯不同意在“军事”中“科学是绝对需要的,不能被忽视”。他将单纯的军事创新与“在征服自然中运用理论科学”区分开来,我在我的书的第8页引用了他的话。施特劳斯认为这一部署至关重要,他驳斥了单纯的军事创新导致所有现代技术“命中注定”的说法。施特劳斯也没有暗示,一个人可以拥有先进的军事技术,而不把技术应用于生活的其他领域。弗罗斯特还抱怨说,“证明古人理解征服自然的有害影响的经典资料相对缺乏”,正如施特劳斯所声称的那样。他似乎对施特劳斯关于古人有意识地拒绝技术的说法的可靠性表示怀疑。其中一些参考文献出现在《论专政》中。2施特劳斯还指出,在他对卢克莱修的《论自然》第五卷和第六卷的解释中,虽然卢克莱修认识到艺术发展对哲学出现的重要性,但他反对艺术的进一步发展,或者反对技术,根据真正快乐的自然术语,以及技术将导致人们远离死亡意识的转移,从而远离正确的快乐也许最重要的是,施特劳斯在卢克莱修第1章中强调了对伴随理论生活和理论意识而来的现实的顺从
{"title":"Response to Frost, MacFarlane, Rabieh, and Stoner","authors":"T. Burns","doi":"10.1080/10457097.2022.2140564","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10457097.2022.2140564","url":null,"abstract":"I am grateful to all four commentators on my book for their very thoughtful comments, to Bryan-Paul Frost for organizing this symposium, and to Daniel Mahoney, Editor of Perspectives on Political Science, for generously agreeing to publish it. Frost finds it disappointing that Strauss cites only Churchill as evidence of greatness within liberal democracy, and puzzling that I would contrast his doing so with Tocqueville, who presents greatness as belonging to the past; he notes that Strauss praises, after all, Churchill’s book on his illustrious ancestor Malborough. As to the first of these: Strauss presents the example of Churchill’s greatness as capable of beginning an ascent out of the historicist reasoning that plagued German youth. He does the same, 23 years later, for Americans raised on the fact-value distinction, whom he encouraged to begin to be directed by their natural political reasoning. As to the second: Churchill’s book on Malborough is on a statesman who had already confronted modernity’s changed circumstances and thereby shown the way to the required political reasoning in those circumstances. Yet Frost wonders if Churchill could have offered such an example to German youth, since he was “the very person against whom post-World War I German nihilists raged and loathed.” Frost conflates Nazi leaders and their attacks on Churchill after 1939 with the German nihilistic youth and their teachers. Strauss, though, distinguishes them: “the defeat of National Socialism will not necessarily mean the end of German nihilism. For that nihilism has deeper roots than the preachings of Hitler, Germany’s defeat in the World War and all that.” Strauss aims to understand “the singular success, not of Hitler, but of those writers” who “knowingly or ignorantly paved the way for Hitler (Spengler, Moeller van den Bruck, Carl Schmitt, Ernst Jünger, Heidegger).”1 Turning to the question of technology, Frost claims that “there was one area where Strauss (following Machiavelli) agreed that science was absolutely needed and could not be ignored: the military (6–7).... But how,” he continues, “can you have the salutary effects of the one (a modern military) without the dire effects of the other (rampant technology)? Interestingly, Strauss says that you can.” These objections are based on a simple misreading of Strauss’s texts. Strauss does not agree that “science was absolutely needed and could not be ignored” in “the military.” He distinguishes mere military innovation from “the deployment of theoretical science in the conquest of nature” in such innovation, as I quote him saying on page 8 of my book. Citing this deployment as crucial, Strauss rejects the claim that mere military innovation made all modern technology “fated.” Nor does Strauss imply that one can have advanced military technology without technology being used in every other area of life. Frost also complains about “a relative paucity of classical sources to demonstrate” that “the ancients und","PeriodicalId":55874,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Political Science","volume":"52 1","pages":"17 - 28"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42171008","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}