Standouts

23. Strauss, The City and Man (22 Dec 2015)

by kurto

Modern political philosophy has become ideology, a phenomenon at the center of the crisis of the West, which is uncertain of its purpose. The modern treatment, which conceives of itself as political science, seeks to separate facts from values, and so cannot accommodate the pursuit of what ought to be, only what is. The classical treatment, best encapsulated in Aristotle’s

    Politics

because it originates the study of moral virtue, is the original and best approach to the ‘common sense’ understanding of political things. In three essays that chronologically work backward, from Aristotle to Plato’s

    Republic

to Thucydides, Strauss elucidates conceptions and problems of the best regime before turning to actual study of political history. In this way, Strauss makes the distinction between what is ‘first for us’ against what is ‘first in nature’, connecting history to philosophy without subsuming one inside the other. Philosophy is the ascendancy of events qua history. The search for the common-sense understanding of the city and man’s role as a good citizen and a good person leads the philosopher back to question: what is the nature of god? To be re-read.

5. Stanlis, Edmund Burke (10 Apr 2016)

by kurto

Burke’s understanding of natural law — the spirit of equity — as reflected in English common law is the cornerstone of his largely uncodified body of thought: so Stanlis has contended since his groundbreaking Edmund Burke and the Natural Law. In this monograph, he reiterates and elaborates the basis of those views, while demonstrating he was not a utilitarian. Subsequently he shows Burke’s opposition to the rationalist views of the Enlightenment, particularly the French philosophe Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose conception of ‘sensibility’, or abstract moral empathy, which paves the wave for theoretical innovation; Burke preferred an empirical approach to limited reform, in order to preserve the best elements of society. This contrast between revolution and reform is demonstrated in Burke’s view of the Glorious Revolution of 1688, a revolution ‘not made but prevented’.

11. Wedgwood, The Thirty Years War (3 Jul 2016)

by kurto

Narrates the central event in 17th-century German lands, masterfully weaving military and political events; religious, regional, and class attitudes; and individual leadership and failure. The political dysfunction of German lands, including but not limited to the supra-‘national’ role of Hapsburg Austria, was the cause not the consequence of the internecine fighting. Sweden and France merely took advantage, and sectarian conflict was simply an activating force. German leaders (princes) several times missed their chance to coalesce, to set aside religion and dynastic interests. Broad in its sweep yet finely detailed. Perhaps the professional historians will have revised some of Wedgwood’s findings, both with the passage of time and because she was not a member of the guild, yet this is how history should be done.

14. Smith, Political Philosophy (5 Sep 2016)

by kurto

The core problems of political philosophy are largely the same as those considered in the Classical age: our contemporary issues are most intelligible when viewed through the lens of democratic-minded masters from Socrates to Tocqueville. That is, the field is not progressive (additive) and certainly not historicist. The main issues deal with law and justice; authority and order; who should rule (what is the statesman)?; what is the best regime, and what is its relationship to the actual (current) regime?; what is a good citizen, and what is the relationship to the ideal (virtuous or perfect) person? The primary subject of political judgement is decision making. The conclusion departs from its study of towering figures to assert the national and the cosmopolitan (i.e., the ideal) each have a role to play is shaping the patriot. The answer depends mightily on the ethos of the people.

15. Cassirer, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment (10 Oct 2016)

by kurto

Evaluates the conceptual novelty and disciplinary trajectory of 18th-century thought, emphasizing the pervasiveness of reason. In contrast to the Renaissance concern for maths-based systems, the Enlightenment sought for approaches to accommodate continuous, scientific progress. Descartes and Newton exemplified the former, while the French philosophes represented the latter, as they were responsible for introducing systemic analysis to philosophic thinking. Leibniz bridges this gap, due to his theory of entities (monads) in an ever-becoming status. Lessing, the poet, emerges the author’s final hero for adding to rationalism’s perfunctory analysis an endemic creative power. Deeply exploring concepts across many fields — science, religion, statecraft, psychology, aesthetics — this is a first-rate history of ideas.

16. Himmelfarb, Roads to Modernity (23 Oct 2016)

by kurto

British thinkers following in the footsteps of Locke and Hume — Berkeley, Hutcheson, Gibbon, Smith joined by Burke and Wesley — were the Enlightenment’s first and foremost cohort, seeking to elaborate social compassion, benevolence, and sympathy. Where the French philosophes concentrated on the ‘ideology of reason’, born of universally applying the systems of Newton and Descartes to society’s structure and pursuits, and the American Founding Fathers on equitable political liberty, the British sought new precepts for a gentler, more virtuous society. These moral philosophers ‘posited a moral sentiment in man as the basis of the social virtues’. Himmelfarb places a major emphasis on Methodism (as an offshoot of the Anglican Church) and Dissent. Burke’s role was to take the British approach further, ‘by making the “sentiments, manners, and moral opinions” of men the basis of society itself, and, ultimately, of the polity as well’.

18. Elton, The Practice of History (17 Nov 2016)

by kurto

History exists distinct of the social sciences because it treats of particular people and events as they have changed over periods of time. The purpose of assessing dynamics is unlike disciplines which seeks to draw conclusions, even laws, from a static, measurable state of affairs. Further, the study of history is its own end, toward the understanding of what happened, rather than any analog or determinant of future events. History is rarely settled because new evidence appears and new ways of conceiving problems are formulated. But history is never relative: the past is dead. It is not the problems studied nor lessons learned but intellectual rigor of assessing evidence and explication that distinguishes the practitioner and the output. Evidence itself can never fulfill the job; while one must gather all he can, one must also criticize (evaluate) its contents and use imagination (investigative thinking) to assess the gaps and the misdirection. While there is a place for description and analysis, narrative is the highest form of the craft; the format will often be suggested by the problem.

3. Fukuyama, Political Order and Political Decay (20 Feb 2017)

by kurto

Examines the expansion of democratic government since the French Revolutions and evaluates reasons for its decay. Building on

    Origins of Political Order

, Fukuyama shows how the sequencing of a strong (capable) state machinery, rule of law, and accountability influence the course of progress toward democracy and also national history, contrasting the US, an earlier adopter of manhood suffrage without developed machinery, Italy (machinery suffused with ‘partrimonialism’), and Germany (lack of accountability). Although Britain extended the franchise relatively late, its strong rule of law and accountability gave it a more credible democratic government than clientelistic America, which conquered the problem only with the rise of Progressivism, heralded by Pinchot’s Forest Service(!). After reviewing the influence of geography and economics (e.g., natural resources), the author turns to democratic governance in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Fukuyama remains an advocate of Asia’s strong state model, even though few countries have reached full democracy. Then comes corruption in democracies, and recidivism. The final chapters consider the possibilities of America’s surmounting its rule-bound bureaucracy and ‘repatrimonialism’. Because he contends that ideas are products of events, Fukuyama continues to overlook ancient Greece, even though America’s founding fathers staked much of their thinking on classical political thought. Another thorough work, evidencing the same teleological shortcomings.

10. Gallie, Philosophy and the Historical Understanding (28 May 2017)

by kurto

Philosophic thought and particularly ‘essentially contested’ concepts improve with understanding of their predecessors, with a sense of context. History helps us to see the value of characteristics or features that otherwise seem arbitrary: when presented in a narrative (i.e., a story that can be followed, in which the crucial developments are contingent and the act of following expresses real interest), trends or ideas are integral to the topic in question and not analytical. Conversely, failure to see the entire range of possibilities (i.e., failure of imagination) undermines understanding of what the principal(s) in fact chose to say or do. Rather than a general set of scientifically discovered rules, history is a public exercise in continuous criticism (revision) combined with advancing interpretation via the discovery of new evidence. Having outlined a dynamic philosophy of history, the author shows that the schools of philosophy themselves – comprising logic (valid inferences), epistemology (objective criteria of different kinds of knowledge), and ethics (individual responsibility to society) – tend to talk past one another, and so their systems and constructs are weakened. As a case in point, the author suggests that metaphysics (Hegel: absolute presuppositions) can only be understood after the unquestioned becomes questionable.

16. Cassirer, Rousseau, Goethe, Kant (16 Aug 2017)

by kurto

The Enlightenment was equally a philosophical and empirical worldview — right thinking as a precursor to right action. Cassirer shows Kant appreciated Rousseau as the ‘Newton of the moral universe’. For example, Kant saw that Rousseau’s state of nature was important not because of its lost splendor but for what society should aspire to: the Swiss sought to revisit man’s natural state in order to identify ‘errors’ of contemporary society. Where Rousseau deduced this ideal, however, Kant (like Burke) saw civilization as the focal point of humanity, and declared the task of philosophy (i.e., defining what it is to be human) began from this point. They share a grounding in the priority of the individual’s rights, and saw conscience as the basis for appreciating God — not metaphysical proof. But where Rousseau is optimistic of man’s increasing happiness, Kant departed in holding that deeds not outcomes are the of final importance: existence is to prove humanity’s worthiness of freedom. Ultimately, Kant gave Rousseau’s conceptual work rigor. Conversely, in the second essay Cassirer shows how Kant’s empiricism established a basis for Goethe’s theoretical advances, such as metamorphosis, the process of becoming in nature. This bore fruit in the arts: both believed that genius give rules and form to creation; science is more beholden to experience, although the two differed on degree. Goethe concluded understanding doesn’t derive (a priori) from nature but is inspired by it. Separately, Kant held everything has value or worth. Value has a substitute, whereas worth is unique. That which is truly worth is borne of moral choices, which alone bear dignity.