Constitutionalism,the Public Philosophy,and Political Science

Examining Willa Cather's corpus of literary works reveals several phases of her illustrious career. After defending commercial culture in O Pioneers! and My Ántonia, her later novels, especially her One of Ours, diagnose an unmediated split in the Western world illustrated by the experience of the Great War: the bourgeois commercial culture undermines aspirations for human greatness. Her later novels deepen this diagnosis and offer a way out in a return to a rooted community of believers living in the shadows of the Church.     

Political History and Political Philosophy: Making Sense of the West

Abstract

The old Western synthesis, the coming together of self-government, the Christian proposition, modern equality, and the commitment to relieving man's estate, appears to be unraveling. In the European context, it is being replaced by a “pure democracy” that cannot do justice to the continuity of Western civilization. Rejecting the twin temptations of Progress and Decline, Pierre Manent recovers the perspective of the human agent. While the polis or classical city is no longer available to us, the self-government of free human beings remains at the heart of the Western enterprise. Manent shows that the Christian notion of conscience preserved the classical analogy between the soul and the political association and is at the hear of Western liberty. The West as a whole rests on the synthetic and mediating notion of conscience.     

Derrida and Post-Modern Political Philosophy

Western political philosophy may be more diverse than its supporters or critics have allowed in recent scholarship. This paper argues that political philosophy is the centre of Derrida's philosophical thought as a whole, and suggests that similarities between Isocrates and Derrida help us to better understand both the political thought of these thinkers and the historical diversity of Western political philosophy.     

中国传统政治哲学的社会历史环境分析

中国古代社会特定的社会历史条件 ,限定了古代思想家的思想视野和思想方式。由于中国古代的地理环境所决定 ,中国古代思想家所感受到的世界不同于希腊哲学家所感受的世界 ;中国早期国家产生的道路不同于雅典人的国家 ,商品经济的相对不发达 ,家长制家庭与村社土地制度的长期存留 ,也在很大程度上影响了中国古代思想家对于国家、权力、平等与公正等问题的理解     

On the Paradoxical Place of Political Philosophy in the Structure of Reality

Abstract

Carey, George W., and Bruce Frohnen, eds. Community and Tradition: Conservative Perspectives on the American Experience, Lanham MD. Rowman and Littlefield. 204 pp., $53.00 clth, $22.95 paper ISBN 0-8476-8660-4 cloth, ISBN 0-8476-8661-2 paper Publication Date: August 1998 Lawler, Peter Augustine, and Dale McConkey, eds. Community and Political Thought Today. Westpott, CT Greenwood, 256 pp., $59.95 ISBN 0-276-596096-X Publication Date: September 1998

The decline of community in America has become a major preoccupation of present-day political theory. Contemporary theorists frequently lament the erosion of civic spirit and social ties in modern society. And increasingly, they trace that erosion back to the calculating “selfishness” of the modern individual. Once celebrated for liberating human beings from the repressive restraints of premodern tradition, modern individualism is today often blamed for the disintegration of smaller communities, such as families and neighborhoods, that humanize society. Thus, as Western jurisprudence makes him ever more aware of his “rights” as an individual, democratic man paradoxically finds himself criticized for being too self-interested and for not taking his social responsibilities seriously enough.

UNITED STATES: Politics and Public Policy, Baseler, Marilyn C. “Asylum for Mankind”: America, 1607-1800. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. 353 pp., $42.50, ISBN 0-8014-3481-5 Publication Date: 1998

Tarr, G. Alan. Understanding State Constitutions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 247 pp., $35.00, ISBN 0-691-01112-5 Publication Date: October 1998

Sunstein, Cass R. One Case at a Time: Judicial Minimalism on the Supreme Court. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 290 pp., $29.95, ISBN 0-674-63790-0 Publication Date: March 1999

Herbst, Susan. Reading Public Opinion: How Political Actors View the Democratic Process. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 256 pp., $41.00 cloth, $ 16.00 paper ISBN 0-226-32746-9 cloth ISBN 0-226-37747-7 paper Publication Date: 1998

Nissen, Bruce, ed. Which Direction for Organized Labor? Essays on Organizing, Outreach, and Internal Transformations. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press. 264 pp., $28.95 paper ISBN 0-8143-2779-6 paper Publication Date: February 1999

Ravitch, Diane, ed. Brookings Papers on Education Policy, 1999. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. 462 pp., $19.95 paper ISBN 0-8157-7355-2 paper Publication Date: March 1999

Blank, Robert H. Brain Policy: How the New Neuroscience Will Change Our Lives and Our Politics. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. 194 pp., $60.00 cloth, $21.95 paper ISBN 0-87840-712-X cloth ISBN 0-87840-713-8 paper Publication Date: April 1999

Shull, Steven A., ed. Presidential Policymaking: An End-of-Century Assessment. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. 310 pp., $66.95 cloth, $24.95 paper ISBN 0-7656-0259-8 cloth ISBN 0-7656-0260-1 paper Publication Date: March 1999

Fackre, Gabriel, ed. Judgment Day at the White House: A Critical Declaration Exploring Moral Issues and the Political Use and Abuse of Religion. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. 190 pp., $12.00 paper ISBN 0-8028-4671-8 paper Publication Date: 1999

Hula, Kevin W. Lobbying Together: Interest Group Coalitions in Legislative Politics. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. 180 pp., $55.00 cloth, $23.95 paper ISBN 0-87840-720-0 cloth ISBN 0-87840-721-9 paper Publication Date: April 1999

Brands, H. W. What America Owes the World: The Struggle for the Soul of Foreign Policy. New York: Cambridge University Press. 335 pp., $54.95 cloth, $17.95 paper ISBN 0-521-63031-2 cloth ISBN 0-521-63968-9 paper Publication Date: October 1998

Etzioni, Amitai. The Limits of Privacy. New York: Basic Books. 280 pp., $25.00, ISBN 0-465-04089-6 Publication Date: March 1999

Wallin, Bruce A. From Revenue Sharing to Deficit Sharing: General Revenue Sharing and Cities. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. 162 pp., $53.00 cloth, $19.95 paper ISBN 0-87840-698-0 cloth ISBN 0-87840-699-9 paper Publication Date: November 1998

Finnegan, Margaret. Selling Suffrage: Consumer Culture and Votes for Women. New York: Columbia University Press. 222 pp., $49.50 cloth, $17.50 paper ISBN 0-231-10738-2 cloth ISBN 0-231-10739-0 paper Publication Date: April 1999

Manuel, Paul Christopher, and Anne Mane Cammisa. Checks and Balances? How a Parliamentary System Could Change American Politics. Boulder, CO: Westview. 226 pp., $49.00 cloth, $15.00 paper ISBN 0-8133-3026-2 cloth ISBN 0-8133-3027-0 paper Publication Date: November 1999

UNITED STATES: Foreign Policy and National Security, Pastor, Robert A., and Rafael Fernandez de Castro, eds. The Controversial Pivot: The U.S. Congress and North America. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. 214 pp., $39.95 cloth, $16.95 paper ISBN 0-8157-6924-5 cloth ISBN 0-8157-6923-7 paper Publication Date: November 1998

Scott, James M., ed. After the End: Making U.S. Foreign Policy in the Post-Cold War World. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 427 pp., $64.95 cloth, $21.95 paper ISBN 0-8223-2134-3 cloth ISBN 0-8223-2266-8 paper Publication Date: 1998

CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA, Welch, Cliff. The Seed Was Planted: The São Paulo Roots of Brazil's Rural Labor Movement, 1924-1964. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press. 412 pp., $65.00 cloth, $25.00 paper ISBN 0-271-01788-0 cloth ISBN 0-271-01789-9 paper Publication Date: February 1999

Peloso, Vincent C. Peasants on Plantations: Subaltern Strategies of Labor and Resistance in the Pisco Valley, Peru. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 251 pp., $49.95 cloth, $17.95 paper ISBN 0-8223-2229-3 cloth ISBN 0-8223-2246-3 paper Publication Date: March 1999

EUROPE/COMMONWEALTH OF INDEPENDENT STATES, Wachtel, Andrew Baruch. Making a Nation, Breaking a Nation: Literature and Cultural Politics in Yugoslavia. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 302 pp., $55.00 cloth, $18.95 paper ISBN 0-8047-3180-2 cloth ISBN 0-8047-3181-0 paper Publication Date: August 1998

Brenner, Michael. Terms of Engagement: The United States and the European Security Identity. Westport, CT: Praeger/CSIS Series. 144 pp., $49.95 cloth, $19.95 paper ISBN 0-275-9649605 cloth ISBN 0-275-96497-3 paper Publication Date: October 1998

Serfaty, Simon. Memories of Europe's Future: Farewell to Yesteryear. Washington, DC: CSIS Press. 148 pp., $18.95 paper ISBN 0-89206-347-5 paper Publication Date: February 1999

Laitin, David D. Identity in Formation: The Russian-Speaking Populations in the Near Abroad. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. 417 pp., $55.00 cloth, $22.50 paper ISBN 0-8014-3495-5 cloth ISBN 0-8014-8495-2 paper Publication Date: June 1998

Dunlop, John B. Russia Confronts Chechnya: Roots of a Separatist Conflict. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 234 pp. + xiv, $59.95 cloth, $18.95 paper ISBN 0-521-63184-X cloth ISBN 0-521-63619-1 paper Publication Date: September 1998

AFRICA AND THE MIDDLE EAST, Clingman, Stephen, Bram Fischer: Afrikaner Revolutionary, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 500 pp., $29.95. ISBN 1-55849-135-X, Publication Date: May 1998

Wright, Stephen, ed. African Foreign Policies. Boulder, CO: Westview. 260 pp., $65.00 cloth, $26.00 paper ISBN 0-8133-2406-8 cloth ISBN 0-8133-2407-6 paper Publication Date: November 1998

Schaffer, Frederic C. Democracy in Translation: Understanding Politics in an Unfamiliar Culture. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. 168 pp., $39.95, ISBN 0-8014-3398-3 Publication Date: 1998

ASIA AND THE PACIFIC, De Bary, Wm. Theodore. Asian Values and Human Rights: A Confucian Communitarian Perspective. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 196 pp., $27.95, ISBN 0-674-04955-1 Publication Date: September 1998

Hagerty, Devin T. The Consequences of Nuclear Proliferation: Lessons from South Asia. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 205 pp., $17.50 paper ISBN 0-262-58161-2 paper Publication Date: August 1998

Alagappa, Muthiah, ed. Asian Security Practice: Material and Ideational Influences. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 851 pp., $75.00, ISBN 0-8047-3347-3 Publication Date: August 1998

Park, Tong Whan, ed. The United States and the Two Koreas: A New Triangle. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. 318 pp. + xi, $55.00, ISBN 1-55587-807-5 Publication Date: September 1998

Murray, Geoffrey. China, the Next Superpower: Dilemmas in Change and Continuity. New York: St. Martin's. 260 pp., $39.95, ISBN 0-312-21533-9 Publication Date: November 1998

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, LAW, AND ORGANIZATION, Wallerstein, Immanuel. Utopistics: Or, Historical Choices of the Twenty-first Century. New York: New Press. 93 pp., $12.95 paper ISBN 1-56584-457-2 paper Publication Date: 1998

Yost, David S. NATO Transformed: The Alliance's New Roles in International Security. Washington, DC: U.S. Institute of Peace Press. 450 pp., $19.95 paper ISBN 1-878379-81-X paper Publication Date: 1998

Boone, Peter, Stanislaw Gomulka, and Richard Layard, eds. Emerging from Communism: Lessons from Russia, China, and Eastern Europe. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 244 pp., $35.00, ISBN 0-262-02447-0 Publication Date: October 1998

Berger, Thomas U. Cultures of Antimilitarism: National Security in Germany and Japan. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 256 pp., $38.00, ISBN 0-8018-5820-8 Publication Date: July 1998

Srinivasan, T. N. Developing Countries and the Multilateral Trading System: From GATT (1947) to the Uruguay Round and the Future Beyond. Boulder, CO: Westview. 126 pp., $39.00, ISBN 0-8133-3419-5 Publication Date: January 1998

Spenser, Daniela. The Impossible Triangle: Mexico, Soviet Russia, and the United States in the 1920s. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 254 pp., $49.95 cloth, $17.95 paper ISBN 0-8223-2256-0 cloth ISBN 0-8223-2289-7 paper Publication Date: 1999

THEORY AND METHODOLOGY, Desrosières, Alain; trans. Camille Naish. The Politics of Large Numbers: A History of Statistical Reasoning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 416 pp., $45.00, ISBN 0-674-68932-1 Publication Date: 1998

Gallagher, Susan E. The Rule of the Rich? Adam Smith's Argument against Political Power. University Park, PA: Penn Slate University Press. 140 pp., $28.50, ISBN 0-271-01774-0 Publication Date: November 1998

Parker, Geoffrey. Geopolitics: Past, Present, and Future. Washington, DC: Pinter. 199 pp.+ viii, $24.95 paper ISBN 1-85567-397-5 paper Publication Date: January 1998

Ober, Josiah. Political Dissent in Democratic Athens: Intellectual Critics of Popular Rule. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 417 pp., $35.00, ISBN 0-691-00122-7 Publication Date: September 1998

Mazlish, Bruce. The Uncertain Sciences. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. 328 pp., $35.00, ISBN 0-300-07477-8 Publication Date: December 1998

THEORY AND METHODOLOGY, Levine, Andrew. Rethinking Liberal Equality from a “Utopian” Point of View. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. 140 pp., $32.50, ISBN 0-8014-3543-9 Publication Date: 1998

Myers, Peter C. Our Only Star and Compass: Locke and the Struggle for Political Rationality. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. 269 pp. + xi, $63.00 cloth, $23.95 paper ISBN 0-8476-9098-9 cloth ISBN 0-8676-9099-7 paper Publication Date: 1998

Keane, John. Civil Society: Old Images, New Visions. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 201 pp., $45.00 cloth, $16.95 paper ISBN 0-8047-3628-6 cloth ISBN 0-8047-3629-4 paper Publication Date: November 1998     

儒家天人观的政治哲学反省

把握普遍的必然性是人的天性。天是中国古代思想家所能认识到的最高意义的本体性存在,理解天人关系是中国古代思想家把握普遍的必然性的基本途径。思孟学派的天人合一论更多地注意到了天人之间的统一性,表达了古代思想家在更抽象的水平上把握客观世界的心理取向。宋代理学家用形而上的思想方式理解和把握天,从而使必然意义的天与可感觉的天和有神性的天分离开来,儒家的天人观也因此而达到了最高的境界。     

Blondel,the Philosophy of Action and Liberation Theology

Abstract

Maurice Blondel's philosophy of action and concrete political theology provide foundations for modern theologies of action. By commencing with the reflective subject, Blondel compensates the deficiencies of collectivist Marxist social analysis. He did not live to complete his account of the social, political and economic implications of his philosophy, but they are realized in the work and witness of others: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Yves de Montcheuil, Henri de Lubac and John McNeill. Liberation theologians of diverse persuasions need especially to acknowledge their debt to Blondel in an era when, in Western societies, the fundamental context of action is no longer material but intellectual, spiritual and interpersonal. The abstract nature of his thought means that he frequently opens suggestive paths into further reflection rather than prescribing complete solutions to specific practical questions.     

Philosophy,Eros, Judaism

Abstract

A careful reading of Caritas in Veritate shows it to be framed and permeated by two principles. The first is that human persons in their consciences and deeds are the principal agents of economic and political life, whether directly in interpersonal relations or mediated through their work in and for institutions. The second is that human persons as citizens are best prepared to promote “integral human development” and “the common good” when they are urged on by charity or love that is lived in truth. In these respects Caritas in Veritate is a clear continuation of the line of thought that Benedict developed in his earlier encyclicals Deus Caritas Est and Spe Salvi, and before that in his theological writings as Joseph Ratzinger. Benedict's work thus underscores the need modern societies and political communities have for charity, and thus for faith and for hope. We explicate this aspect of Benedict's political vision throughout this essay, anticipating and beginning to respond to some objections to the thesis that politics even in a secular age requires theological virtues to flourish.