The Postmodern Problem

Abstract

Mormon political theology must reconcile two distinct projects: the care for the Church's concrete, temporal existence in the World, and the welcoming of the future Kingdom of God on earth. Because of this duality, political theology finds itself highlighting the distinction between the World and the Kingdom of God and at the same time pointing out common ground and attempting to establish peace between the Church and the World. The alleged contradictions of Mormon political thought are, according to this conception, to be understood not as confrontations between idealism and brute reality (or “utopianism” and “assimilation”), but rather as the bringing together of the two goals of Mormon political reflection, pursued by two sides of political theology. These two sides, apologetic and prophetic political theology, are distinguished not by their political content, but rather by their particular kinds of political rhetoric.     

Elite Analysis of Democracies' International Policy Introduction

This essay offers a critical appreciation of Mark Lilla's Stillborn God. To his credit, Lilla understands the primacy and enduring appeal of political theology, as well as the danger of intellectual complacency about the underlying principles of modern politics. Lilla maintains that modern politics is a relatively recent and radically novel experiment that aims at nothing less than displacing a primordial and perennial way of constituting politics with reference to the divine. My essay compares Lilla's analysis of the fundamental antagonism between political theology and modern liberal politics to Strauss's analysis of the theological-political problem. In doing so, I bring to light both the strengths and limits of Lilla's attempt to clarify the relationship between politics, biblical religion, and philosophic rationalism.     

Spiritedness,Reason, and the Founding of Law and Order: John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

Abstract

John Ford's 1962 classic Western, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, analyzes the difficulties inherent in founding a new political order based on the rule of law. Some critics have concluded that the film mordantly portrays the closing of the frontier, the tragic loss of the rugged individualism it promoted (represented by Tom Doniphon), and the ascendance in its place of a fraudulent political class (represented by Ransom Stoddard), while exposing that even free societies are founded on crime. Yet, as others have argued, Doniphon also represents the spirited part of the Platonic tripartite soul, revealing spiritedness's ambiguous relation to justice: he refuses to fight unless personally threatened; perpetuates servitude, if not slavery; and shows no interest in promoting equality of women. Doniphon stands in opposition to the principles of the Declaration of Independence, pointedly recited at the film's chronological center, and his eclipse by Stoddard is not a tragic mistake. In addition, John Locke's state of nature teaching unlocks why Valance's death is not a crime that sullies the foundations of the society. Finally, the legend told as fact at the film's conclusion combines both men into a single entity, “the man who shot Liberty Valance,” thereby propagating a salutary lesson for future citizens: reason must combine with and rule over spiritedness if law and order are to prevail.     

Humphrey and Civil Rights: The Politics of Racial Progress

Abstract

This article explores and defends Leo Strauss's interpretation of Edmund Burke's thought. Strauss argues that Burke's conservatism is rooted in the modern empiricist school of John Locke and others. Following Strauss, this article sets out to consider the suitability of these foundational principles to conservative politics. Burke wants to temper or ennoble Lockean politics by inspiring sublime attachment to the political community and its traditions, but he shies away from stating universal standards according to which the traditions of political communities ought to be judged. This respect for reason in history without moorings in transcendent standards of reason or revelation leaves his conservatism on precarious ground.     

The Interplanetary Dialectic: Freedom and Equality in Ursula Le Guin's The Dispossessed

In his most recent work, Homeless and at Home in America, Peter Lawler diagnoses our country's twin intellectual impulses, libertarianism and Darwinism, as expressions of the modern, disjunctive soul; torn between the desire to conquer nature for the sake of individual autonomy and the inclination to scientifically deprivilege ourselves as merely another part of nature, many Americans have managed to incoherently embrace a kind of libertarian sociobiology. Lawler attempts to demonstrate that each perspective promises only a partial view of the truth and that a deeper anthropology that properly includes both our natural inclinations and our eros to transcend nature can be accounted for by what he calls a "Thomistic Realism." The theoretical crux of this Thomistic realism is a "science of theology" that articulates the relation between reason and revelation, navigating between the mutual exclusivity espoused by Leo Strauss or any decisive theoretical synthesis. The purpose of this article is to fully explain the meaning of Lawler's science of theology and the extent to which it is influenced by but ultimately departs from Strauss's view.     

The Presidency and the News Media

Abstract

Leo Strauss, often considered a critic of modernity, is famous for his claim that Machiavelli, in turning away from the classical tradition, is its originator. Yet his “Restatement on Xenophon's Hiero” presents a concise indictment of that tradition and a remarkably sympathetic account of the political and philosophic motives that led to the rupture. In light of this tension, Strauss's interest in Xenophon appears as a useful counterweight to both.     

Liberty and Community: A Liberal Resolution

Much has been written in the last few years regarding Leo Strauss's political attachments, especially with respect to his purported influence over American neoconservatives. Problematically, Strauss scrupulously avoided explicit ideological entanglements, rarely addressed particular policy debates, and left little guidance for the statesman or thoughtful commentator interested in drawing practical political inferences from his philosophical writing. To add further ambiguity to already muddy waters, Strauss's discussion of the relation between prudence and philosophic insight coupled with the many and incompatible roles he assigns to the philosopher within the city make it unclear if there is anything at all that philosophy can teach us of political significance. The following essay aims to explain Strauss's view of the political function of philosophy in light of his distinction between classic and modern utopianism and what he calls in On Tyranny "philosophic politics."     

The End of Socialism's Historical Theology and Its Rebirth in Fukuyama's Thesis

Abstract

I consider Robert Faulkner's “case for greatness” in relation to egalitarianism and the fear of greatness that egalitarianism may justifiably inspire. I question how the “greatness” that Faulkner defends may be fostered—and whether we really do want to foster it after all.     

Red Tory: How Left and Right Have Broken Britain and How We Can Fix It

Abstract

Responding to my generous critics, I attempt to clarify my view of reason’s responsibility and its limits, and I underline my agreement with Strauss on the insuperability of political thinking and thus the impossibility of any neat separation between theory and practice or of any trans-political doctrine of transcendence. Finally, I resist invitations to overcome tensions between vertical and horizontal transcendence and thus to go beyond responsibility to autonomy.     

Freudian Slips and Coteries of Vice: The Sexual Offences Act of 1967*

The Sexual Offences Act 1967 made the first inroads to decriminalising men's homosexual sex since buggery was made a capital offence under Henry VIII. The act was drafted at the direction of the 1957 Wolfenden report, but bore the distinct hallmark of individuals of the 1967 parliament. More complex than the dictated product of Wolfenden, and more idiosyncratic than a simple reflection of the social climate of the 1960s, the private member's bill was a Labour initiative with bipartisan support, driven in the Commons by the bizarre motivations of its sponsor, Labour member for Pontypool, Leo Abse. Contrary to popular myths about the aims of decriminalisation, Abse's crusading Freudian motivation was concerned with discouraging, more than allowing, homosexual behaviour. Similarly, ‘privacy’– the gift of the house of lords to sexual regulation – was aimed largely at curtailing men's sexual practices, along with secreting them away. Thus, while the act is typically associated with a general ideal of freedom, much parliamentary motivation concerned control and the prevention of sexual activities.     

The Impact of Back Benchers in the Creation of Social Reform: The Indefatigable and Honourable Exertions of Mr Gilbert*

During the 18th century, back-bench members of parliament played a critical role in creating social policy. This article provides a case study of the political campaigns of the Lichfield MP, Thomas Gilbert, and his attempts at a comprehensive reform of the poor law in 1765 and 1782. These individual endeavours were energetic, sophisticated, but unallied to a particular agenda or based on Gilbert's original perspectives. Instead, he harnessed the power of local interests and extra-parliamentary forces, particularly magistrates, through the adept use of print culture in his later campaign to form social policy based on a broad political consensus. A skilled political operator, he used these same methods to help navigate his bills through parliament. To better fit the context, the campaigns were moulded around political expediency and influenced by the development of Gilbert's humanitarian reputation and the burgeoning of the press, parliamentary reporting, and political debate. The political environments of 1765 and 1782 were, therefore, different, and broader trends influenced the two campaigns. This article demonstrates the importance of the press to political campaigning and suggests that to be successful (in social policy at least) a would-be reformer was required to engage with a developing participatory political culture. However, given Gilbert's approach, the importance of ideology as a basis for social reform in an 18th-century context is questioned.     

An Empire of the Scholars: Transnational Lawyers and the Rule of Opinio Juris

The eternal conflict between justice and violence is the theme of director John Ford's last great film, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. In the world of the American West where Ford's story is set, justice does not just happen; it is a work of manly courage that encompasses a willingness—in extreme cases—to kill those men, such as Liberty Valance, who challenge law and order. Justice will require, as Plato said, a rightly ordered soul, but it will be a soul that must do violence to realize justice in a world that too often resembles a Hobbesian state of nature. In Ford's view, the truth of these violent origins of justice are more likely to be obscured than illuminated by the civilized historian's account of this truth. And we do violence not merely to justice but also to truth itself if we fail to respect the hard reality that civilization requires such measures.     

Parliament and the Reformation of Edward VI

This article explores the ways in which parliament was used to shape the accelerating protestant reformation undertaken by successive governments under Edward VI. It underlines the significance for constitutional history of Thomas Cromwell's extraordinary promotion of England's parliament to enact the break with Rome and evangelical religious change, and the corresponding use of parliament after Cromwell's fall by conservatives to combat evangelical gains, which at first constituted an obstacle to Protector Somerset's plans. There was a steady deliberate erosion of conservative episcopal votes in the Lords through political man?uvres from 1547; nevertheless, up to late 1549, the weight of conservative opposition in the Lords (without much obvious corresponding traditionalist support in the Commons) dictated crabwise progress in legislation. The convocations of Canterbury and York played a more marginal role in religious change. Somerset's unsuccessful attempt at populist innovation in parliament was, arguably, an important element fuelling the coup against him in autumn 1549. Thereafter, events moved much more rapidly, aided by further compulsory retirements of bishops. Attention is drawn to the frustration felt by some enthusiastic evangelicals at the pace of change dictated by parliament, leading the prominent refugee, Jan ?aski, sarcastically to characterise the Edwardian Reformation in retrospect as ‘parliamentary theology’. From late 1552, divisions between clergy and nobility in the evangelical leadership over plundering of church wealth led to confusion, ill will and the disruption of further progress, even before it was obvious that King Edward was rapidly dying.     

An Essay on the Context and Formation of Wilhelm von Humboldt's Linguistic Thought

SUMMARY

This essay combines the study of Humboldt's sources with a critique of the treatment of this subject in most studies of Humboldt and his linguistic thought. One crucial issue is the date of his early ‘Über Denken und Sprechen’, which is our first evidence of his mature thinking about language. This text is conventionally dated 1795, thus ruling out that Humboldt might be indebted to the anthropo-linguistic philosophy that he explored in Paris a few years later. But a host of facts make the date untenable and the debt unquestionable, including incontrovertible evidence that ‘Über Denken und Sprechen’ relies on Condillac's argument for the anti-idealist principle that the distinction between subject and object is the absolute precondition for self-awareness and reflection, and thus, by the same token, for the concept of Weltansicht. ‘Über Denken und Sprechen’ also shows that Humboldt was inspired to choose Condillac's and Destutt de Tracy's argument over that of Fichte for what Berkeley disapprovingly called ‘outness’. This analysis exemplifies the critique that is advanced in this essay.     

Peers,Politics and the Price of Pepper: Skinner v. the East India Company

The case of Thomas Skinner v. the East India Company brought parliament to a standstill in 1668 in a confrontation between the Houses over their respective privileges that lasted nearly two years. There is no doubt that the case was exploited for political advantage by presbyterians anxious to block the passage of a new conventicles act, but that is far from being the whole story.  This article examines for the first time the details of the case and reliability of Skinner's claims against the East India Company.  It reveals that Thomas Skinner was somewhat of an obsessive fantasist who, far from being a presbyterian sympathiser, was close to the household of James, duke of York. At one stage his daughter was even reputed to be the mother of the ‘pretended’ prince of Wales. It concludes that Skinner was himself an unscrupulous opportunist, eager to exploit political and commercial uncertainty for private gain.     

Religion and the Enlightenment: A Review Essay

Recent studies of the Enlightenment suggest that its relationto religion is far more complex than a simple process of increasingsecularization. The book by Sheehan shows, by examining translationsof the Bible into English and German in the Enlightenment, howreligion was reshaped, leading eventually to the dogma-freeChristianity proposed by Matthew Arnold. Israel's book arguesthat alongside the relatively cautious mainstream Enlightenmentthere was always a radical Enlightenment, heavily indebted toSpinoza, that was rationalist, atheist, and libertarian, andanticipated the dominant liberal values of the present day.Neither of these important studies, however, considers two areasthat remain under-researched: the popular Enlightenment (‘Volksaufklärung’),that is to say, the diffusion of Enlightenment thought amonguneducated people; and the Catholic Enlightenment which flourishedparticularly in Italy, Austria, and south Germany.     

Literacy,reading, and writing in the medieval West

Over the last quarter century, a plethora of studies on literacy, reading, and writing in medieval Europe have contributed significantly to our understanding of medieval society and culture. Nevertheless the sheer number of these studies and their authorship by scholars in several different disciplines have obscured the relationships between these studies, their common themes and their differences. This essay seeks to survey this literature and its background, to explicate its contributions to the field of medieval history, and to suggest avenues for future study. It also reveals how approaches developed outside medieval studies were borrowed and adapted by medievalists, and how the study of literacy, reading, and writing in the Middle Ages has, in turn, influenced the work of ancient and modern historians.