Technology,Free Labor,and Slavery: Lincoln on Discovery and Invention

Abstract

Abraham Lincoln presented a lecture in 1858–1859 on the process of “Discoveries and Invention.” In this lecture he discusses man's desire to improve his condition and the use of technology to that end. The process of discovery and invention allows man to develop that technology and alleviate his state. Education, especially literacy, allows knowledge to be passed down through time, facilitating yet further improvement. Yet, Lincoln warns that human nature can also become raw material, as seen in the institution of slavery. In light of Lincoln's more commonly known natural rights argument against slavery, this warning about human nature takes on greater significance. Coupled with an address on agriculture from 1859, Lincoln's lecture on discovery and invention attempts to illustrate the liberating power of invention and education while reminding us of the limits posed by man's natural equality.     

Revisiting Dred Scott: Prudence,Providence, and the Limits of Constitutional Statesmanship

Abstract

After the Dred Scott decision in 1857, Abraham Lincoln embarked on a public campaign to prevent the expansion of slavery in the federal territories. Lincoln's opposition to Dred Scott was, however, bound up with a certain theoretical orientation that is often rejected in the general milieu of modern constitutional theory. Within the context of two recent revisionist accounts of slavery and American constitutionalism, I argue that our retrospective evaluations of the sixteenth president's statesmanship must enter into a deeper engagement with Lincoln's attachment to natural law and his theological interpretation of the Civil War.     

Young Mr. Lincoln in Ford's Theater

In Young Mr. Lincoln, director John Ford and screenwriter Lamar Trotti engage an issue that is central to Ford's films and to Lincoln's political thought. That issue is the tension between individual greatness and the rule of law, a tension heightened in a democracy by the demos's passion for equality. In the film's portrayal of Lincoln, Ford and Trotti suggest a solution to this tension that is fundamentally consistent with the one Lincoln suggested in the Lyceum Address. To remain within the political community, the great man must hold a sincere reverence for the law and be willing to exhibit humility in declaiming his own superiority. In the context of these characteristics, greatness can be a force that preserves the law and protects the community from harm. The film depicts Lincoln as the paradigmatic combination of these characteristics and alludes to his mature leadership based on these commitments in his later career.     

Lincoln as Commander-in-Chief

Abstract

Abraham Lincoln's presidency was defined and dominated by war, yet Lincoln himself had very little direct experience with warfare; nor had the American presidency been truly tested by war when he took office. Lincoln had to negotiate very difficult political and constitutional terrain as he waged the Civil War: issues of executive authority, constitutional powers and their limitations, and the nature of civil liberties during war constantly bedeviled him. His guiding principle in all these matters, and the greatest lesson we can learn from him today, was his flexibility and his pragmatism.     

Justice Breyer's Constitutional Jurisprudence: Active Liberty and Pragmatism

This analysis of Associate Justice Stephen Breyer's jurisprudence proceeds from his first book devoted to this subject, Active Liberty, a term he derives from Benjamin Constant and that Breyer defines as participatory democracy. Active Liberty and two subsequent books, as well as numerous off-bench writings, explain his jurisprudence of pragmatism, an approach he contrasts with originalism. This article addresses three general questions: Is Breyer's jurisprudence, founded on active liberty and pragmatism, fundamentally consistent with the design of the Constitution? Does his jurisprudence support his opinions in the constitutional decisions examined, a number of which are also treated in his books and articles? In a system that is designed to empower and to limit government, do his jurisprudence and judicial decisions constrain judges? This last question is especially important because of Breyer's thesis “that courts should take greater account of the Constitution's democratic nature when they interpret constitutional and statutory texts.” Breyer believes that his theory of active liberty ameliorates the democratic anomaly between a system “based on representation and accountability” that at the same time entrusts “final or near-final” authority to unelected judges who are insulated from public opinion.     

“The Pull of Love”: Mutual Love as Democratic Virtue in Niebuhrian Political Theology

Although Reinhold Niebuhr's account of democracy aims to protect marginalized communities by restraining sin through the diffusion of power, the conceptions of sin and love that inform his political theology have anti-democratic consequences for members of these communities. I address this inconsistency by revisiting his under-developed idea of mutual love and clarifying his account of sin. Mutual love occupies crucial terrain between agape and justice for Niebuhr, and therefore enables moral agents to achieve democratic goals. Given the nature and importance of mutual love, I clarify Niebuhr's account of sin by making his position on “self-love” more moderate than it often appears.     

Republican patriotism and Machiavelli’s patriotism

The theories of republican patriotism, especially articulated by Maurizio Viroli, promote Machiavelli's patriotism as the archetype of patriotism without nationalism. The upshot is that in Machiavelli's republicanism, the ideal of liberty as non-domination cultivates moral obligations towards humanity. Rather than engaging in debates on the tension between republican liberty and republican imperialism in Machiavelli's writings, this article tackles this interpretation with textual evidences that shed light on Machiavelli's patriotism prone to the same problems as those Maurizio Viroli sees in nationalism. More specifically, I argue that Machiavelli's patriotic aspiration neglects the role of regulative principle in guarding patriotic loyalty from degenerating into collective selfishness.     

Philosophy,Sociability and Modern Patriotism: Young Herder between Rousseau and Abbt

Summary

In his early years Herder is known to have been a follower of Rousseau (via Kant). This article argues that there was indeed a substantial overlap between Herder's and Rousseau's ideas in Herder's early writings, particularly in terms of their joint critique of abstract philosophy and their understanding of the sentimental foundations of morality, as well as their commitment to the ideals of human moral independence and political freedom. Yet Herder's admiration for Rousseau's moral philosophy did not lead him to adopt Rousseau's critique of sociability even in this early period, and there was in fact a deep divergence between their political views. Herder attempted to combine a Rousseauian cultural critique, ‘human’ moral philosophy and philosophy of education with ideas inspired by Thomas Abbt's theory of monarchical patriotism. In contrast to Rousseau, and following Abbt, Herder posited the existence of natural patriotic feelings and underlined their importance in guaranteeing good government and political freedom. Thus, Herder could have a relatively optimistic view of the role of ‘human philosophy’ in regenerating patriotism in a modern setting. Herder embraced Abbt's emphasis on the positive aspects of modern monarchies and ‘modern liberty’ when compared to ancient republics, highlighting the compatibility of Christianity, international commerce and religious tolerance, and the general possibility of developing one's natural inclinations in modern monarchies.     

Dying for the fatherland: Thomas Abbt's theory of aesthetic patriotism

This article aims to dissect Thomas Abbt's (1738–1766) theory of aesthetic patriotism as laid out in his On Dying for the Fatherland (1761) and his prize-essay On Mathematical, Metaphysical and Moral Certainty (1763). Aesthetic idioms, such as the emphasis on the intrinsic pleasure from the order and beauty of virtue, had been invoked throughout the eighteenth century to vindicate the morally optimistic view of humanity against the sceptical vision of an exclusively utility-centred mankind. In the post-Montesquieu debates on the moral foundations of modern politics, German-speaking authors in particular, from both republics (Switzerland) and monarchies (Prussia), appropriated the aesthetic idioms in order to reject those theories which grounded patriotism in some sort of self-interest or proclaimed it redundant in modern society. Thomas Abbt was one of the most prominent representatives of this intellectual position. Combining the general emphasis of Shaftesbury on the role of aesthetic appreciation in moral and political agency with the more specific German Baumgartenian analysis of ‘beauty’ as a central principle in human ‘empirical psychology’, Abbt argued that patriotism in modern monarchies could be grounded in an aesthetic passion of enthusiasm generated through sensuous examples of great virtue. The example of a king fighting for his country on the battlefield could inspire monarchical subjects to follow his example as well as regenerate patriotism among them. Abbt was adamant that patriotism based on aesthetic foundations had to be supported and stabilised by a pervasive patriotic culture of remembrance and emulation of dead heroes through the fine arts, as well as by a system of meritocratic honour in the army.     

Reading trade in the wealth of nations

Economic analysis identifies comparative, rather than absolute, advantage as the basis of international trade, a distinction first thought to have been clearly made by David Ricardo in his Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817). Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (1776) is thought to have failed to make this distinction, instead treating foreign trade principally as a “vent” for surplus domestic produce. However, Smith's underlying argument in favour of a “system of natural liberty” made his name synonymous with open seas and free markets, and the economist most closely linked to free trade. This paper suggests that Smith advanced a rather more sophisticated analysis of the gains from trade than this textbook understanding would suggest, but that his line of reasoning has long been obscured by the long-established habit of reading Wealth of Nations as a work whose first two books contain the important analytical elements that the later books merely elaborate. It is demonstrated that Smith's analysis of the gains from trade derives from his discussion of capital, and that therefore a reader needs to begin at the end of Book II, and not with the principles of exchange outlined in Book I.     

Refraining the Meaning of “Political” in Research with Adolescents

Abstract

The Gettysburg Address contains no direct quotations from the Bible; nevertheless, it is replete with biblical phrases and themes. Lincoln, who had an intimate and thorough knowledge of the King James Bible, used the Bible in ways essential to the mission and message of his brief address delivered on November 19, 1863, at the dedication of a national cemetery at Gettysburg. The unifying theme of his speech was the conception, birth, and death of the nation, which parallels the life of Jesus as recounted in the New Testament. This theme climaxes with the nation's “new birth of freedom,” secured through the sacrifice of the Civil War, especially through the shed blood and death of the “brave men” on Gettysburg's battlefield. Lincoln invoked biblical cadences, phrases, and themes to solemnify the occasion for his speech and to infuse the great sacrifice of the dead and wounded with profound meaning.     

NOTES ON CAMPS,OR, COUNTERFACTUAL FÜHRERS AND THE STRUCTURE OF THE JOKE

In this review essay I explore the dynamics of “normalization” in historical and fictional depictions of the National Socialist past, examining both the “organic” normalization of catastrophic events through the passage of time, and efforts to normalize the Nazi past through aesthetics. Focusing on Gavriel Rosenfeld's Hi, Hitler: How the Nazi Past is Being Normalized in Contemporary Culture, I argue against many dimensions of Rosenfeld's account of normalization, particularly his claim that aesthetic normalization can undermine our moral judgments regarding the Holocaust. Drawing on Sigmund Freud on jokes, and Susan Sontag on Camp aesthetics, I argue that every effort to normalize the Holocaust, especially ones that work through humor and jokes (a major topic of Rosenfeld's book), actually maintain the Holocaust's status as a series of historical events resistant to “normalization.” If “normalization” is a process through which extraordinary, or morally charged, historical events lose their moral charge, then aesthetic efforts to normalize the Holocaust actually reinscribe the special moral status that Rosenfeld believes they erase.     

Corruption European Style: The 1861 Frémont Scandal and Popular Fears in the Civil War North

Union General John C. Frémont excited considerable controversy during the Civil War, and not just due to his dubious military competence and early advocacy of emancipation. Many republican‐influenced citizens suspected Frémont of the corrupt misuse of power, and undermining the essential moral basis of the republic. While ultimately his ineffectual generalship might have reassured Northerners that “the Pathfinder” was hardly likely to succeed in his suspected schemes, it is striking that even during the war for national survival, citizens remained deeply concerned with the possible threat of power (particularly in the hands of corrupt, designing men) to liberty.     

Kant and the Two Principles of Publicity

ABSTRACT

The aim of this article is to argue that the principle of “publicity” constitutes a fundamental idea in Kant’s political thought. Publicity provides a central insight that binds together various strands of Kant’s political writings (on issues as diverse as the question of Enlightenment, the right of revolution, historical teleology, reflective judgment, cosmopolitan citizenship, democratic peace, and republican government), and moreover, it offers a much-needed cornerstone for a systematic exposition of his nonexistent political philosophy. Apart from some eminent examples, publicity has been a rather neglected topic in the ever-expanding literature on Kant’s political ideas. Revisiting this notion will make us more attentive to his evocation of the “spirit of republicanism” over and above the letter of the law, and might prompt us to reconsider Kant’s reputation as a classical representative of liberal political thought. Indeed, it should inspire us to situate Kant’s appeal for the “public use of reason” in the vicinity of the republican ideal of political liberty.     

Troubadours in Debate: The Breviari d'Amor

Matfre Ermengaud's thirteenth-century Occitan encyclopedia, the Breviari d'Amor, concludes with a treatise on courtly love, the “Perilhos tractat d'amor de donas segon que han tractat li antic trobador en lors cansos.” In this treatise, the chief figures of courtly love—the lovers, ladies, troubadours, and maldizen, with Matfre as narrator and participant—dispute key tenets of love, quoting frequently from numerous troubadour lyrics in order to prove their arguments. In fact, the “Perilhos tractat” presents quotations of troubadour lyric in a disputative manner so as to highlight the troubadours as themselves in debate, although the Breviari purports to be structured by the overarching principle of love dictated by the visual mnemonic metaphor of the Tree of Love. This study examines the quotations of the troubadour lyrics here as dialectical, then, rather than as expressing and confirming a unitary vision of Natural Love. The “Perilhos tractat” is a debate not simply on love but also on the understanding and reception of the troubadours more broadly; that is, Matfre's dialectical use of troubadour lyric generates a broader debate about the meaning of the troubadours’ lyrics and their poetic legacy in the late thirteenth century.     

Love and Marriage Among the Ruins

Abstract

Walker Percy articulated that the American South, liberated by civil rights legislation and economic growth from former strife, was needed in a new quest to save the Union. Percy believed that the troubles facing America were the philosophical and anthropological failures of late-modern thought. Difficult consequences emerged from these failures in the form of failed marriages. The distinctive capacity of the person to intimately love the other for the other's own good is displaced, if not eliminated, by theorists who narrow man to a this-worldly preoccupation while simultaneously denying his unique aspects. One injured element, broached by Percy in his novels The Second Coming and Love in the Ruins, is the shared love of the domestic family that becomes misconceived and misshaped in an age no longer conversant with the sacramental significance of man. Percy's discerning observations in these novels afford a unique purchase on the institution's diminishment in the midst of a humanistic age. The failure of this basic and complex love is one of the most deeply and painfully felt consequences achieved by the intrapersonal splits that have resulted from the age of theorist–consumerism. From man's failures to move beyond ideology and theory emerge his inability to even understand love's connection with his existence.     

A Liberal and a Classic: Pierre Manent's Neo-Aristotelian Reading of Raymond Aron

The contemporary French political philosopher Pierre Manent is, by his own account, deeply influenced by the Christian tradition, by Leo Strauss, and by his teacher Raymond Aron. This article explores Manent's indebtedness to Raymond Aron (1905–1983), one of the great political thinkers of the twentieth century. In a series of writings about Aron over the past thirty-five years, Manent presents a public man who spoke with “authority and competence of the things of the city, whose eloquence was able to instruct the public as it retained the ear of princes, of whom the sovereign reason seized, in each situation, the essential.” Manent has thought long and hard about Aron's lucid and courageous opposition to totalitarianism, his defense of human liberty and political reason, and his affinities with the prudence and sobriety of the first great political scientist, Aristotle. Manent's Aron is a liberal classic more than a classical liberal. His defense of modern liberty never forgot that even a free society must cultivate virtue and respect for the common good. This article shows the affinities between the later Aron in particular and Manent's own political writings. Manent's own turn to the chose publique owes much to Aristotle as indirectly mediated by Aron.     

Resistance,Charity, and Rebirth in Roberto Rossellini's Rome,Open City

Abstract

With its use of contemporary events, location shots, and a plot that mixes comedy, tragedy, and passion play, Roberto Rossellini's 1945 film Rome, Open City founded the movement known as “Italian Neo-Realism.” The film vividly presents the Christian teaching on the relation between religion and politics. Rossellini asserts that a Christian Europe can be reconstructed only on a foundation of charity rather than hate, vengeance, or even justified punishment for Nazi crimes. It is not on the basis of tales of resistance that Italians and Europeans can be reborn, Rossellini argues, but on the basis of the Christian command to “love your enemies.” European rebirth means the installation of a moral order that makes parenthood feasible and respectable. By reflecting on Rossellini's masterpiece, I examine the triumph and the tragedy of the Christian Democratic Europe that Rome, Open City foretold and helped to found.     

Lincoln and Chiriquí Colonization Revisited

Abstract

This article looks at Abraham Lincoln's pursuit of colonization in the Chiriquí region of Colombia (now Panamá), conventionally known as one of just two places that he seriously considered with respect to his policy of relocating African Americans. Challenging the standard account of the scheme's demise around October 1862 due to vehement Central American protest, this piece questions whether such a development really took the president by surprise. The two weak threads running through the Chiriquí proposal were its scope for diplomatic upset and the embarrassment that might arise from its corrupt proponents’ links to the administration. The author argues that Lincoln was aware of both issues from an early date – even if they each became more complicated than he had initially realized – but that he made persistent attempts to address them. The administration was also more concerned about the ramifications of divisions within Colombia than the widespread isthmian outcry at colonization. Lincoln accordingly tried to place colonization policy on a sounder diplomatic and legislative footing as it became apparent that his contract with a domestic businessman also carried international implications. Yet ultimately, it was the Chiriquí venture's corruption that killed it when the president discovered that it went all the way to the cabinet.