Responsibility and Biotechnology

Abstract

Francisco Suárez's political theory has received increased attention in recent years. In some regards it bears a resemblance to that of John Locke, but the two view politics as having different ends. It is interesting that both thinkers are in favor of religious toleration but for different reasons that correspond to the different ends they assign to government. Locke's reasons are more secular, whereas Suárez's are derivative from a religious perspective. The paradox, however, is that Suárez's account of toleration provides a firmer ground for religious liberty.     

Hobbes as Political Theologian

Abstract

Although an orphaned subject among scholars of religion, the theology of Thomas Hobbes is now among the most contested issues in Hobbes studies and the study of early liberal political theory. This essay maps the state of the question and offers a theological appraisal of it. In so doing it attempts to critique a leading reading of Hobbes’s Leviathan by highlighting its attack on civil religion and endorsement of a biblical political theology. The relationship between Hobbes’s political and theological views in Leviathan also receives sustained attention.     

The Locke Essay: Achievement and Promise

Abstract

Strauss's essay on Locke is devoted to Locke's early lectures on the law of nature, a text unpublished when he initially wrote on Locke in Natural Right and History. One purpose of his essay was to show that the Locke text did not contradict the position on the law of nature that Strauss had earlier attributed to him. Strauss also used the essay as an opportunity to further his own reflections on traditional natural law doctrine.     

英国革命时期共和主义者对“自由”的理解

目前,共和主义已成为学术界的重要研究内容,文章将对英国革命时期的共和主义,特别是共和主义者对"自由"概念的理解进行初步的探讨,以期深化对共和主义思想的研究。回顾英国革命时期这些共和主义者对自由的表述,以及对思想家霍布斯理论的批评,可以看到霍布斯的那种"不受阻碍"的"消极自由"和共和派"避免依从"的"第三种自由"这样两种不同自由观的对立,而不同的自由观又导致了对不同政治体制的设计。因此,对于实现和保障我们的自由而言,回顾发生在英国革命时期的这场辩论就显得特别有意义。它激发起我们重新思考建立什么样的国家或者政治体制才能使人们避免受到强制和奴役,才能切实保障其自由和权利。     

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.     

Hobbes ou la crise de l'état baroque

Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan presented a paradigm of the social contract that has proven foundational in Western political thought. A proper understanding of the philosopher’s thought is thus of paramount importance. I argue that today’s case for a religiously tolerant Hobbes has missed an important part of the historical record. I first consider an obscure but important document, the second edition of the Humble Proposals. It demonstrates that leading members of a seventeenth century Christian denomination, the Independents, considered a state-enforced confession of faith. Independents are generally seen as tolerant, and one of the arguments for Hobbesian toleration is that Hobbes endorsed them. But the second edition of the Humble Proposals aligns with the possibility in Hobbes that the civil sovereign will impose part III of Leviathan on the Universities and treat its contents as a legally required confession of faith – one that may be necessary for security, and the avoidance of civil war. Hobbes’s endorsement of Independency alone cannot be used to argue that his work leads to religious toleration. The evidence I present reinforces an earlier assessment and alongside other evidence points to the return of the intolerant Hobbes.     

Protection — Evil

Abstract

This article is premised on Heinrich Meier's dichotomy between political theology and political philosophy, the latter of which stakes its claims on “human wisdom.” I will examine one of the most famous political allegories claimed on this ground: that of the Hobbesian social contract. Then I will unpack this allegory into a set of five propositions that make up something I call the ontopolitical set. My argument is that in order to stand up as political philosophy, make rational sense, one must believe in the truth of all the five propositions of the ontopolitical set. If at least one of them is not a candidate for belief, then the whole set will collapse and the legitimacy of the modern Leviathan does not measure up to human wisdom, because it cannot be rationally justified. If this should be the case, we are left with political theology.     

A Review of “Never Enough”

Abstract

Three of Alasdair MacIntyre's published essays help to illuminate his critique of modern liberal individualism Liberalism, in the name of freedom, inculcates indifference to the developmental social needs of human agents, denies the ties that bind members of society to the common good, and prevents political communities from pursuing common goods effectively. Rather than freeing individuals for self-government, liberalism leaves the government of the community's goods to unacknowledged elites. Liberation demands self-government and self-government requires the virtues, which are formed, in part, through the community's shared pursuit of common goods.     

The Reward of a King: Machiavelli,Aquinas, and Shakespeare's Richard III

Abstract

Richard III centers on the rise and fall of a man who claims that he will “set the murderous Machiavel to school” and proceeds to seize the crown of England, only to lose his grip on that coveted prize in his own sudden personal and political unraveling. Insofar as we see Richard as a genuine but failed Machiavellian, it remains difficult to determine the extent to which Shakespeare's critique of Richard is a critique of Machiavelli. Yet Shakespeare's account of Richard's hopes, successes, and failures, examined in light of relevant classical texts, points to fatal flaws in Machiavelli's account of reason, conscience, and the end of human actions, demonstrating that the concept of the objective good is an essential component of any meaningful and coherent account of human action. Thus, Richard's ultimate descent into madness is a sign of the fate that even the “best” Machiavellian statesman or society is destined to share.     

Thomas Hobbes and the Term ‘Right Reason’: Participation to Calculation

Three times between 1640 and 1651, once at considerable length, Hobbes used and accepted, and then mocked, repudiated and discarded, the ancient/medieval term recta ratio/right reason. These repeated fluctuations in his thinking and rhetorical strategy occurred during the writing of his three major treatises on moral and political theory, one additional note on the term in De Cive, and an unpublished commentary on Thomas White's De Mundo. They are made obvious by his substitution of recta ratio for reason or natural reason when recycling passages from Elements of the Law for use in De Cive, and by his subsequent reversal of that substitution when revising other passages in De Cive for use in Leviathan. Despite incorporating recta ratio as a structural element in De Cive, he finally reverted in Leviathan to regarding the term as a deceptive verbal construct, non-existent in rerum natura, and ridiculing its users and proponents. Right reason carried connotations linked to it in antiquity and in the Middle Ages, and Hobbes's reversals in his view and use of it, and his final dismissal of it, provide further evidence and justification for the now familiar modern claim that he was a herald of modernity.     

Modern Liberty and the Moral Contents of Life: An Introduction to the Political Reflection of Pierre Manent

Abstract

Robert Faulkner's The Case for Greatness offers a lively, detailed discussion of Aristotle's magnanimous man and the statesman who embodies this ethical–political ideal. Faulkner's portrayal of the complexity and tensions within this classical portrait of magnanimity and in the souls of its ancient and modern exemplars is compelling, but missing from his discussion is any mention of magnanimity in the Jewish and Christian intellectual traditions and the resources they afford to mitigate and heal these tensions and provide an openness to fuller wholeness and happiness. One of these resources is the virtue of humility, which is discussed here as a support and a supplement to magnanimity. Various statesmen who seem to incarnate this humble yet arguably more magnanimous magnanimity are noted in the last sections of this essay.     

The Preaching of the Master: Thomas Aquinas’s University Sermons on Happiness

ABSTRACT

The single task of the Parisian masters of the thirteenth century was to read Scripture, a task they performed by way of the famous legere, disputare, praedicare. Although intimately connected these three are rarely studied in relation to each other. Thomas Aquinas’s sermons on the beatitudes (Matthew 5. 1–10) can be compared to his commentary on Matthew and the Summa Theologiae. This opens up a new perspective on the sermons, addressing some of the questions they raise. The edition of Aquinas’s sermons by Louis Bataillon is instrumental in performing this task and will therefore be considered in greater detail. The present article seeks to contribute to Medieval Sermon Studies by way of a more theological approach and to present to theologians the importance of a greater appreciation for the sermons of the masters.