What is Social Economics?

During the 1950s at the latest, Max Weber became a ‘founding father’ of sociology, chiefly on the basis of a restricted set of canonical writings and without any consideration of his wider relationships to law, economics and politics. During the last ten years of his life he was responsible for a major collaborative work, the Grundriss der Sozialökonomik—Outline of Social Economics. The title was of his own choosing; and so it might well shed new light on his work if we consider how this work was organised, and how Economy and Society, written as a contribution to this handbook, was intended to form part of it.     

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.     

Between Leibniz and Kant: The Political Thought of Wilhelm von Humboldt

Abstract

In his early text, The Limits of State Action, Wilhelm von Humboldt raises the Kantian question of the permissibility and legitimate extent of political and juridical coercion, as his contribution to a debate amongst Kantians launched by the publication in 1785 of Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. In arguing for a minimal state, concerned exclusively with internal and external security of its members but not at all with their felicity, Humboldt inflects Kantian political thought in the direction of a liberal laissez-faire state, in marked contrast to the strong interventionism that his fellow-Kantian Fichte derived from similar Kantian grounds. The article argues that the underlying conception of the individual retained by Humboldt has markedly Leibnizian traits, namely the notion of freedom as the spontaneous unfolding of a highly personal, monadic developmental trajectory toward perfection, which ought not to be impeded or homogenized by unnecessary state intervention. Humboldt thus represents not only a ‘rightist’ libertarian reading of Kant, but a particular appropriation of significant Leibnizian themes. His combination of these sources is compared with that of other contemporary theorists like Hufeland and Fichte.     

Review Article: Westward the Course of Empire

ARTHUR POWER DUDDEN. The American Pacific: Prom the Old China Trade to the Present. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Pp. xx, 314. $39.50 (CDN)

SUNG-HWA CHEONG. The Politics of Anti-Japanese Sentiment in Korea: Japanese- South Korean Relations under American Occupation, 1945–1952. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1991. Pp. xv, 190. $43.00 (US)

HIDEO IBE. Japan Thrice-Opened: An Analysis of Relations between Japan and the United States. New York: Praeger, 1992. Pp. 294. $49.93 (US)

RICHARD B. FINN. Winners in Peace: MacArthur, Yoshida, and Postwar Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. Pp. xxi, 413. $42.00 (US)

ROBERT P. NEWMAN. Owen Lattimore and the ‘Loss’ of China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. Pp. xvi, 669. $36.00 (US)

H. W. BRANDS. Bound to Empire: The United States and the Philippines. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Pp. xii, 384. $39.50 (CDN)

ODD ARNE WESTAD. Cold War and Revolution: Soviet-American Rivalry and the Origins of the Chinese Civil War, 1944–1946. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993. Pp. x, 260. $16.50 (US).     

The Virtue Ethic Difference in the Just War Discourse of James Turner Johnson and Catholic Social Teaching

Abstract

In this article, I investigate how incorporating virtue ethics into the process of interpreting and responding to conflict re-shapes the understanding and application of just war theory. More specifically, I analyze James Turner Johnson's idea of just war and the implications of Thomistic virtue ethics. My argument in this article is that Johnson's rule-based idea of just war theory lacks the more integrated virtue ethic, which we find in Thomas and in the re-appropriation of Thomistic virtue ethics in contemporary Catholic Social Teaching's discourse on just war. This contributes to Johnson's idea of just war being inconsistent with the direction of contemporary Catholic Social Teaching on just war theory, particularly regarding the presumption against war. His lack of a virtue ethic also contributes to an inadequate understanding, development, and application of basic just war criteria, particularly from a Catholic perspective.     

Edgar Kant (1902–1978): A Baltic Pioneer

It is indeed a joy to speak about Edgar Kant on this occasion which celebrates the hundredth anniversary of his birth. His lifepath traversed only two‐thirds of this eventful century, yet he did experience directly many of its dreams and realities, the passion and pain of war and peace, of economic boom and bust, of national liberation, scientific revolutions, exile and the traumas of geopolitical transformations. The twentieth century also witnessed profound changes in practices of geography and the name of Edgar Kant deserves an honoured place as pioneer of many influential turns in the discipline. It is especially delightful to simultaneously honour his mentor and friend, Johannes G. Granö, who stirred his imagination in conceptual directions which were truly novel in those days‐directions which later spawned enthusiastic research on environmental perceptions, time geography, and‐most especially‐landscape and cultural identity.     

论中国特色社会主义文化价值观

文明是人类改造世界的物质成果和精神成果的总和,是人类文化发展的积极成果和进步状态。"文明先进"是中国特色社会主义文化的核心价值;"民族性、科学性、大众性"是中国特色社会主义文化价值观的基本特征;"面向现代化、面向世界、面向未来"是中国特色社会主义文化价值观的根本趋向。     

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.     

学术之宗 明道之要——论《汉书·艺文志》的目录学价值

<汉书@艺文志>是我国现存的最早的一部综合性国家书目,奠定了"辨章学术,考镜源流"的传统,在中国目录学史上具有重要的理论价值.本文比较全面地论述了<汉书@艺文志>的著录体例及其中的总序、小序、大序所体现的学术思想.     

Engineers and engineering history: problems and perspectives

In past decades, the history of engineers and engineering has seen spectacular development. Despite this, major interrogations are still left unanswered. This article examines some of these pending questions, like the type of relation that exists between engineering knowledge and practice, or the complex articulation between continuities and discontinuities that characterizes engineering history. Finally, the article proposes to focus on engineering rationality as a possible way to address some of these issues. In order to do so, engineering rationality is not to be confused with some kind of generic and abstract logic. On the contrary, it must be historicized.     

An Early Assessment of Reagan Defense Policy and Programs

Abstract

Ralph Hancock’s Responsibility of Reason represents an important addition to the literature on the crisis of modernity. This article focuses on his account of the origins and nature of modernity and his claim that Tocqueville exemplifies the best way to work through the crisis of modernity. It then suggests that Hancock’s own reflections on the nature of human existence require a more balanced or even positive assessment of modernity than the one he offers in the book. Finally, it attempts to illustrate this point by showing that elements of Kant’s political thought are akin to Hancock’s.     

Reassessing Kant's geography

This article offers a critical reassessment of Immanuel Kant's lectures on Physische Geographie and his contribution to geographical thought more generally. There are a number of reasons why this reassessment is needed: the lectures are finally about to be published in English translation; careful philological work in German has exposed how corrupted the standard text of the lectures is; and philosophers are finally beginning to critically integrate an understanding of the Geography into their overall assessment of Kant's work. English speaking geographers will therefore soon have access to the lectures in a way that they have not done before, but they need to be aware both of the problems of the edition being translated and the work philosophers have undertaken on their situation in Kant's work and their impact. More broadly, the reassessment requires us to reconsider the position Kant occupies in the discipline of geography as a whole. The article examines the history of the lectures and their publication in some detail; discusses Kant's purpose in giving them; and looks at the way in which he structured geographical knowledge and understood its relation to history and philosophy. In terms of the broader focus particular attention is given to the topics of race and space. While these lectures are undoubtedly of largely historical interest, it is for precisely that reason that an examination of them and Kant's thought more generally is of relevance today to the history of the discipline of geography.     

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.