What is ‘First Philosophy’? Comments on Richard Velkley's Heidegger,Strauss, and the Premises of Philosophy

In a noteworthy new study, Richard Velkley brings together Martin Heidegger and Leo Strauss as part of a reexamination of the foundations and nature of philosophical questioning. In what follows, I critically reflect on this shared search for foundations, and particularly on the role of Plato in Strauss's effort to forge a new path for philosophy which moves away from Heidegger without losing sight of him.     

On the Degeneration of Public Philosophy in America: Problems and Prospects

Abstract

Mark Blitz’s Plato’s Political Philosophy is reviewed in this article with special attention to two recurring themes. The first is the relation of parts to wholes and, especially, how the knowledge of parts and wholes in general and of political parts and wholes in particular relate to the philosophic attempt to know the whole itself. The second theme is that of philosophy’s relation to piety and, in particular, how the attempt to know the whole, as understood by Blitz, relates to the fundamental opposition between piety and philosophy. Attention to these themes, the author argues, helps to explain peculiarities of Blitz’s approach, especially his greater emphasis on articulating the entire “realm of political philosophy” than on explicating individual dialogues and his tendency to connect and divide Platonic thoughts, themes, and problems rather than to bore into individual Socratic problems.     

Feature Reviews

Abstract

Rosanvallon, Pierre; trans. Barbara Harshav The New Social Question: Rethinking the Welfare State Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 139 pp. + xii. $22.95, ISBN 0-691-01640-2. Publication Date: 2000

UNITED STATES. Politics and Public Policy: Perry, Michael J. We the People: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Supreme Court. New York: Oxford University Press. 288 pp., $35.00, ISBN 0-19-512362-X

Bamberger, Michael A. Reckless Legislation: How Lawmakers Ignore the Constitution. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. 233 pp., $32.00, ISBN 0-8135-2732-5 Publication Date: January 2000

Wolbrecht, Christina. The Politics of Women's Rights. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 241 pp., $55.00 cloth, $17.95 paper ISBN 0-691-04856-8 cloth ISBN 0-691-04857-6 paper Publication Date: September 2000

Ledeen, Michael A. Tocqueville on American Character. New York: St. Martin's Press. 229 pp., $23.95, ISBN 0-312-25231-5 Publication Date: July 2000

Shaiko, Ronald G. Voices and Echoes for the Environment: Public Interest Representation in the 1990s and Beyond. New York: Columbia University Press. 300 pp., $49.50 cloth, $21.00 paper ISBN 0-231-11354-4 cloth ISBN 0-231-11355-2 paper Publication Date: January 1999

Burke, Sheila; Eric R. Kingson; and Uwe E. Reinhardt, eds. Social Security and Medicare: Individual versus Collective Risk and Responsibility. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. 218 pp., $20.95 paper ISBN 0-8157-1283-9 paper Publication Date: April 2000

Karabell, Zachary. The Last Campaign: How Harry Truman Won the 1948 Election. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 308 pp., $27.50, ISBN 0-375-40086-9 Publication Date: April 2000

Pratt, Richard C., with Zachary Smith. Hawai'i Politics and Government: An American State in a Pacific World. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 310 pp., $57.50 cloth, $27.50 paper ISBN 0-8032-3724-3 cloth ISBN 0-8032-8750-X paper Publication Date: February 2000

Thurber, James A.; Candice J. Nelson; and David A. Dulio, eds. Crowded Airwaves: Campaign Advertising in Elections. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. 187 pp., $39.95 cloth, $16.95 paper ISBN 0-8157-8456-2 cloth ISBN 0-8157-8455-4 paper Publication Date: July 2000

Stephenson, Donald Grier, Jr. Campaigns and the Court: The U.S. Supreme Court in Presidential Elections. New York: Columbia University Press. 363 pp., $49.50 cloth, $19.50 paper ISBN 0-231-10034-5 cloth ISBN 0-231-10035-3 paper Publication Date: May 1999

Craycraft, Kenneth R. The American Myth of Religious Freedom. Dallas, TX: Spence Publishing Company. 202 pp., $27.95, ISBN 1-890626-13-9 Publication Date: May 1999

Lammers, William W., and Michael A. Genovese. The Presidency and Domestic Policy: Comparing Leadership Styles, FDR to Clinton. Washington, DC: CQ Press. 383 pp., $38.95 cloth, $28.95 paper ISBN 1-56802-125-9 cloth ISBN 1-56802-124-0 paper Publication Date: 2000

Dollinger, Marc. Quest for Inclusion: Jews and Liberalism in Modern America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 288 pp., $35.00, ISBN 0-691-00509-5 Publication Date: July 2000

Spitzer, Robert J., ed. Politics and Constitutionalism: The Louis Fisher Connection. Albany: SUNY Press. 285 pp., $57.59 cloth, $18.95 paper ISBN 0-7914-4639-5 cloth ISBN 0-7914-4640-9 paper Publication Date: June 2000

Powe, Lucas A., Jr. The Warren Court and American Politics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press/Belknap Press. 566 pp., $35.00, ISBN 0-674-00095-1 Publication Date: March 2000

Popkin, William D. Statutes in Court: The History and Theory of Statutory Interpretation. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 340 pp., $54.95, ISBN 0-8223-2328-1 Publication Date: September 1999

UNITED STATES. Foreign Policy and National Security: Haass, Richard N., and Meghan L. O'Sullivan, eds. Honey and Vinegar: Incentives, Sanctions, and Foreign Policy. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. 212 pp., $39.95 cloth, $16.95 paper ISBN 0-8157-3356-9 cloth ISBN 0-0157-3355-0 paper Publication Date: September 2000

O'Hanlon, Michael. Technological Change and the Future of Warfare. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. 208 pp., $42.95 cloth, $17.05 paper ISBN 0-8157-6440-5 cloth ISBN 0-8157-6439-1 paper Publication Date: 2000

Deitchman, Seymour J. On Being a Superpower: And Not Knowing What to Do about It. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. 350 pp., $32.00, ISBN 0-8133-6775-1 Publication Date: February 2000

CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA: Frieden, Jeffrey; Manuel Pastor Jr.; and Michael Tornz, eds. Modern Political Economy and Latin America: Theory and Policy. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. 348 pp., $65.00 cloth, $24.00 paper ISBN 0-8133-2417-3 cloth ISBN 0-8133-2418-1 paper Publication Date: May 2000

Crisp, Brian F. Democratic Institutional Design: The Powers and Incentives of Venezuelan Politicians and Interest Groups. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 274 pp., $55.00, ISBN 0-8047-3370-0 cloth Publication Date: July 2000

López-Alves, Fernando. State Formation and Democracy in Latin America, 1810-1900. Durham, NC; Duke University Press. 295 pp., $49.45 cloth, $17.95 paper ISBN 0-8223-2450-4 cloth ISBN 0-8223-2474-1 paper Publication Date: March 2000

EUROPE/COMMONWEALTH OF INDEPENDENT STATES: Mayer, Arno J. The Furies: Violence and Terror in the French and Russian Revolutions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 705 pp., $35.00, ISBN 0-691-04897-5 Publication Date: May 2000

Deák, Istvan; Jan T. Gross; and Tony Judt, eds. The Politics of Retribution in Europe: World War II and Its Aftermath. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 337 pp. + xii, $65.00 cloth, $19.95 paper ISBN 0-691-00953-8 cloth ISBN 0-691-00954-6 paper Publication Date: May 2000

Tiersky, Ronald. Europe Today: National Politics, European Integration, and European Security. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield 492 pp. + x, $25.95 paper ISBN 0-8476-8591-8 paper Publication Date: 1999

AFRICA AND THE MIDDLE EAST: Cobban, Helena. The Israeli-Syrian Peace Talks: 1991-1996 and Beyond. Washington, DC: U.S. Institute of Peace Press. 235 pp., + xiii, $19.95 paper ISBN 1-878379-98-4 paper Publication Date: December 1999

Hartman, David. Israelis and the Jewish Tradition: An Ancient People Debating Its Future. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. 192 pp., $18.50, ISBN 0-300-08378-5 Publication Date: October 2000

ASIA AND THE PACIFIC: Dittmer, Lowell; Haruhiro Fukui; and Peter N. S. Lee, eds. Informal Politics in East Asia. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. 308 pp., $59.95 cloth, $19.95 paper ISBN 0-521-64232-9 cloth ISBN 0-521-64538-7 paper Publication Date: July 2000

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, LAW AND ORGANIZATION: Boyle, Francis Anthony. Foundations of World Order: The Legalist Approach to International Relations, 1898-1922. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 220 pp., $54.95 cloth, $18.95 paper ISBN 0-8223-2327-3 cloth ISBN 0-8223-2364-8 paper Publication Date: August 1999

THEORY AND METHODOLOGY: Anderson, John C. Why Lawyers Derail Justice: Probing the Roots of Legal Injustices. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. 236 pp. + xii, $40.00 cloth, $18.95 paper ISBN 0-271-01842-9 cloth ISBN 0-271-01843-7 paper Publication Date: January 1999

Engeman, Thomas S., ed. Thomas Jefferson and the Politics of Nature. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. 218 pp., $17.00 paper ISBN 0-268-04211-X paper Publication Date: June 2000: Browning, Gary K. Hegel and the History of Political Philosophy. New York: St. Martin's Press. 185 pp., $59.95, ISBN 0-312-22023-5 Publication Date: May 1999

Voegelin, Eric; ed. Gilbert Weiss; trans. Ruth Hein. Collected Works, Vol. 4: The Authoritarian State: An Essay on the Problem of the Austrian State. Columbia: University of Missouri Press. 396 pp., $39.95, ISBN 0-8262-1235-2 Publication Date: May 1999

Cliffe, Lionel; Maureen Ramsey; and David Bartlett. The Politics of Lying: Implications for Democracy. New York: St. Martin's Press 236 pp., $45.00, ISBN 0-312-23139-3 Publication Date: May 2000

Slomp, Gabriella. Thomas Hobbes and the Political Philosophy of Glory. New York: St. Martin's Press. 194 pp., $65.00, ISBN 0-312-23419-8 Publication Date: March 2000

Eisenstadt, S. N. Paradoxes of Democracy: Fragility, Continuity, and Change. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center. Press/Johns Hopkins University Press 120 pp., $29.95, ISBN 0-8018-6309-0 Publication Date: September 1999

Newell, Waller R. Ruling Passion: The Erotics of Statecraft in Platonic Political Philosophy. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield 288 pp., $70.00 cloth, $24.95 paper ISBN 0-8476-9726-6 cloth ISBN 0-8476-9727-4 paper Publication Date: June 2000

GENERAL: Becker, Ted, and Christa Daryl Slaton. The Future of Teledemocracy. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers. 230 pp., $65.00 cloth, $24.95 paper ISBN 0-275-96632-1 cloth ISBN 0-275-97090-6 paper Publication Date: June 2000

Sparrow, Malcolm K. The Regulatory Craft: Controlling Risks, Solving Problems, and Managing Compliance. Washington, DC: Council for Excellence in Government/Brookings Institution Press. 314 pp., $20.95 paper ISBN 0-8157-8065-6 paper Publication Date: July 2000

Dunn, Seth. Micropower: The Next Electrical Era. Washington, DC: World Watch Institute. 94 pp., $5.00 paper ISBN 1-878071-53-X paper Publication Date: July 2000

Morton, F. L., and Rainer Knopff. The Charter Revolution and the Court Party. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press. 227 pp., $19.95 paper ISBN 1-55111-089-X paper Publication Date: January 2000     

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."     

青铜文物保护技术的传承与发展

本文回顾了二十世纪青铜文物保护技术及相关的问题,随着二十一世纪的到来,现代社会的高度发展,提出了青铜文物保护即保护技术与工艺研究二个部分,并应制定相应的法律保护传统工艺的设想。     

落实科学发展观建立应用哲学

要使一般人都能把抽象的哲学用于指导社会实践,就必须建立应用哲学。应用哲学是关于如何把抽象的哲学原理运用于指导人们社会实践的学问。它包括学科哲学和哲学方法学(方法类应用哲学)。本文将着重对建立应用哲学的意义及哲学方法学的基本框架进行探讨。     

丝绸纺织品传统染色工艺的色度学研究

本研究在对传统染色方法染色丝绸色度测定的基础上,尝试对其色度参数所隐含的规律进行解释和说明,以达到对传统染色方法有更好的理解和应用。为此使用传统染色方法对丝织品染色,应用无损色度学分析技术,测量染色后的丝绸纺织品的色度参数。利用RGB、XYZ、Lab和LCh色度参数,分析了传统染色工艺的色度参数的分布范围和分布规律以及染色工艺对色度参数的影响。特别观察到了R-G、X-Y参数都存在线性相关的关系,C-L数值存在近似线性关系;植物染料对丝绸染色的a-b参数存在一个大致的范围;多次染色使RGB参数下降,L值下降;套染效果基本符合颜色加法;媒染剂的光谱图主要受染料影响,丝绸材质对染色结果几乎没有影响。建立了简单染色模型,利用"亮度显色因子"和"彩度显色因子"的概念,解释了C-L参数的近似线性相关关系,以及L参数随染色次数增加而递增和递减的现象。本研究的成果对于未来进一步深入研究与丝绸纺织品的文物保护和修复相关的色彩还原、配色等问题奠定了实验基础。     

长沙风篷岭汉代漆器制作工艺中淀粉胶黏剂的分析

为研究汉代髹漆工艺中是否含有淀粉粘结剂,利用淀粉粒分析方法提取了长沙风篷岭汉墓出土的漆器残片中的残留物.实验结果显示:在偏光显微镜下观察到具有十字消光特性的淀粉颗粒,粒度大小在13至25μm,且有加热糊化的现象,加热温度在60至80℃,加热时间大约在30min以内.本实验证实在汉代漆器制作过程中使用了淀粉作为粘结剂,为研究汉代漆器的制作工艺提供了新的科学方法.     

Yeats,Wittgenstein and the ladder of linguistic inversion

This paper will consider the philosophy of language by Ludwig Wittgenstein in relation to the later modernist poetry of W. B. Yeats in Last Poems (1939). Accordingly, Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922) and Philosophical Investigations (1953) are used to understand the limits of language in conveying the facts of existence and the necessity for the inversion of previously held truths to navigate the altering nature of reality through time. W. B. Yeats’s final volume of poetry, Last Poems (1939), is shown to parallel the philosophical ideas of Wittgenstein, thus demonstrating the subversive nature of Yeats’s last written poetry as an interrogation of his own constructed truths of the past. Both philosopher and poet are shown to coalesce in the deconstruction of linguistic representations of the world through the “form of life” that is the game of language in order to question limiting worldviews.