New at VoegelinView This Week (Sept 23, 2013) NEW Rule by a Party of Friends Professor Tilo Schabert continues his examination of what really takes place when a person is elected to political office, showing that the constitutional forms are the bare outline within which power is exercised, and that above all it is political friendship that is decisive: “[It is] this party of friends upon which the candidate will rely for the aggregation and maintenance of his or her power, once he or she has been elected.” Read this week part 2 of “The True Form of Governments.” The Elevation of Virtue over Rights Professor Joseph Hebert examines Tocqueville’s use of Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero: “Tocqueville’s debt to classical political thought is signaled by his elevation of virtue over rights, his allusion to Cicero’s De Re Publica, and his celebration of the New England township for exhibiting ‘a real, active, altogether democratic and republican political life’ ‘as in [ancient] Athens.’” Read this week part 3 of “The Limits of Modern Cosmopolitanism.” Rome, Syncretism, and Summodeism We conclude Eric Voegelin’s analysis of the religious milieu in Rome at the beginning of the Christian era. He considers the problems created by the incorporation of many peoples and religions, particularly Christianity, into the Empire: “A circumcised Caesar who married a Vestal virgin in order to symbolize the union between Baal and Tanit proved too much of a strain on the Roman tradition. [Emperor Elagabalus] was murdered by his praetorian guards.” Read this week part 2 of “Rome and Christianity.” Neglecting the Experience Itself We welcome Max Arnott’s return to VoegelinView for a fifth season of bemused reflections. This week he looks at a peculiar accomplishment that suggests there are limits on the recounting of experience: “After all, seventeen hundred words, for example, on the quality of light in Sam Spade’s office in the first chapter would slow the Maltese Falcon to the point where people would throw it across the room.” Enjoy “The Man Who Read The O.E.D.” on the Inside “. . . the world veers into the regions of cold.” Poetry Editor Thomas D’Evelyn has chosen this week a poem by the late Italian poet, Bartolo Cataffi, a prolific philosophical poet not much known in the US, one of whose favorite topics is the importance of the individual despite living in an apparently cold and impersonal universe. Read in Poetry this week “My Love, Don’t Believe.” The Political Goal is “Monocracy“ We are pleased to welcome Professor Timothy Fuller to VoegelinView. He reviews for usThe Primacy of Persons in Politics, a book built on Tilo Schabert’s thesis that political science has been mistakenly looking at unstable institutions rather than at politicians–their creativity, ambitions and alliances: “The political goal is what Schabert calls ‘monocracy,’ which means surmounting the constitutional limitations while maintaining overt allegiance to them.” Eight scholars respond. Read in Book Reviews “The Thesis of Tilo Schabert.” El Camino de Santiago We welcome Elizabeth-Jane McGuire to VoegelinView. She reviews for us a memoir on a subject unfamiliar to most, yet attractive and compelling once described, the modern-day pilgrimage: “Particularly in an era when most people travel for entertainment, what makes walking the Camino different? And, even more to the point, do you have to know why before you start out?” Enjoy this week in Book Reviews“The Way of the Stars.” Community and the Ethics of Responsibility William French concludes his extended review of Glenn Moots’ Politics Reformed by highlighting the spiritual foundations of political society: “Religious community takes . . . priority over citizenship, and sustainable political order requires communities . . . to supply civil society with that which society cannot itself supply: love.” Today read part 2 of “The Mystery of God’s Survival in Political Order.” (And part 1 may be read HERE.) The URL is voegelinview
Posted on: Mon, 23 Sep 2013 01:36:02 +0000