Ralph Lerner

Medieval political philosophy : a sourcebook

For students of political philosophy, the history of religion, and medieval civilization, this book provides a rich storehouse of medieval thought drawn from Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic sources. Twenty-five important works, many never before translated into English, are included in their entirety or in substantial and coherent selections.

Commerce and Character: The Anglo-American as New-Model Man

B q ETWEEN them, Adam Smith and Alexis de Tocqueville have provided us with a detailed, fully realized portrait of the new man of commerce. Their psychological analysis both of the universal type and of its American democratic exemplar is by now familiar and persuasive. We not longer startle at the strange blend of limitless aspiration, quasi-heroic effort, and sensible calculation that characterizes their model man of the future. And, of course, we rarely wonder at how much domestic tranquillity owes to the influence of commerce upon mens tastes, thoughts, and manners. In the eighteenth century, however, when this model of civil behavior was being formulated, all this stood in need of explication and argument. A case had to be made, and then won. The advocates men as diverse as Montesquieu and John Adams, Adam Smith and Benjamin Franklin, David Hume and Benjamin Rush were united at least in this: they saw in commercial republicanism a more sensible and realizable alternative to earlier notions of civic virtue and a more just alternative to the theological-political regime that had so long ruled Europe and its colonial periphery. However much these advocates differed in their philosophic insight, in their perception of the implications of their proposal for the organization of economic life, even in the degree of their acceptance of the very commercial republic they were promoting for all this, they may be considered a band of brethren in arms.1

Calhoun's New Science of Politics

John C. Calhouns Disquisition on Government is that rarity in American political thought-a work that explicitly declares itself a theoretical study of politics. By purporting to give a comprehensive and systematic account, by claiming to have explored new territory beyond the range of American discoveries, Calhoun in effect put his Disquisition in a class of which it is almost the sole example: an American political theory. But this claim to esteem and originality has been disputed; and in the subsequent debates among his interpreters, we have yet to find a satisfactory solution to the problem that Calhoun represented in such clear shape. Those who have rated him as a statesman and thinker-be that assessment high or low-and those who have accepted or denied his claim to originality have all failed to solve the peculiar problem of how to study and interpret the writing of a man of theory-andpractice. Until that problem is met, our understanding of the Disquisition is not clear and we remain without a way of evaluating Calhouns merits and originality. How, then, ought Calhouns Disquisition, or his high theoretical pretensions in general, best to be understood? Reducing his theory to practice, or saying in effect that the Disquisition was only another string to his pro-slavery bow, forecloses the question of what Calhoun can teach us. Reducing his practice to theory places what is almost a superhuman burden upon a man who was at or near the center of the national political stage for forty tumultuous years. A more moderate procedure would seem to be indicated. First, the Disquisition should be examined as the work of political theory it claims to be. At the same time, free use ought to be made of the practical political arguments and positions he adopted over a lifetime of political activity as further indications of his intention and meaning. Following this procedure may help in assessing Calhouns stature as a political theorist. In advancing his claim to the rank of political theorist, Calhoun proposed not only to transcend the practical, but to transcend conventional political theory as well. He would make of politics a science modelled after astron-

Beating the Neoplatonic Bushes

It is hard to resist being awed by large and expensive monuments. Let there be no mistaking this volume: it is a monument to the learning and dedication of the late Richard Walzer, reader in Arabic and Greek philosophy at the University of Oxford and fellow of the British Academy. And yet, truth to tell, the effect of all this erudition is unsettling, even astonishing, for the Farabi that emerges from Walzers pages appears alternately as an object of abiding significance and as a figure who probably is not worth our time. To trace the causes of these discordant conclusions takes some close

The Gospel according to the Apostle Ben

Reconstructing or unearthing the religion of Benjamin Franklin poses quite a challenge. It is hard to reconcile his many orthodox-sounding pronouncements with the outlandish news hoaxes, loony letters to the editor, and satires in which he embeds them. This essay argues that Franklin’s special gospel is directed toward gaining self-respect and deserving it. No power, human or divine, can give that to you; it is yours to earn. This single-minded objective informs his private liturgy, his special conception of providence, his formation of the Junto, his program for moral perfection in The Art of Virtue, and his many public-spirited proposals. The artful design of his life story and the zaniness of many of the characters who populate his writings are meant to further that objective. He drew on a wide variety of modes and devices in all these cases, the better to reach and motivate a wide variety of human types.

Rattling the Iron Cage@@@Natural Rights and the New Republicanism@@@Locke in America: The Moral Philosophy of the Founding Era@@@If Men Were Angels: James Madison and the Heartless Empire of Reason@@@The Anti-Federalists and Early American Political Thought

Taxonomists, intent on finding a place for every thing and putting every thing in its place, may themselves be tagged and placed. They present their schemes as the human constructs they are, never pretending that theirs are patterns laid up in heaven. If we are persuaded to adopt their systems of analysis in our efforts to make sense of the visible world, it is because they appear to us as indeed making sense. Like any process of abstraction and generalization, a taxonomy should help us see the forest, not just the trees. And yet the particulars in all their confusing multiplicity should not be expunged or finessed away in the headlong rush toward an all-encompassing system, however elegant or economic. We ought not to be scandalized, then, to see systems of classifica-