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This book looks to the history of the 'the commons' in American and
European social thought to better understand contemporary
environmental problems. The authors show how American law governing
lands and resources relies on the individualist assumptions of
Enlightenment thinkers, who regarded land as 'wasted' when not
being 'improved' by European agriculture or colonization. Curry and
McGuire trace the history of this philosophical and historical
legacy and reveal its strong influence on American concepts on
community and land. They not only reveal the law's insufficient
comprehension of community rights, but they also advocate realistic
policy alternatives whereby community governance can better solve
the challenges of resource management and other American social
problems.
If natural law arguments struggle to gain traction in contemporary
moral and political discourse, could it be because we moderns do
not share the understanding of nature on which that language was
developed? Building on the work of important thinkers of the last
half-century, including Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin, John Finnis,
and Bernard Lonergan, the essays in Concepts of Nature compare and
contrast classical, medieval, and modern conceptions of nature in
order to better understand how and why the concept of nature no
longer seems to provide a limit or standard for human action. These
essays also evaluate whether a rearticulation of pre-modern ideas
(or perhaps a reconciliation or reconstitution on modern terms) is
desirable and/or possible. Edited by R. J. Snell and Steven F.
McGuire, this book will be of interest to intellectual historians,
political theorists, theologians, and philosophers.
If natural law arguments struggle to gain traction in contemporary
moral and political discourse, could it be because we moderns do
not share the understanding of nature on which that language was
developed? Building on the work of important thinkers of the last
half-century, including Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin, John Finnis,
and Bernard Lonergan, the essays in Concepts of Nature compare and
contrast classical, medieval, and modern conceptions of nature in
order to better understand how and why the concept of nature no
longer seems to provide a limit or standard for human action. These
essays also evaluate whether a rearticulation of pre-modern ideas
(or perhaps a reconciliation or reconstitution on modern terms) is
desirable and/or possible. Edited by R. J. Snell and Steven F.
McGuire, this book will be of interest to intellectual historians,
political theorists, theologians, and philosophers.
In Subjectivity, sixteen leading scholars examine the turn to the
subject in modern philosophy and consider its historical
antecedents in ancient and medieval thought. Some critics of
modernity reject the turn to the subject as a specifically modern
error, arguing that it logically leads to nihilism and moral
relativism by divorcing the human mind from objective reality. Yet,
some important thinkers of the last half-century--including Leo
Strauss, Eric Voegelin, John Finnis, and Bernard Lonergan--consider
a subjective starting point and claim to find a similar position in
ancient and medieval thought. If correct, their positions suggest
that one can adopt the subjective turn and remain true to the
tradition. This is a timely question. The common good of our polity
encounters a situation in which many believe that there is no
objective reality to which human minds and wills ought to conform,
a conclusion that suggests we can define and construct reality. In
light of this, the notion of a natural or objective reality to
which human beings ought to conform becomes particularly vital.
Should we, then, adopt the modern turn to subjectivity and argue
for objective truth and moral order on its basis, or reject the
subjective turn as part of the problem and return to an earlier
approach that grounds these things in nature or some other external
reality? Critics of modern subjectivity argue that the modern turn
to subjectivity must be abandoned because it is the very source of
the nominalism that threatens to undermine liberal democracy.
Others argue, however, that subjectivity itself logically leads to
the recognition of an objective reality beyond the mind of the
individual. Edited by R. J. Snell and Steven F. McGuire, this
collection will be of particular interest to intellectual
historians, political philosophers, theologians, and philosophers.
Twentieth-century political philosopher Eric Voegelin is best known
as a severe critic of modernity. Much of his work argues that
modernity is a Gnostic revolt against the fundamental structure of
reality. For Voegelin, "Gnosticism" is the belief that human beings
can transform the nature of reality through secret knowledge and
social action, and he considered it the crux of the crisis of
modernity. As Voegelin struggled with this crisis throughout his
career, he never wavered in his judgment that philosophers of the
modern continental tradition were complicit in the Gnostic revolt
of modernity. But while Voegelin's analysis of those philosophers
is at times scathing, his work also bears marks of their influence,
and Voegelin has much more in common with the theorists of the
modern continental tradition than is usually recognized. Eric
Voegelin and the Continental Tradition: Explorations in Modern
Political Thought evaluates this political philosopher--one of the
most original and influential thinkers of our time--by examining
his relationship to the modern continental tradition in philosophy,
from Kant to Derrida. In a compelling introduction, editors Lee
Trepanier and Steven F. McGuire present a review of the
trajectories of Voegelin's thought and outline what often is
portrayed as his derisive critique of modernity. Soon, however,
they begin to unravel the similarities between Voegelin's thought
and the work of other thinkers in the continental tradition. The
subsequent chapters explore these possible connections by examining
Voegelin's intellectual relationship to individual thinkers,
including Hegel, Schelling, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Gadamer.
The essays in this volume go beyond Voegelin's own reading of the
modern philosophers to offer a reevaluation of his relationship to
those thinkers. In Eric Voegelin and the Continental Tradition,
Voegelin's attempt to grapple with the crisis of modernity becomes
clearer, and his contribution to the modern continental tradition
is illuminated. The book features the work of both established and
emerging Voegelin scholars, and the essays were chosen to present
thoughtful and balanced assessments of both Voegelin's thought and
the ideas of the other thinkers considered. As the first volume to
examine the relationship--and surprising commonalities--between
Voegelin's philosophy and the continental tradition as a whole,
this text will be of interest not only to Voegelin disciples but to
philosophers engaged by continental modernism and all disciplines
of political philosophy.
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