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24In Search of Humanity: Essays in Honor of Clifford Orwin (edited book)Lexington Books. 2015.This collection of essays, offered in honor of the distinguished career of prominent political philosophy professor Clifford Orwin, brings together internationally renowned scholars to provide a wide context and discuss various aspects of the virtue of “humanity” through the history of political philosophy
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14Educating the Prince: Essays in Honor of Harvey Mansfield (edited book)Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2000.For forty years, Harvey Mansfield has been worth reading. Whether plumbing the depths of MachiavelliOs Discourses or explaining what was at stake in Bill ClintonOs impeachment, MansfieldOs work in political philosophy and political science has set the standard. In Educating the Prince, twenty-one of his students, themselves distinguished scholars, try to live up to that standard. Their essays offer penetrating analyses of Machiavellianism, liberalism, and America., all of them informed by Mansfi…Read more
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17In Search of Humanity: Essays in Honor of Clifford Orwin (edited book)Lexington Books. 2015.This collection of essays, offered in honor of the distinguished career of prominent political philosophy professor Clifford Orwin, brings together internationally renowned scholars to provide a wide context and discuss various aspects of the virtue of “humanity” through the history of political philosophy
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144Questions Concerning the Law of Nature (review)Review of Metaphysics 44 (4): 849-851. 1991.For much the greater part of Western history, moral and political thinking took fundamental guidance from "natural law," a standard of justice and human flourishing resting ambiguously on the dual foundation of the rational knowledge of human nature and the revelation of divine will. Modern politics and philosophy, by contrast, may be said to have emerged through the rise of a doctrine of "natural rights," which rested ambiguously on the rejection and the transformation of natural law. In the pr…Read more
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25Philosophy Between the Lines: The Lost History of Esoteric WritingUniversity of Chicago Press. 2014.Philosophy Between the Lines is the first comprehensive, book-length study of the history and theoretical basis of philosophical esotericism, and it provides a crucial guide to how many major writings—philosophical, but also theological, ...
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Rousseau en de hedendaagse oprechtheidscultusNexus 8. 1994.Rousseau meende dat hypocrisie de meest wezenlijke karaktertrek van zijn tijdgenoten was. Vandaar dat hij een niuew oprechtheidsideaal propageerde. Dit ideaal hangt nauw samen met zijn opvattingen over het fundament van de menselijke natuur, het zelfbewustzijn, dat in voortdurende strijd is met het collectief.
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31The natural goodness of man: on the system of Rousseau's thoughtUniversity of Chicago Press. 1990.The true key to all the perplexities of the human condition, Rousseau boldly claims, is the “natural goodness of man.” It is also the key to his own notoriously contradictory writings, which, he insists, are actually the disassembled parts of a rigorous philosophical system rooted in that fundamental principle. What if this problematic claim—so often repeated, but as often dismissed—were resolutely followed and explored? Arthur M. Melzer adopts this approach in The Natural Goodness of Man. The f…Read more
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61What evidence and what arguments can be produced in support of the controversial suggestion, first made by Leo Strauss now over 65 years ago, that most earlier philosophers wrote esoterically and, what is more, that they did so, not merely from fear of persecution, but with an eye to enhancing their pedagogical effectiveness? I argue here that the inherent paradoxes of philosophical education combined with the inherent shortcomings of writing led many earlier thinkers to see the pedagogical nece…Read more