Elliott R. Jones

This research paper is a comparative study of the works of the rabbi and theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel and the Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper. Drawing on each thinker as a prominent voice within their respective religious traditions, I present an interreligious and philosophical study of their responses to modernity found, in particular, in Heschel’s The Sabbath and Pieper’s Leisure: The Basis of Culture. Starting with the works of Byung-Chul Han, I build a historical and philosophical framework of “modernity” which, I argue, Heschel and Pieper respond to in their works. Drawing from their religious traditions in the aftermath of World War II, each thinker argues against the reduction of human life to a worker’s existence, to the quantitative lens of the economy and time, and the attachment to “civilization” and “total work” that often leads to acedia, discontentment, and restlessness. My work contributes to the interreligious dialogue between the Jewish and Christian traditions by amplifying the perspectives of two modern religious thinkers who were never able to engage in conversation.

This paper examines the epistemological foundations of Thomas Hobbes's political philosophy in Leviathan, arguing that the sovereign operates according to "Perception Theory" (PT)—the view that knowledge is simply whatever one perceives to be true or false. Drawing on Plato's critiques of relativism in the Republic and Theaetetus and Aristotle's analysis of the Principle of Non-Contradiction in the Metaphysics, I demonstrate that Hobbes's sovereign embodies a fundamental paradox: while attempting to establish absolute political authority through a covenant that transfers subjects' rights and deliberative powers, the sovereign becomes the sole arbiter of truth and justice through voluntarism and relativism. Though Hobbes avoids the theoretical contradictions of PT by making subjects' perceptions identical to the sovereign's through the covenant, this mechanism merely obscures rather than resolves the deeper problem. The result is that subjects receive only an illusion of freedom, self-sovereignty, and truth while the sovereign alone possesses genuine autonomy. This analysis reveals tensions within Hobbes's liberal foundations and contributes to ongoing debates about relativism, voluntarism, and the grounds of political authority, demonstrating how ancient epistemological critiques illuminate fundamental problems in early modern political philosophy.