Things Turned into Sounds: Aristotle The first voice we ought to listen to is that of Aristotle. At the beginning of his text Peri hermeneias (On Interpretation) Aristotle distinguishes between three degrees of human understanding. There are, first, “affections in the soul” (en te psyche pathemátōn) that reflect within…

Part 3: Whatever Happened to Nietzsche? This is the third part of our journey into the strange Other Wold of neo-reactionary political thought that began with an investigation into the phenomenon of the “alt right”. In the second instalment it lea into discussion of the monarcho-capitalist “NRx” movement. In…

Part 2: Rebooting the Leviathan. In the first part of this essay we looked at the phenomenon of the “alt right”. In this second piece we turn to discussions of neo-reactionary philosophy. A common story goes that the intellectual flagship, the act of legitimation for reanimating reaction as a…

Part 1: Inside the Nazi CPU. This is the first of a three part essay on the current rise in hard right political thought. My aim is to work downwards from the tip of more conspicuous reactionary emergences like the “alt right” and the populism of Brexit and Trump…

In the first season of AMC’s Mad Men, advertising executive Don Draper gives a presentation to some prospective clients from Kodak. The clients are looking for a way to market a new rotary slide projector. Don upsets and exceeds their expectations when, instead of focusing on the “exciting technology”…

Mad Men:  The Death and Redemption of American Democracy. Sara MacDonald and Andrew Moore. Lexington Books, 2016.   It’s been a decade since Mad Men premiered on television, with its alluring and disturbing portrait of America in the 1960s.  This prestige drama and its mysterious protagonist, Don Draper, captured…

No one would dispute that Shakespeare was interested in political questions. Much of his theatrical output focuses on medieval monarchs and ancient Roman civil wars. Plays such as The Merchant of Venice and Measure for Measure explicitly wrestle with political and legal dilemmas. Even Shakespeare’s more romantic and comical…

Shakespeare between Machiavelli and Hobbes: Dead Body Politics. Andrew Moore, Lexington Press, 2016.   Andrew Moore’s book, Shakespeare between Machiavelli and Hobbes: Dead Body Politics, is bold and enlightening. Moore follows in the footsteps of Harry Jaffa, Allan Bloom, Thomas West, Paul Cantor, and Leon Craig, among others, in…

The Philosopher’s English King: Shakespeare’s Henriad as Political Philosophy. Leon Harold Craig. Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2015.   Anyone interested in studying Shakespeare as a philosopher-poet who addresses perennial questions about human existence through his plays will benefit from reading Leon Craig’s excellent book. Like his previous work,…

33rd International Meeting of THE ERIC VOEGELIN SOCIETY, 2017 American Political Science Association Meeting,August 31-September 3 San Francisco, CA   David Walsh, Meeting Director [email protected]   Dear Friends, This is our program as it currently stands at the beginning of August.  Please continue to update me with any changes…

According to Nobel Prize Winner, Mario Vargas Llosa, Jorge Luis Borges is “the most important thing that happened to Spanish literature in modern times, and one of the most memorable artists of our time.” I had not fully realized the unique stature that Borges reached abroad until fifteen years…

Liberty, Individuality, and Democracy in Jorge Luis Borges. Alejandra Salinas. Lanham MD, Lexington Books: 2017.   This volume explores the writings of Jorge Luis Borges in respect to the appearance of “the political” in his work, arguing that Borges’ fiction discloses an admiration for individuality, liberal anarchism, and a…

Behind the renowned artistic and literary production of Aldous Huxley is a political thinking that proves decisive for a full analysis of the entire intellectual career of one of the most important figures of twentieth-century English literature. After his encounter with Vilfredo Pareto’s Trattato di Sociologia Generale, his early…

Aldous Huxley: The Political Thought of a Man of Letters. Alessandro Maurini. Lexington Books, 2017. Few books bridge the divide between serious literature and popular entertainment as successfully as Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Huxley’s dystopian vision of the dangers of materialism, social engineering, and omnipresent government regulation brings…

Sinclair Lewis had an ambivalent relationship with America. His Midwestern upbringing perfectly situated him to understand the American experiment, but he found it wanting in many ways. His take on the United States was captured during a 1930 radio interview he gave while in Berlin: “Intellectually I know that America is no…

Sinclair Lewis and American Democracy. Steven Michels. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2017. In his 1922 travelogue What I Saw in America, G.K. Chesterton comments briefly on the most popular book of the day, Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street.  Chesterton finds it ironic that denizens of Main Streets all over America…

The Politics of Perfection: Technology and Creation in Literature and Film. Kimberly Hurd Hale. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016.   It is a nearly universally acknowledged fact that technology carries the potential for both great benefits and great dangers to human beings. Few question the assumption that science and…

The Politics of Perfection: Technology and Creation in Literature and Film. Kimberly Hurd Hale. Lexington Books, 2016.   In The Politics of Perfection:  Technology and Creation in Literature and Film, Kimberly Hurd Hale confronts one of the most serious political issues facing humanity in the 21st century.  Technology, increasing…