Immortality: Experience and Symbol
The Struggle between Man and his Soul As the purpose of this inquiry is not a description of symbols but an analysis of the experiences engendering them,…
Natural Law and Aristotle: What is Right by Nature?
In classical philosophy "right by nature" was a symbol, with the help of which the philosopher interpreted his noetic experience of right human action. Through the dogmatization…
Morality and the Pursuit of Happiness: Understanding the Meaning and Relevance of Eudaimonism
“Why Be Moral?” Among the many questions that contemporary moral philosophers have raised over the past few decades is the question: Why be Moral? Nearly all contemporary…
Understanding the Language of Politics
Political science is suffering from a difficulty that originates in its very nature as a science of man in historical existence. For man does not wait for…
The Break with the Myth
Our picture of Greek intellectual history is still substantially influenced by historiographic conventions of the Hellenistic period. The development of philosophical schools in the fourth century b.c.…
The Order of Society and its Tensions
We are faced with the following aporia: on the one hand, the law is manifest phenomenally in a plurality of legal orders understood as aggregates of valid…
What is Society?
[Aristotle was plagued by such problems as whether a nation remained the same nation after a revolution]. He applied to the polis the categories of form and…
What is the Law?
[One problem] will be singled out for present examination: the equivocal use of "the law" in the sense of valid rules made by organs of government and…
What is Nature?
Any assertion that this or that is, or is not, "right by nature" must remain void of meaning unless we know what nature is. In this matter…
It Takes More than Money: On Oligarchy
On Oligarchy: Ancient Lessons for Global Politics. David Edward Tabachnick and Toivo Koivukoski, eds. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011. In On Oligarchy: Ancient Lessons for…
From Piaget to the Tetragrammaton: Religious Thought and Psychological Development
Worldview and Mind: Religious Thought and Psychological Development. Eugene Webb. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press. 2009. Let it be understood up front that Worldview and…
The Failure of Immanentist Metaphysics
The Aristotelian speculation ends in a serious impasse, both practically and theoretically. Practically, the discovery of the truth seems to serve no other purpose than to forge…
Ethics and Politics: Sciences for the Mature
Politics in the narrower sense of nomothetics [constitution-making science] intends to teach the lawgiver how to create the institutions that will inculcate the ethical excellences in the…
Grounded in Compassionate Love: Aristotle, Lonergan, and Nussbaum
Love and Objectivity in Virtue Ethics: Aristotle, Lonergan, and Nussbaum on Emotions and Moral Insight. Robert J. Fitterer. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008. Reviewing books…
Common Sense and the Common Sense Tradition
The philosophical and political import of common sense is strikingly suggested in a passage from Eric Voegelin's Autobiographical Reflections. The passage has the additional merit of highlighting…