The Review of Politics articles from September 1997

The Review of Politics archives from September 1997

In memoriam: Robert F. Byrnes: 1917-1997.(Obituary)
September 22, 1997... Robert F. Byrnes, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at Indiana University, died on 19 June at a family reunion in North Carolina. Along with his wife and devoted helpmate, Eleanor, and their seven children and seventeen...

In memoriam: Gerhart Niemeyer: 1907-1997.
September 22, 1997... Gerhart Niemeyer died on 23 June 1997. He was, for four decades, a defining presence in the Department of Government at Notre Dame, as well as a valued friend and frequent contributor to this journal. Niemeyer was born in Essen,...

Democracy and the problem of statesmanship.
September 22, 1997... Is statesmanship still compatible with democracy? Democratic theorist once viewed democracy as a partnership between citizens and statesmen, to which each brought complementary virtues. Statesmanship has come to be condemned by many...

Machiavelli's political psychology. (Niccolo Machiavelli)
September 22, 1997... Systematic analysis shows the psychological premises of Machiavelli's political theory to be fairly consistent and to transcend historical circumstance. Above all, the apparent contradiction between its rapacious and consensual sides can be...

Hegel and liberalism. (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel)
September 22, 1997... In this article, the venerable but still not entirely resolved issue of Hegel's relationship to liberalism is discussed. In contradistinction to recent communitarian accounts, the Kantian and Enlightenment idea of rational freedom in Hegel's...

Hobbes and "A Discourse of Laws": the perils of wordprint analysis. (Thomas Hobbes)
September 22, 1997... John Hilton, Noel Reynolds, and Arlene Saxonhouse have employed statistical authorship analysis to claim that Hobbes authored three anonymously published works. But the authors of the study were not aware of close textual parallels between...

Hobbes and a "Discourse of Laws": response to Fortier. (response to article by John Fortier in this issue, p. 861)
September 22, 1997... We appreciate the seriousness with which John Fortier addresses the issue of Hobbesian authorship of "A Discourse of Laws," his drawing our attention to Mark Neustadt's discovery of Bacon's Aphorisms,(1) and especially his identification of...

Last word. (response to article by John Hilton et al. in this issue, p. 889)
September 22, 1997... I thank John Hilton, Noel Reynolds and Arlene Saxonhouse for their detailed response to my article. I am, however, still not persuaded by their argument for Thomas Hobbes's authorship of the "Discourse of Laws."(1) To recall, I made two...

Francis Bacon: philosopher or ideologue?
September 22, 1997... In recent years, Francis Bacon has been receiving long overdue attention. As we directly confront the problems of modernity, scholars have begun to reexamine the thoughts of the man held by so many philosophers to be the very founder of...

Francis Bacon and the Project of Progress.
September 22, 1997... In recent years, Francis Bacon has been receiving long overdue attention. As we directly confront the problems of modernity, scholars have begun to reexamine the thoughts of the man held by so many philosophers to be the very founder of...

Francis Bacon: The History of A Character Assassination.
September 22, 1997... In recent years, Francis Bacon has been receiving long overdue attention. As we directly confront the problems of modernity, scholars have begun to reexamine the thoughts of the man held by so many philosophers to be the very founder of...

Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy.
September 22, 1997... Between Facts and Norms is less than accessible due in equal measure to its internal complexity and unforgiving prose. And like so much of Jurgen Habermas's oeuvre, it is also rich and fertile scholarship, offering brilliant insights...

The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt.
September 22, 1997... Seyla Benhabib's Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt provides a thorough and balanced assessment of Arendt scholarship and contributes to that literature utilizing resources and implementing an interpretive approach distinctly unique from...

Sophocles' Tragic World: Divinity, Nature, Society.
September 22, 1997... Since Hegel, scholarly studies of tragedy have fastened especially on the unique combination of hubris and greatness that is descriptive of individual "tragic heroes." In his most recent book, Charles Segal attempts to supplement this...

Herodotus and the Origins of the Political Community: Arion's Leap.
September 22, 1997... Norma Thompson recalls the story of the poet and singer Arion who, during a battle with Corinthian pirates, elects to leap into the sea fully clothed rather than dehumanize himself by stripping down. He sings before he leaps, and his reward...

Reading Aristotle's Ethics: Virtue Rhetoric and Political Philosophy.
September 22, 1997... In a lucid and remarkably brief exposition, Tessitore covers all the major topics in Aristotle's Ethics. He pays attention to contemporary debates over the audience, intention, and unity of the Ethics, but this never distracts the reader...

Virtues of the Will: The Transformation of Ethics in the Late Thirteenth Century.
September 22, 1997... In the conventional and predominantly Thomistic view, as articulated by Bonnie Kent in this engaging study, the rediscovery of Aristotle's ethical and political works profoundly reshaped the history of Western moral thought, in large part...

The Two Faces of Political Apathy.
September 22, 1997... Given the steady decline in voter turnout in the United States since the 1960s, Tom DeLuca's Two Faces of Political Apathy is a timely and important study of what Ruy Teixeira (1992) has aptly referred to as the "disappearing American...

Woman Suffrage and the Origins of Liberal Feminism in the United States: 1820-1920.
September 22, 1997... Suzanne Marilley's book provides rich detail on the century-long struggle by woman suffragists to win the vote. She places the debate over enfranchisement within the context of historical debates over such issues as slavery, post-Civil War...

More than Victims: Battered Women, the Syndrome Society, and the Law.
September 22, 1997... Less than three decades ago, popular wisdom had it that domestic violence was a rare event. We knew, of course, that occasionally men hit their wives, but a powerful and complex mythology surrounded domestic violence that silenced the many...

Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge.
September 22, 1997... In Impure Science Steven Epstein devotes most of his analysis to a sociological study of the construction of scientific knowledge about AIDS. The author's main claim is that we cannot possibly understand AIDS bio-medical fact-making by...

Identity Ideology and Conflict: The Structuration of Politics in Northern Ireland.
September 22, 1997... "The Irish are a fair-minded people," Dr. Johnson famously remarked. "They never speak well of one another." As a summary of the damnable question, Johnson's observation is unlikely to be bettered. It captures well enough the conflict's...