The Review of Politics articles from September 1998

The Review of Politics archives from September 1998

The theory of moral ecology.
September 22, 1998... In Navajo legend Coyote, known as atse'hashkke or First Angry, symbolized the dark forces of chaos that might destroy a community dependent on harmony and peace for survival. As depicted by novelist Tony Hillerman, Coyote always waits for a...

Rousseau on self-love: what we've learned, what we might have learned.
September 22, 1998... In recent years we have witnessed a considerable revaluation of self-love. Traditionally, self-love has been viewed as a moral evil. Today, however, one often speaks of at least some self-love as good. Though selfishness and egocentrism are...

Pluralizing universal 'man': the legacy of transcendentalism and teleology in Habermas's discourse ethics.
September 22, 1998... Introduction Notwithstanding the fact that Jurgen Habermas's theory of discourse (or communicative) ethics has, over the years, provoked extensive and wide-ranging critique, the Habermasian approach to moral theory has largely remained...

Alfarabi on the prudence of founders.
September 22, 1998... Introduction The founder of a religious community can use religion to bind the community together, uniting it towards a single goal.(1) To affirm this truth while placing prudent limitations on the universal claims of religion is...

Catholicism and liberalism: kudos and questions for communio ecclesiology.('Heart of the World, Center of the Church: Communio Ecclesiology, Liberalism, and Liberation' book)
September 22, 1998... It is a commonplace among Catholic social ethicists in the United States that the Church has finally made its peace with liberalism in the post-conciliar era. The promulgation of Gaudium et Spes and Dignitatis Humanae at Vatican II is widely...

Liberal ideology, an eternal no; liberal institutions, a temporal yes? And further questions.
September 22, 1998... Michael Baxter's long review provides an outline of David Schindler's useful first book; concentrates on its treatment of John Courtney Murray; gives a free pass to its lengthy ontological and theological speculations; and calls attention to...

Communio ecclesiology and liberalism.(response to article to Michael Baxter, in this issue, p. 743)
September 22, 1998... I. I begin with a discussion of Father Michael Baxter's reflections on my Heart of the World, Center of the Church (HWCC). I am deeply grateful for the evident care and thoroughness with which he read the book, and can suggest here only the...

From Sacrament to Contract: marriage, Religion, and Law in the Western Tradition.(Review)
September 22, 1998... John Witte, Jr.: (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997. Pp. xii, 315. $24.00.) Part of the series on "The Family, Religion, and Culture," From Sacrament to Contract offers a cogent and clearly written account of the...

Living Downstream: An Ecologist Looks at Cancer and The Environment.(Review)
September 22, 1998... Sandra Steingraber: (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1997. Pp. 336. $24.00.) At present rates, four out of ten Americans will develop cancer. A couple of decades ago, one in twenty women developed breast cancer, now one in eight will. We...

Politics and Truth: Political Theory and the Postmodernist Challenge.(Review)
September 22, 1998... Theresa Man Lee: (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1997. Pp. xii, 243. $17.95.) Theresa Man Ling Lee's interesting book takes up the claim, which she attributes to postmodernist political theory, that there is a necessary...

Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression.(Review)
September 22, 1998... Jacques Derrida: Translated by Eric Prenowitz. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Pp. 113. $17.95.) Invited to speak at a conference held at the Freud Archives in London in 1994 in which Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi was to...

Raymond Aron: The Recovery of the Political.(Review)
September 22, 1998... Brian C. Anderson: (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998. Pp. 215. $58.00; $22.95, paper.) Raymond Aron may well rank as the foremost public intellectual of the twentieth century. He was also a stalwart champion of liberty, human...

Demoracy and Elections.(Review)
September 22, 1998... Richard S. Katz: (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Pp. viii, 344. $60.00.) In terms of what it promises, Richard Katz's latest book is very ambitious indeed. In terms of intellectual endeavor and empirical effort, it...

The British General Election of 1997.(Review)
September 22, 1998... David Butler and Denis Kavanagh: (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998. Pp. xii, 343. $55.00.) Butler and Kavanagh have earned the position of master storytellers when it comes to the study of British General Elections. Together they have...

We the People: Transformations.(Review)
September 22, 1998... Bruce Ackerman: (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1998. Pp. xi, 515. $29.95.) The first volume in this series, We the People: Foundations (1991), is among the most enthusiastically acclaimed and severely criticized works...

The Bow and the Lyre: A Platonic Reading of the Odyssey.(Review)
September 22, 1998... Seth Benardete: (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997. Pp. xiv, 177. $29.95.) In Beyond Good and Evil (224), Nietzsche writes that the "semi-barbarism" of our age allows us, if nothing else, to "enjoy Homer again." Men of nobler,...

Romantics, Reformers, Reactionaries: Russian Conservative Thought and Politics in the Reign of Alexander I.(Review)
September 22, 1998... Alexander M. Martin: (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 1997. Pp. 294. $35.00.) Alexander Martin's ambition in this fine book is to analyze the three principal conservative currents of early nineteenth-century Russia:...

Social Darwinism in European and American Thought: 1860-1945.(Review)
September 22, 1998... Mike Hawkins: (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Pp. x, 344. $69.95.) For more than two decades, historians have been revising earlier views of Charles Darwin and his legacy. The portrait of scientific truth triumphing almost...

Darwinian Myth: The Legends and Misuses of a Theory.(Review)
September 22, 1998... Edward Caudill: (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1997. Pp. xxi, 184. $35.00.) For more than two decades, historians have been revising earlier views of Charles Darwin and his legacy. The portrait of scientific truth...

The Political Discourse of Anarchy: A Disciplinary History of International Relations.(Review)
September 22, 1998... Brian C. Schmidt: (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1998. Pp. xi, 309. $19.95.) The unique contribution of Brian Schmidt's book, The Political Discourse of Anarchy, is its examination of a period of time of intellectual...

System Effects: Complexity in Political and Social Life.(Review)
September 22, 1998... Robert Jervis: (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997. Pp. xi, 309. $29.95.) In international relations, the word "system" still connotes Kenneth Waltz's idea that anarchy shapes behavior and that bipolarity is more stable than...

Alliance Politics.(Review)
September 22, 1998... Glenn H. Snyder: (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1997. Pp. x, 414. $39.95.) In Alliance Politics Glenn H. Snyder provides a much-needed theoretical analysis of the formation and management of alliances. While Stephen Walt's...