Political Theory Lunch Colloquy

The Voegelin Institute invites LSU graduate students to join us over lunch again this year (2024-2025) on Wednesdays at 11:30 to discuss recent research in political theory.  Bring a “brown bag”; drinks will be provided.  We’ll take turns reporting on articles in the journals and discuss other matters as they arise.

Wed., August 28 – Welcome Back Workshop

  • Alexander Orwin, "How to Write an Article in Political Theory"

Wed., September 4 – Interpretation 50 (3), Summer 2024

  • Benjamin Haines on Mark Glouberman, "Genesis 1 and Genesis 2: Interpreting the Beginning
  • William Palomares on Erik Cleven & Peter B. Josephson, "The Ambivalence of Laughter: Carnival and Politicsin Dostoevsky’s Devils"

Thurs., September 12 – Lunch with Teresa Bejan, Oxford University

  • "Political Theory 'Across the Pond'" [cancelled due to hurricane closure]

Wed., September 18 – Political Science Reviewer 48 (1), 2024

  • Matthew Flanders on Lynita K. Newswander, "The Poetic Philosophy of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar"
  • Kenlea Barnes on Brian Danoff, "Arendt and Lincoln on Leadership and Rule"

Wed., September 25 – Political Theory 52 (3&4), June & August 2024

  • Simeon Burns on Timothy Brennan, "Teaching by Examples: Rousseau's Lawgiver and the Case of Benjamin Franklin"
  •  Jie Zhang on Jacob Swanson, “Beyond Governance and Prevention: On the Use(s) of Aristotle for Theorizing Money’s Politics”

Wed., October 2 – Researching the Eric Voegelin Papers at Hoover

  • Muen Liu, Tsinghua University
  • Boru Chen, LSU

Wed., October 9 – History of Political Thought 45 (1), Spring 2024

  • Alexander Orwin on Eduardo Schmidt Passos, "Leo Strauss, the Latin Averroists, and the Eternity of the World"
  • Lendon Little on Jo Ann Hoeppner Moran Cruz "Machiavelli's Warning: The Medici, Florence, Rome, and New Princes"

Wed., October 16 – James Stoner, LSU

  • "Political Theory in Hungary"

Wed., October 23 – American Political Science Review 117-118, 2023-24

  • Kenlea Barnes on Teresa Bejan, "Hobbes and Hats" [117 (4)]
  • Gabrielle Stanton Ray on Rob Goodman, "Slavery and Oratory: Frederick Douglass in the History of Rhetoric" [117 (4)]

Wed., October 30 – American Journal of Political Science 67-68, 2023-24

  • Derek Foret on Alexander Duff, "Anger, Hatred, and Judgment in Aristotle's Rhetoric"
  • Matthew Flanders on Avshalom M. Schwartz, "Political Phantasies: Aristotle on Imagination and Collective Action"

Wed., November 6 – Journal of Politics 85-86, 2023-24

  • Asher Gelzer-Govatos on Nathan Pippenger, "Reading Ellison through Herder: Language, Integration, and Democracy"
  • Emily Davis on Jordan Rudinsky, "Max Weber and James Bryce: The Constitution of Responsibility"

Wed., November 13 – American Political Thought 13 (3&4), Summer & Fall 2024

  • James Stoner on Luke Sheahan, "'The People' of the Tenth Amendment: A Constitutional Theory of Town and Civil Society"
  • Jie Zhang on Micah Harris, "Noah Webster and the Influence of Rousseau on Education in America, 1785–1835"

Wed., November 20 – Journal vol (no), date

  • who on what
  • who on what

Wed., December 4 – Journal vol (no), date

  • who on what
  • who on what
     
     

 

 

Wed., May 22 – American Political Thought 13 (1), Winter 2024

  • Kenlea Barnes on reviews by Carol Nackenoff of Sara Chatfield, In Her Own Name, and by Joel Alden Schlosser of Timothy Kaufmann-Osborn, The Autocratic Academy
  • James Stoner on Samuel Piccolo, “Nature in Native American Political Thinking”

Wed., June 19 – American Political Thought 13 (2), Spring 2024

  • Matthew Flanders on Raúl Rodríguez, “Tocqueville and Native Americans”
  • Xuegang Zhao on  David Ferkaluk, “James Wilson's Reidian Alternative to John Locke”

Wed., July 17 – Comparative Political Theory 3 (1&2), 2023

  • Dalton Ansley on Timothy Berk, “Dialogue, Dasein, and Destiny: Heidegger’s Challenge to Dialogical Comparative Political Theory”
  • Jacob Harvey on Rieke Trimçev, “Judith N. Shklar's Skeptical Liberalism and the Specter of Conservatism”

Wed., January 24 – “When Voegelin Met Oppenheimer: On Science, Communism, and the End of the World”

  • James Stoner on Raymond Aron, ed., World Technology and Human Destiny (Michigan, 1963)

Wed., January 31 – History of Political Thought 44 (4), Winter 2023

  • Kenlea Barnes on Eero Arum, “Aristotle on Political Friendship and Equality”
  • Asher Gelzer-Govatos on Jacob Scott Hoerger, “The Rival Freedoms of Don Quixote

Wed., February 7 – Interpretation 50 (1), Fall 2023

  • Lendon Little on Eric Buzzetti, “The Crisis of the West and Strauss on Xenophon: A Prologue to a Comprehensive Study”
  • Allen Ray on Matthew Wells, “On Strauss on Xenophon’s Symposium

Wed., February 21 – Interpretation 50 (1), Fall 2023

  • Jacob Harvey on Yashir Jeirani, “Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin on Philosophy and Politics in Plato’s Republic
  • Asher Gelzer-Govatos on Ralph Wood, “Charles Péguy: Eternity in Love with the Productions of Time”

Wed., February 28 – Political Theory 51 (6), December 2023, & Interpretation 50 (1), Fall 2023

  • Benjamin Haines on Michael Group, “Not Subjects of the Market, but Subject to the Market: Capitalist Slavery as Expropriation”
  • Simeon Burns on Allen Porter, “Heidegger’s Metametaphysics: Heidegger on Modernity and Postmodernity”

Wed., March 6 – American Political Thought 12 (4), Fall 2023

  • Kenlea Barnes on Jean Yarbrough, “Tocqueville and Lincoln on Slavery”
  • discussion of new Graduate Regulations concerning general exams

Wed., March 20 – Political Science Reviewer 47, 2023

  • Jie Zhang on Barry Cooper, “Hans Kelsen and Eric Voegelin: The History of a Divergence”
  • Jacob Harvey on Manfred Henningsen, “The Kelsen-Voegelin Controversies: A Biopsy”

Wed., March 27 – no meeting

  • Please choose for our upcoming sessions

Wed., April 3 – Interpretation 50 (2), Winter 2024

  • Benjamin Haines on Emmanuel Patard, “Leo Strauss on the Rejection of Natural Right by the Social Sciences: A Lecture”
  • Jacob Harvey on Lorraine Pangle, “Zarathustra’s Task and the Promise of Contemplation”

Wed., April 10 – American Political Thought 13 (1), Winter 2024

  • Xuegang Zhao on Jed W. Atkins, “John Rawls’s Theology of Liberal Toleration”
  • [conclude at noon to attend job talk]

Wed., April 17 – Political Theory 52 (1), February 2024

  • Peidong Wu on Loubna El Amine, “Women, Rituals, and the Domestic-Political Distinction in the Confucian Classics”
  • [conclude at noon to attend job talk]

Wed., April 24 – Political Theory 52 (2), April 2024

  • Lendon Little on Andrew Stewart, “Social Worlds and the Roles of Political Philosophy”
  • Alexander Orwin on Andrew F. March, “After Sovereignty: From a Hegemonic to Agonistic Islamic Political Thought”

Wed., May 1 – American Political Thought 13 (1), Winter 2024 ~ European Journal of Political Theory 22 (4), October 2023

  • Jie Zhang on Jak Allen, “What Is a ‘Moral’ Citizen? Learned Hand and the Judicial Role for Defining Immigrant Morality Tests, 1929–61”
  • Simeon Burns on Alessandro Mulieri, “Theorizing the Multitude before Machiavelli: Marsilius of Padua between Aristotle and Ibn Rushd”

Wed., August 23 – Leo Strauss in China

  • Matthew Dean, PhD student in Philosophy, Tulane University
  • Jie Zhang, PhD student in Political Science, LSU

Wed., August 30 – American Political Thought 12 (3), Summer 2023

  • Kenlea Barnes on Elly Long, “Small-Town Life and Difference”
  • James Stoner on “Author Meets Critics: Vincent Phillip Muñoz’s Religious Liberty and the American Founding

Wed., September 6 – Interpretation 49 (2&3), Winter – Spring 2023

  • Lendon Little on Robert Faulkner, “Beauty in Love and Speaking of Love: Lessons from the Phaedrus
  • Alexander Orwin on Robert Wyllie, “‘Solomon’s Science’: Spinoza on the Possibility and Limits of Ancient Philosophy”

Wed., September 13 – History of Political Thought 44 (2), Summer 2023

  • Simeon Burns on Avshalom M. Schwartz, “Divine Epiphany and Political Authority in Plato’s Republic
  • Benjamin Haines on Benjamin Mueser, “‘The Possession of their Ancestors’: Locke and Levellers on Conquest and Native Rights”

Wed., September 20 – Interpretation 49 (1), Fall 2022

  • Jie Zhang on Richard Hassing, “The Question of Self-Reference in Nicomachean Ethics, Book 6″
  • Jacob Harvey on Pierre Manent, “Pascal and Rousseau”

Wed., September 27 – History of Political Thought 44 (1 & 3), Spring & Autumn 2023

  • Jacob Harvey on Jonny Thakkar, “Aristotle on Moneymaking: The Roads not Taken”
  • Kenlea Barnes on Ann Ward & Catherine Craig, “Philosophy, Sexuality, and the Rational Soul in Plato’s Statesman

Wed., October 4 – European Journal of Political Theory 22 (3), July 2023

  • Conrad Sharpe on Matthew Landauer, “Demos (a)kurios? Agenda power and democratic control in ancient Greece”
  • [conclude at noon to attend job talk]

Wed., October 11 – Review of Politics 85 (3), Summer 2023

  • Boru Chen on Jerónimo Rilla, “Are Hobbesian States as Passionate as Hobbesian Individuals?”
  • [conclude at noon to attend job talk]

Wed., October 18 – Review of Politics 85 (3), Summer 2023

  • Kenlea Barnes on Symposium on Storey & Storey, Why We Are Restless
  • Jie Zhang on Monica Rovira’s review of David Dyzenhaus, The Long Arc of Legality: Hobbes, Kelsen, Hart

Wed., October 25 – Review of Politics 85 (3), Summer 2023

  • Benjamin Haines on Loralea Michaelis, “Contesting the Future: Secular and Religious Time in Hobbes’s Leviathan
  • [conclude at noon to attend job talk]

Wed., November 1 – Political Theory 51 (3 & 5), June & October 2023

  • Jacob Harvey on Mauro Barisione, “Reviving Metapersonal Charisma in Max Weber”
  • Gabrielle Stanton Ray on Christine Dunn Henderson, “Revisiting Tocqueville’s American Women”

Wed., November 8 – “Jerusalem and Athens Revisited”

Wed., November 15 – American Journal of Political Science, 2023

  • Alexander Orwin on Alexander Duff, “Anger, Hatred, ad Judgment in Aristotle’s Rhetoric

Wed., November 29 – Political Theory 51 (4), August 2023

  • Simeon Burns on J.L. Feldman, “Between General Strike and Dissensus: W.E.B. DuBois’s Black Reconstruction
  • [conclude at noon to attend job talk]

Wed., May 31 – Herbert Marcuse, “Repressive Tolerance” (1965/68)

  • opening comments:  pro (Ben Haines) / contra (Jake Harvey)

Wed., June 28 – American Political Thought 12 (1 & 2), Winter & Spring 2023

  • Kenlea Barnes on Rita Koganzon, “There Is No Such Thing as a Banned Book: Censorship, Authority, and the School Book Controversies of the 1970s”
  • Jacob Harvey on W.B. Allen, “What Harry Jaffa Taught”

Wed., July 26 – Review of Politics 85 (2), Spring 2023

  • Kenlea Barnes on Arlene W. Saxonhouse, “The Comedy of Crowds: Aristophanes and the Voice of the People—or the Poet”
  • James Stoner on David Polansky, “Populism and Democratic Conflict: An Aristotelian View”

Wed., Jan. 18 – Stephen Wolfe, The Case for Christian Nationalism (Canon Press, 2022)

  • comments: Simeon Burns and Jacob Harvey
  • responding: Stephen Wolfe

Wed., Jan. 25 – Guest Speaker: Santiago Legarre, Universidad Católica Argentina

Wed., Feb. 1 – American Political Thought 11 (3 & 4), Summer & Fall 2022

  • Ben Haines on Hadass Silver, “Inventing ‘White Privilege’: Pseudo-progressivism in American Political Discourse”
  • Kenlea Barnes on Joel Schlosser’s review of Roosevelt Montas, Rescuing Socrates: How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter to a New Generation

Wed., Feb. 8 – “ERIC VOEGELIN & HIS INTERLOCUTORS”: Martin Heidegger

Wed., Feb. 15 – American Political Thought 11 (4), Fall 2022

  • Charles Cacciatore on Thomas Mertes’s review of Benjamin T Arrington, The Last Lincoln Republican: The Presidential Election of 1880, and Lucas Morel’s review of Ronald C. White, Lincoln in Private: What His Most Personal Reflections Tell Us about Our Greatest President

Wed., Mar. 1 – Journal of Politics 84 (2022)

  • Matthew Flanders on Theresa MacArt, “Pietas: A Case for Ethical Patriotism in Aquinas”
  • Kenlea Barnes on  John Warner, “’I Know Not If I Delude Myself’: Rousseau’s Julie and the Ambiguities of Self-Deception”

Wed., Mar. 8 – “ERIC VOEGELIN & HIS INTERLOCUTORS”: Leo Strauss

  • Daniel Mahoney, Assumption College (emeritus) on Eric Voegelin & Leo Strauss
  • LSU “assignment”: letters 3, 4, 26, 27, 28, 34, 35, 37, 38, 39, plus the appendix to letter 20 (Voegelin’s review of On Tyranny and Strauss’s response in the “Restatement”
  • REGISTER to join on Zoom

Wed., Mar. 22 – American Journal of Political Science 66 (2022)

  • Charles Cacciatore on William McCormick, “Polarities of the Human and Divine: Aquinas and Schmitt on Political Theology”
  • Jacob Harvey on Raúl Rodríguez, “Tocqueville’s State of Nature Foundation”

Wed., Mar. 29 – Journal of Politics 84 (2022)

  • Alexander Orwin on Matthew Landauer, “Drinking Parties Correctly Ordered: Plato on Mass Participation and the Necessity of Rule”
  • Dede Adote on Michelle T. Clarke, “Machiavelli’s Virtuous Princes: Rhetoric, Power, and the Politics of Ironic Historiography”

Wed., Apr. 5 – History of Political Thought 43 (4), Winter 2022

  • Benjamin Haines on Markku Peltonen, “Democracy and Representation in Early Modern England, 1531-1653”
  • Kenlea Barnes on Kristján Kristjánsson, “The Primacy of Civic Virtue in Aristotle’s Politics and its Educational Implications”

Wed., Apr. 12 – “ERIC VOEGELIN & HIS INTERLOCUTORS”: Hannah Arendt

  • Peter Baehr, Lingnan University, Hong Kong (emeritus) on Eric Voegelin & Hannah Arendt
  • REGISTER to join on Zoom

Wed., Apr. 19 – Political Theory 51 (1), February 2023

  • Matthew Flanders on Kennan Ferguson, “Why Did They Assume Only Humans Had Politics?”
  • Lendon Little on Lisa Bellantoni, “Organics, Hyborgs, and Philosopher-Cyborgs: The Politiverse in 2278”

Wed., Apr. 26 – History of Political Thought 43 (4), Winter 2022

  • Charles Cacciatore on Dan Edelstein & Benjamin Straumann, “Roman Rights Talk: Subjective Rights in Cicero and Livy”
  • Jake Harvey on Deborah Baumgold, “Hobbes and Grotius: Elements of Law & De Jure Belli ac Pacis

Wed., May. 3 – Political Theory 51 (2), April 2023

  • Kenlea Barnes on Adriana Alfaro Altamirano, “Narrative and the ‘Art of Listening’: Ricoeur, Arendt, and the Political Dangers of Storytelling
  • James Stoner on Marcus Carlsen Häggrot, “Geographic Legislative Constituencies: A Defense”

Wed., Aug. 31 – Interpretation 48 (2), Winter 2022

  • Ben Haines on Nelson Lund, “Adam Smith on Rousseau and the Origins of Languages”

Wed., Sept. 7 – Interpretation 48 (1 & 3), Fall 2021 & Summer 2022

  • Jie Zhang on John Kirby, “‘A Mysterious Communication’: Schopenhauer’s Will to Live in Conrad’s The Secret Sharer
  • Kenlea Barnes on Thomas Pangle, “The Unfolding Plan of ‘Maxims and Arrows’ in Nietzsche’s Twilight of the Idols

Wed., Sept. 14 – Interpretation 48 (1 & 2), Fall 2021 & Winter 2022

  • Charles Cacciatore on Jerome C. Foss, review of Breidenbach, Our Dear-Bought Liberty, and Will Morrisey, review of Platt, Mighty Opposites
  • Jacob Harvey on  Iraj Azerfaza, “Overcoming the Powerful Prejudice against Xenophon: A Debate between Leo Strauss and Friedrich Schleiermacher”

Wed., Sept. 21 – Political Theory 50 (3), June 2022

  • Charles Cacciatore on James Lindley Wilson, “Constitutional Majoritarianism against Popular ‘Regulation’ in the Federalist
  • Conrad Sharpe on Gianna Englert, “Tocqueville’s Politics of Grandeur”

Wed., Sept. 28 – History of Political Thought 43 (2), Summer 2022

  • Charles Cacciatore on L. Klein, “Italian Reason of State, 1589-1635: Anti-Machiavellianism as Counter Reformation”
  • Cecil Eubanks on K.A. Barker, “Kant, Wonder, and an Order of Freedom”

Wed., Oct. 5 – Review of Politics 84 (3), Summer 2022

  • Kenlea Barnes on Jason S. Canon, “Three General Wills in Rousseau”
  • James Stoner on Elena Ziliotti, “Questions for Hierarchical Confucianism”

Wed., Oct. 12 – Interpretation forthcoming

  • Alexander Orwin on Rasoul Namazi, Leo Strauss and Islamic Political Thought (Cambridge, 2022)

Wed., Oct. 19 – Political Theory 50 (4), August 2022

  • Lendon Little on Robyn Marasco, “Machiavelli and the Play-Element in Political Life”
  • Jacob Harvey on Thomas Fossen, “Political Legitimacy as an Existential Predicament”

Wed., Oct. 26 – History of Political Thought  43 (3), Autumn 2022

  • Benjamin Haines on J. Holley, “Rousseau’s Memorial Practice of Happiness: Autobiography, Askesis, and Ataraxia
  • Kenlea Barnes on W.T. Schmid, “Aristotle’s Theory of Magnanimity: An Ethical and Political Interpretation”

Wed., Nov. 2 – European Journal of Political Theory 21 (2), April 2022

  • Jacob Harvey on Adrian Blau, “Habermas on Rationality: Means, Ends and Communications”
  • Benjamin Haines on Johan Olsthoom and Laurens von Apeldoorn, “’This man is my property’: Slavery and political absolutism in Locke and the classical social contract tradition”

Wed., Nov. 9 – Political Theory 50 (5), October 2022

  • Jacob Harvey on Alison McQueen, “Absolving God’s Laws: Thomas Hobbes’ Scriptural Strategies”
  • Dalton Ansley on  Laura Ephraim, “Everyone Poops: Consumer Virtues and Excretory Anxieties in Locke’s Theory of Property”

Wed., Nov. 16 – Curriculum Discussion

  • Review of the Theory Reading List and POLI 2060

Wed., Nov. 30 – Trepanier, ed., Making Sense of Diseases and Disasters (Routledge, 2022)

  • Lendon Little on Paul Krause, “Saint Augustine and the Politics of Sovereign Charity: Love and Disaster in The City of God
  • Jie Zhang on Khalil Habib, “The Plague in Thucydides’s Account of Civilization”

Wed., June 1 – History of Political Thought 43 (1), February 2022

  • Charles Cacciatore on Ian Harris, “The Authentication of Burke’s Reflections: Church, Monarchy, Universities, 1790-91″
  • Stacy Stingle on Nicholas Mithen, “Politics as Moderation in Machiavelli”

Wed., July 6 – American Political Thought 11 (1), Winter 2022

  • Simeon Burns & Stacy Stingle on Joel Winkelman, “David Foster Wallace and the Audience of Democratic Authority”

Wed., Aug. 3 – American Political Thought 11 (2), Spring 2022

  • Charles Cacciatore on Kevin J. Burns, “Republican Manners, Monarchic Vigor: The Federalist Defense of Pardon Power”
  • James Stoner on Richard J. Ellis, “The Opportunist: James W. Sullivan and the Origins of the Initiative and Referendum in the United States”

Wed., Jan. 19 – Comparative Political Theory 1 (1), 2021

  • Alexander Orwin on Vasileios Syros, “The Safavid Machiavelli: Shah ‘Abbas I and the ‘Great Man’ Theory Revisited”
  • James Stoner on Book Symposium on Shaun O’Dwyer, Confucianism’s Prospects (SUNY Press, 2019) [articles by O’Dwyer, Sam Crane, Dongxian Jiang, Sungmoon Kim, and Sarah Mattice]

Wed., Jan. 26 – Political Theory 49 (6), December 2021

  • Lendon Little on Arlene Saxonhouse, “Nation and Responsibility: The King and his Soldiers in Shakespeare’s Henry V
  • Conrad Sharpe on Elizabeth Barring, “Mortal Democracy and Plato’s Apology

Wed., Feb. 2 – History of Political Thought 42 (4), Winter 2021

  • Jacob Harvey on G. Baldin, “The Republic of Venice and the Development of Jean Bodin’s Idea of Sovereignty”
  • Ben Mabry on Edward Lucas, “Review Article: Labour Churches, Social Christianity and Spiritual Freedom–Socialism and Religion”

Wed., Feb. 9 – “Who Was Eric Voegelin & What Did He Think?”

  • Barry Cooper, University of Calgary, on “An Intellectual Biography of Eric Voegelin” (Eric Voegelin Reader, pp. ix-xxvii, 1-32) [Zoom Lecture with live audience]

Wed., Feb. 16 – “WWEV & WDHT?”

  • Lee Trepanier, Samford University, on “Voegelin’s Philosophical Science of Politics” (Eric Voegelin Reader, pp. 33-109) [Zoom Lecture with live audience]

Wed., Feb. 23 – “WWEV & WDHT?”

  • Carol Browning Cooper, University of Houston, on “Voegelin’s Modern Philosophizing” (Eric Voegelin Reader, pp. 111-191) [Zoom Lecture with live audience]

Wed., Mar. 9 – “WWEV & WDHT?”

  • David Walsh, Catholic University, on “Voegelin on Consciousness, Reason, and Divine Reality” (Eric Voegelin Reader, pp. 193-286) [Zoom Lecture with live audience]

Wed., Mar. 23 – “WWEV & WDHT?”

  • John von Heyking, University of Lethbridge, on “Voegelin’s Philosophy of History” (Eric Voegelin Reader, pp. 287-392) [Zoom Lecture with live audience]

Wed., Mar. 30 – Review Session: “Who Was Eric Voegelin, What Did He Think, and What Do YOU Think?”

  • James Stoner on our Voegelin lecture series: what worked, what didn’t, and what should we do next?

Wed., Apr. 6 – Guest Lecture

  • Neil Rogachevsky, Yeshiva University, on “The Israeli Declaration of Independence”

Wed., Apr. 13 – Political Science Reviewer 45 (2), 2021

  • Stacy Stingle on Jerome C. Foss, “The Moral Imagination in Flannery O’Connor and Russell Kirk”
  • Charles Cacciatore on Michael Federici, “Russell Kirk’s Defense of the American Tradition: Liberalism and Reconstitution”

Wed., Apr. 20 – Political Theory 50 (1), February 2022

  • Stacy Stingle on B.J. Brendese, “A Race of Devils: Race-Making, Frankenstein, and The Modern Prometheus
  • Conrad Sharpe on Stephen K. White, “Agonism, Democracy, and the Moral Equality of Voice”

Wed., Apr. 27 – Review of Politics 84 (1), Winter 2022

  • Jake Harvey on Chris Campbell, “The Rhetoric of Hobbes’ Translation of Thucydides”
  • Simeon Burns on Mark Fisher, “Thucydides’ Tragic Science of Athenian Defeat”

Wed., May 4 – Dolgoy, Hale, & Peabody, eds., Political Theory on Death & Dying (Routledge) [resurrected]

  • Charles Cacciatore on James Stoner, “Continuity without Corruption: The Political Theology of Death in St. Augustine” (ch. 13)
  • Lendon Little on Alexander Orwin, “Jihād for the City: How Alfarabi Discourages, and Encourages, Death in Battle” (ch. 14)

 

Wed., Aug. 25 – Welcome Back!

  • Organizational meeting and lunch

Wed., Sept. 1 – Hurricane Ida Recovery [no meeting]

Wed., Sept. 8 – Political Theory 49 (3), June 2021

  • Alex Cole on Asher Wycoff, “Between Prophecy and Apocalypse: Buber, Benjamin, and Socialist Eschatology”
  • Alex Cole on Zachariah Black, “Laughing with Leviathan: Hobbesian Laughter in Theory and Practice”

Wed., Sept. 15 – History of Political Thought 42 (3), Autumn 2021

  • Charles Cacciatore on R. Palmen, “Comparing Oneself to Others and Estimating Oneself in Thomas Aquinas’ Moral Philosophy”
  • Jake Harvey on Z. Bhorat, “Automata in Hobbes: Three Heads of Cerebus”

Wed., Sept. 22 – American Political Thought 10 (2), Spring 2021

  • Charles Cacciatore on Savannah Eccles Johnston, “The Rise of Illiberal Conservatism: Immigration and Nationalism at National Review
  • Alex Cole on Judie Newman, Review: “The Moderate Imagination: The Political Thought of John Updike and the Decline of New Deal Liberalism”

Wed., Sept. 29 – Political Theory 49 (4), August 2021

  • James Stoner on Chloé Bakalar, “The Virtues of Everyday Talk: The Enduring Significance of John Milton’s Theory of Expressive Liberties”
  • Benjamin Mabry on Joshua Foa Dienstag, “Dignity, Difference, and the Representation of Nature”

Wed., Oct. 6 – History of Political Thought 42 (3 again), Autumn 2021

  • John Boersma on A. Mulieri, “The Language of Democracy Between Aristotle and Machiavelli”
  • Alex Cole on M.S. Ostrowski, “Social Democracy and ‘Positive’ Foreign Policy: The Evolution of Edouard Bernstein’s International Thought, 1914-1920”

Wed., Oct. 13 – American Political Thought 10 (3), Summer 2021

  • Thomas Cloud on Jonathan Ashbach, “Against Every General Principle: Prudence in the Constitutional Statesmanship of James Madison”
  • Charles Cacciatore on Reviews: Brandon Turner, “Never Trump: The Revolt of the Conservative Elites,” and Helen J. Knowles, “A Constitution in Full: Recovering the Unwritten Foundation of American Liberty”

Wed., Oct. 20 – European Journal of Political Theory 20 (3), July 2021

  • Jacob Harvey on  Cody Trojan, “Republican Auctoritas: Harrington’s Dual Theory of Political Legitimacy”
  • James Stoner on “Symposium on Ryan Hanley’s Fenelon

Wed., Oct. 27 – Review of Politics 83 (2&3), Spring & Summer 2021

  • Alexander Orwin on Samuel Garrett Zeitlin, “Francis Bacon on Imperial and Colonial Warfare”
  • Simeon Burns on Matthew Dinan, “Kierkegaard’s Socratic Alternative to Hegel in Fear and Trembling

Wed., Nov. 3 – European Journal of Political Theory 20 (3), July 2021, & Political Theory 49 (5), October 2021

  • Conrad Sharpe on James Gordon Finlayson, “No Proviso: Habermas on Rawls, religion, and public reason”
  • Thomas Cloud on Jacob Swanson, “The Use of Money in Society: Friedrich Hayek’s Social Work”

Wed., Nov. 10 – Dolgoy, Hale, & Peabody, eds., Political Theory on Death & Dying (Routledge)

  • Alex Cole on Cecil Eubanks, “Hegel on Death and the Spirit” (ch. 33)
  • Jacob Harvey on Bradley Jackson, “Thomas Hobbes on the Uses and Disadvantages of Death for Political Life” (ch. 24)

Wed., Nov. 17 – Dolgoy, Hale, & Peabody, eds., Political Theory on Death & Dying (Routledge)

  • Peidong Wu on Peng Yu, “The Political Philosophy of Death in Laozi” (ch. 8)
  • Matthew Flanders on John W. Schiemann, “Alasdair MacIntyre and the Twilight of the Virtues” (ch. 45)

Wed., Dec. 1 – Dolgoy, Hale, & Peabody, eds., Political Theory on Death & Dying (Routledge)

  • Conrad Sharpe on Ann Ward, “Mortality, Recollection, and Human Dignity in Plato” (ch. 4)
  • Benjamin Haines on Jack Clinton Byham, “The Role of Death and Eternity in Locke’s Political Philosophy” (ch. 25)

Wed., May 19 – Review of Politics 83 (1&2), Winter & Spring 2021

  • Alex Cole on Matthew Sharpe, “On Politics, Irony, and Plato’s Socrates as Derrida’s Pharmakon
  • Cecil Eubanks on Adrian Blau, “How Should We Categorize Approaches to the History of Political Thought?”

Wed., June 16 – Political Science Reviewer  45 (1), 2021

  • Alexander Orwin on Rebecca LeMoine, “Rereading Plato on Censorship: Mindfulness toward Music and Politics in the Republic
  • John Boersma on his article, “‘Two Going Together’: The Alliance of Politics and Philosophy in Aristotle’s Ethics

Wed., July 21 – Interpretation 47 (1&2), Winter & Summer 2021

  • Simeon Burns on Lewis Fallis, “The Political Significance of Friendship in Plato’s Lysis
  • Charles Cacciatore on reviews by Kevin J. Burns of Will Jordan, “From Reflection and Choice,” & by Jonathan Yudelman of Pierre Manent, Natural Law and Human Rights

Wed., Jan. 6 – Interpretation 47 (1), Fall 2020

  • James Stoner on Anthony Vecchio & J.A. Cohen, “Leo Strauss’s Walgreen Lectures on Machiavelli”

Wed., Jan. 13 – Guest Speaker: Santiago Legarre, Universidad Católica Argentina

  • “Overruling Louisiana: Horizontal Stare Decisis and the Concept of Precedent in the Supreme Court’s 2020 Term”

Wed., Jan. 20 – Inauguration Watch Party

  • We’ll watch the presidential inauguration and the inaugural address live

Wed., Jan. 27 – History of Political Thought 41 (3), Autumn 2020

  • Alex Orwin on Jeremy Mhire, “Reassessing the Turn Dramatically: The Birth of Political Philosophy in Plato’s Phaedo
  • Jacob Harvey on J. Matthew Hoye, “Leviathan Against the City”

Wed., Feb. 3 – Political Theory 48 (6), December 2020

  • Alex Cole on Todd Hedrick’s review of The Habermas-Rawls Debate by James Gordon Finlayson
  • James Stoner on “The Inheritance of Loss: Symposium on Jeffrey K. Tulis and Nicole Mellow, Legacies of Losing in American Politics

Wed., Feb. 10 – American Political Thought 9 (4), Fall 2020

  • Charles Cacciatore on Sanford Kessler, “Locke and Tocqueville on Religious Foundationalism”
  • William Schulz on Brian Schoen, “Francis Lieber on Institutional Liberty, Secession, and the Modern State”

Wed., Feb. 17 – no meeting (Ash Wednesday)

Wed., Feb. 24 – History of Political Thought 41 (4), Winter 2020

  • Charles Cacciatore on D.I. Halikias, “Adam Smith on the Scottish Highlands and the Origins of Commercial Society”
  • Thomas Cloud on L. Cornelissen, “‘There Can Be No Room for a Sovereign Body’: The Philosophical Roots of F.A. Hayek’s Hostility to Democracy”

Wed., Mar. 3 – European Journal of Political Theory 20 (1), January 2021

  • Alex Cole on Jeffrey Church, “The Veil of Philanthropy: Kant on the Political Benefits of Dissimulation and Simulation”
  • Lendon Little on Christopher Holman, “Pierre Clastres as comparative political theorist: The democratic potential of the new political anthropology”

Wed., Mar. 10 – Political Theory 49 (1), February 2021

  • Charles Cacciatore on Andrew Bibby, review of Keegan Callanan, Montesquieu’s Liberalism and the Problem of Universal Politics
  • Thomas Cloud on Davide Panagia, “On the Possibilities of a Political Theory of Algorithms”

Wed., Mar. 17 – Theory in the “Top Three”

  • Jacob Harvey on Christopher Brooke, “Nonintrinsic Egalitarianism, from Hobbes to Rousseau” (Journal of Politics, 82 (4): 1406-1417)
  • James Stoner on Lee Ward, “Equity and Political Economy in Thomas Hobbes” (AJPS 64 (4) 823-835)

Wed., Mar. 24 – American Political Thought 10 (1), Winter 2021

  • Alex Cole on Geoffrey Kurtz, “American Socialism and American Political Culture: Irving Howe’s Conciliation with (and Dissent from) Individualism”
  • Charles Cacciatore on Svetozar Minkov and Rasoul Namazi, “‘Religion and the Commonweal in the Tradition of Political Philosophy’: An Unpublished Lecture by Leo Strauss”

Wed., Mar. 31 – More Theory in the “Top Three”

  • Alexander Orwin on Linda Rabieh, “Gender, Education, and Enlightened Politics in Plato’s Laws
  • James Stoner on Jordan Jochim, “From Tyrannicide to Revolution: Aristotle on the Politics of Comradeship”

Wed., Apr. 7 – History of Political Thought 42 (1), Spring 2021

  • Jacob Harvey on Anna Marisa Schön, “Medieval Alternatives to the Nation-State: The Concept of the Nation in the Vulgate”

Wed., Apr. 14 – Political Theory 49 (2), April 2021 / History of Political Thought 42 (1) [cont.] [SESSION WILL BEGIN AT 11:10 AM]

  • William Schulz on William Levine, “Heinrich Heine’s Critique of the Present: Poetry, Revolution, and the ‘Rights of Life'” [Political Theory]
  • Lendon Little on Robert Stone, “Machiavelli’s Rhetoric of Provocation: The Examples of Fabius and Scipio” [History of Political Thought]

Wed., Apr. 21 – Laehn & Laehn, eds., Welcoming the Other: Student, Stranger, and Divine (Lexington Books, 2021)

  • Lendon Little on ch. 5, Peter A. Petrakis, “The Poets and Professor”
  • Thomas Cloud on ch. 3, Andrea D. Conque, “Toward a Politics of Care: Heidegger, Freedom, and Moral-Political Posture of Authentic Solicitude”

Wed., Sept. 9 – Political Theory 48 (3), June 2020

  • Simeon Burns on Desmond Jagmohan, “Between Race and Nation: Marcus Garvey and the Politics of Self-Determination”
  • Stacy Stingle on Jonathan Havercroft, “Review Essay: Rethinking Sovereignty in an Era of Resurgent Nationalism and Populism”

Wed., Sept. 16 – American Political Thought 9 (3), Summer 2020

  • Jacob Harvey on Elliot Bartky & Stephen Clouse, “Orestes Brownson on the Democratic Principle and the Fourteenth Amendment”
  • Alex Cole on Rogers Smith, “Islands in the Churning Stream: Analyzing Xenophobia and Democracy in the Twenty-First Century”

Wed., Sept. 23 – Review of Politics 82 (2), Spring 2020

  • Thomas Cloud on Alyssa Cortes, “Zeal without Fanaticism: Jean-Jacques Rousseau on the Religion of the Citizen”
  • Simeon Burns on Thomas Meredith, “The Radical Goals of Slave Morality in Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality

Wed., Sept. 30 – Trepanier, ed., Eric Voegelin’s Asian Political Thought

  • Alexander Orwin on Brendan Purcell, “The Bhagavad Gita: An Incomplete Breakthrough within the Drama of Humanity”
  • James Stoner on John von Heyking, “The Figure of Socrates and its Significance for Liberal Education in Asia”

Wed., Oct. 7 – Political Science Reviewer 44 (1), 2020

  • Alex Cole on Lee Trepanier, “What Can Political Science Learn from Literature?”
  • Rachel Alexander on Catherine Craig & Sara MacDonald, “Wit’s Justice in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics

Wed., Oct. 14 – Trepanier & Havers, eds., Walk Away: When the Political Left Turns Right

  • William Schulz on Lee Trepanier, “‘Mugged by Reality’: The Neoconservative Turn”
  • Alex Cole on Pedro Blas González, “The Failure of Marxism through the Frankfurt School and Jürgen Habermas”

Wed., Oct. 21 – Political Theory 48 (4&5), August & October 2020

  • James Stoner on Rousseliere, Frank, & McCormick, “Labor Republicanism: Symposium on Alex Gourevitch’s From Slavery to the Cooperative Commonwealth
  • Charles Cacciatore on  Amy Gais, “The Politics of Hypocrisy: Baruch Spinoza and Pierre Bayle on Hypocritical Conformity”

Wed., Oct. 28 – Review of Politics 82 (3), Summer 2020

  • Rachel Alexander on Daniel DiLeo, “Aristotle’s Manipulative Maxims”
  • James Stoner on Eugene Heath, “Sir John Davies on Custom and the Common Law”

Wed., Nov. 4 – POST-MORTEM on the ELECTION (or if necessary, a tutorial on the Electoral College)

Wed., Nov. 11 – History of Political Thought 41 (2), Summer 2020

  • William Schulz on L. Ramelet, “Pufendorf’s Solution to the Puzzle of Consent and Natural Law”
  • Charles Cacciatore on K. McNeil, “An Overview of Political Authority in Medieval Europe: Empire, Papacy, and the Rights of Infidels”

Wed., Nov. 18 – Review of Politics 82 (4), Fall 2020

  • Alexander Orwin on Humeira Iqtidar, “Theorizing Popular Sovereignty in the Colony: Abul A ‘la Maududi’s ‘Theodemocracy'”
  • Alex Cole on Antong Liu, “‘The Constant Companion of Virtue’: On the Dilemma and Political Implications of Kantian Honor”

Wed., Nov. 25 – Thanksgiving Break

Wed., Dec. 2 – Interpretation 47 (1), Fall 2020

  • Charles Cacciatore on  Kojima Hidenobu, “The Value of the Feudalistic Relationship in Edmund Burke’s Political Economy”
  • James Stoner on Anthony Vecchio & J.A. Cohen, “Leo Strauss’s Walgreen Lectures on Machiavelli”

Wed., May 13 – American Political Thought 9 (2), Spring 2020

  • Charles Cacciatore on Justin Buckley Dyer, “Reason, Revelation, and the Law of Nature in James Wilson’s Lectures on Law”
  • James Stoner on Daniel Cullen, “Roger Scruton, 1944-2020: Conservatism Unmodified”

Wed., June 10 – American Political Thought 9 (2) & American Political Science Review 114 (1)

  • Stacy Stingle on John Holzwarth, “Nietzsche and Emerson” (book review), American Political Thought 9 (2) (Spring 2020)
  • William Schulz on William M. Curtis, “Democracy versus Neoliberalism: The Second Dewey-Lippmann Debate,” American Political Thought 9 (2) (Spring 2020)
  • Thomas Cloud and Gargi Aleaz on Daniel Luban, “What Is Spontaneous Order?” American Political Science Review 114 (1) (March 2020)

Wed., July 8 – American Journal of Political Science 64 (1) & Journal of Politics 82 (2)

  • Conrad Sharpe on Lior Erez & Cecile Laborde, “Cosmopolitan Patriotism as a Civic Ideal,” AJPS 64 (1) (Jan 2020)
  • Rachel Alexander on Alexander Livingston, “Power for the Powerless: Martin Luther King Jr’s Late Theory of Civil Disobedience,” Journal of Politics 82 (2) (April 2020)

Wed., August 12 – Interpretation 46 (3) (Summer 2020)

  • James Stoner on Devin Stauffer, “Locke on the Limits of Human Understanding”
  • Charles Cacciatore on Ying Zhang, “A Guide to The Guide: Some Observations on ‘How to Begin to Study The Guide of the Perplexed‘”

Wed., Jan. 15 – History of Political Thought 40 (4), Winter 2019

  • Simeon Burns on F.C.C. Sheffield, “The Greek Philosophers Against Arendt”
  • Jacob Harvey on M.J. White, , “‘How Ius (Right) Became Distinguished from Lex (Law): Two Early Episodes in the Story”

Wed., Jan. 22 – GUEST SPEAKER: Kalling Heck, Department of English/ Program in Screen Arts

  • on his forthcoming book, After Authority: Global Art Cinema and Political Transition (Rutgers, 2020)

Wed., Jan. 29 – America Political Thought 8 (4), Fall 2019

  • Lendon Little on Philip D. Bunn, “Communities Are All that’s Substantial: Kurt Vonnegut’s Post-Liberal Political Thought”
  • James Stoner on Kevin Portteus, “Sovereignty, the Law of Nations, and Immigration in the American Founding”

Wed., Feb. 5 – Political Theory 47 (6), December 2019

  • Logan Istre on Teresa M. Bejan, “‘Since all the World is mad, why should I not be so?’ Mary Astell on Equality, Hierarchy, and Ambition”

Wed., Feb. 12 – Review of Politics 82 (1), Winter 2020

  • Nathan Mateer on George Duke, “Aristotle and Natural Law”
  • Thomas Cloud on Nathan J. Pinkoski, “Alasdair MacIntyre and Leo Strauss on the Activity of Philosophy”

Wed., Feb. 19 – GUEST SPEAKER: Michael Kochin, Tel Aviv University [noon in Stubbs 210]

  • “Showdown at Fort Miamis: War & Diplomacy in the Anglo-American Crisis of 1794”

Wed., Mar. 4 – Political Science Reviewer, 43 (1), 2019

  • Thomas Cloud on Matthew D. Mendham, “A Veiled Antinomian? On Straussian and Subversive Interpretations of Rousseau’s Life and Thought”
  • Nathan Mateer on “Author Meets Critics: Yoram Hazony’s The Virtue of Nationalism

Wed., Mar. 11 – Political Theory, 48 (1), February 2020

  • Simeon Burns on Hagar Kotef, “Violent Attachments”

Wed., Mar. 18 – American Political Thought, 9 (1), Winter 2020

  • Jake Harvey on Yuji Takayama, “Tocqueville on Pantheism: The Theory of Democratic Despotism”
  • Logan Istre on Jordan T. Cash, “George Sutherland and the Contextualization of Executive Power”

Wed., Mar. 25 – Interpretation, 46 (2), Spring 2020

  • Lendon Little on Thomas L. Pangle, “A Synoptic Introduction to the Ontological Background of Aristotle’s Political Theory”

Wed., Apr. 1 – Interpretation, 46 (2), Spring 2020

  • Alexander Orwin on James H. Nichols, Jr., “A Discourse on the Beginning of Tacitus’s Histories”
  • James Stoner on Rong Hengying, “The Reception of Leo Strauss in China: Two Chinese Straussians, between Theological Temptation and Political Criticism”

Wed., Apr. 8 – Political Science Reviewer, 43 (2), 2019

  • Gabriela Vitela on Nathan Schlueter, “Five Questions for Antiliberal Conservatives”
  • James Stoner on James Read, “From Missouri Compromise to ‘House Divided’: Abraham Lincoln, Sectional Pacts, and Majority Rule”

Wed., Apr. 15 – CLASSIC ARTICLES

Wed., Apr. 22 – Political Theory 48 (2), April 2020

  • Victoria Wells on Wiarimu Njoya, “The Progress of Law: Aeschylus’ Oresteia in Feminist and Critical Theory”
  • Lendon Little on Jordan Jochim, “Aristotle, Tyranny, and the Small-Souled Subject”

Wed., Apr. 29 – History of Political Thought 41 (1), Spring 2020

  • Stacy Stingle on Jan Maximilian Robitzsch, “‘I Wrote it in Part Because of You’: Broch and Arendt on Human Rights”
  • Alexander Orwin on Banu Turnaoğlu, “Despotism (Istibdad) in Ottoman Political Thought”

Wed., August 28 – Welcome and Organizational Lunch

  • lunch provided this week courtesy of the Voegelin Institute

Wed., Sept. 4 – Trump and Political Philosophy: Patriotism, Cosmopolitanism, and Civic Virtue, ed. Sable & Torres (Palgrave, 2018)

  • Alexander Orwin on Susan Shell, “Civic Dignity in the Age of Donald Trump: A Kantian Perspective”
  • Jacob Harvey on Kevin Slack, “Thomas Hobbes’ Defense of Liberalism, Populism and the Rise of Donald Trump”

Wed., Sept. 11 – History of Political Thought 40 (3), Autumn 2019

  • James Stoner on George Duke, “Aristotle on Constitutional and Legal Reform”
  • Simeon Burns on R. LeMoine, “‘We Don’t Need No (Foreign) Education’: Plato’s Hippias Major as a Critique of Spartan Law”

Wed., Sept. 18 – Review of Politics 81 (3), Summer 2019

  • Thomas Cloud on Catherine Zuckert, “Machiavelli: Radical Democratic Political Theorist?”
  • Conrad Sharpe on Aaron Maltais, Jonas Hultin Rosenberg, & Ludvig Beckman, “The Demos and Its Critics”

Wed., Sept. 25 – Interpretation 45 (3), Summer 2019

  • Thomas Cloud on Thomas Pangle, “The Socratic Founding of Economic Science”
  • Dalton Ansley on book reviews by PatrickCoby, Douglas Kreis, and Lee Ward

Wed., Oct. 2 – Trump and Political Philosophy:  PCCV / LST

  • Lendon Litte on You Jin Ko, “Donald Trump: Shakespeare’s Lord of Misrule”

Wed., Oct. 9 – Trump and Political Philosophy: Leadership, Statesmanship, and Tyranny, ed. Torres & Sable (Palgrave, 2018)

  • Alexander Orwin on Christopher Colmo, “Trump, Alfarabi, and the Open Society”
  • Logan Istre on Murray Dry, “American Constitutionalism from Hamilton to Lincoln to Trump”

Wed., Oct. 16 – American Political Thought 8 (3), Summer 2019

  • Jacob Harvey on Steven Bilakovics, “The Vice of Our Virtues: Tocqueville and the Constitution of the American Dream”
  • Victoria Wells  on Ben Peterson, “Republican Institutionalism for a ‘Government of Laws’: The Polybian Political Science of John Adams”

Wed., Oct. 23 – Political Theory  47 (5), October 2019

  • Lendon Little on Alec Dinnin, “Ortega y Gasset in the Ruins of Empire”
  • Conrad Sharpe on Heikki Haara & Ti Stuart-Buttle, “Beyond Justice: Pufendorf and Locke on the Desire for Esteem”

Wed., Oct. 30 – Review of Politics 81 (4), Fall 2019

  • Simeon Burns on Alexandra Oprea, “Pluralism and the General Will: The Roman and Spartan Models in Rousseau’s Social Contract
  • Alexander Orwin on Eric Cheng, “Aristotelian Realism: Political Friendship and the Problem of Stability”

Wed., Nov. 6 – Robinson, Trepanier, & Whitney, eds., Eric Voegelin Today: Voegelin’s Thought in the 21st Century

  • James Stoner on ch. 1, David D. Corey, “Rethinking Eric Voegelin’s Interpretation of Liberalism and its History”
  • Dalton Ansley on ch. 7, Scott Segrest, “The Dream of the Caliphate and the Loss of Reality: An Application of Eric Voegelin’s ‘The Origins of Totalitarianism’ and ‘In Search of the Ground'”

Wed., Nov. 13 – Interpretation 46 (1), Fall 2019

  • Lendon Little on Hannes Kerber, “Leo Strauss on Exoteric Writing”
  • Alexander Orwin on his review of Jacob Howland, Glaucon’s Fate: History, Myth, and Character in Plato’s Republic

Wed., Nov. 20 – Public Affairs Journals: City Journal and American Affairs

  • James Stoner on City Journal (Autumn 2019)
  • who on American Affairs, 3 (3) (Autumn 2019)

Mon., Nov. 25 – GUEST SPEAKER: Sean Illing (LSU PhD 2014), Vox.com

  • “A Political Theorist Working in the World”
  • lunch provided by the Voegelin Institute

Wed., Dec. 4 – Public Affairs Journals: First Things, City Journal, The New Criterion,

  • James Stoner on Heather MacDonald, “Harvard Admits its Preferences,” and James Hankins, “Thinking about the Ottoman Threat,” in The New Criterion, 38 (3): 4-12, 13-18 (November 2019)
  • Jacob Harvey on articles in First Things, November or December 2019

Wed., Jan. 9 – Interpretation 45 (1), Fall 2018

  • John Boersma on Lorraine Smith Pangle, “The Radicalness of Strauss’s On Tyranny
  • Nathan Mateer  on Matthew S. Brogdon, “‘Who Would Be Free, Themselves Must Strike the First Blow’: Revolt and Rhetoric in Douglass’s Heroic Slave and Melville’s Benito Cereno

Wed., Jan. 16 – History of Political Thought 39 (4), Winter 2018

  • Stephen Wolfe on S. A. Morgan Smith, “James Madison, Religious Liberty, and Union”
  • Simeon Burns on J. P. W. Muller, “The Problem of Praise: Plato’s Protagoras Against Free Society”
  • James Stoner on W. McCormick, “The Role of Natural Law in Politics According to Thomas Aquinas”

Wed., Jan. 23 – Political Science Reviewer 42 (1), 2018

  • Alex Orwin on Mark Blitz, “Heidegger During the War”
  • Michael Reed on Grant Havers, “Leo Strauss on Nazism: A Theological-Political Interpretation”

Wed., Jan. 30 – American Political Thought 7 (4), Fall 2018

  • Stephen Wolfe on James R. Zink & Michelle Schwarze, “James Wilson’s Science of Politics and the Moral Psychology of American Constitutionalism”
  • James Stoner on Stephen F. Knott, “The Four Faces of Alexander Hamilton: Jefferson’s Hamilton, Hollywood’s Hamilton, Miranda’s Hamilton, and the Real Hamilton”

Wed., Feb. 6 – Guest: Santiago Legarre, Universidad Católica Argentina

Wed., Feb. 13 – Political Theory 46 (6), December 2018

  • M. Riley on Peter D. Thomas, “Refiguring the Subaltern”
  • James Stoner on Anne Phillips, “Gender and Modernity”

Wed., Feb. 20 – Review of Politics 81 (1), Winter 2019

  • Alexander Orwin on John M. Warner, “The Friendless Republic: Freedom, Faction, and Friendship in Machiavelli’s Discourses
  • John Boersma on Beau Shaw, “‘The God of This Lower World’: Leo Strauss’s Critique of Historicism in Natural Right and History
  • Nathan Mateer on Eva Odzuck, “War by Other Means? Incentives for Power Seekers in Thomas Hobbes’s Political Philosophy”

Wed., Feb. 27 – Political Theory 47 (1), February 2019

  • Simeon Burns on Ella Myers, “Beyond the Psychological Wage: DuBois on White Dominion”
  • James Stoner on “Review Symposium: On Partisanship (Muirhead, Weinstock, Urbinati, White & Ypi)”

Wed., Mar. 13 – American Political Thought 8 (1), Winter 2019

  • Stephen Wolfe on Matthew Berry, “The Alt-Right and the Religious Impulse:  A Tocquevillian Analysis”
  • John Boersma on Sean Beienburg, “Progressivism and States’ Rights: Constitutional Dialogue between the States and Federal Courts on Minimum Wages and Liberty of Contract”
  • Alexander Orwin on Brian Danoff, “Invisible Man and Democratic Leadership”

Wed., Mar. 20 – History of Political Thought 40 (1), Spring 2019

  • James Stoner on C. Atack, “Plato, Foucault, and the Conceptualization of Parrhesia
  • Nathan Mateer on A. Verza, “From a New Vision of History to an Early Sociology of Power and Civilization in Ibn Khaldun’s Masterpiece”
  • Cory Sukala on A. Bardin, “Materialism and Right Reason in Hobbes’s Political Treatises: A Troubled Foundation for Civil Science”

Wed., Mar. 27 – Reading Catherine Zuckert on Plato and Machiavelli

In preparation for Catherine  Zuckert’s keynote lecture at our Spring Conference, we’ll examine a chapter each from her books Plato’s Philosophers (Chicago, 2009) and Machiavelli’s Politics (Chicago, 2017).  The links below can be accessed by LSU faculty and students when logged in to myLSU.  [Students in brackets will introduce the discussion.]

  • Plato’s Philosophers, Introduction: Plato’s Dramatalogy [John Boersma]
  • Machiavelli’s Politics, Introduction: Reading Machiavelli [Conrad Sharpe]

Wed., Apr. 3 – Guest: Paul Caringella (Eric Voegelin’s Research Assistant & Trustee of the Voegelin Literary Trust)

  • Remembering Eric Voegelin

Wed., Apr. 10 – Interpretation 45 (2), Spring 2019

  • James Stoner on David N. Levy, “Aristotle’s ‘Reply’ to Machiavelli on Morality

Wed., Apr. 24 – Journals of Politics, Religion, and Culture [First Things, City Journal, The New Criterion, American Affairs]

  • Cory Sukala on Matthew Milliner, “Evangelicals and Zen Masters,” First Things, April 2019
  • Gabi Vitela on Jacob Siegel, “Managed Obsolescence: Homelessness in America’s Gilded Cities,” American Affairs 3(1) (Spring 2019)
  • who on what?

Wed., Aug. 22 – Organizational welcome (lunch provided this time!)

  • Alex Orwin on Shalini Satkunanandan, “Drawing Rein: Shame and Reverence in Plato’s Law-Bound Polity and Ours,” Political Theory 46 (3): 331-356 (June 2018)
  • James Stoner on Lucas Swaine, “Freedom of Thought as a Basic Liberty,” Political Theory 46 (3): 405-425 (June 2018)

Wed., Aug. 29 – Political Theory 46 (4), August 2018:

  • Simeon Burns on Christopher Meckstroth, “Hospitality, or Kant’s Critique of Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights”
  • M. Riley on Alexander Livingston, “Fidelity to Truth: Gandhi and the Genealogy of Civil Disobedience”
  • Stephen Wolfe on Sonja Graf, “‘A Trespass against the Whole Species’: Universal Crime and Sovereign Founding in John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government

Wed., Sept. 5 – History of Political Thought 39 (2), Summer 2018

  • Dalton Ansley on A. Schriefl, “Plato on the Incompatibility if Wealth and Justice: The Property Arrangements in the Republic
  • John Boersma on B. Buekenhout, “Aristotle’s Peculiar Analysis of Monarchy”

Wed., Sept. 12 – Review of Politics 80 (3), Summer 2018

  • Conrad Sharpe on Dana Jalbert Stauffer, “‘The Most Common Sickness of our Time’: Tocqueville on Democratic Restlessness”
  • Nathan Mateer on Chris Barker, “Dostoevsky and Education through Punishment”

Wed., Sept. 19 – NO MEETING

Wed., Sept. 26 – American Political Thought 7 (3), Summer 2018

  • Nathan Mateer on Steven B. Smith, “Lincoln and the Politics of the ‘Towering Genius'”
  • Thomas Cloud on Brendan J. Wright, “Religious Faith as Political Praxis: Walter Rauschenbusch, Incarnational Religion, and the Social Gospel Cultus”
  • John Boersma on Benjamin Patrick Newton, “Mr. Justice Hobbes? On the Jurisprudence of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.”

Wed., Oct. 3 – Interpretation 44 (3), Spring 2018

  • Conrad Sharpe on Ronald Beiner & Michael Allen Gillespie, “Exchange on Nietzsche’s Final Teaching
  • James Stoner on Rodrigo Chacon, “Philosophy as Awareness of Fundamental Problems, or Leo Strauss’s Debt to Heidegger’s Aristotle”

Wed., Oct. 10 – continued: Interpretation 44 (3), Spring 2018

  • Alexander Orwin on José A. Colon, “Review Essay: What Is Wrong with Human Rights? La loi naturale et les droits de l’homme by Pierre Manent”

Wed., Oct. 17 – History of Political Thought 39 (3), Autumn 2018

  • James Stoner on T. Varacalli, “Thomas Aquinas, the Thomists, and Political Consent”
  • AUTHOR PRESENTS: Stephen Wolfe, “The American Founding and the Harmony of Reason and Revelation: A Rediscovery of Calvinist Sources” [available to LSU students and faculty logged into “myLSU”: https://filestogeaux.lsu.edu/public/download.php?FILE=poston/15217kaIgS8]

Wed., Oct. 24 – Political Theory 46 (5), October 2018

  • Gabriela Vitela on Monique Deveaux, “Poor-Led Social Movements and Global Justice”
  • Nathan Mateer on Daniel Luban, “Hobbesian Slavery”

Wed., Oct. 31 – Review of Politics 80 (4), Fall 2018

  • John Boersma on Lorraine Smith Pangle, “The Anatomy of Courage in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics
  • Alexander Orwin on Ahmed Ali Siddiqi, “Political Rationalism and the Theological Alternative in Alfarabi’s Book of Religion”

Wed., Nov. 7 – L. Trepanier & E. Callahan, eds., Tradition v. Rationalism: Voegelin, Oakeshott, Hayek, and Others (Lexington Books, 2018)

  • Dalton Ansley on Grant Havers, “Wittgenstein and the Athens-Jerusalem Problem”
  • Thomas Cloud on Colin Cordner, “The Diagnosis of Scientism: Eric Voegelin and Michael Polanyi on Science and Philosophy”
  • James Stoner on Timothy Fuller, “Liberalism and the Prospect of Rational Order in Hobbes’s Political Philosophy and the Responses of Oakeshott, Strauss, and Voegelin”

Wed., Nov. 14 – American Political Science Review 112 (4), November 2018, & American Journal of Political Science 62 (4), October 2018

  • Simeon Burns on Samuel Bagg, “The Power of the Multitude: Answering Epistemic Challenges to Democracy” [APSR]
  • Conrad Sharpe on Michael Lamb, “Between Presumption and Despair: Augustine’s Hope for the Commonwealth” [APSR]
  • James Stoner on Richard Avramenko & Michael Promisel, “When Toleration Becomes a Vice: Naming Aristotle’s Third Unnamed Virtue” [AJPS]

Wed., Nov. 21 – no meeting (Thanksgiving)

Wed., Nov. 28 – Journals of Politics, Religion, and Culture

  • Gabriela Vitela on Timothy Crimmins, “Incarceration as Incapacitation: An Intellectual History,” in American Affairs, vol. 2, no. 3, Fall 2018
  • Cory Sukala on Julius Krein, “The Three Fusions,” in American Affairs, vol. 2, no. 3, Fall 2018
  • Stephen Wolfe on James Poulos, “The Digital Return of Memory,” in American Affairs, vol. 2, no. 3, Fall 2018

Spring 2018

Wed., Jan. 10 – Organizational welcome (lunch provided this time!)

Wed., Jan. 17 – CANCELLED due to university closure

Wed., Jan. 24 – POSTPONED due to Department meeting

Wed., Jan. 31 – Political Theory 45(6), December 2017:

  • Josh Bowman on Diego Rossello, “All in the (Human) Family? Species Aristocratism in the Return of Human Dignity”
  • James Stoner on Sergei Prozorov, “Foucault’s Affirmative Biopolitics: Cynic Parrhesia and the Biopower of the Powerless”
  • Thomas Cloud on Andrew Norris, “Michael Oakeshott and the Postulates of Individuality”

Wed., Feb. 7 – History of Political Thought 38 (4), Winter 2017

  • Alex Orwin on A. Tugendhaft, “Sovereignty and the Gods: Ugarite Literature in the Hittite Empire”
  • Simeon Burns on R.S. Leib, “Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise and Lessing’s Fragmanenstreit
  • Stephen Wolfe on E. Brandom, “Violence in Translation: Georges Sorel, Liberalism and Totalitarianism from Weimar to Woodstock”

Wed., Feb. 21 – American Political Thought 6 (4), Fall 2017

  • Tim Klein on Alexander Jech, “What Has Athens to Do with Rome? Tocqueville and the New Republicanism”
  • Nathan Mateer on Gregory Collins, “Beyond Politics and Natural Law: The Anticipation of New Originalist Tenets in the Constitutional Thought of Frederick Douglass”
  • James Stoner on Nicholas Buccola, ed., “James Baldwin, William F. Buckley, Jr., and the American Dream: A Symposium”

Wed., Feb. 28 – Review of Politics 79 (4), Fall 2017

  • John Boersma on Ruth Abbey, Review Essay: “On Friendship”
  • Alex Orwin on Book Reviews

Wed., Mar. 7 – Interpretation 44 (1), Fall 2017

  • Alex Orwin on Nicholas J. Higgins, “Bethlehemic Trilogy: Political Apology of the Davidic Kingship”
  • James Stoner on Jason W. Blakely, “Does Liberalism Lack Virtue? A Critique of Alasdair MacIntyre’s Reactionary Politics”

Wed., Mar. 14 – Political Theory in the “Big Three”

  • Stephen Wolfe on Lisa Herzog, “Durkheim on Social Justice: The Argument from ‘Organic Solidarity,'”  American Political Science Review 112 (1): 112-124
  • John Boersma on Anthony Lister Ives, “Frederick Douglass’s Reform Textualism: An Alternative Jurisprudence Consistent with the Fundamental Purpose of Law,” Journal of Politics 80 (1): 88-102
  • Michael Reed on Schmuel Nili, “Injustice Abroad, Authority at Home? Democracy, Systemic Effects, and Global Wrongs,” American Journal of Political Science 62 (1): 72-83

Wed., Mar. 21 – Josh Bowman, “Democratizing Religion and the Religion of Democracy: Theorists Responding to Theorist”

  • comment on Chiara Cordelli, “Democratizing Organized Religion,” Journal of Politics 79 (2): 576-590

Wed., Apr. 4 – Political Theory 46(2), April 2018

  • James Stoner on Sophie Smith, “Democracy and the Body Politic from Aristotle to Hobbes”
  • Thomas Cloud, on Pablo Kalmanovitz, “Sovereignty, Pluralism, and Regular War: Wolff and Vattel’s Enlightenment Critique of Just War”
  • John Boersma on James Pattison, “The Case for the Nonideal Morality of War: Beyond Revisionism versus Traditionalism in Just War Theory”
  • Stephen Wolfe on Paul Sagar, “Burke Unboxed”

Wed., Apr. 11 – John Tomasi, Free Market Fairness (Princeton, 2012): preview for lecture Fri., Apr. 13

Wed., Apr. 18 – Review of Politics 80 (1), Winter 2018

  • James Stoner on Robert Kraynak, “The Origins of ‘Social Justice’ in the Natural Law Philosophy of Antonio Rosmini”
  • John Boersma on Colloquium on Robert Bartlett’s Sophistry and Political Philosophy: Protagoras’ Challenge to Socrates

Wed., Apr. 25 – History of Political Thought 39 (1), Spring 2018

  • Nathan Mateer on A. Avgousti, “An Overlooked Form of Demotic Power: Reputation in Plato’s Republic”
  • Alex Orwin on M.S. Kochin, “Freedom and Empire in Josephus”
  • Josh Bowman on A. Walsh, “John Streater and the Saxon Republic”