I just had an article published in Libertarian Papers:
“Immanent Politics, Participatory Democracy, and the Pursuit of Eudaimonia,” Libertarian Papers 3, 16 (2011).
Here’s the abstract:
This paper builds on the burgeoning tradition of Aristotelian liberalism. It identifies and critiques a fundamental inequality inherent in the nature of the state and, in particular, the liberal representative-democratic state: namely, an institutionalized inequality in authority. The analysis draws on and synthesizes disparate philosophical and political traditions: Aristotle’s virtue ethics and politics, Locke’s natural rights and idea of equality in authority in the state of nature (sans state of nature), the New Left’s conception of participatory democracy (particularly as described in a number of under-utilized essays by Murray Rothbard and Don Lavoie), and philosophical anarchism. The deleterious consequences of this fundamental institutionalized inequality are explored, including on social justice and economic progress, on individual autonomy, on direct and meaningful civic and political participation, and the creation and maintenance of other artificial inequalities as well as the exacerbation of natural inequalities (economic and others). In the process, the paper briefly sketches a neo-Aristotelian theory of virtue ethics and natural individual rights, for which the principle of equal and total liberty for all is of fundamental political importance. And, finally, a non-statist conception of politics is developed, with politics defined as discourse and deliberation between equals (in authority) in joint pursuit of eudaimonia (flourishing, well-being).
Follow the link above for the pdf and MS Word files as well as discussion of the article on the Libertarian Papers website. You can also download the pdf from my Mises.org Literature archive.
Older versions of this article were presented at the Austrian Scholars Conference 2008 and appeared in my doctoral dissertation (May 2009) as chapters six and seven.
[Cross-posted at The Libertarian Standard.]
Part of my college essays series: This is one of the essays I wrote during the political theory general exam for my PhD. The exam was an approximately 15-hour marathon session, involving 6 out of 12 essay questions, for a final total of 33 double-spaced pages written without access to any notes or sources.
In this essay I will address how the American framers conceived of liberty as well as how the Constitution they designed was supposed to secure it and whether it has in fact done so. Stating my conclusions right out, which I will then seek to explain and justify as best I can in the space and time allotted, I think that though the Constitution was a grand and very admirable attempt at securing liberty it was at the outset doomed to failure in the long run in large part due to inner contradictions and inadequate safeguards.
By and large the framers, and the American people in general, conceived of liberty in Lockean and republican terms. Locke’s influence was particularly prevalent owing largely to the influence of John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon’s Cato’s Letters, which popularized and enhanced the popularity of Lockean individual rights arguments. This is not to neglect the importance of republicanism and of Christianity; the framers in particular were steeped in republicanism, and Christianity was indeed a formative influence on the early Americans, particularly through the thousands of fiery political sermons of the day, many of which also employed Lockean rights language (such as Elisha Williams in particular, but also Jonathan Mayhew and John Allen).
However, liberalism and republicanism were in tension from the outset, and Christianity has been employed effectively in support of both sides. On the one hand, the sole justification and purpose of government is the protection of each and every individual’s rights to life, liberty, and property. Consistently applied this means that all morals legislation and economic regulation are unjust and invalid. On the other hand, republicans like Algernon Sidney and John Adams feared that liberty unrestrained will degenerate into license, that virtue ought to be promoted and/or required, and vice discouraged and/or prohibited, with the coercive and legal power of the state; and that republican or civic virtue is necessary and must be somehow enforced and inculcated in the people if liberty and the republic are to be sustained. While some liberals have and continue to deny the virtue of virtue, ethical neutrality or relativism is not an inherent feature of liberalism and many liberals do indeed hold and advocate firm moral convictions.
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Part of my college essays series: This is one of the essays I wrote during the political theory general exam for my PhD. The exam was an approximately 15-hour marathon session, involving 6 out of 12 essay questions, for a final total of 33 double-spaced pages written without access to any notes or sources.
The cycle of decline from the best regime to the worst is an important aspect of Plato’s Republic, and not merely for the mundane purposes of history and political science. In elaborating the logic of this decline, Plato couples his discussion of the rank order and decline of the five regimes with five corresponding types of man. For this reason it is necessary to understand the philosophical anthropology underlying Plato’s political philosophy as well as the anthropological principle, i.e., that the city is man writ large. Additionally, and perhaps of equal importance as a clue to Plato’s primary purpose in writing the Republic, we are shown (purposefully?) in the discussion of the cycle of decline the utopian nature of Plato’s “city in speech.”
The five regimes in order of best to worst are kingship or aristocracy, timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny. The corresponding types of man are the kingly or aristocratic man, the timocratic man, the oligarchic man, the democratic man, and the tyrant or tyrannical man. Before delving into the cycle of decline and the natures of these different types of regimes and men, it is necessary to briefly explicate Plato’s philosophical anthropology.
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First installment in my new college essays series: This is one of the essays I wrote during the political theory general exam for my PhD. The exam was an approximately 15-hour marathon session, involving 6 out of 12 essay questions, for a final total of 33 double-spaced pages written without access to any notes or sources.
In Thoughts on Machiavelli, Leo Strauss wrote that “Machiavelli does not bring to light a single phenomenon of any fundamental importance which was not fully known to the classics.” I have not yet read Strauss’s book, so I cannot speak for him regarding what precisely he meant by this statement but I suspect that what he meant bears some similarity to a growing sense within me that the ancient Greeks developed, at least in essence and prototypical form, every or most major philosophical positions that have been advocated at one time or another in modernity. If anything is fundamentally new about modern political philosophy, I think that it lies in the sheer predominance and popular acceptance of certain of these philosophical positions: namely, those related to the positivist-empiricist-historicist paradigm of our age. Modernity is plagued by a host of artificial dichotomies, reified abstractions such as realism-idealism, rationalism-empiricism, mind-body, Self-Other, subjective-objective, science vs. philosophy and foundationless value-judgments, and so forth. Classical or premodern political philosophy might be characterized by the search for right order, modern political philosophy by the search for order simplicitor, and postmodern political philosophy by giving up on the search for order altogether (moral, immoral, or amoral) (but perhaps this last is starting to change?). I find that these are dominant trends only, however; exceptions abound.
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Political Science PhD
