My interest in this essay is to modify how we understand the operation of sovereignty in discussi... more My interest in this essay is to modify how we understand the operation of sovereignty in discussions of the Roman republic.
Provides the context of imperial politics and policy toward North Africa during Augustine&#39... more Provides the context of imperial politics and policy toward North Africa during Augustine's time.
Polis: The Journal for Ancient Greek and Roman Political Thought, 2020
My starting point is a fundamental paradox that lies at the heart of the slow demise of the Roman... more My starting point is a fundamental paradox that lies at the heart of the slow demise of the Roman Republic: why does the system collapse when, as many scholars have noted, there is nothing that suggests that there was ever an intention by anyone to overthrow the Republic? Understanding this paradox is key to identifying what Rome might have to say to us today. What changes in the final decades of the Roman Republic is a declining view of the ability of political institutions to project the community into the future. This change is due to important alterations in the norms that provide the background context by which individuals working through institutions can get things done. The changes in these norms not only disable these institutions, making them seem less capable of projecting the community into the future, but also make possible alterations in the political framework that might have been inconceivable before. In particular, one sees the elevation of individuals who offer solu...
For Hannah Arendt, a twentieth-century German-American political theorist, there is probably no c... more For Hannah Arendt, a twentieth-century German-American political theorist, there is probably no concept more distinctive to Roman politics, and more associated with the Roman senate, than auctoritas. In this article, I explore an ambiguity and tension that lies at the heart of auctoritas and of Roman republican politics: the tension between continuity and tradition, on the one hand, and authoring and augmenting, on the other hand. I look first at how Cicero and Sallust negotiated this tension. I then examine how Arendt looks to this past, seeing the breakdown of auctoritas as symptomatic of a more modern loss of memory, both of tradition and of the authoring spirit (even the revolutionary spirit) that gives rise to those traditions. The tension that exists in auctoritas, the question of how one can author within history, has implications for Arendt's understanding of participatory politics.
The originality of Foucault’s work lies in part in how he reverses the question of power, asking ... more The originality of Foucault’s work lies in part in how he reverses the question of power, asking not how power is held and imposed, but how it is produced. In both his discussion of sovereignty and governmentality, though, Foucault skips over the res publica; a form of political organization that fits neither Foucault’s characterization of sovereignty nor the care of the self. I extend Foucault’s discussion to identify a ratio of government around the discipline of ownership by which the res publica was made intelligible, its relations understood, and its logic organized. I end by suggesting some implications for neo-Roman interpretations of liberty as non-domination.
Historia Zeitschrift Fur Alte Geschichte Revue D Histoire Ancienne, 2005
... 459-462). For an assessment of the evidence, see Robinson 1997. 73-78. ... The category, howe... more ... 459-462). For an assessment of the evidence, see Robinson 1997. 73-78. ... The category, however, is extremely suggestive of archaic age politics, which is not the focus of Finley's discussion. Historia, Band 54/2 (2005) ?) Franz Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden GmbH, Sitz Stuttgart ...
LA ENTRE VISTA SEMI-ESTRUCTURADA DE FINAL ABIERTO. APROXIMACI?NA UNA GUIA OPERATWA ... paradas de... more LA ENTRE VISTA SEMI-ESTRUCTURADA DE FINAL ABIERTO. APROXIMACI?NA UNA GUIA OPERATWA ... paradas deantemano. Pero, a diferencia de las entrevistas que se hacen aplicando un cuestionario rigido, aqui las preguntas-guia debenser reducidas al minimo23. ...
This article reassesses Arendt's relationship to Augustine, exploring the Augustinian context... more This article reassesses Arendt's relationship to Augustine, exploring the Augustinian context for Arendt's own thinking about the relationship between thought and action. What Arendt drew from Augustine, the contours of which remain in her later work, is a journey of memory in which reflection, as it removes us from the world, paradoxically reveals us as inserted into this world. Out of this ontology of origins emerges an ethic of beginning as we recognize, in the moment of reflection, a bond of kinship and an equality toward each other that is constituted by our common relationship of beginning and fatefulness to the world. It is this Augustinian journey of memory that continued to guide Arendt's thinking in developing a political ethic that shared with action the ontological foundation of beginning.
The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Political Thought
Plato did Homer no favors. When Plato banished Homer from his republic, he posited a split betwee... more Plato did Homer no favors. When Plato banished Homer from his republic, he posited a split between epic and philosophic knowledge that would remain a part of a Western philosophical tradition. For Plato, the problem with the Homeric epics was that they were imitations of phenomenal appearance because they depicted the shadowy world of human action and emotion. Though tempered in recent years by examinations of both the philosophic contributions of literature and the literary basis of philosophy, what has often emerged is a distinction, made both implicitly and explicitly, between political thought - which is depicted as a systematic, reasoned, reflective, and critical account of the political world - and the epics - which are often characterized as uncritical appropriations of myths, legends, stories, and superstitions. As evidence, commentators point to a seemingly irrational cosmology alive with divine forces, inconsistencies in the stories that comprise the epic, and the oral nature of epic verse in which the aim was to tell a particular story and not to analyze the foundations of thought. In this chapter, I approach Homer as a political thinker. By this I mean both that the epics are engaged in critical reflection and that this reflection is political in nature. The chapter will proceed in several parts. First, I will examine two major obstacles to approaching the epics as works of political thought: the ideas that oral poetry lacks a critical dimension and that Homeric society is pre-political. I end these sections by making an argument about what is critical and what is political in the epics. In the subsequent sections, I engage in a series of forays into Homeric political thought, taking up contending notions of power, rights, the people, gender, and ethics.
My interest in this essay is to modify how we understand the operation of sovereignty in discussi... more My interest in this essay is to modify how we understand the operation of sovereignty in discussions of the Roman republic.
Provides the context of imperial politics and policy toward North Africa during Augustine&#39... more Provides the context of imperial politics and policy toward North Africa during Augustine's time.
Polis: The Journal for Ancient Greek and Roman Political Thought, 2020
My starting point is a fundamental paradox that lies at the heart of the slow demise of the Roman... more My starting point is a fundamental paradox that lies at the heart of the slow demise of the Roman Republic: why does the system collapse when, as many scholars have noted, there is nothing that suggests that there was ever an intention by anyone to overthrow the Republic? Understanding this paradox is key to identifying what Rome might have to say to us today. What changes in the final decades of the Roman Republic is a declining view of the ability of political institutions to project the community into the future. This change is due to important alterations in the norms that provide the background context by which individuals working through institutions can get things done. The changes in these norms not only disable these institutions, making them seem less capable of projecting the community into the future, but also make possible alterations in the political framework that might have been inconceivable before. In particular, one sees the elevation of individuals who offer solu...
For Hannah Arendt, a twentieth-century German-American political theorist, there is probably no c... more For Hannah Arendt, a twentieth-century German-American political theorist, there is probably no concept more distinctive to Roman politics, and more associated with the Roman senate, than auctoritas. In this article, I explore an ambiguity and tension that lies at the heart of auctoritas and of Roman republican politics: the tension between continuity and tradition, on the one hand, and authoring and augmenting, on the other hand. I look first at how Cicero and Sallust negotiated this tension. I then examine how Arendt looks to this past, seeing the breakdown of auctoritas as symptomatic of a more modern loss of memory, both of tradition and of the authoring spirit (even the revolutionary spirit) that gives rise to those traditions. The tension that exists in auctoritas, the question of how one can author within history, has implications for Arendt's understanding of participatory politics.
The originality of Foucault’s work lies in part in how he reverses the question of power, asking ... more The originality of Foucault’s work lies in part in how he reverses the question of power, asking not how power is held and imposed, but how it is produced. In both his discussion of sovereignty and governmentality, though, Foucault skips over the res publica; a form of political organization that fits neither Foucault’s characterization of sovereignty nor the care of the self. I extend Foucault’s discussion to identify a ratio of government around the discipline of ownership by which the res publica was made intelligible, its relations understood, and its logic organized. I end by suggesting some implications for neo-Roman interpretations of liberty as non-domination.
Historia Zeitschrift Fur Alte Geschichte Revue D Histoire Ancienne, 2005
... 459-462). For an assessment of the evidence, see Robinson 1997. 73-78. ... The category, howe... more ... 459-462). For an assessment of the evidence, see Robinson 1997. 73-78. ... The category, however, is extremely suggestive of archaic age politics, which is not the focus of Finley's discussion. Historia, Band 54/2 (2005) ?) Franz Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden GmbH, Sitz Stuttgart ...
LA ENTRE VISTA SEMI-ESTRUCTURADA DE FINAL ABIERTO. APROXIMACI?NA UNA GUIA OPERATWA ... paradas de... more LA ENTRE VISTA SEMI-ESTRUCTURADA DE FINAL ABIERTO. APROXIMACI?NA UNA GUIA OPERATWA ... paradas deantemano. Pero, a diferencia de las entrevistas que se hacen aplicando un cuestionario rigido, aqui las preguntas-guia debenser reducidas al minimo23. ...
This article reassesses Arendt's relationship to Augustine, exploring the Augustinian context... more This article reassesses Arendt's relationship to Augustine, exploring the Augustinian context for Arendt's own thinking about the relationship between thought and action. What Arendt drew from Augustine, the contours of which remain in her later work, is a journey of memory in which reflection, as it removes us from the world, paradoxically reveals us as inserted into this world. Out of this ontology of origins emerges an ethic of beginning as we recognize, in the moment of reflection, a bond of kinship and an equality toward each other that is constituted by our common relationship of beginning and fatefulness to the world. It is this Augustinian journey of memory that continued to guide Arendt's thinking in developing a political ethic that shared with action the ontological foundation of beginning.
The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Political Thought
Plato did Homer no favors. When Plato banished Homer from his republic, he posited a split betwee... more Plato did Homer no favors. When Plato banished Homer from his republic, he posited a split between epic and philosophic knowledge that would remain a part of a Western philosophical tradition. For Plato, the problem with the Homeric epics was that they were imitations of phenomenal appearance because they depicted the shadowy world of human action and emotion. Though tempered in recent years by examinations of both the philosophic contributions of literature and the literary basis of philosophy, what has often emerged is a distinction, made both implicitly and explicitly, between political thought - which is depicted as a systematic, reasoned, reflective, and critical account of the political world - and the epics - which are often characterized as uncritical appropriations of myths, legends, stories, and superstitions. As evidence, commentators point to a seemingly irrational cosmology alive with divine forces, inconsistencies in the stories that comprise the epic, and the oral nature of epic verse in which the aim was to tell a particular story and not to analyze the foundations of thought. In this chapter, I approach Homer as a political thinker. By this I mean both that the epics are engaged in critical reflection and that this reflection is political in nature. The chapter will proceed in several parts. First, I will examine two major obstacles to approaching the epics as works of political thought: the ideas that oral poetry lacks a critical dimension and that Homeric society is pre-political. I end these sections by making an argument about what is critical and what is political in the epics. In the subsequent sections, I engage in a series of forays into Homeric political thought, taking up contending notions of power, rights, the people, gender, and ethics.
My interest in this essay is to modify how we understand the operation of sovereignty in discussi... more My interest in this essay is to modify how we understand the operation of sovereignty in discussions of the Roman republic.
... (This assertion, curiously, is foomoted to Augusane's Confessions.) Levy treats Augustin... more ... (This assertion, curiously, is foomoted to Augusane's Confessions.) Levy treats Augustine as manufac-turing persecution out of "ehborate rationaliza-tion" (p. 47), rather than asa theologian genu-inely concemed with issues of salvation and the maintenance of community. ...
A few decades ago, the Romans barely rated consideration in political thoughttheir arguments seen... more A few decades ago, the Romans barely rated consideration in political thoughttheir arguments seen as uninspired and derivative; their lasting contributions residing in the details of law and administration, which during the twentieth century became less-and-less the purview of political theory; and their oligarchic society even less admired. We knew Rome from its imperial ambitions; its aqueducts, roads, and sewers; and its descent into the decadence of the principate. It was three decades ago that I sat in a graduate seminar in which we read a short excerpt from Cicero. It was all we needed to read; we knew serious ancient political thought began and ended with the Greeks. That has changed in recent decades with renewed interest in Cicero's philosophic and political ideas. There were political theorists like Walter Nicgorski and Neal Wood who were tilling Ciceronian fields alone. Elizabeth Rawson advanced a more nuanced and sympathetic portrait of Cicero than the standard characterization inherited from Theodor Mommsen, notably in Römische Geschichte (1861). 2 But J.G.F. Powell's edited collection, Cicero the Philosopher (1995), marked a turning point in the reception of Cicero as an original thinker. In the ensuing decades, scholars from different theoretical perspectives began to see in Cicero's texts not only richer and original conceptualizations of the res publica, constitutionalism, and civic ethics, but also his contributions to how we can think about violence, participation, citizenship, identity, and democratic discourse. Jed Atkins's Roman Political Thought is an introduction to Roman political ideas that also uses Roman thought to reflect on modern liberalism and republicanism. Gregory Smith, in Political Philosophy and the Republican Future, looks to Cicero to combat the modern 876627P TXXXX10.1177/0090591719876627Political TheoryBook Review book-review2019
does not “appeal to a nation defined in cultural terms” and finds it in Jürgen Habermas’s constit... more does not “appeal to a nation defined in cultural terms” and finds it in Jürgen Habermas’s constitutional patriotism, which redeems the “radical democratic potential inherent in Rousseau’s theory” without its nationalist or patriotic baggage. Shared citizenship, we are told, can provide necessary political unity just as well as “the cultural nation” (p. 24). Stilz’s recovery of Rousseau, then, leads straight to Habermas’s constitutional patriotism, the very heart of the book. Stilz deploys Habermas’s political vision to great analytic effect. With attention concentrated on democratic process, however, little, if any, attention is paid to the affective dimensions of citizenship. How, in short, can identification with a process suffice to sustain political motivation? As she remarks of the nationalist claim, her own “motivational thesis is at best unproven” (p. 151). Indeed, Habermas’s shared citizenship can provide sufficient reasons for meeting obligations insofar as lawmaking discourse entails ethical-political reasoning of a kind that “answers the question ‘Who are we?’” Bound up with a people’s constitutional history and traditions, citizenship can become “a locus for particular identities and for democratic solidarity” (p. 163). Citizens can distance themselves from or bracket their purely private interests and adopt a common or general perspective, the “we.” Citizens can adopt this perspective, we are told, because law, with its appeal to ethical-political reasoning, possesses “the power to motivate citizens’ allegiance and shape their particular identities” (pp. 164–65). Habermas recognizes that his theory of constitutional patriotism might thus seem to rely on the very thing he rejects, “an already existing national-cultural identity” (p. 166). He may or may not be able to fend off this charge insofar as constitutional patriotism presupposes “at least theoretically, a ‘best answer’ to questions about rights, which stands outside any nation’s traditions or self-understanding,” which in turn provides citizens a permanent moral standpoint, the idea of an always “freer, more equal political community,” from which to criticize their own political institutions, arrangements, and practices (pp. 170–71). Either way, given Stilz’s reliance on Habermas and democratic process, where procedural norms and substantive rights presuppose and engender one another, one feels compelled to ask: What precisely is patriotic about constitutional patriotism? It is not that one should not challenge and contest entrenched and commonly understood terms of political discourse, but it is not clear why she wants the patriotic mantle when she does so little with it. Why is this not a work of democratic, constitutional, or liberal citizenship? Stilz offers Habermas assistance in the book’s concluding chapter: “[J]ustice gives us reason to form a shared intention to participate together with our fellow citizens in a democratic process” (p. 174). She notably compares a democracy to an orchestra; like a voluntary association, it “generates obligations to play our role, to treat compatriots with respect and concern in relevant contexts, and to contribute to fulfilling collective obligations” (p. 191). The analogy illuminates her argument, though perhaps not quite in the way she imagines. When discussing why someone might join an orchestra, she speaks of a trombone player who “values” playing Beethoven, her favorite composer. Unable to play him alone, the musician decides to join an orchestra (p. 184). Yet not even music can move Stilz’s pen to passion: not Beethoven’s compositions, not the orchestra’s performance, not the art of playing trombone. Obligations may follow from membership, but the trombone player feels stolid, the connection to the orchestra feels instrumental, much like Stilz’s all too rational citizen and democracy. Turning the final page of Liberal Loyalty, then, I recalled the inaugural references to patriotism. I recalled them not because Stilz’s argument, intent notwithstanding, invoked an undue patriotism. I recalled them because her cool, analytic, dispassionate sensibility feels rather peculiar, given that the subject is not just citizenship (and thus politics) but a kind of patriotism. Where is the love? Or, better, where is the passion, the animation, the adrenaline? Where is the visceral register that forms such a critical dimension to politics, a world of causes, campaigns, enemies, and enmity? If history and tradition matter to constitutional patriotism, then what of the ceremonies, rituals, myths, and symbols reflective of them? Here, the author is silent. Stilz wants good citizens, but for the right reasons only. She rejects, convincingly, the liberal nationalist claim that a national culture or identity—and it alone—must play a supplemental role in any viable liberal conception of citizenship. Yet she does not adequately address how the energy and drive that such a supplement can provide— aspects without…
A Companion to Greek Democracy and the Roman Republic (Wiley-Blackwell 2014), 2014
Provides a side-by-side comparison of different aspects of Greek and Roman society, politics, and... more Provides a side-by-side comparison of different aspects of Greek and Roman society, politics, and culture
The Puritan Tradition examines how a Puritan past, historically reconstructed as a founding legen... more The Puritan Tradition examines how a Puritan past, historically reconstructed as a founding legend, gave meaning to early American political culture. In tracing the rhetorical invocations of this Puritan legacy, this study lends important insight into how this constructed past helped shape the political thought that underlies revolutionary, Federalist, and Whig political discourse. This emphasis on the changing political uses of this puritan Past is an important departure from scholarship that identifies an enduring Puritan essence that is read forward into American culture. Where such scholarship has often yielded either unpersuasive genealogies or a view of Puritanism as dissolving into irrelevance, The Puritan Tradition demonstrates how a Puritan past continues to play a critical role in American political identity.
Provides a side-by-side comparison of different aspects of Greek and Roman society, politics, and... more Provides a side-by-side comparison of different aspects of Greek and Roman society, politics, and culture
Explores the importance of the Romans in the political thinking of Machiavelli, Montesquieu, Aren... more Explores the importance of the Romans in the political thinking of Machiavelli, Montesquieu, Arendt, and Foucault
The book uses the Roman and American shared founding myths of communities formed by strangers dis... more The book uses the Roman and American shared founding myths of communities formed by strangers dislocated from their own pasts to explore the tensions that arise in creating a national identity of belonging. Through this lens, I provide new readings of Virgil’s Aeneid, the American western, The Outlaw Josey Wales, Cato the Elder, Cicero, Varro, Horace, Noah Webster, W.E.B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, Charles Eastman and Native American policy, the spectacles of gladiatorial combat, bare-knuckle boxing, and early American theatre, and the fall of the Roman Republic and the current crisis of democracy. What emerges is a complicated relationship between memory, violence, and belonging. The book provides perspective on some of the current issues of the day, including recent discussions of manhood and Trump plans to use the unitary executive as the path to authoritarianism.
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