Why Some Progressives Make Unjustified Accusations of Racism
Image: John M. Chase/Shutterstock.comVindicating Publius
Publius Valerius We’ll Always Have Sproul Plaza
Sheldon S. Wolin, who died last year, was an immensely influential figure in American political thought. His student, Nicholas Xenos, has edited 25 of Wolin’s essays as a kind of monument to his teacher, the noted democratic theorist, lover of “participatory democracy,” and scourge of all forms of antidemocratic thought. And a fitting monument it is. Fugitive Democracy and Other Essays gradually reveals the whole of Wolin’s thought from bottom to top, from fundamental question to perpetual answer. That question is what to do about modernity. Like Martin Heidegger and his French followers like Jean-Paul Sartre and Michel Foucault, but above…
Freedom of the Athenians
It is a daunting task to write a book on Thucydides and have something new and interesting to say. A formidable group of scholars, including the incomparable Donald Kagan and Clifford Orwin, have written rich analytical studies that have both illuminated and rendered accessible to us moderns the work of the dean of historians. Following in Kagan’s and Orwin’s footsteps, numerous commentators and students have produced what is now a substantial body of scholarship. Yet Mary P. Nichols has succeeded in giving us a study that opens up Thucydides’ work in a refreshing way by focusing her analysis on the…
Thucydides’ Pursuit of Freedom: A Conversation with Mary Nichols
In this Liberty Law Talk, Mary Nichols discusses her new book, Thucydides and the Pursuit of Freedom, which explores the idea of freedom in Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War. This work, which Thucydides offered as a possession for all time, permits us, Nichols observes, to consider the manifestations of freedom in both cities and individuals.
Trade Expectations and the Outbreak of Wars
Why countries go to war remains a perennial question for international relations. Military, ideological, and geopolitical challenges to a nation’s security draw great attention, but its economic interests play an important part that demands greater study. To that end, Dale C. Copeland has written Economic Interdependence and War, a carefully argued contribution to the professional literature on international relations. While controlling resources and gaining territory have long been factors in driving conflict, few wars have been fought ostensibly for market share. Copeland argues that commercial factors have been far more important to the outbreak of war than either realists or liberals…
