The Political Science Reviewer
type: channel
description: Established in 1971, the Political Science Reviewer has served for more than a half century as a venue for political theory and philosophy that resists disciplinary dogmas and novelties. We endeavor to give voice to a range of scholars and to put these voices into traditional conversation with each other. Authors are encouraged to submit both articles and symposium ideas.
publisher: School of Economic Thought and Leadership
language: en
publication name: The Political Science Reviewer
issn: 0091-3715
items: Notes on Contributors
items: Editor's Note
items: Wilson Carey McWilliam's The Idea of Fraternity in America at 50
items: The Concept of Tradition and the Catholic University
items: Glenn Arthur “Chip” Hughes (1951-2024)
items: Xenophon's Political Realism: The Opening of the Cyropaedia
items: The Devil and Humpty Dumpty
items: Pope Francis
items: Stephanie Shonekan and Adam Seagrave's Race and the American Story
items: Relativism and Revelation in Plato's Cratylus
items: Atlantic Revolutions, Constitutionalism, and Liberalism During the Spanish-American Independence Movements
items: Democracy in America, America in France
items: Ortega y Gasset’s The Revolt of the Masses and the Future of Liberty
items: Tyranny in the Americas: Sarmiento’s Tocquevillian Science and the Argentine Civil Wars
items: Ernesto Laclau on Political Theology
items: Federalism in Mexico
items: Suppressing the Wicked and Ensuring Order
items: Narratives of Identity
items: Plurinational States and Legal Pluralism: An Impossible Mission?
items: The Unfaithful Translation of Bentham for Gran Colombia and the Hispanic World
items: Nostalgia for Empire?: Ortega y Gasset’s Use of Memory during Spain’s Crisis of Identity
items: Author Meets Critics: Jeffrey Church's Kant, Liberalism, and the Meaning of Life
items: Thinking and Political Considerations
items: An Achilles Without a Zeus

Notes on Contributors
type: item
subject: Notes
  topic: section
subject: Notes
  topic: keywords
creator: Richard Avramenko
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
date: 2025-08-01
publication date: 2025-08-01
starting page: iv
ending page: vii

Editor's Note
type: item
subject: Notes
  topic: section
subject: Editor's Note
  topic: keywords
creator: Richard Avramenko
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
date: 2025-08-01
publication date: 2025-08-01

Wilson Carey McWilliam's The Idea of Fraternity in America at 50
type: item
description: A symposium on Wilson Carey McWilliam's The Idea of Fraternity in America
subject: Author Meets Critics
  topic: section
subject: fraternity
  topic: keywords
creator: Susan McWilliams Barndt
creator: Geoffrey Kurtz
creator: Derek W. M. Barker
creator: Emma Rodman
creator: Natalie Fuehrer Taylor
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
date: 2025-08-01
publication date: 2025-08-01
starting page: 245
ending page: 272

The Concept of Tradition and the Catholic University
type: item
description: This paper considers Alasdair MacIntyre’s explication of three rival versions of moral enquiry—encyclopedia, genealogy, and tradition—as a framework for thinking about the modern Catholic university. In applying MacIntyre’s analysis to the contemporary situation, the paper argues that “tradition hires” rather than “mission hires” are required to maintain the identity of an authentically Catholic university. At the same time, the paper contends that those faculty who practice moral enquiry in the mode of encyclopedia or genealogy nonetheless contribute to a thriving university. Finally, the paper draws on the theologian, Yves Congar, to argue that a plurality of traditions exist within the Catholic intellectual tradition.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: MacIntyre
  topic: keywords
subject: catholic
  topic: keywords
subject: university
  topic: keywords
subject: tradition
  topic: keywords
creator: Christopher Justin Brophy
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Political Science Reviewer
date: 2025-04-09
publication date: 2025-04-09

Editor's Note
type: item
description: Editors note.
subject: Notes
  topic: section
subject: notes
  topic: keywords
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
date: 2025-01-16
publication date: 2025-01-16
starting page: i
ending page: v

Notes on Contributors
type: item
description: Notes
subject: Notes
  topic: section
subject: Notes
  topic: keywords
creator: Richard Avramenko
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
date: 2025-01-16
publication date: 2025-01-16
starting page: vi
ending page: x

Glenn Arthur “Chip” Hughes (1951-2024)
type: item
description: In Memoriam: Chip Hughes
subject: In Memoriam
  topic: section
subject: Obituary
  topic: keywords
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
date: 2025-01-16
publication date: 2025-01-16
starting page: 1
ending page: 2

Xenophon's Political Realism: The Opening of the Cyropaedia
type: item
description: Readers of The Education of Cyrus have long pondered its basic message. In this essay, I argue for the centrality of the first chapter of the work to our understanding of the work as a whole. There, Xenophon indicates that he was led to the study of Cyrus by idealistic hopes engendered by the awe he felt at Cyrus’s accomplishments. Once he had come to understand certain key aspects of Cyrus’s rule, Xenophon ceased to be gripped by those hopes. In this way, the introductory chapter of the Cyropaedia anticipates and encapsulates key teachings of the work as a whole, both about the true character of Cyrus’s excellence at ruling and about Xenophon’s interest in Cyrus. The chapter provides substantial evidence for a realist reading of the Cyropaedia as a corrective to idealistic hopes, particularly the hope that knowledge, if joined with political power, could solve all the problems of political life.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Xenophon, Cyrus, Cyropaedia, Realism
  topic: keywords
creator: Dana Jalbert Stauffer
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
date: 2025-08-01
publication date: 2025-08-01
starting page: 1
ending page: 22

The Devil and Humpty Dumpty
type: item
description: Using René Girard’s mimetic theory, this article breaks new and important ground in the scholarly treatment of Robert Penn Warren’s award-winning All the King’s Men. The novel depicts a society in the midst of a major political and social crisis. Anger, envy, resentment, and corruption are widespread. For Girard, such a crisis almost always culminates in an act of spectacular community violence—a scapegoating event—that brings peace and renews order. This is exactly how the novel concludes. By intuiting (if not consciously understanding) the relationship between mimetic conflict and violence, the novel illustrates what Girard sees as the “satanic” foundation of political and social order as such. This article not only sheds new light on the novel. It also demonstrates the value of Girard’s mimetic theory for research in the areas of American literature and political theory.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: René Girard, mimetic theory, scapegoat, Satan, Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men
  topic: keywords
creator: Justin D. Garrison
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
date: 2025-08-01
publication date: 2025-08-01
starting page: 175
ending page: 204

Pope Francis
type: item
description: This article explores the (qualified) Peronism of the Argentinian pope, his tendency to redefine Catholic thought in a broadly humanitarian and progressivist direction, and his questionable advocacy of enhanced Christian-Communist collaboration. By confusing compassion with charity, pacifism with peace, and the universality of the Christian religion with the effacement of national distinctions, Francis has weakened the Catholic Church's long-time refusal to identify freedom, justice, and peace with “ideological dreaming.” Special attention is paid to the pope's largely "humanitarian" reading of the Parable of the Good Samaritan in his 2020 encyclical Fratelli tutti.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Pope Francis
  topic: keywords
subject: Latin American Political Thought
  topic: keywords
subject: Peronism
  topic: keywords
creator: Daniel J. Mahoney
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
date: 2025-01-16
publication date: 2025-01-16
starting page: 169
ending page: 188

Stephanie Shonekan and Adam Seagrave's Race and the American Story
type: item
subject: Author Meets Critics
  topic: section
subject: Race
  topic: keywords
subject: America
  topic: keywords
creator: Adam Seagrave
creator: Stephanie Shonekin
creator: Daniella Mascarenhas
creator: Nicholas Buccola
creator: Brandon Davis
creator: Rodolfo K. Hernandez
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
date: 2025-01-16
publication date: 2025-01-16
starting page: 319
ending page: 350

Notes on Contributors
type: item
description: Notes on Contributors Political Science Reviewer 48(1) 2024
subject: Notes
  topic: section
subject: notes
  topic: keywords
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
date: 2024-05-30
publication date: 2024-05-30
starting page: v
ending page: viii

Editor's Note
type: item
description: Editor's Note
subject: Notes
  topic: section
subject: Editor's Note
  topic: keywords
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
date: 2024-05-30
publication date: 2024-05-30
starting page: iv
ending page: iv

Relativism and Revelation in Plato's Cratylus
type: item
description: This study, focusing on the figure of Hermogenes in Plato’s Cratylus and Socrates’s allusions to Euthyphro and to divine inspiration, argues that the dialogue discloses a strange kinship between “perspectivism” or “relativism,” on one hand, and “revelation” or “decisionism,” on the other. It finds that Socrates concedes surprisingly significant ground to those positions. And, finally, it gives a view of Socrates’s dialectical response in light of that ground he is forced to concede.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Plato
  topic: keywords
subject: Classical Political philosophy
  topic: keywords
subject: Political Philosophy
  topic: keywords
subject: Cratylus
  topic: keywords
subject: Relativism
  topic: keywords
subject: Revelation
  topic: keywords
subject: Science
  topic: keywords
subject: Dialectic
  topic: keywords
subject: Hermogenes
  topic: keywords
subject: Euthyphro
  topic: keywords
subject: Divine revelation
  topic: keywords
subject: Perspectivism
  topic: keywords
subject: Socrates
  topic: keywords
creator: Matthew Wells
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
date: 2025-08-01
publication date: 2025-08-01
starting page: 23
ending page: 55

Atlantic Revolutions, Constitutionalism, and Liberalism During the Spanish-American Independence Movements
type: item
description: This article is a historiographic analysis and critique of the central aspects of the study of the Spanish-American independence movements, specifically, its framing within the Atlantic Revolutions, the constitutional explosion during the second decade of the 19th century, and the role that liberalism played, not only in the Spanish-American context, but also the Spanish liberal revolution (1810-1814) and the Cádiz Constitution of 1812. The main thesis of the article is that the revoluciones hispánicas that took place in the Spanish-speaking world between 1808 and 1824 were clearly different from other revolutionary movements and made an original contribution to the Age of Revolutions, all of which tends to be minimized when considered as the last of the “great” Atlantic Revolutions (that of the Thirteen Colonies, the French Revolution, and the Haitian Revolution).
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Constitutionalism
  topic: keywords
subject: Liberalism
  topic: keywords
subject: Spanish-American Independence movements
  topic: keywords
subject: Atlantic Revolutions
  topic: keywords
subject: Age of Revolutions
  topic: keywords
creator: Roberto Breña
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
date: 2025-01-16
publication date: 2025-01-16
starting page: 283
ending page: 318

Notes on Contributors
type: item
description: All about the authors in this issue.
subject: Notes
  topic: section
subject: notes
  topic: keywords
creator: Richard Avramenko
rights: Copyright (c) 2023 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
date: 2024-03-23
publication date: 2024-03-23
starting page: v
ending page: ix

Editor's Note
type: item
description: Editor's Note
subject: Notes
  topic: section
subject: Note
  topic: keywords
creator: Richard Avramenko
rights: Copyright (c) 2023 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
date: 2024-03-23
publication date: 2024-03-23
starting page: iii
ending page: iv

Democracy in America, America in France
type: item
description: Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America remains the authoritative study of American society through French eyes. But Tocqueville was not the only Frenchman to record his observations of America in the nineteenth century. This article explores the forgotten essays and notes of Ernest Duvergier de Hauranne, who traveled throughout the United States at the height of the Civil War in 1864. Duvergier de Hauranne deepened Tocqueville’s insights about the aristocratic-democratic binary, but he also amended Tocqueville’s framework to explain the conditions of America at war. This article argues that Duvergier de Hauranne’s observations about the party system in particular were meant to educate Second Empire France, since parties could promote plurality without sacrificing the sense of national unity that the French aimed to preserve. His insights remind us why many Frenchmen in the volatile nineteenth century were drawn to America in the first place: to understand the characteristics of a faraway republic in order to respond to the unique circumstances of their home country.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Alexis de Tocqueville
  topic: keywords
subject: history of political thought
  topic: keywords
subject: democracy
  topic: keywords
subject: liberalism
  topic: keywords
creator: Gianna Englert
rights: Copyright (c) 2023 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
date: 2024-03-13
publication date: 2024-03-13
starting page: 233
ending page: 256

Ortega y Gasset’s The Revolt of the Masses and the Future of Liberty
type: item
description: José Ortega y Gasset’s seminal 1930 book, The Revolt of the Masses, has a misleading title. The word ‘revolt’ in the title gives the unsuspecting reader the impression that the book is a work of political science. Readers who approach this now classic work in that vein are quickly disappointed, some even confused. The Revolt of the Masses is a work of philosophical anthropology that explores the nature of free will, authenticity, self-reflection and liberty in relation to man’s understanding of society, the world and objective reality. Ortega y Gasset addresses these philosophical themes through metaphysical/existential reflection in the life of mass and noble man respectively, and what these two modes of being signify for human freedom in modernity and future eras. One of the achievements of The Revolt of the Masses is Ortega’s exploration of the effect that metaphysical/existential turning away from authenticity and free will has on modern life, and the threat that existential negation and ennui are to the future of liberty. “Ortega y Gasset’s The Revolt of the Masses and the Future of Liberty” makes the case that Ortega’s thought, regarding mass man and liberty, should be given ample space to make the case for himself, through a careful reading and generous citations.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Ortega
  topic: keywords
subject: Liberty
  topic: keywords
subject: Revolt of the Masses
  topic: keywords
subject: Meditations on Quixote
  topic: keywords
subject: Vital Reason
  topic: keywords
subject: Historical Reason
  topic: keywords
subject: Neo-Kantianism
  topic: keywords
subject: Existentialism
  topic: keywords
subject: Perspectivism
  topic: keywords
subject: Phenomenology
  topic: keywords
subject: Adan el el Paraiso
  topic: keywords
subject: Adam in Paradise
  topic: keywords
subject: Mass Man
  topic: keywords
subject: Noble Man
  topic: keywords
subject: Minority Man
  topic: keywords
subject: Authenticity
  topic: keywords
subject: Inauthenticity
  topic: keywords
subject: The Live Experience
  topic: keywords
subject: Biographical Life
  topic: keywords
subject: Biological Life
  topic: keywords
subject: Alteracion
  topic: keywords
subject: Ensimismamiento
  topic: keywords
subject: Idealism
  topic: keywords
subject: Radical Reality
  topic: keywords
subject: Philosophical Anthropology
  topic: keywords
subject: Scientism
  topic: keywords
subject: Subjectivity
  topic: keywords
subject: Objectivity
  topic: keywords
subject: Liberty
  topic: keywords
subject: Modernity
  topic: keywords
subject: Postmodernity
  topic: keywords
subject: The Modern Theme Meditations on Hunting
  topic: keywords
creator: Pedro Blas González
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
date: 2025-01-16
publication date: 2025-01-16
starting page: 3
ending page: 26

Tyranny in the Americas: Sarmiento’s Tocquevillian Science and the Argentine Civil Wars
type: item
description: This paper investigates Domingo Faustino Sarmiento’s application of Alexis de Tocqueville’s “new science of politics” to analyze the consequences of the great democratic revolution in Argentina. Unlike Tocqueville’s America, Sarmiento believes that Argentina’s inner convulsions reveal a “new way of being that has no well-marked or known precedent.” What is this new way of being? Which political phenomenon does Sarmiento’s account of the Argentinian civil war reveal to modern science? If Tocqueville found in the United States a “social state” that permitted the delicate balance between democracy and freedom, in Argentina, Sarmiento unveils a new lesson for science, a new modern form of tyranny. Thus, Sarmiento’s Facundo presents two distinct forms of tyranny: the cruel primitive personalism of Facundo Quiroga, representing ancient tyranny, and the cold bureaucratic impersonalism of Juan Manuel de Rosas, who creates modern tyranny based on a total state and total terror.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Latin American Political Thought
  topic: keywords
subject: Alexis de Tocqueville
  topic: keywords
subject: Domingo Faustino Sarmiento
  topic: keywords
subject: tyranny
  topic: keywords
creator: Eduardo Schmidt Passos
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
date: 2025-01-16
publication date: 2025-01-16
starting page: 115
ending page: 138

Ernesto Laclau on Political Theology
type: item
description: There has been increasing worldwide attention to Ernesto Laclau’s work, but his views on political theology remain understudied. Since Laclau is often read in connection with Schmitt and given that he acknowledges the influence of Derrida, we compare their thoughts on this subject to show formal similarities, common analogies, and contrasting political implications. Like Schmitt, Laclau invokes secularized theological concepts to address the political and, as does Derrida, invokes mystic logic to deconstruct traditional thought. However, unlike Schmitt, Laclau denies a metaphysical foundation for the political and the possibility of a stable order. Also, unlike Derrida’s detachment from more practical or concrete considerations, Laclau offers an explicit defense of political hegemony. Despite some conceptual tensions in Laclau’s reading of the apophatic tradition, his analogical exercise shows how political theology remains a fruitful field of interest for political theorists.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Political Theology, Ernesto Laclau, Political Philosophy, Populism
  topic: keywords
creator: Alejandra M. Salinas
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
date: 2025-01-16
publication date: 2025-01-16
starting page: 189
ending page: 222

Federalism in Mexico
type: item
description: This article compares the nineteenth-century Mexican statesman and political thinker Lucas Alamán to his close contemporary Alexis de Tocqueville starting from their parallel verdicts on the United States Constitution of 1789 and the Mexican Constitution of 1824: that federalism would successfully combine authority and liberty in the U.S. but not in Mexico. It identifies commonalities between their methodologies and sources, their constitutional analyses, and their understandings of the relationship between history and political action. The article demonstrates not just that Alamán was engaged in and contributing to the latest debates in Western political thought, but also that Alamán’s adherence to the mixed regime tradition and stress on the need for state capacity to provide order addresses a lacuna in Tocquevillian thinking.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Alexis de Tocqueville
  topic: keywords
subject: Lucas Alamán
  topic: keywords
subject: Federalism
  topic: keywords
subject: Mexico
  topic: keywords
subject: constitutionalism
  topic: keywords
subject: Revolution
  topic: keywords
subject: Edmund Burke
  topic: keywords
subject: mixed regime
  topic: keywords
creator: Luke Foster
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
date: 2025-01-16
publication date: 2025-01-16
starting page: 83
ending page: 114

Suppressing the Wicked and Ensuring Order
type: item
description: Thinkers and statesmen in newly independent, postcolonial Latin America reflected on what it could mean to be authentically Latin American without being dependent on Spain. This was a major theme in many of the most significant political theoretical writings of the nineteenth century in Latin America. This article turns to the age of a newly independent Mexico in the 1820s and 1830s to explore how the philosopher and statesman Lucas Alamán wrestled with questions of how Mexico might extricate itself from the shadow of Spain and its putatively defective institutions without simply repeating their failure and servilely replicating the practices of the United States. This went hand-in-hand with larger questions regarding the shape of the Mexican nation—and indeed whether there was one in the first place. Yet Alamán does not embrace a manifestly critical disposition toward Spain and Europe as a whole. He instead positions himself as a careful and moderate reformer, skeptical of both the failures of the past and the idealistic promises for the future. He was, in short, a sort of postcolonial Mexican Edmund Burke—the latter having been an important influence on Alamán. Ultimately, Alamán understood his task as being the historical construction of Mexico—one that relied neither on indigenous history, which had been fundamentally erased, nor on Spanish political institutions, which he believed ought to be jettisoned. That is, he sought to establish an authentically Mexican politics.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Mexico
  topic: keywords
subject: Edmund Burke
  topic: keywords
subject: Liberalism
  topic: keywords
subject: Revolution
  topic: keywords
creator: Brendon Westler
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
date: 2025-01-16
publication date: 2025-01-16
starting page: 27
ending page: 56

Narratives of Identity
type: item
description: This article discusses the use of literature by four leading Latin American intellectuals— Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (1811–1888), Esteban Echeverría (1805–1851), Rubén Darío (1867–1916), and José Enrique Rodó (1871–1917)—and its connection with their political thought on the question of national identity. Apart from their role in the nation-building efforts of elites during this period, these figures, through their literary writings, helped to establish a common “American” intellectual tradition and national identity during a postrevolutionary period that was still struggling with civil wars, social unrest, and commercial and governmental development amid newfound political independence. Literature thus played an active role in shaping the character of Latin American political thought in the nineteenth century by conveying the visions for national and broader “American” identities. Sarmiento and Echeverría, both figures in the Romantic movement, conceived of an American identity in nature; Darío and Rodó, figures in the modernismo movement, conceived of an American identity in spirit.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Latin America
  topic: keywords
subject: nation-building
  topic: keywords
subject: Latin American Political Thought
  topic: keywords
subject: literature and politics
  topic: keywords
subject: Sarmiento
  topic: keywords
subject: national identity
  topic: keywords
creator: Nayeli L. Riano
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
date: 2025-01-16
publication date: 2025-01-16
starting page: 139
ending page: 168

Plurinational States and Legal Pluralism: An Impossible Mission?
type: item
description: Almost fifteen years ago, Bolivia and Ecuador endorsed the most radical constitutions globally regarding indigenous issues. Both nations established plurinationality as the guiding principle for interactions between the state and indigenous peoples. In theory, plurinationality aims to replace the modern and liberal state with a decolonized and post-liberal indigenous state. However, in practice, Bolivia and Ecuador have significantly restricted the self-government of indigenous peoples, contradicting and nuancing the original meaning of plurinationality, even within the same constitutional provisions that ostensibly promote it. One institutional arrangement reflecting the numerous limitations to the autonomy of indigenous peoples is legal pluralism and the severe constraints indigenous justice systems face. All these contradictions cast severe doubts on the plurinational character of Bolivia and Ecuador, the only plurinational states at the constitutional level worldwide. Throughout this essay, I explore some features and effects of this paradox. Firstly, I delve into the concept of plurinationality and examine how the constitutional courts have shaped plurinational political projects in both countries. Then, I analyze the limitations of legal pluralism in Bolivia and Ecuador. In the final section, I discuss the implications of the contradictions in plurinational political practice and its diffusion in Latin America.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Plurinationality, Bolivia, Ecuador, Legal Pluralism
  topic: keywords
creator: Guillermo Peréz
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
date: 2025-01-16
publication date: 2025-01-16
starting page: 251
ending page: 282

The Unfaithful Translation of Bentham for Gran Colombia and the Hispanic World
type: item
description: This paper argues that the supporters of Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarian principles in the Gran Colombia skillfully propagated his views through targeted adaptive methods within a religious and political conservative stronghold. Although Bentham believed in the universality of his rational and utilitarian principles, their global dissemination required the practical act of translation, an act which often failed to achieve a genuine fidelity to the original. Hispanic audiences were introduced to Bentham’s writings through the translation of Ramón Salas, a thinker, who admittedly altered, edited, and revised his subject’s work. Salas stretched, corrected, and altered Bentham’s own statements to appeal to Hispanic audiences steeped in Catholic teachings and Scholasticism in two fundamental ways. First, he determined narrow moments of convergence with natural law approaches and utilitarian principles. He also reinterpreted religious dictums and doctrines to coincide with Bentham’s aims. Salas proved instrumental in integrating Bentham into a seemingly incompatible tradition. His rhetorical tactics were emulated abroad by Colombian defenders of utilitarianism who faced vitriol from religious and conservative voices in their country.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Bentham, utilitarianism, Colombia, Latin American Political thought
  topic: keywords
creator: Alejandro Castrillón
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
date: 2025-01-16
publication date: 2025-01-16
starting page: 223
ending page: 250

Nostalgia for Empire?: Ortega y Gasset’s Use of Memory during Spain’s Crisis of Identity
type: item
description: This article identifies a consistent thread in Ortega y Gasset’s early political thought from 1914-1921. This thread lies in his treatment of Spain’s identity crisis after their defeat against the United States in the Disaster of 1898. Two of his early books, Meditaciones del Quijote and España Invertebrada, are identified as works that reveal the historical causes and effects of Spain’s identity crisis. Both works meditate upon the significance of Spain’s imperial past as a solution to their identity crisis yet reach different conclusions about what their imperial past means for their present situation. It is argued that the tying thread within his approaches to address Spain’s identity crisis is in his appeal to a particular historical method based on his metaphysical assertion that "I am myself plus my circumstances."
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Ortega y Gasset
  topic: keywords
subject: Iberian Political Thought
  topic: keywords
subject: Latin American Political Thought
  topic: keywords
subject: memory
  topic: keywords
subject: identity
  topic: keywords
subject: Liberalism
  topic: keywords
creator: Phillip Pinell
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
date: 2025-01-16
publication date: 2025-01-16
starting page: 57
ending page: 82

Author Meets Critics: Jeffrey Church's Kant, Liberalism, and the Meaning of Life
type: item
description: Jeffrey Church, author of Kant, Liberalism, and the Meaning of Life, replies to commentary from Elisabeth Ellis, Nicholas Tampio, Robert Taylor, Peter Steinberger, and Michael Kryluk.
subject: Author Meets Critics
  topic: section
subject: Immanuel Kant
  topic: keywords
subject: liberalism
  topic: keywords
creator: Jeffrey Church
creator: Elisabeth Ellis
creator: Nicholas Tampio
creator: Robert S. Taylor
creator: Peter J. Steinberger
creator: Michael Kryluk
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
date: 2024-05-30
publication date: 2024-05-30
starting page: 357
ending page: 402

Thinking and Political Considerations
type: item
description: Much has recently been written on the inevitable demise of liberalism because of a lack of virtue forming intermediary institutions. Liberalism, in its nearly three-century history, has always relied on a certain set of virtues within its citizenry. The absence of virtue forming institutions within liberalism suggests that liberals should look elsewhere for virtue. Adopting this line of thinking, this article suggests a lost virtue that might rescue liberalism from itself: what the Stoic philosopher Epictetus identifies as gnômê. Gnômê refers to our rational activity that according to the Stoics ought to be conformed to nature and, when practiced properly, aligns the basic reality of nature to the moral and ethical choices people make. “Gnomic education,” I argue, will teach citizens how to think in accordance with nature without institutional aid.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Epictetus
  topic: keywords
subject: Stoicism
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subject: gnômê
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subject: virtue theory
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subject: liberalism
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creator: Phillip Pinell
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
date: 2024-05-30
publication date: 2024-05-30
starting page: 87
ending page: 112

An Achilles Without a Zeus
type: item
description: This is a review essay of Costin Alimariu's recently published, bestselling book, Selective Breeding and the Birth of Philosophy, which assesses the meaning and motives of "Nietzschean vitalism" in the larger context of liberalism and its discontents.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Leo Strauss
  topic: keywords
subject: Nietzsche
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subject: Anti-Liberalism
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subject: post-liberalism
  topic: keywords
creator: Dustin Sebell
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
date: 2024-05-30
publication date: 2024-05-30
starting page: 331
ending page: 356