Political Theory

Philip the Fair and Boniface VIII. St. Thomas and Dante stood so completely within the tradition of a single European society that they failed to realize how insecure the foundations of this tradition or how imminent were the changes that would destroy the system they took to be eternal. Dante failed to see how hollow … Read more

Universitas Hominum. As scholarly performances the controversial tracts described in the preceding article were quickly outmoded in the extraordinary intellectual rebirth that began in the latter years of the twelfth century and which made the thirteenth one of the most brilliant in the history of Europe. This new scholarly activity, in so far as it … Read more

The American Political System. The United States is a representative federal democracy driven by-elections in which citizens and lobbyists, diverse interests compete. The concentration of Economic Power:- In the United States, Professor C. Kaysen notes, “There are currently some 4.5 million business enterprises. Corporations formed only 13 per cent of the total number.” The United … Read more

The investiture controversy. The latter part of the eleventh century brought a resumption of intellectual labor upon the body of political and social ideas preserved from antiquity in the Christian Fathers tradition. It began a development that was produced in the centuries following an astonishingly brilliant and virile culture. Order emerged from chaos and, especially … Read more

The folk and its law. The church Fathers’ period, extending down to the sixth or seventh century, still belongs to antiquity. Despite the vast changes -social, economic, and political-which occurred in the first six Christian centuries, Seneca and St. Gregory were still both Romans. Both men lived within the circle of Roman political ideas; both … Read more

Seneca and the fathers of the church. In one respect- the belief in human equality- the idea of a common race, as the jurists developed it, broke sharply with the scale of values that prevailed in the city-state. In another respect, however, the two were quite continuous. For Cicero, as for Plato, to found or … Read more

Cicero and the roman lawyers. By the beginning of the first century before Christ the political processes which began with Alexander’s conquest of the East had in a large measure completed themselves. The whole Mediterranean world had been cast into the melting pot and had become in no small degree a single community. The city-state … Read more

The law of nature in the history of political philosophy the death of Aristotle in 322 marks the close of an era, as the life of his great pupil, who died the year before him, marks the beginning of a new era in politics and the history of European civilization. The failure of the city-state … Read more

The Twilight of the City State. The political philosophy of Plato and Aristotle was singularly devoid of immediate influence both of a practical and a theoretical kind. In fact, if it were judged by the part that it played in the two centuries following Aristotle’s death, it could only be described as a magnificent failure. … Read more

Political actualities in Aristotle. The opening paragraphs of Book IV of the Politics show a significant enlargement of Aristotle’s conception of political philosophy, Any science or art ought, he says, to cover the whole of a subject, A gymnastic trainer ought indeed to be able to produce a finished athlete, but he ought also to … Read more