Sometimes we hear that “right” and “left” are no longer relevant. Here is a redefinition of right and left so that the terms remain relevant. Standardly, a “left” politics is associated with equality, progress, planning, openness, or criticism, and a “right” politics with inequality, regress, lack of planning, closedness, or an uncritical attitude. Against these suggestions, I define “left” as a synecdochal politics, a politics which takes a part to stand for the whole, and searches for a policy, and “right” (...) as the opposite, an unsynecdochal politics, a politics which does not take a part to stand for the whole, and searches for a sense of balance, order and proportion. This redefinition is supported by empirical observations made by psychologists about the nature of the right and left hemispheres of the brain. “Left” has been considered superior to “right” for at least a century. But this is a mistake since both left and right are as necessary for a successful politics as they are for successful brain function. But they are not equal in status, for in politics, as in psychology, we have to recognise as a fundamental principle, “the necessity of the left but the superiority of the right.”. (shrink)

Volume 30, Issue 4, June 2025, Page 466-472.

Volume 30, Issue 4, June 2025, Page 499-500.

Volume 30, Issue 4, June 2025, Page 501-502.

Volume 30, Issue 4, June 2025, Page 492-498.

This article focuses on Nietzsche’s reception by the leading figures of the European New Right—Alain de Benoist, Guillaume Faye, and Pierre Krebs. By exploring their direct borrowings of Nietzschean terms and ideas in their works, such as his ontology, theory of history, and normative self-assertion, I illustrate the New Right’s interpretation and appropriation of Nietzsche’s Dionysian philosophy and political project as a whole. More specifically, I demonstrate that the Nietzschean appropriations that are crucial to the political agenda of the European (...) New Right are the revival of paganism and the rights of peoples, and other themes its leaders see as constituting Nietzsche’s “aristocratic radicalism.”. (shrink)

Western secularity has been traced to events such as the Scientific Revolution, the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution. What is not often appreciated is how thinkers from opposing schools of thought have reached similar conclusions about the long-term impacts of secularization. This article deals with four very different modern philosophers who approach the problem of secularity from their own respective field. I examine the thought of Carl Jung, Leo Strauss, Charles Taylor, and D. C. Schindler, (...) to identify where exactly each of them places the modern secular turn and why. They all observe the diminishment of religious belief, community, and the common good, and an amplification of secularity with its embrace of self-interest and worldly welfare. Despite their differences, their critique of modernity reveals a common focus on a turn in the consciousness of modern Europeans, with ramifications for the rest of the world through Western imperialism. The exploration of their theories shows, moreover, how thoroughgoing, powerful, and diverse the critique of modernity has been. These major representatives of opposing schools of thought tackle modernity and liberalism from different standpoints, yet their analyses and conclusions when juxtaposed and combined offer—more than any single critique—a particularly powerful and incisive statement on modernity. (shrink)

Volume 30, Issue 4, June 2025, Page 484-488.

Volume 30, Issue 4, June 2025, Page 489-491.

Volume 30, Issue 4, June 2025, Page 511-513.

This article makes a case for the unusual nature of Northanger Abbey’s reception in Maoist China and analyzes the socio-political factors that may have contributed to this case. Northanger Abbey (1817) was one of the few British novels that, despite being considered conservative and bourgeois by its Chinese translator, was nevertheless published in China in 1958. Why would the publisher want such a work to be translated, given that it seemed to contradict Maoist orthodoxy? I argue that this unusual case (...) was shaped by the shifting political dynamics of that period. Northanger Abbey may well have been selected for its realist streak and its relevance to the marriage reforms of socialist China. By not being sanctioned by Soviet critics, Northanger Abbey’s Maoist reception was particularly subject to the cultural politics of the moment. The translator’s presentation of it as bourgeois was most likely shaped by the increasingly leftist political climate following the Anti-Rightist Campaign (1957–1958) when it would have been politically risky to defend a novel centered on romantic love. The act of publishing Northanger Abbey cannot be explained in simple terms of compliance or resistance but rather suggests a complex negotiation between cultural workers and the uncertain political circumstances under which they worked. (shrink)

Volume 30, Issue 3, May 2025, Page 345-349.

This article considers the way beneficence was treated in an important journal toward the end of the Old Regime. It finds that the Journal de Paris during the years 1783 and 1784 not only publicized acts of beneficence, but also mediated between members of the public who, on their own initiative, contributed to those in need and officials and organizations which in practice cared for the disadvantaged, especially a committee that freed prisoners for debts to wet nurses and the Société (...) philanthropique of Paris. While the notion of beneficence has sometimes been found to offer a secularized version of the traditional value of charity, this article finds that in practice religious and secular people worked together to support those they deemed worthy of aid. The relation of beneficence to self-interest is also considered, and it is suggested that the initiatives of the better-off members of civil society rather than government opened the way toward something approaching a welfare state. (shrink)

Leading American film critics, including, among others, Tony Williams and Robert Miklitsch, have claimed that both World for Ransom and Macao reflect an orientalist, racist, and reactionary worldview. In this article I argue that, on the contrary, these 1950s films noir portray Asian and American characters alike actually carrying out their moral duties. To be sure, these American films employ aesthetic techniques to help illustrate the ethical ambiguities for which film noir is justly celebrated. Still, where the fulfillment of moral (...) duties is concerned, the films’ resolutions are clear. This article enlists the thought of moral philosophers H.L.A. Hart and Daniel Statman to vindicate the ethical outlook of these works, which reward characters who fulfill imperfect, perfect, and/or supererogatory moral obligations. The American protagonists transcend their given circumstances by carrying out high-stake duties in an Asian setting, while forming amorous alliances tested by the aesthetics of film noir. Moreover, I show that none of the protagonists’ moral duties involves maligning Asia. Indeed, were these films noir to disparage Asia, they would diminish the very milieu breathing life into their finest characters. (shrink)

Leading American film critics, including, among others, Tony Williams and Robert Miklitsch, have claimed that both World for Ransom and Macao reflect an orientalist, racist, and reactionary worldview. In this article I argue that, on the contrary, these 1950s films noir portray Asian and American characters alike actually carrying out their moral duties. To be sure, these American films employ aesthetic techniques to help illustrate the ethical ambiguities for which film noir is justly celebrated. Still, where the fulfillment of moral (...) duties is concerned, the films’ resolutions are clear. This article enlists the thought of moral philosophers H.L.A. Hart and Daniel Statman to vindicate the ethical outlook of these works, which reward characters who fulfill imperfect, perfect, and/or supererogatory moral obligations. The American protagonists transcend their given circumstances by carrying out high-stake duties in an Asian setting, while forming amorous alliances tested by the aesthetics of film noir. Moreover, I show that none of the protagonists’ moral duties involves maligning Asia. Indeed, were these films noir to disparage Asia, they would diminish the very milieu breathing life into their finest characters. (shrink)

Volume 30, Issue 3, May 2025, Page 356-359.

By all accounts, higher education is a success. It has significantly grown since World War II and expanded from its old vestiges to new regions of influence, both geographically and thematically. T...

William T. Cavanaugh is a Professor of Catholic Studies and director of the Center for World Catholicism and Intercultural Theology at DePaul University, USA. He is the author of seven books, with...

Volume 30, Issue 3, May 2025, Page 371-373.

Carl Niekerk’s Enlightenment Anthropology: Defining Humanity in an Era of Colonialism charts the rise of the modern discipline of anthropology from its beginnings in early modern natural history to...

Volume 30, Issue 3, May 2025, Page 373-375.

This collection of Pierre Bourdieu’s (1930–2002) thoughts and reflections on sociology, originally presented in his lectures at the Collège de France from 1982 to 1986, consists of: Vol. 1: Classif...

The late lamented Sir Roger Scruton (1944–2020) must have written more books on music than many professional musicologists. One also wonders if specialists on Wagner, his favourite composer, have b...

Shaftesbury has long been celebrated as the early Enlightenment pioneer in English and European aesthetics. His aesthetic innovation, however, has hitherto been explained as merely a new way of saying or appreciating old things within his inherited European cultural traditions. To read him differently, it is crucial to pay attention to a spiritual crisis which he began to experience in the late 1690s. Both before and during it, he was influenced decisively by Pierre Bayle into utilizing information about China in (...) his works, particularly the Chinese monistic idea of tianren heyi or humanity’s unity with heaven. Fundamentally different from the Platonist and Neo-Platonist monism of his inheritance, that liberating conceptual framework from China can and should be seen in hindsight as what made possible Shaftesbury’s aesthetic breakthrough in The Sociable Enthusiast. (shrink)

Shaftesbury has long been celebrated as the early Enlightenment pioneer in English and European aesthetics. His aesthetic innovation, however, has hitherto been explained as merely a new way of saying or appreciating old things within his inherited European cultural traditions. To read him differently, it is crucial to pay attention to a spiritual crisis which he began to experience in the late 1690s. Both before and during it, he was influenced decisively by Pierre Bayle into utilizing information about China in (...) his works, particularly the Chinese monistic idea of tianren heyi or humanity’s unity with heaven. Fundamentally different from the Platonist and Neo-Platonist monism of his inheritance, that liberating conceptual framework from China can and should be seen in hindsight as what made possible Shaftesbury’s aesthetic breakthrough in The Sociable Enthusiast. (shrink)

Before American alt-rock band R.E.M. lost their religion in the 1990s and “the Donald” anointed himself as God’s chosen to resurrect a 1950s white utopian fantasy in 2024, The Beatles were perhaps...

Volume 30, Issue 3, May 2025, Page 376-379.

One may well find the title itself a little strange with its reference to taking skepticism seriously, given that Adam Leite’s argument holds that skepticism can be dismissed without any epistemolo...

Volume 30, Issue 3, May 2025, Page 382-383.

Within the political lexicon of the European Middle Ages, tyranny (along with related terms such as tyrant and tyrannical) constituted one of its most ubiquitous and flexibly applied discursive fields. Moreover, once Aristotle’s Ethics and Politics began to circulate in the West after their translation into Latin in the mid-1200s, a closely related term for tyranny emerged: despotism. Yet when we turn to Marsiglio of Padua, the fourteenth-century political theorist who is often regarded to be the quintessential medieval exponent of (...) Aristotelian political ideas, we find remarkably few references to either tyranny or despotism. The present article examines how Marsiglio deploys the languages of tyranny and despotism in his major work, the Defensor pacis (completed in 1324). Three intertwined theses are proposed. First, the occasions on which Marsiglio invokes tyranny and despotism reveal a great deal about his intellectual connection to his supposed source, Aristotle. Second, unacknowledged dimensions of Marsiglio’s highly critical attitude toward the papacy, especially the doctrine of the papal plenitude of power (plenitudo potestatas), may be illuminated. Third, examination of the languages of tyranny and despotism reveals additional insights into Marsiglio’s signature theory of political consent espoused in the first discourse of the Defensor pacis. (shrink)

Within the political lexicon of the European Middle Ages, tyranny (along with related terms such as tyrant and tyrannical) constituted one of its most ubiquitous and flexibly applied discursive fields. Moreover, once Aristotle’s Ethics and Politics began to circulate in the West after their translation into Latin in the mid-1200s, a closely related term for tyranny emerged: despotism. Yet when we turn to Marsiglio of Padua, the fourteenth-century political theorist who is often regarded to be the quintessential medieval exponent of (...) Aristotelian political ideas, we find remarkably few references to either tyranny or despotism. The present article examines how Marsiglio deploys the languages of tyranny and despotism in his major work, the Defensor pacis (completed in 1324). Three intertwined theses are proposed. First, the occasions on which Marsiglio invokes tyranny and despotism reveal a great deal about his intellectual connection to his supposed source, Aristotle. Second, unacknowledged dimensions of Marsiglio’s highly critical attitude toward the papacy, especially the doctrine of the papal plenitude of power (plenitudo potestatas), may be illuminated. Third, examination of the languages of tyranny and despotism reveals additional insights into Marsiglio’s signature theory of political consent espoused in the first discourse of the Defensor pacis. (shrink)

This book, in the series Just Sustainabilities, consists of twelve case studies from around the globe as indicated by the wide geographical range of the chapters, “that bring together both the lens...

Volume 30, Issue 3, May 2025, Page 379-382.

Volume 30, Issue 3, May 2025, Page 383-385.

Well written, meticulously organized and persuasively argued, this unique work examines the interactive dimensions of media and capitalism, a synergy grounded in their codependency and common aspir...

This article offers a comparative study of the views of Alexis de Tocqueville and those of several Chinese thinkers of the late Ming dynasty (1368–1644)—primarily Gu Yanwu, Huang Zongxi, Wang Fuzhi—on the socio-political processes of centralization. My central claim is that their views of political centralization and of the decentralized polycentric society that preceded it in their respective countries exhibit a remarkable array of analogous structural features. More specifically, both Tocqueville and his Chinese counterparts perceive in centralization an inherent unsustainability (...) driven by its self-destructive nature: since the foundation and strength of statism depends on its social resources, the centralization of power inevitably results in the weakening of its own basis. I conclude that through their nuanced reinterpretation of self-interest, both parties advocate a “small-community-oriented communitarianism” instead of the increasingly centralized modern state. (shrink)

This article offers a comparative study of the views of Alexis de Tocqueville and those of several Chinese thinkers of the late Ming dynasty (1368–1644)—primarily Gu Yanwu, Huang Zongxi, Wang Fuzhi—on the socio-political processes of centralization. My central claim is that their views of political centralization and of the decentralized polycentric society that preceded it in their respective countries exhibit a remarkable array of analogous structural features. More specifically, both Tocqueville and his Chinese counterparts perceive in centralization an inherent unsustainability (...) driven by its self-destructive nature: since the foundation and strength of statism depends on its social resources, the centralization of power inevitably results in the weakening of its own basis. I conclude that through their nuanced reinterpretation of self-interest, both parties advocate a “small-community-oriented communitarianism” instead of the increasingly centralized modern state. (shrink)

Out of the many good and important arguments of this book, I will limit myself to highlighting the following: Paul Lynch’s expansion of both René Girard’s mimetic theory and the study of rhetoric t...

This article examines the views of Burke, Tocqueville, and Marx on the nature and extent of modern revolution and its restorative logic. I argue that, while all three supported the introduction of changes in society, they differed on how to steer the course of such changes, which resulted in a peculiar meaning of modern revolution. Each of them proposed good and bad versions of modern revolution, offered specific ways of protecting the good versions from producing perverse effects, and warned against (...) the ugly consequences of a failed revolution. Burke’s conservative revolution favored incremental change against radical social transformations. Contra Burke, Tocqueville acclaimed the egalitarian tendency as a preordained path and advocated democratic revolutions insofar as political liberty could be rescued from the ills of social equality. Marx drew the possibilities of a proletarian revolution from the future the history of class conflicts had prepared. Particularly in his later works, Marx rejected Blanqui’s abortive version of conspiratorial revolution and social revolution without democratization. Overall, each of these thinkers—Burke, Tocqueville, and Marx—reconciled political and social revolutions in their own way, acknowledging that in order to prevent social and moral decay, modern revolutions inevitably gravitate to the Christian logic of restoration. (shrink)

Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922–1975) was a versatile Italian artist, writer, poet, screenwriter, playwright, actor and film director. History also remembers him as a public intellectual, philosopher, cr...

Ernesto de Martino left The End of the World unfinished at his death in 1965. His student Clara Gallini published the first Italian edition in 1977, which was followed by an updated version in 2002...

This article mounts an argument for the Trojan War as Homer’s invention, possibly fired by sundry legends that still formed part of the rhapsodic currency in his time. Yet the poet gives us only a...

Early modern utopian literature includes an overlooked theme that explains many of the throughlines within the genre. This common theme is the biopolitical control of the population, which implies a form of governance that optimizes life through the regulation of sex, reproduction, health, food, hygiene, habitation, and “race.” In this article I examine four early seventeenth-century utopias—Campanella’s City of the Sun, Andreae’s Christianopolis, Burton’s “Utopia of mine owne,” and Bacon’s New Atlantis—and suggest that exposing this theme can lead to a (...) deeper understanding of both early modern utopian literature and the much debated history of biopolitics, which Foucault understood as a uniquely modern phenomenon. (shrink)

Sandro Jung’s study begins by examining the illustrations in three eighteenth-century literary works: Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719), James Thomson’s poetic cycle The Seasons (1726-1730), an...

Can language capture objective reality? N. J. Enfield’s Language vs. Reality: Why Language Is Good for Lawyers and Bad for Scientists probes into this question and argues how language performs poor...

This article assesses to what extent the future of democratic liberty depends upon its citizens employing a proper approach to the past, by analyzing Tocqueville’s views of three kinds of historical consciousness—aristocratic, revolutionary, and democratic. It is argued that democracies require certain aristocratic assumptions about historical dynamics to cultivate a historical consciousness that fosters liberty. Key to this is the belief in the human capacity to influence the trajectory of history. Tocqueville’s historical approach, which blends aristocratic and democratic elements, is (...) identified as the most effective method for tempering the fatalistic tendencies of the democratic point of view. Thus, for democracies to maintain liberty, citizens should recognize the dual role of general causes and human agency in directing the course of historical events. Tocqueville’s insights on the effects of historical consciousness on the future of democratic liberty remain particularly relevant today when Western democracies confront internal polarization and external anti-democratic challenges, whether neoliberal, illiberal, populist, or fascist. (shrink)

Heinz-Uwe Haus started his career as Director of the Deutsches Theatre in Berlin and today is Professor (emeritus) of Theatre at the University of Delaware, USA. The volume under review centers on...

Ranging from Europe to the United States and to Latin America, this work—comprising decades of in-depth research—illustrates how right-wing extremists increasingly advocate violence, propaganda, ra...

In this lucidly written, soundly researched monograph, Alex Bellamy vividly portrays the complex, often bewildering, spectrum of forces and factions involved in Syria’s tragic experiences during th...

This article focuses on Nietzsche’s critique of the moral ideal of forgiveness and explores the idea of active forgetting as a possible alternative to this ideal. It situates Nietzsche’s critique against the background of a substantial body of work which has grown around the more general question of unconditional and conditional forgiving. I examine Nietzsche’s concept of active forgetting in On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life (1874) and in On the Genealogy of Morality (1887). In both texts (...) Nietzsche addresses the question of how nations and individuals relate to their past and argues that a healthy psyche, of nations as of individuals, requires the ability to relieve ourselves of the burden of the past. I suggest that, while what Nietzsche calls active forgetting is a natural endowment of the human being, albeit suppressed by the abundance of memory, it can also be thought of as an ethical principle in its own right. (shrink)

Before my spouse and I decided to have a child, we had what I then believed to be some fairly weighty and morally serious discussions about the matter. We talked earnestly about how we would divide...

Memorialising the Holocaust in Human Rights Museums makes an important contribution to the critique of hegemonic powers, such as governments and “supernational bonds” such as UNESCO, the UN, and th...

Soviet communism has come and gone so now we have a study that covers the whole thing. A theme of the early pages is that in terms of Marxist theory it shouldn’t have arrived in the first place. Th...