American Political Thought Journal: Winter 2021 Issue
American Political Thought: A Journal of Ideas, Institutions, and Culture, has recently published its Winter 2021 issue, which includes pieces by JMC faculty partners Benjamin Kleinerman and Nicholas Buccola and fellows Svetozar Minkov and Michelle Schwarze.
>> Table of Contents <<
Articles:
- “The Revival of Thoreauvian Resistance,” William E. Scheuerman
- “American Socialism and American Political Culture: Irving Howe’s Conciliation with (and Dissent from) Individualism,” Geoffrey Kurtz
- “Political Radicalism and Pocket Constitutionalism: The Bundys and Beyond,” Justin Crowe
- “‘Religion and the Commonweal in the Tradition of Political Philosophy’: An Unpublished Lecture by Leo Strauss,” Svetozar Minkov and Rasoul Namazi
Review Essays:
- “The Representative Presidency in the Constitutional Order” Benjamin A. Kleinerman
Book Reviews:
- “The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr, by Peniel E. Joseph,” Michael Sawyer
- “The Spirit vs. the Souls: Max Weber, W. E. B. Du Bois, and the Politics of Scholarship, by Christopher A. McAuley,” Inés Valdez
- “Lincoln and Democratic Citizenship, edited by Michael P. Zuckert,” Steven Johnston
- “Demagogue: The Life and Long Shadow of Senator Joe McCarthy, by Larry Tye,” Gregory L. Schneider
- “The Politics of Petulance: America in an Age of Immaturity, by Alan Wolfe,” Michelle Schwarze
- “At the Center: American Thought and Culture in the Mid-twentieth Century, by Casey Nelson Blake, Daniel H. Borus, and Howard Brick,” Tom Arnold-Forster
- “The Claims of Experience: Autobiography and American Democracy, by Nolan Bennett,” Nicholas Buccola
“‘Religion and the Commonweal in the Tradition of Political Philosophy’: An Unpublished Lecture by Leo Strauss,” Svetozar Minkov and Rasoul Namazi
“The transcript published here for the first time is of Leo Strauss’s 1963 lecture on, and discussion of, the relation of religion to the commonweal in the tradition of political philosophy. In this lecture, Strauss considers the question of the establishment of religion, the relation of freedom of religion to freedom from religion, and the question of the truth of religion. The lecture has implications for American constitutional jurisprudence, especially concerning the First Amendment, which Strauss situates within the development of modern political philosophy.”
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Svetozar Minkov is a Professor of Philosophy at Roosevelt University where he teaches Introduction to Philosophy, Ethics, Phenomenology, Philosophy of Technology, Philosophy of Nature, and Philosophy of Law. He is the author of Francis Bacon’s “Inquiry Touching the Human Good”, co-translator with Gabriel Bartlett of Strauss’s Hobbes’s Critique of Religion, author and editor of Enlightening Revolutions: Essays in Honor of Ralph Lerner, as well as of Man and His Enemies: Essays on Carl Schmitt. Professor Minkov has written most recently on Plato’s Laws, Strauss’s Thoughts on Machiavelli, and Bacon’s On the Wisdom of the Ancients.
Professor Minkov is a JMC fellow.
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“The Representative Presidency in the Constitutional Order,” Benjamin Kleinerman
“This is a review essay reflecting on six recent publications addressing the question of the power of the presidency. The publications reviewed are Jeremy D. Bailey’s The Idea of Presidential Representation: An Intellectual and Political History, Sarah Burns’s The Politics of War Powers: The Theory and History of Presidential Unilateralism, Stephen F. Knott’s The Lost Soul of the American Presidency: The Decline into Demagoguery and the Prospects for Renewal, David J. Siemers’s The Myth of Coequal Branches: Restoring the Constitution’s Separation of Functions, Jeffrey Tulis’s The Rhetorical Presidency, and Mariah Zeisberg’s War Powers: The Politics of Constitutional Authority.”
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Benjamin Kleinerman is the RW Morrison Professor of Political Science at Baylor University. He is also editor of The Constitutionalist and on the Board of Directors of the Jack Miller Center. Professor Kleinerman received his B.A. at Kenyon College in Political Science and his Ph.D. at Michigan State University in Political Science. Kleinerman was the founding Chair of the American Political Thought section of APSA. His research focuses mostly on presidential power in relation to the separation of powers. He has published articles on this subject in Perspectives on Politics, APSR, and several edited volumes, including Nomos and The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. Professor Kleinerman’s first book, The Discretionary President: The Promise and Peril of Executive Power, was published by the University Press of Kansas and he is currently working on a book titled The Crisis Presidency. Professor Kleinerman teaches classes on American political thought and political institutions.
Professor Kleinerman is a JMC board member and faculty partner.
Learn more about Benjamin Kleinerman >>
“The Politics of Petulance: America in an Age of Immaturity, by Alan Wolfe,” Michelle Schwarze
Michelle Schwarze reviews The Politics of Petulance: America in an Age of Immaturity, by Alan Wolfe, which “captures this twin feeling of shock and awe among liberals today at popular and anti-democratic movements, while helping to contextualize it in American history.”
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Michelle Schwarze is the Jack Miller Center Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research centers on the passions and the history of political economy, especially in 18th century moral and political theory and the works of Adam Smith. She has just finished revising her first book, Recognizing Resentment, which argues that spectatorial resentment is central to justice and the recognition and protection of equal rights in a liberal society. Her work has been published in the American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, and American Political Thought. She currently serves on the executive committee of the International Adam Smith Society.
Professor Schwarze is a JMC Assistant Professor of Political Science.
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“The Claims of Experience: Autobiography and American Democracy, by Nolan Bennett,” Nicholas Buccola
Nicholas Buccola reviews Nolan Bennett’s The Claims of Experience: Autobiography and American Democracy: “I find certain aspects of Bennett’s theoretical framework to be very useful, and although I can only claim serious knowledge of one of his subjects (Douglass), it is clear that his treatment of the other authors is careful and thoughtful.”
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Nicholas Buccola is the Elizabeth & Morris Glicksman Chair in Political Science at Linfield College. His teaching and research interests are in political theory and public law. Professor Buccola is the founding director of the Frederick Douglass Forum on Law, Rights, and Justice, a partner program in JMC’s Pacific Northwest Initiative, and has written extensively on the political thought of Frederick Douglass. He has published essays on a wide variety of topics including the debate over same-sex marriage, Friedrich Nietzsche’s critique of socialism, and the political philosophies of Judith Shklar and Leo Strauss. He is a recipient of the Allen and Pat Kelley Faculty Scholar Award, and a two-time recipient of the Samuel Graf Faculty Achievement Award. Professor Buccola is also the book review editor for the JMC supported journal, American Political Thought.
Professor Buccola is a JMC faculty partner.
Learn more about Nicholas Buccola >>
American Political Thought: A Journal of Ideas, Institutions, and Culture is a JMC supported journal that bridges the gap between historical, empirical, and theoretical research. It is the only journal dedicated exclusively to the study of American political thought. Interdisciplinary in scope, APT features research by political scientists, historians, literary scholars, economists, and philosophers who study the foundation of the American political tradition. Research explores key political concepts such as democracy, constitutionalism, equality, liberty, citizenship, political identity, and the role of the state.
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