Between eternities

Lexington Books

2008

x, 657 p.

9780739120767

Contents: Introduction: Political Philosophy; Is There a Future Tradition? 1 -- Part 1 Modern Constructivism or Phenomenology -- Preface to Part 1: Modernity and Its Closure 13 -- 2 The "End of History" or a Portal to the Future: Does Anything Lie Beyond Late Modernity? 17 -- 3 What Is Political Philosophy: A Phenomenological Approach 37 -- 4 Machiavelli's The Prince and the Essence of Modernity 65 -- 5 Phenomenology or Constructivism: Robert Pippin's Modernity 85 -- 6 Cacophony or Silence: Derrida's Deconstructionism and the Possibility of Political Philosophy 107 -- Part 2 Leo Strauss and the Tradition; an Engagement -- Preface to Part 2: Remembrance and Tradition 147 -- 7 Who Was Leo Strauss? 151 -- 8 Leo Strauss and the Straussians: An Anti-Democratic Cult? 167 -- 9 Athens and Washington: Leo Strauss and the American Regime 187 -- 10 On a Possible Epicurean Garden for Philosophy: Philosophy and the City in the Thought of Leo Strauss 215 -- 11 On Cropsey's World: Joseph Cropsey and the Tradition of Political Philosophy 249 -- 12 On the Tradition of Political Philosophy in the Future: Leo Strauss and Martin Heidegger 279 -- Part 3 The Non-Metaphysical Plato: Second Beginnings? -- Preface to Part 3: Plato, Platonism, and a Second Beginning 307 -- 13 Dialogue and Dialectic in Plato's Phaedo: Plato as Metaphysician, Epistomologist, Ontologist and Political Philosopher 313 -- 14 Political Philosophy and Eros: Plato's Socrates in the Symposium 337 -- 15 Plato's Parmenides: Socratism and the Origins of Platonic Political Philosophy 371 -- 16 Between Platonism and Postmodernism: Plato's Emendation of Socratism in the Trilogy 397 -- 17 Aristotle on Reason and Its Limits 433 -- Part 4 Political Philosophy After Modernity? -- Preface to Part 4: Openings Toward the Postmodern 471 -- 18 Legitimacy, International Morality and the Postmodern Global Future 475 -- 19 Jerusalem and Washington: Political Philosophy and Theology 501 -- 20 Ontology, Technology, Poetry or Mandarin Pastime? Theoretical Physics in the Postmodern Age 529 -- 21 The Queen of the Sciences: Political Philosophy or Biology? 559 -- 22 Political Philosophy and Environmentalism: Recovering the Phenomenon "Nature" 589 -- 23 Conclusion: Is There a Future? 617.

Between Eternities reflects on the possibility of political philosophy as an ongoing, architectonic activity that is necessarily linked to both the past and future. Almost all contemporary work in political philosophy either studies the subject with an eye to the past tradition - choosing a winner from that tradition and then deducing what follows from the posited premises in a thoroughly modern, constructivist fashion - or else limits itself to drawing out what follows from already accepted premises and principles. There is almost no effort to reflect upon the prerequisites for the tradition being an ongoing undertaking that can have a unique future. Between Eternities attempts to set loose that thinking toward the future.

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