“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” – Declaration of Independence (1776). Scholars have long sought to understand what Thomas Jefferson meant when he included the pursuit […]
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Countering Challenges to the Constitution
It is characteristic of every age under our Constitution that Americans are prone to see contemporary challenges to the national charter as dire, perhaps unique—or to see the Constitution as urgently in need of being challenged, or changed. Justice Scalia observed, in the Tanner Lectures published as A Matter of Interpretation, that the Constitution’s—any constitution’s—“whole […]
Shame and Politics
If our goal as Americans is to create a politics fit for persons, we need to cultivate the kind of shame that warns us against the use of persons as means to our own ends. Shame, as it appears in common discourse, means “feeling badly about oneself.” Here, however, I’m interested in shame understood as […]
War for Peace: Author Interview with Murad Idris
A Political Theory Review interview with Murad Idris, Assistant Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia, about his recent book War for Peace: Geneologies of a Violent Ideal in Western and Islamic Thought (Oxford University Press, 2018). Hear more interviews from The Political Theory Review.
Somewhere/Anywhere: Reflections of a Brit at the University of Missouri
(Remarks delivered after dinner in the Hall of St. Peter’s College, Oxford on Thursday 28th March 2019 as part of the Kinder Institute-Oxford program, 2019) On our walking tour of Oxford yesterday, we saw many of the university’s most famous places and buildings: The High Street; Radcliffe Square with, at its centre, the Radcliffe Camera, […]
