scholarly journals Nature and Politics

2013 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 363-366
Author(s):  
Jeffrey C. Isaac
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Human Dimensions ◽  
Human Interaction ◽  
Theoretical Development ◽  
Leo Strauss ◽  
Human Beings

The broad theme of “nature and politics” has been ubiquitous at least since Aristotle's Politics, the fourth century BCE text often considered the founding work of political science. Long before “political science” took the distinct disciplinary and institutional forms with which we are familiar, the effort to understand the sources and the range of political experience was typically linked to reflection on nature—the nature of politics, the nature of human beings, the nature of existence, and the nature of “nature” itself. In contemporary, post-World War II political science in the United States, much of this reflection about nature has until recently been linked to the work of Leo Strauss and his followers, who saw themselves as heirs to a philosophical discourse at odds with modern social science. At the same time, serious consideration of nature as a theme of political science never disappeared and in recent decades has dramatically expanded. (And of course interpretations of the science of nature, i.e., “science,” have been at the center of political science, especially since the advent of behavioralism.) One source of this expansion of interest in nature has no doubt been the growing politicization of “the environment” and heightened attention to the natural world as both the setting in which human interaction takes place and the object of extraordinary human transformation and degradation. Another source has been the politicization of identities—race, gender, sexuality—that had long been considered natural and whose contestation raised anew questions about “human nature” and its limits, variations, and transformations. A third source has clearly been the technological and theoretical development of “the natural sciences” themselves, and the growth of new discourses—evolutionary psychology, behavioral economics, neuroscience—that raise new questions about the complex relationships between the non-human dimensions of nature—physics, chemistry, biology and especially neurobiology—and human individuals and the social worlds that human individuals inhabit.

Leo Strauss and American Democracy: A Response to Wood and Holmes

1991 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 187-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Lewis Schaefer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Political Science ◽  
The United States ◽  
Popular Media ◽  
Leo Strauss ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
American Mind ◽  
York Review ◽  
Judaic Studies

Although Leo Strauss spent the better part of his scholarly career in the United States, his name remained essentially unknown in this country during his lifetime outside the rather restricted academic circles of political science and Judaic studies. Only in recent years — owing, positively, to the best-selling status achieved by a book by one of his students, Allan Bloom's Closing of the American Mind; and negatively, to several critical reviews of his thought and influence in the semi-popular media —has Strauss's name been publicized to a somewhat wider audience. This article is a response to two of the critiques: Gordon Wood's relatively moderate “The Fundamentalists and the Constitution,” published in the New York Review of Books (18 February 1988), and Stephen Taylor Holmes's less restrained “Truths for Philosophers Alone?”, which appeared in the Times Literary Supplement (1–7 December 1989)

Legal Constraints on the Use of Race in Biomedical Research: Toward a Social Justice Framework

2006 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 526-534 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dorothy E. Roberts
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
Genome Project ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Scientific Validity ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Racial Categories ◽  
Genomic Studies ◽  
Legal Constraints ◽  
The Human Genome Project

The scientific validity of racial categories has been the subject of debate among population geneticists, evolutionary biologists, and physical anthropologists for several decades. After World War II, the rejection of eugenics, which had supported sterilization laws and other destructive programs in the United States, generated a compelling critique of the biological basis of race. The classification of human beings into distinct biological “races” is a relatively recent invention propped up by deeply flawed evidence and historically providing the foundation of racist ideology and inequities of power. Social scientists’ conclusion that race is socially constructed was confirmed by genomic studies of human variation, including the Human Genome Project, showing high levels of genetic similarity within the human species. Some scholars came to believe that the science of human genetic diversity would replace race as the preeminent means of grouping people for scientific purposes.

Tocqueville on Religion, the Enlightenment, and the Democratic Soul

2015 ◽  
Vol 109 (3) ◽  
pp. 523-534 ◽  
Author(s):  
AARON L. HEROLD
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Religious Psychology ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
New Political Science

This article proposes a new interpretation of Tocqueville's thought, one that focuses on his account of religious psychology. From his observations of America, Tocqueville concludes that human beings have a natural hope for immortality—a hope that is driven by a paradoxical but ineradicable desire to affirm and forget oneself simultaneously. Tocqueville formulates this insight as a critique of the Enlightenment thinkers who laid the foundations for liberal democracy; I argue that he crafts his “new political science” to provide healthy outlets for the religious hopes whose existence these thinkers largely denied and whose anomalous presence in the United States has accordingly led to unforeseen dangers. Tocqueville's analysis not only helps us understand and begin to remedy those dissatisfactions that characterize democracy today but it also reveals his theoretical depth, political moderation, and sober assessment of our moral psychology in a way not seen before.

Traditional Saami reindeer herding village resource territories on the western Kola Peninsula, Russia

Polar Record ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 222-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert P. Wheelersburg ◽  
Natalia Gutsol
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Kola Peninsula ◽  
The United States ◽  
Human Dimensions ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Cultural Continuity ◽  
Reindeer Herding ◽  
World War ◽  
Economic Activities ◽  
Lake Imandra

ABSTRACTSome Arctic scholars believe that modern reindeer herding on the Kola Peninsula has cultural continuity with the traditional period of such activity in the late 19th century. Others believe that by World War II, Soviet repression of Saami leaders, collectivisation of herding villages, and relocation of families had eliminated many traditional behaviours, especially in the Lake Imandra watershed. This study utilises informant interviews with survivors of the Babinski and Ekostrovski Saami reindeer herding villages and archival materials to understand how their families used land and water to fish, hunt, and obtain other resources including cash labour. As part of the United States National Science Foundation's human dimensions of the Arctic system (HARC) programme to examine how humans are both shaped by, and shape, the Arctic environment, the authors document how lands and waters formed traditional resource territories for Saami herding families. The results reveal that prior to their destruction, western Kola reindeer herding villages were integrated along family lines, with villages sharing mates, resource territories, and economic activities. This paper argues that there was, in fact, no cultural continuity between traditional Saami reindeer herding villages and modern herding structures such as the post-Soviet brigade on the western Kola Peninsula.

Leo Strauss: The Ancient as Modern

1988 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 497-514 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernard Susser
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Science ◽  
The United States ◽  
Leo Strauss ◽  
Intellectual Tradition ◽  
Intellectual Style ◽  
Post War ◽  
American Political Science

Although his approach to politics and philosophy were relatively little known outside the United States, Leo Strauss was perhaps the most revered and the most controversial figure in post-war American political science. His followers today form what is arguably the most cohesive intellectual fraternity in the discipline. They constitute a highly influential opposition to the empirical–quantitative course taken by political science and political philosophy. This study explores Strauss's ideas highlighting the unconventional mixture of substance and style that gives them an arrestingly idiosyncratic character. Substantively, Strauss belonged to the pre-modern intellectual tradition that understood Truth as accessible and knowable through philosophical contemplation. The form of his argumentation, however, his relentless critique of modernity and the moderns, is conducted with all the cognitive weaponry provided for by the modernist intellectual style.

Ecological Education: Extending the Definition of Environmental Education

1999 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 139-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory A. Smith ◽  
Dilafruz R. Williams
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Environmental Education ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Cultural Beliefs ◽  
The United States ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Environmental Crisis ◽  
Ecological Education ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Impact

Except in small measure, environmental education in the United States has not yet challenged the status quo of Western notions of progress or monoculturalism, or recognized that moving through the environmental crisis may require significant shifts in generally unquestioned cultural attitudes and beliefs. In the U.S., environmental education has instead tended to focus on information regarding environmental problems and to explore topics such as endangered species, global climate change, or the water quality of local streams and rivers. Even this has become a source of controversy in the United States since the mid-1990s as a coalition of right-wing organizations has mounted a well-coordinated political campaign charging environmental educators with bias and a failure to present both sides of controversial issues (Sanera & Shaw 1996, Independent Commission on Environmental Education 1997). Despite this, we believe that if environmental education is to live up to its promise as a vehicle for developing a citizenry capable of making wise decisions about the impact of human activities on the environment, examining and altering fundamental cultural beliefs and practices that are contributing to the degradation of the planet's natural systems will be imperative.We have chosen to call this extended form of environmental education ecological education. For us, ecological education connotes an emphasis on the inescapable embeddedness of human beings in natural settings and the responsibilities that arise from this relationship. Rather than seeing nature as other—a set of phenomena capable of being manipulated like parts of a machine—the practice of ecological education requires viewing human beings as one part of the natural world and human cultures as an outgrowth of interactions between our species and particular places. We believe that the development of sustainable cultures will in fact require widespread acceptance of a relationship between humans and the earth grounded in moral sentiments that arise from the willingness to care. As Indian physicist and ecofeminist Vandana Shiva writes, the term ‘sustainability’ implies the ability and willingness ‘to support, bear weight of, hold up, enable to last out, give strength to, endure without giving way’ (Shiva 1992, p. 191).

Political Thought in Xenophon: Straussian Readings of the Anabasis

2015 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Rood
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Final Section ◽  
The United States ◽  
Leo Strauss

The main aim of this paper is to discuss some influential approaches to political thought in Xenophon’s Anabasis within the field of Political Science, especially within the United States, where the influence of Leo Strauss’ writings on Xenophon has been powerful. It starts by discussing a number of features shared by these discussions, notably a strong idealisation of Xenophon’s wisdom and accuracy; a lack of interest in the conditions under which Xenophon wrote; a pro-Hellenic perspective; and a tendency to innovative (and often allegorical) literary explication. It then discusses the two most important themes treated by Strauss and his followers, Xenophon’s piety and philosophy and politics. It argues that Straussian exegesis introduces anachronistic conceptions while neglecting the narrative dynamics of the text. The final section sets out briefly some ways of exploring Xenophon’s relationship to other currents in Greek political thought.

Politics: American and Non-American

1984 ◽  
Vol 17 (03) ◽  
pp. 545-548
Author(s):  
Suzanne Berger
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
American Politics ◽  
American Political Science Review ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Past ◽  
Foreign Governments

Tocqueville, considering how Americans compare their nation with others, observed that general ideas about politics testify to the weakness of human intelligence. “The Deity does not regard the human race collectively.… Such is, however, not the case with man. … Having superficially considered a certain number of objects, and remarked their resemblance, he assigns to them a common name, sets them apart, and proceeds onwards.”As it is for human beings, so, too, for political scientists. And of the generalizations which have helped Americans and American political scientists organize the confusing mass of differences and similarities between this country and others, none has been more important and enduring than the notion of the uniqueness of the American political community. This conception is reflected in the split within the discipline between those who study the U.S. political system and those who study comparative politics, a field understood to encompass various foreign countries. The rubric that in theAmerican Political Science Reviewuntil the 1950s used to read “Foreign Governments and Politics” has been replaced by a subsection of the book reviews that is entitled “Comparative Politics.” But today as in the past, it is rare to find teaching or research in political science that truly integrates the analysis of American politics within a comparative framework.Why this should remain the case is difficult to understand, for over the past half-century there have been many shifts in the discipline and in the world that challenged the premises of research based on American exceptionalism. Already in the interwar period, significant work in political science was moving beyond configurative case studies of individual countries. C. J. Friedrich's importantConstitutional Government and Democracy(1937), indeed, included the United States in its examination of how well certain general political theories explained the experiences of major political systems. Whatever reservations one might have had about the methodologies of comparative research on which Friedrich relied, the broad influence of his work promised a new integration of American politics into an expanded field of comparative politics.

Leo Strauss on Modern Political Science:Two Previously Unpublished Manuscripts

2017 ◽  
Vol 79 (3) ◽  
pp. 413-425
Author(s):  
Svetozar Minkov ◽  
Rasoul Namazi
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
The United States ◽  
Prison Reform ◽  
Leo Strauss ◽  
Political Views ◽  
British Labour ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Unpublished Manuscripts ◽  
First Time ◽  
New Political Science

The two manuscripts published here for the first time were written by Leo Strauss: the first in 1956 and the second between 1957 and 1962. The first, entitled “Lecture in Milwaukee: Michigan Midwest Political Science,” was written for the Fourteenth Annual Meeting of the Midwest Conference of Political Scientists on May 4, 1956, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The second is an unpublished passage of “An Epilogue” Strauss wrote for Essays on the Scientific Study of Politics, published in 1962. Together these pieces improve our understanding of both the context in which Strauss developed his critique of the new political science and the audience to whom that critique was addressed. These two texts are of “biographical” interest. They are biographical in the sense that they clarify Strauss's thought and its evolution. The “Lecture in Milwaukee” clarifies the context in which Strauss's critique of modern political science was born: confrontation with the political scientists of the 1950s, here represented by Glendon Schubert who is not mentioned in Strauss's published writings. Without this lecture one might overlook the reference to “extrasensory perception” in the ironical discussion of “our man in Missouri” in “Epilogue.” The critique of Arthur Bentley, Bernard Berelson, Harold Laswell, and Herbert Simon by Strauss's students also takes on new meaning if read in the light of this lecture's references and Schubert's published article. Aside from Strauss's view of academia in the 1950s, his references in the lecture to the British Labour Party's policy toward Nazi Germany, to postwar American disarmament, and to prison reform and immigration policy in the United States provide rare and thus important information about Strauss's political views and judgment.

International Studies as a Discipline and Women’s Status Therein

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meredith Reid Sarkees ◽  
Marie T. Henehan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Studies ◽  
The Status ◽  
Civil War Era ◽  
Status Of Women

As a distinct discipline, international studies is relatively young, emerging in the United States only after World War II. The study of the status of women in international studies is also a fairly new field, appearing more recently than that in other fields in academia, including political science. In the United States, political science evolved through at least six distinct phases. The first two phases occurred during the American Revolution and the post-Civil War era, while the next four took place in the twentieth century, described by David Easton as the formal (legal), the traditional (informal or pre-behavioral), the behavioral, and the post-behavioral stages. It was during this period that the study of women in politics began. As political science began to solidify itself as a separate academic discipline at the beginning of the twentieth century, there was also an attempt to include international relations within its domain. Despite the increase in the number of women in international studies and the advances that women have made in publications and positions, the field remains dominated by men. In other words, it is still not an equitable place for women to work. In order to overcome many of these enduring barriers, there should be a greater willingness to investigate and publish more studies about the status of women and to take more proactive steps to resolve the issues that have stalled women’s progress.

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