Polybios von Megalopolis

In his ‘Histories’, the Greek historian Polybius, a hostage of Rome for about 17 years, pursued the question of ‘how and thanks to what kind of constitution the Romans … [had] subjected nearly the whole inhabited world to their sole government’. His main merit for political science was that he analysed the history of his world under the hermeneutic primacy of constitutional thought, thereby uniting historical empiricism and political theory. The articles collected in this volume elaborate a multifaceted profile of this political thinker between the world of Greek poleis and the Roman res publica. His main concepts and narratives are thoroughly investigated in terms of themselves as well as their political reception from Polybius’ own time to the 21st century’s High Theory. With contributions by Frank Daubner, Boris Dreyer, Martin Gronau, Lisa Hau, Felix K. Maier, Stefano Saracino, Philipp Scheibelreiter and Jonas Scherr.

Adams, Wilson, and the American Res Publica

This chapter considers the final stage of the Ciceronian tradition: the American founding. Insofar as the American founding is influenced by John Locke, it is indirectly indebted to Cicero. However, John Adams and James Wilson recognize the profoundly Ciceronian character of American liberal republicanism. Both argue that the prevailing understandings of natural law, justice, liberty, and what it means to be a republic derive from Cicero’s formulation. Moreover, Adams and Wilson see the American experiment as proving Cicero right, that a republic tethered to natural law could be realized. They also see the American Founding as contributing its own innovation to this tradition: written constitutionalism. The self-conscious writing of a regime’s constitution enables the principles of a natural law republic to be fixed and formalized in a way that Cicero’s original formulation did not provide for.

Res publica ciceroniana e ‘anarchia militare’ In margine a due Vitae della Historia Augusta

This paper sets out to elaborate on the persistence of the republican ideal in imperial Rome through the lens of historiography. The investigation – which is meant to be part of a wider workplan – is divided in two parts. Firstly, it focuses on what is believed to be a key-factor of such persistence: Cicero’s elaboration of the ideal government of the Roman state in his De re publica. Secondly, it highlights significant testimonies focusing on two momentous events of the third century, notably from the Historia Augusta, which suggest the persistence of Cicero’s assessment: the rise of Pupienus and Balbinus and the death of Maximinus (238), and the rise of Tacitus (275).

I consoli di dio: un topos poetico cristiano

With the conversion to Christianity in the Theodosian age, the Roman aristocracy projected their class ideology and self-representation into the conception of religious sanctity and the vision of the Afterlife. On a literary level, this gives rise to an eschatological imagery in which the holy souls are the nobility and the ‘notables’ (proceres) of the eternal res publica, they constitute the ‘heavenly senate’ (caelestis curia) seated around the throne of God, and the martyrs of Christ are given the title of ‘consuls’. This paper aims to describe the development of such images in the Christian Latin poetry of the 4th-6th centuries AD.

Does laïcité translate to the American classroom?

This essay reflects on the relevance of French laïcité for the American college classroom. It begins with a discussion of philosopher Catherine Kintzler’s radical interpretation of laïcité as a theory of political association that takes the classroom as its model. According to this view, the autonomous learning contingent on doubt and self-correction that ideally occurs there is the basis for an egalitarian and collaborative production of knowledge, a model of a res publica. The essay then turns to legal scholar and philosopher Anthony Kronman’s analysis of classroom conversation and the “ethics of depersonalization.” It considers the extent to which these notions can be viewed as American translations of Kintzler’s laïcité. The essay concludes with a reading of American essayist Ta-Nehisi Coates’s bestselling 2015 memoir as an endorsement of the autonomous abstract individual, the linchpin of republican universalism, laïcité, and liberal education.

Hegels Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts. Ein dialogischer Kommentar

Von Geist und Denken von Hegels „Rechtsphilosophie“ sind wir durch eine bloß scheinbar gemeinsame Sprache getrennt wie sprichwörtlich England und die Vereinigten Staaten. Die Folge ist, dass Hegels Grundlegung aller Staats- und Sozialwissenschaften den einen zu konservativ, den anderen zu liberal ist, den einen als restaurativ, den anderen als sozialrevolutionär erscheint. Stekelers Kommentar zeigt dagegen, dass es Hegel in erster Linie um eine radikale Säkularisierung jedes Grund- und Verfassungsrechts samt zugehöriger Ethik und Moral geht. Wir können uns weder mit einem Gesetz beruhigen, das mythisch, d. h. rein verbal, auf einen Gott zurückgeführt wird, noch mit einem „Naturrecht“ oder einer „Vernunftmoral“. Die Aufgabe ist vielmehr, alle normativen Rechte und Pflichten als Antworten auf Probleme freier Kooperation und damit als notwendige Bedingungen freien Personseins explizit zu machen. Hegels freiheitspraktische Begründung des Staates im Sinn des Gesamts aller öffentlichen Angelegenheiten der res publica beginnt daher unter dem Titel eines abstrakten Rechts mit ganz allgemeinen handlungstheoretischen Selbstverständlichkeiten. Es folgt eine radikale Kritik an der bloß subjektiven Moral Kants und eine Explikation der grundlegenden Praxisformen der Familie und der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft mit ihrem vertragsgestützten Austausch von Leistungen.