Search results for ""Author John von Heyking""

For statesmen, friendship is the lingua franca of politics. Considering the connections between personal and political friendship, John von Heyking's The Form of Politics interprets the texts of Plato and Aristotle and emphasizes the role that friendship has in enduring philosophical and contemporary political contexts. Beginning with a discussion on virtue-friendship, described by Aristotle and Plato as an agreement on what qualifies as the pursuit of good, The Form of Politics demonstrates that virtue and political friendship form a paradoxical relationship in which political friendships need to be nourished by virtue-friendships that transcend the moral and intellectual horizons of the political society. Von Heyking then examines Aristotle's ethical and political writings - which are set within the boundaries of political life - and Plato's dialogues on friendship in Lysis and the Laws, which characterize political friendship as festivity. Ultimately, arguing that friendship is the high point of a virtuous political life, von Heyking presents a fresh interpretation of Aristotle and Plato's political thought, and a new take on the most essential goals in politics. Inviting reassessment of the relationship between friendship and politics by returning to the origins of Western philosophy, The Form of Politics is a lucid work on the foundations of political cooperation.

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Histories and biographies of Winston Churchill frequently mention his friends. Some comment on their importance but few explain their significance. Indeed, he rarely spoke of his friendships. However, his concern for friends and for friendship always seems to hover above, or in the background, of his statecraft and in his thinking about statecraft and politics. This book brings friendship into focus as a central component of Churchill’s understanding of politics and statesmanship. Regarding friendship as a key to politics seems archaic or even elitist today in the minds of many. But for many of the greatest statesmen of the past and even of contemporary times, friendship has been the central category of their statecraft and their moral vision of politics. Churchill was one of those statesmen. This book examines friendship as the core of Churchill’s moral vision of politics by considering both his practice of friendship, as well as his thoughts on friendship in political life. It examines some of the friendships he conducted in his political life, including with Lord Birkenhead (F. E. Smith), Lord Beaverbrook (Max Aitken), and Franklin D. Roosevelt. It also examines his historical and political writings to explain how he regarded friendship also as a goal for political life. He regarded Parliament as a club of friends who esteemed their friendships, as parliamentarians who are custodians of the common, as nobler than the partisan differences that divided them. The idea of trans-partisan friendships also animated the “Other Club” he founded with Birkenhead. Indeed, Churchill thought parliamentary democracy, more than other regimes, depends upon the friendliness of its statesmen and its citizens to mitigate the heat of factional strife. For him, parliamentary democracy depends on personal friendships of the highest order to sustain the forms and formalities of the regime, as well as the political friendship upon which they are based. Churchill’s biography of his great ancestor John Churchill, the Duke of Marlborough, is his greatest statement of his political wisdom that consists also of a sustained statement on the centrality of friendship in politics. His view of Great Britain as an “island story” is also his expression of a political friendship expressed as a long historical adventure, much as he his personal friendships within politics as great adventures. Because adventures get sung about, he was its main singer, whose “songs” appeared as his speeches and extensive historical writings. As a book about Churchill’s moral vision for politics, this book asks a philosophical question by considering his life, political actions, and writings. This book is not a biographical or historical description of Churchill and his friends. This is more of a character sketch, or a work of “empirical political philosophy” because of the philosophical exposition it provides of the actions and speeches of a creative prince such as Churchill. This book describes how Churchill understood friendship as the essence of statesmanship.

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The essays in this volume honor the work of political scientist and Eric Voegelin scholar, Barry Cooper, by considering how political philosophy (a form of hunting) and empiricism get “woven” together (to borrow a metaphor from Plato). In other words, they consider how science needs to be conducted if it is to remain true to our commonsense experience of the world and to facilitate political judgment. Several of the essays cover Eric Voegelin, including his understanding of consciousness, a comparison of him and Leo Strauss, and his self-understanding as a scholar. Other essays consider terrorism, technology, religion and the modern world, the divided line in Plato’s Republic, and the political significance of hope. The volume also includes a number of essays that consider different aspects of Canadian politics, including its strong regionalism, political culture, public law, and the infamous “Calgary School” of political science. These essays are united by the concern that political science must “weave” together political philosophy and empiricism. This task was what Aristotle meant when he characterized political science as a matter of practical wisdom. It is an insight that was also central for Voegelin’s restoration of political science in the twentieth century, and that these essays continue into the twenty-first century. Political analysis begins in whatever contemporary crisis the analyst has found himself. The analyst sifts through competing claims of political meaning asserted by the partisans in the crisis. From there he ascends to greater luminosity concerning the human condition by viewing those claims in light of the “major questions in the history of political thought.” They inform one another, as the search for order is necessarily the search for order that is conducted by a particular individual’s consciousness in the context of a particular community in space and time. This volume will be of special interest to scholars of political philosophy as well as citizens and statesmen interested in how an engagement in the history of political philosophy can facilitate political judgment in particular political circumstances.

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Throughout the history of Western political philosophy, the idea of friendship has occupied a central place in the conversation. It is only in the context of the modern era that friendship has lost its prominence. By retrieving the concept of friendship for philosophical investigation, these essays invite readers to consider how our political principles become manifest in our private lives. They provide a timely corrective to contemporary confusion plaguing this central experience of our public and our private life. This volume assembles essays by well-known scholars who address contemporary concerns about community in the context of philosophical ideas about friendship. Part One includes essays on ancient philosophers including Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero. Part Two considers treatments of friendship by Christian thinkers such as Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin, and Part Three continues with Thomas Hobbes, Montaigne, the American founders, and de Tocqueville. The volume concludes with two essays that address the postmodern emphasis on fragmentation and the dynamics of power within the modern state. Contributors: John von Heyking, Richard Avramenko, James M. Rhodes, Stephen M. Salkever, Walter Nicgorski, Jeanne Heffernan Schindler, Thomas Heilke, Timothy Fuller, Travis D. Smith, George Carey, Joshua Mitchell, and Jürgen Gebhardt.

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This anthology brings together scholarship in the field of Friendship Studies.In recent decades, friendship has been a site of analysis for understanding the connections between people and groups, and as a fabric for holding the political and social together. Starting with the theoretical debates about how to conceptualize friendship as a political idea, the anthology then looks at friendship's relationship with justice, the state, and civic relations. The collection presents cutting-edge research which moves the theorization of friendship beyond western confines to consider the themes in cross-cultural and decolonized contexts.

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