Abstract: While the presentation of ‘humanitas’ changes between Cicero’s texts, the overall use of the term throughout his corpus establishes both a foundation for community and a standard to justify exclusion from it. The role of ‘humanitas’ in Cicero’s thought, I argue, hinges on an attempt to reconcile an expansionist understanding of the cultivation of souls on the one hand with a rhetorical means to exclude political opponents and non-Romans alike on the other. As a result, when the scope of the former becomes more inclusive, the punitive force of the latter becomes correspondingly more severe. In De legibus, the character Marcus claims there is “nothing better than those mysteries through which we have been refined from a boorish, savage life and softened to humanity” (2.36). By this account, humanity is the mark of a cultivated soul that distinguishes Roman citizens from barbarians. In contrast, however, Cicero argues in De officiis that “those fierce and savage monsters in human form should be cut off from what may be called the common body of humanity” (3.32). Although the context of the second statement pertains to tyrants in particular, the account nevertheless presents humanity as a shared bond between most people that can be used to determine the worthiness of one’s political participation. Cicero’s politics of ‘humanitas’ is thus seemingly incongruent with itself; it relies on an assertion of civilizational inclusion through a “softened” humanity while simultaneously hardening the conception of what it means to be Roman.

Abstract: The recrudescence of campus speech codes, the recent calls for trigger warnings on books and syllabi, injunctions against “microagressions,” and various campus initiatives to limit what can be said and written all stem from the most basic liberal virtue: tolerance. In this paper, we argue that this 21st century understanding of toleration—to avoid hurting the feelings of others— is a gross misunderstanding of this crucial virtue. As a remedy, we propose re-examining toleration as it appears in an unexpected place: Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (2.6). We will invoke Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean to understand toleration as a mean between two vices. In so doing, we will argue that Aristotle’s discussion of toleration (the third, unnamed virtue) demonstrates that contemporary definitions of toleration as noninterference (or even as recognition and praise) are actually vicious and harmful, both to the individual involved and to the the larger community.

Abstract: Eric Voegelin was a leading political philosopher of the 20th century. With wide-ranging interests that included questions of the symbolization of political reality and the existential structure of civilizational forms, he was deeply interested in the relationship of Christianity to those civilizations that it helped to form. His Platonist approach to these broad questions led him to develop a semi-gnostic Christology, yet a seemingly more or less “traditional,” plausibly orthodox political theology surrounding that Christology. This combination opened him up to criticism from scholars who otherwise found his philosophical approach congenial to their own positions. Several of Voegelin’s writings directly address the question of the historical Jesus from a philosophical perspective and the importance of that question for understanding past and current political-theoretical and political-theological formations in Western civilization. My paper examines Voegelin’s approach to this problem in the context of his wider philosophical concerns, with a view to understanding his analysis of the past and future of Western Civilization and the associated difficulties surrounding questions of Christian origins and ecclesiological formation. On what basis could Voegelin make an appeal to traditional orthodoxy as a means for sustaining a western civilization he understood to be in crisis, and how plausible was that philosophical appeal in light of the modern quest for the historical Jesus and contemporary ecclesiological and “church and state” concerns? My paper, when completed, has been invited for submission to an edited volume that explores the late writings of Professor Voegelin.

Abstract: In Book Three of the History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides famously remarks that “war is a violent teacher.” But a teacher of what, exactly, and to whom, he does not necessarily specify. In this paper, therefore, I attempt to answer this question in an effort to shed light on Thucydides’ ontology of history. To begin, I discuss the metaphysical implications of viewing war not only as something violent but as something violent from which knowledge or wisdom can be attained—that is, as something that not only kills and maims but, in so doing, births lessons for those who experience and study it. Next and by way of analyzing the important role that Thucydides assigns to a character named Diodotus, I discuss how those implications inform Thucydides’ overall understanding of history—that is to say, whether and to what extent war’s teachings can, in his view, be ultimately used to end war and end history so defined. Finally and by taking a second, more critical look at the example of Diodotus, I discuss how for Thucydides, whatever knowledge can be attained from the study of war, the most important lesson that war teaches is its permanence and as a result, that history is here to stay. In so doing, I ultimately argue that while, on the one hand, Thucydides does exhibit an often unnoticed optimism when it comes to learning from war and using its teachings to mitigate human suffering, on the other hand, his optimism (unlike that exhibited by Hobbes and Hegel, for instance) is a sober and staid one, accepting of war and by extension, history as a permanent feature of the human condition.