Since the promulgation of the encyclical Pacem in Terris in 1963, Catholic social teaching has recommended the ongoing strengthening of institutions of global government. As political experience limits the idealistic prospects which motivated the postwar project of global government, the Church’s social teaching may appear committed in principle to a dubious policy. Engaging the encyclical’s invocation of the principle of subsidiarity, this article shows that the relationship of global government to the nation-state laid out in Pacem in Terris suffers from an inattention to questions of political form. I argue that through his “science of political forms,” Pierre Manent both provides an account of what social teaching would call the propria of the nation-state, and shows why these propria cannot be maintained within global dimensions. Turning to the inter-war encyclicals of Pius XI and Pius XII, I then retrieve an earlier strand of social teaching which, instead of proposing an ambiguous revision of the nation form, offered points of moral orientation for politics by defending a proper love of nation within the structure of what Augustine calls the ordo amoris. The paper thus shows how political philosophy enables a coherent application of the principle of subsidiarity to the nation-state, and why theological insights present within the tradition of social teaching can support the preservation of the valuable propria of the nation form.

This article explores the transformation of Rome from a city to an empire and its profound impact on the rise of Christianity. It delves into the political, psychological, and religious changes that facilitated this metamorphosis. The expansion of the Roman Empire altered Roman perceptions, fostering a shift toward the universal and cosmopolitan, thus altering Roman politics and religion. These shifts paved the way for Christianity, which offered a universal way of salvation grounded in Jesus Christ as the mediator of one, universal way of salvation in contrast to the pagan alternatives that were neither one nor universal. Pierre Manent’s analysis of political forms provides a framework for understanding these transformations, emphasizing the unique transition from city to empire and its implications for Roman life and the rise of Christianity. Manent’s observations are marvelously confirmed and augmented by Shakespeare’s narration of the history of the Roman metamorphosis in his Roman trilogy of Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, and Antony and Cleopatra.

This article is a presentation of the French political philosopher, Pierre Manent’s, thoughts on the ancient Greeks’ original and originating contributions to the dynamism of Western civilization. The discussion focuses on three contributions: the production of “the common,” “a hitherto unknown dimension of human life”; the emergence of philosophy with the discovery of “the universal”; and the practice of political philosophy, which monitored and developed “the civic debate.” With these three innovations, the life of action and of thought received decisive new orientations and tasks that helped define and propel western humanity.

Americans have a complicated, obsessive relationship with what we term a “political apocalypse.” A political apocalypse is the idea of the destruction of civil society and subsequent return to a state of nature. Americans are at once terrified of and drawn toward this concept. American popular culture is replete with examples of this draw. We argue that ideas foundational to the American Regime (i.e. the state of nature and consent-based government) help explain the nature of this fixation. By examining the writings of Locke, Tocqueville, and Lincoln, we conclude that the American urge to participate in the initial act of governmental consent partly manifests itself as a fascination with stories depicting the end of the United States government.

Acorns are found in the state of nature narratives of the major social contract theorists, Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau as well as classical and medieval accounts of life before the development of civil society. Whether acorns are a desirable or undesirable food correlates directly to the subsequent assessment of that condition as either positive or negative. Moreover, the rejection of this simple foodstuff is often the explanation for or justification of a political society. This holds true also for Glaucon’s reaction to the first city described in Plato’s Republic, the one he characterized as a “city of pigs” largely because the inhabitants ate acorns. Tracing the history of the acorn not only allows us to uncover a heuristic device used in political philosophy from the ancient to the early modern periods, that same device reminds us of the central place of food in political life, something often overlooked in philosophical accounts.

One of the most important aspects of Plato’s Republic is the formulation of an abstract and transcendent idea of the “Good.” Distinguishing himself from older, more esthetically oriented concepts of goodness and nobility, Plato’s Socrates consistently insists that an abstract and purely rational idea of goodness both exists, and that knowledge of it is fundamental to the right ordering of all human action. While scholarly disagreement exists about the extent to which the arguments of Plato’s Socrates should be taken at face value, few scholars deny that the mind (the realm of abstraction) is presented as essentially superior to the body. The consequence of Socrates’ turn toward the abstract in the Republic—though perhaps not the intention of his argument—is a subsequent movement away from the body, and thus, also away from an emphasis on the particulars of human life. This in turn, I argue necessarily undermines the city’s existence as a multitude of distinct parts working toward a common goal. We can see the effects of the move toward abstraction most clearly by examining the consequences of the argument for sexual equality in Book V of the Republic, which I argue exemplifies the problems associated with a politics of pure abstraction. Specifically, I contend that the turn toward abstraction present in the argument for sexual equality undermines the vitally important role of mothers in establishing a sense of self, which in turn undermines the basic ground of the city as a composition of distinct parts.

This essay aims to honor the important contributions Paul Cantor and David Lowenthal made through their thoughtful scholarship and extraordinary teaching to the study of Shakespeare as a playwright who studied political through his nature his portrayal of human nature and the variety of regimes available to human beings, from Athens and Rome to his own England. Both Cantor and Lowenthal thought deeply about Shakespeare’s Roman plays and devoted much time to how Shakespeare’s “Antony and Cleopatra” fit into his “Roman Trilogy.” They agree that “Antony and Cleopatra” is a love story that parallels and portrays the final dissolution of not only the Roman republic, but the civic institutions and political way of life characteristic of ancient republicanism, and the transition to the Roman “time of universal peace” under the imperial rule of a single man (4.6.5). They also agree that the play signals the incipient introduction of Christianity into the world. Starting from this essential agreement, I explore the ways in which their arguments differ more on the details, and, in particular, where those details take them in their understanding of the character and ultimate fate of Antony and Cleopatra.