- Department of Political Science
One Bear Place #97276
Waco, Texas
76798-7276 - 254-710-7416
David Corey
Baylor University, Honors Program, Faculty Member
- Baylor University, Philosophy, Faculty MemberBaylor University, Political Science, Faculty Memberadd
- Political Philosophy, Early Greek Political Thought from Homer to the Sophists, Sophists, Contemporary Liberalism, Liberalism, Greek political thought, and 9 moreJust War, Ideology, Eric Voegelin, Michael Oakeshott, Leo Strauss, Hannah Arendt, History of Political Thought, Political Theory, and Political Liberalismedit
- See my webpage at:
http://davidcorey.weebly.com/edit
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COURSE OVERVIEW The backdrop for this course is supplied by contemporary events—by the problem of international terrorism and the current attempt to address this problem through war. However, this is not a course on terrorism or on the... more
COURSE OVERVIEW The backdrop for this course is supplied by contemporary events—by the problem of international terrorism and the current attempt to address this problem through war. However, this is not a course on terrorism or on the “war against terror” per se; it is a course on the power of great texts to help us think deeply, ethically and concretely about war, and thus to debate the justice of any particular war in philosophically fruitful ways. As such, this is a course in the connection between citizenship, philosophy and tradition—in the ways that rich traditions of politicalphilosophical reflection can be brought to bear effectively on issues of contemporary life. The course begins with a session on “formulating questions.” In this introductory session we face the challenge of admitting our ignorance and trying to articulate the questions we would most like to answer. We turn then to a seven-week long, in-depth study of the just-war tradition, focusing on the authors and t...
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In this essay I try to demystify the concept of “nationalism.” The task is complicated, because the political rhetoric surrounding nationalism—the rhetoric for and against it—has reached a fever pitch in the United States and Europe. It... more
In this essay I try to demystify the concept of “nationalism.” The
task is complicated, because the political rhetoric surrounding
nationalism—the rhetoric for and against it—has reached a fever
pitch in the United States and Europe. It is also complicated because
so many commentators have tried to sidestep the difficult questions
surrounding nationalism by repairing to a less-than-perfectly
helpful distinction, that between “nationalism” and “patriotism.”
This distinction is, no doubt, meant to clarify—to sort out bad from
good, intemperate from temperate. But it is a highly artificial
distinction, nonetheless, and has tended, unfortunately, to obscure
rather than clarify what most needs to be explored.
task is complicated, because the political rhetoric surrounding
nationalism—the rhetoric for and against it—has reached a fever
pitch in the United States and Europe. It is also complicated because
so many commentators have tried to sidestep the difficult questions
surrounding nationalism by repairing to a less-than-perfectly
helpful distinction, that between “nationalism” and “patriotism.”
This distinction is, no doubt, meant to clarify—to sort out bad from
good, intemperate from temperate. But it is a highly artificial
distinction, nonetheless, and has tended, unfortunately, to obscure
rather than clarify what most needs to be explored.
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The effort to reclaim liberalism will require some understanding of what kind of liberalism to reclaim. What is liberalism? What has happened historically such that it needs to be reclaimed? These turn out to be difficult questions.... more
The effort to reclaim liberalism will require some understanding of what kind of liberalism to reclaim. What is liberalism? What has happened historically such that it needs to be reclaimed? These turn out to be difficult questions. In this essay I propose a theoretical account of liberalism, a way of understanding what it is and why it has undergone such dramatic changes over the course of its history. At the heart of my account is the claim that liberalism did not come into being as an independent historical phenomenon but was rather a contingent aspect of a much broader, more powerfully sweeping historical movement, the “modern quest for freedom,” which predates liberalism, gives rise to it, and eventually overtakes it—at which point the quest for freedom itself (notoriously) retains the name “liberalism” in the United States for reasons partly principled, partly expedient. The theory of liberalism on offer here occupies the bulk of this essay, but it is not the only contribution I hope to make. My account of liberalism facilitates a unique assessment of some of its current weaknesses. And this in turn makes possible a concrete analysis of what an effort to reclaim liberalism might look like. In the end, I argue that the politics of warring freedoms (what contemporary liberalism has in part become) should give way to a markedly different conception of politics, which I call the politics of liberal truce.
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Political philosophy seems to have fallen on hard times. Though plenty of academics in departments of philosophy and political science still lay claim to the field, those who actually have something illuminating to say about our political... more
Political philosophy seems to have fallen on hard times. Though plenty of academics in departments of philosophy and political science still lay claim to the field, those who actually have something illuminating to say about our political world are few and far between. We have no modern-day Plato or Aristotle, no Hobbes or Hegel, not even a Hannah Arendt or a Michael Oakeshott to offer us much-needed perspective. Why is this? Why are we more likely to learn something fresh about politics today from elite journalists, sociologists, and psychologists than from political philosophers? What is going on in our undergraduate and graduate curricula that stunts the development of political philosophy? Why are our professional journals filled more with articles about the history of political philosophy than with political philosophy itself? These are hard questions to answer, but they deserve attention. Something has gone wrong with the kind of pedagogy that is likely to make political philosophy possible. It has been corrupted by those who undervalue, as well as those who overvalue, the great texts of the discipline. It has been undercut by the overly cynical and the suspicious. And it has too often been shaped by apologists, activists, and ideologues rather than those who take the fundamental questions of politics seriously. It is worth considering what a more solid and constructive political-philosophical pedagogy would look like while responding to some of the distracting ideas and practices that now get in its way. In so doing, we might discover how political philosophy can once again become valued and well practiced.
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Political philosophy seems to have fallen on hard times. Though plenty of academics in departments of Philosophy and Political Science still lay claim to the field, those who actually have something illuminating to say about our political... more
Political philosophy seems to have fallen on hard times. Though plenty of academics in departments of Philosophy and Political Science still lay claim to the field, those who actually have something illuminating to say about our political world are few and far between. We have no modern-day Plato or Aristotle, no Hobbes or Hegel, not even a Hannah Arendt or a Michael Oakeshott to offer us much-needed perspective. Why is this? Why are we more likely to learn something fresh about politics today from elite journalists, sociologists, and psychologists than from political philosophers? What is going on in our undergraduate and graduate curricula that stunts the development of political philosophy? Why are our professional journals filled more with articles about the history of political philosophy than with political philosophy itself? These are hard questions to answer, but they nevertheless deserve attention. In my view something has gone wrong-or rather many things have gone wrong-with the kind of pedagogy that is likely to make political philosophy possible. Our pedagogy has been corrupted by those who undervalue as well as those who overvalue the great texts of the discipline. It has been undercut by the overly cynical and suspicious. And it has too often been shaped by apologists, activists, and ideologues rather than those who take the fundamental questions of politics seriously. In this essay I want to describe what I take to be a solid political-philosophical pedagogy and to respond to some of the distracting ideas and practices that now get in its way. In so doing, I hope to show how political philosophy might once again become valued and practiced.
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Abstract: People often think about justice in war in the simplest terms: some group commits an injustice; another group attempts to remedy the wrong by means of force. But in fact the pursuit of justice is never so simple. While... more
Abstract: People often think about justice in war in the simplest terms: some group commits an injustice; another group attempts to remedy the wrong by means of force. But in fact the pursuit of justice is never so simple. While attempting to remedy wrongs of one kind, agents of justice commit wrongs of another. Nor is this easily avoidable. Rather, justice itself seems to admit of ambiguities that frustrate even our best efforts to correct wrongs. In this essay I expose the ambiguities of justice in war by analyzing real-world and literary examples. In so doing, I reveal some ethical issues that the just war tradition has not, to date, adequately addressed. To conclude, I explain why recognition of the ambiguities of justice in war is both morally and strategically advantageous.
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Michael Oakeshott worried that during his lifetime liberal democracies had become dangerously oblivious to the problem of political legitimacy—the problem of ensuring that government power be used in ways that respect the freedom and... more
Michael Oakeshott worried that during his lifetime liberal democracies had become dangerously oblivious to the problem of political legitimacy—the problem of ensuring that government power be used in ways that respect the freedom and political equality of all citizens. In this essay, I deepen Oakeshott’s concern by arguing that there has never been a successful theoretical argument to establish why some citizens should be able to exercise political power over other citizens under conditions of freedom and political equality. I conclude by considering the implications of this argument for the size and scope of liberal government today, particularly in the United States.
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Click this link for the abstract and the final version of the essay.
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13569317.2014.951145?journalCode=cjpi20#.VIXZUedtFJk
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13569317.2014.951145?journalCode=cjpi20#.VIXZUedtFJk
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This paper considers the extent to which Eric Voegelin’s mature writings supply a basis for a substantive ethical and political science. It does so by examining Voegelin’s understanding of nous as the ground for theorizing, and by... more
This paper considers the extent to which Eric Voegelin’s mature writings supply a basis for a substantive ethical and political science. It does so by examining Voegelin’s understanding of nous as the ground for theorizing, and by relating this back to Aristotle. Aristotle is shown to have understood the activities of nous in two distinct ways. On the one hand, nous is the divine activity of the soul exploring its own ground. But nous is also induction (epagôgê) of the first principles of science through sense perception, memory and experience. The two basic activities of nous are related, but they have different values when it comes to the world of particulars. It is the argument of this paper that a substantive ethical and political science—one that sheds light on particulars—must include the inductive employment of nous and that the exclusion of this from Voegelin’s political science results in some discernible limitations.
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The practice of teaching virtue (arete) for pay was typical of the Greek sophists but consistently eschewed by their contemporary Socrates. Plato and Xenophon offer various explanations for Socrates' refusal to take pay, explanations... more
The practice of teaching virtue (arete) for pay was typical of the Greek sophists but consistently eschewed by their contemporary Socrates. Plato and Xenophon offer various explanations for Socrates' refusal to take pay, explanations intended not only to reflect favourably upon their teacher but also to reflect negatively upon the sophists. Indeed, Plato and Xenophon have been so persuasive in this regard that the mere fact of accepting pay has become a common source of invective against the sophists. This paper examines and evaluates these passages of Plato and Xenophon in light of the historical information we have concerning sophistic and Socratic pedagogy in general and it reaches two major conclusions: first, that most of the reasons ascribed to Socrates for refusing to accept pay are sufficiently problematic to raise serious doubts about their authenticity and, second, that none of these reasons functions successfully as a general critique of the sophists.
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Socrates was not only a paradigmatic philosopher; he was also a paradigmatic citizen according to some contemporary political theorists—paradigmatic for his moral integrity and his political practices of dissent and noncompliance. What... more
Socrates was not only a paradigmatic philosopher; he was also a paradigmatic citizen according to some contemporary political theorists—paradigmatic for his moral integrity and his political practices of dissent and noncompliance. What is perhaps most exemplary about Socrates, according to some commentators, is that his citizenship was “purely secular,” relying upon no sources of authority beyond the naked moral self. The present article challenges this dominant view of Socratic citizenship by examining Socrates’ relationship to the oracle at Delphi and the mysterious divine sign that frequently turned him away from certain civic activities. Arguing that these sources of authority affected Socrates’ practice of citizenship in significant ways, I present here a picture of Socrates that is at once truer to the texts to which these secular views appeal and more instructive for contemporary theorizing about citizenship.
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Not much is known about Prodicus of Ceos, though he is mentioned in more than a dozen Platonic dialogues and appears as a character in the Protagoras. In this article I examine the extant evidence about Prodicus from Plato and other... more
Not much is known about Prodicus of Ceos, though he is mentioned in more than a dozen Platonic dialogues and appears as a character in the Protagoras. In this article I examine the extant evidence about Prodicus from Plato and other ancient authors and show that Plato's attitude toward him was, surprisingly, one of great respect. In fact, Plato suggests that Prodicus was quite literally Socrates' teacher. I argue that by considering the evidence carefully we can determine with some confidence what Socrates probably took from his instruction, namely, an art of making careful distinctions (diairesis), which had important political and philosophical applications
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The Greek sophists are perhaps most noteworthy in the history of political thought for their claim to be able to teach virtue (aretê) for pay. Socrates, by contrast, claimed not to be able to teach virtue, though his method of elenchus... more
The Greek sophists are perhaps most noteworthy in the history of political thought for their claim to be able to teach virtue (aretê) for pay. Socrates, by contrast, claimed not to be able to teach virtue, though his method of elenchus or refutation had a moral-pedagogical dimension that is often said to have rivaled the pedagogical practices of the sophists. The present study examines the sophistic pedagogical methods of exhortation and association, and compares these to the Socratic method of refutation in order to assess their relative effectiveness. The following three conclusions are reached: that Socratic elenchus was probably less effective than either exhortation or association as a method of imparting virtue; that Socrates in fact made use of exhortation and association in addition to elenchus; and, finally, that the sophists’ unique approach to exhortation and association in particular would have made their methods extremely effective and worthy of imitation today.
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This article describes liberal education as it comes to light not historically but philosophically, taking the word liber (free) as its chief distinguishing feature. It considers what liberal education presupposes of those who pursue... more
This article describes liberal education as it
comes to light not historically but philosophically, taking
the word liber (free) as its chief distinguishing feature. It
considers what liberal education presupposes of those who
pursue it, and it enumerates several outcomes or “ends” that
are likely to ensue. Through liberal education, I argue, the
mind is liberated from the here and now, freed by exposure
to diverse kinds of character, released from the tyranny of the
practical mode of thought, and, at the same time, freed by
certain careful habits of reflection that take years to acquire.
comes to light not historically but philosophically, taking
the word liber (free) as its chief distinguishing feature. It
considers what liberal education presupposes of those who
pursue it, and it enumerates several outcomes or “ends” that
are likely to ensue. Through liberal education, I argue, the
mind is liberated from the here and now, freed by exposure
to diverse kinds of character, released from the tyranny of the
practical mode of thought, and, at the same time, freed by
certain careful habits of reflection that take years to acquire.
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Undergraduate Course for Non-Musicians on the Tradition of Classical Music in the West
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Non-specialist, undergraduate course on the tradition of western classical music
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Friends and Colleagues, This is a draft of a syllabus for a course I'm teaching this fall. Constructive critical feedback welcome.