Dr. David Livingstone
University College Professor
Vancouver Island University
900 Fifth Street
Nanaimo, BC
CANADA
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Dr. David Livingstone University College Professor
Vancouver Island University 900 Fifth Street Nanaimo, BC CANADA |
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VIU's "Liberal Studies Abroad"...join the Liberal Studies Department in Italy this May and study Renaissance art, politics, and philosophy while earning up to 9 (nine!) credits toward your VIU degree (eligible for student loans).
Pictures from my 2007 study trip below. Contact Libby McGrattan, faculty secretary for the Liberal Studies Department (Bldg 355) for more information. Link to the Liberal Studies Florence Trip homepage
Bldg 355, office 336
local 2175
Political Studies 340, Fall 2011:
Short Essay Assignment (due September 30th)
Rousseau PowerPoint slides part 1, part 2
Required readings from Alexis De Tocqueville's Democracy in America
Required readings for Sept 30th
James Madison, "On Property"
Abraham Lincoln, Excerpt from Debate with Stephen Douglas, July 10, 1858
Property of Her Own: Protecting Women from Violence on Reserves
Supplementary reading
Abraham Lincoln, excerpt from Address Before Wisconsin State Agricultural Society
Liberal Studies Course Resources:
How to participate in Seminar
How to write a Seminar Note
Format for Liberal Studies Essays
The Editorial assignment
The Art Review Assignment
Essays and Arguments: A Handbook on Writing Argumentative and Interpretive Essays, by Ian Johnston
Liberal Studies 411 (Courtenay)
First set of readings for class on Tuesday, Sept 7th 2010
Links:
The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History has some excellent material that explains the American Revolution and introduces the Constitution, with facsimiles of rare, original documents.
The Founders' Constitution brings together many primary sources having to do with the American Constitution.
Founding.com is an interactive site dedicated to understanding the US Declaration of Independence
US National Constitution Center (Pennsylvania)
Liberty Fund: Online Library of Liberty: excellent source for online versions of classic works in political philosophy.
C2C: Canada's Online Journal of Ideas
The Idea File--a blog about Canadian politics, and political philosophy by Dr. Janet Ajzenstat, Emeritus Professor of Political Science, McMaster University.
Churchill Society for the Advancement of Parliamentary Democracy in Canada
VIU Library's Political Science resources page
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If you don't have PowerPoint you can download a PowerPoint Reader for free here. |
Writing Tips (things to do and to avoid in your papers) excerpted from Ian Johnston's Essay's and Arguments
Other Items Of Interest
Writings and Publications
Livingstone, David. Review of TOLERism: The Ideology Revealed, Howard Rotberg (Brantford, ON: Mantua Books, 2009). C2C Journal, Vol 4 no 1, March 2010.
Livingstone, David. "Spiritedness, Reason, and the Rule of Law: John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" in Perspectives on Political Science Vol. 38, no. 4 (Fall 2009).
Livingstone, David. "The Unscientific Character of Rousseau's Second Discourse," delivered at the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, Philadelphia 2006 (draft).
Review of Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl, Norms of Liberty: A Perfectionist Basis for Non-Perfectionist Politics University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 2005.
Review of Mads Qvortrup, The Political Philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Impossibility of Reason: New York: Manchester University Press, 2004.
Review of Christopher Kelly. Rousseau as Author: Consecrating One's Life to the Truth. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.
Livingstone, David. "The Emancipation Proclamation, the Declaration of Independence, and the Presidency: Lincoln's Model of Statesmanship." Perspectives on Political Science, (Fall99, Vol. 28 Issue 4).
Resources for Poli 440:
Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton, speaking about Natural Law and Natural Rights (mp3 audio file approx. 9 Mb).
Does the Free Market Corrode Moral Character? the Templeton Foundation recently asked this question; you can read the responses here: http://www.templeton.org/market/
Peter Berkowitz's review of Anthony Kronman's Education's End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life (Yale University Press, 2007).
A timeline of philosophy--may help you locate a few of the figures Strauss refers to in his work.
A eulogy to Leo Strauss, written by his daughter.
Was Leo Strauss behind the neo-conservative foreign policy of the Bush administration? By Tom West, University of Dallas Politics Department.
An interview with Shadia Drury about Strauss's relation to liberal democracy. (I have to admit, I don't buy her argument. She cites Strauss' City and Man in an attempt to demonstrate that Thrasymachus is Plato's mouthpiece. For those of you familiar with Plato's Republic, Thrasymachus argues that justice is nothing more than the advantage of the stronger. "So, we must surmise that Strauss shares the insights of the wise Plato (alias Thrasymachus) that justice is merely the interest of the stronger; that those in power make the rules in their own interests and call it justice." But in re-reading the pages she cites (pp. 74-5, 77, 83-4, 97, 100, 111) I don't see Strauss claiming that Thrasymachus is Plato's mouthpiece. And even if it were true that Plato endorses Thrasymachus, I don't see how Drury concludes that this necessarily means Strauss also endorses Thrasymachus. But let's, for the moment, concede Drury's point. If Strauss believes that justice is the rule of the stronger, what is meant by the stronger? Physical strength? The strength of one's reasoning power? Some combination of these? Bear in mind, Socrates' name (in Greek) means "sure strength." One should read Leon Craig's War Lover regarding that whole question (University of Toronto Press). Finally, if Drury is correct and Strauss is merely a conduit of Plato, wouldn't it make more sense to say Plato is ultimately responsible for the Bush foreign policy? Lastly, merely or say that the rulers rule in their own interest and call it justice doesn't preclude the possibility that their interest and justice can't be aligned. Presumably justice must be in somebody's interest, and it may be that it interests those who are just. If just rule benefits the ruler (even while they are ruling) I don't see how that disqualifies them from ruling.
Professor Harry Jaffa's response to one of Drury's books about Strauss (PDF document)
Excerpt from Catherine and Michael Zuckert's book on Leo Strauss, confronting the Strauss-Neoconservative connection. "It is hard to avoid the thought that there is something circular about the literature: the exposition of Strauss's thought is motivated by the desire to find in it the themes that resonate with Bush foreign policy, and the writers' conceptions of the themes that drive that foreign policy are then attributed to Strauss with little independent effort to find them in his texts."