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[Excerpt] Deirdre L. Mahony's book focuses on the ethical thinking of Hannah Arendt, the famous (but also infamous) philosopher, political theorist, historian, Zionist thinker, correspondent of Karl Jasper, and Martin Heidegger's (perhaps naïve) disciple. Arendt was an émigré to the United States, fleeing Nazi Germany. In the US, she wrote and taught at many first-rate universities, never quite finding a new home despite her celebrity.

Striving for equality has been often, if not always, at the heart of the ethos of democratic regimes, even when practices fall short of such an ambitious goal. The trend towards an ever-increasing equality still faces an important and pervasive limitation, i.e. citizenship is not a right shared by all, but a privilege of birth, or descent, or autochthony. This problem was voiced in Plato's dialogue Menexenus: is democracy viable if no historical ties or common culture justifies solidarity and bearable sharing democratic burdens? Is social equality of the citizens a condition forcing to seek legal equality or an enemy of excellence? In spite of the enormous differences between Popper's and Strauss' agendas and even their ideals, both chose to explore the normative foundation of democracy by confrontation with Plato and his predecessors. Karl Popper in The Open society criticized Plato's arguments against equality proposing an idiosyncratic interpretation of the controversy on Nature and Convention. Leo Strauss in his conferences on Natural right and history also elaborated on the emergence of the concepts of nomos and phusis contrasting Plato against "classical conventionalism". This paper engages Popper and Strauss in a fictive debate on the foundations of political equality. ; Buscar arduamente a igualdade tem estado muitas vezes, senão sempre, no coração do ethos dos regimes democráticos, mesmo quando as práticas fi cam aquém dessa meta ambiciosa. A tendência para uma cada vez maior igualdade enfrenta todavia uma limitação importante e generalizada, ou seja, a cidadania não é um direito partilhado por todos, mas um privilégio do nascimento, descendência ou ligação à terra. Platão deu voz a este problema num diálogo intitulado Menexeno: é a democracia viável se não há vínculos históricos ou uma cultura comum que justifi quem a solidariedade e tornem suportável a partilha dos fardos democráticos? É a igualdade social dos cidadãos uma condição que força a busca da igualdade legal ou um inimigo de excelência? ...

O objecto deste texto, relativo a um projecto de pesquisa em curso, é propôr a análise das leituras que fi zeram Karl Popper e Leo Strauss da fi losofi a política de Platão. Muito distintos entre si, ambos os pensadores viram contudo na Républica uma das mais poderosas críticas da democracia e construíram interpretações e argumentos polémicos em confronto com Platão. Hoje há também dois "relatos" que colocam em questão a democracia. O primeiro tem a sua origem nas ciências sociais, que constatam certos defeitos inerentes ao sistema: assimetria de informação e problemas de agência entre governantes e governados. O outro, antes mediático ou popular partilha com o anterior a crítica dos mecanismos de decisão democráticos, mas acrescenta-lhe uma visão extrema da política e dos políticos democráticos que justifi ca a apatia senão o desprezo de tudo o que é político. As duas leituras, de Popper e de Strauss, por muito diferentes que sejam, partilham entre si certos traços como o anti-historicismo, a não neutralidade axiológica, um certo racionalismo (crítico ou zetético). Procuraremos sugerir neste texto que possuem o poder de alargar, no tempo e no espaço, o horizonte dos debates sobre os "regimes constitucionais - pluralistas" contemporâneos. ; The purpose of this tentative paper, which reflects an ongoing research, is to suggest the usefulness of an analysis of the readings of Karl Popper and Leo Strauss on Plato's political philosophy. Very different as they are, both thinkers saw in the Republic one of the most powerful critics of democracy and built interpretations and polemic arguments in contrast with Plato's arguments. There are currently two arguments questioning liberal or constitutional democracy. The first originates in the social sciences, which point out a number of defects that are innate in the system: asymmetry in information and agency problems between governors and governed. The other is rather popular or media-based but it shares with the first the criticism of democratic decision-making ...

Most of the political books of Raymond Aron on the eve of the Cold War hesitate, as the work of Thucydides, between meditation of the past and prospective. However, if there is no doubt that the Greek model inspired him, Aron did not fail to formulate the theoretical issues underlying this meditation in a large systematic work: Paix et guerre entre les nations. This paper aims to follow the genesis of the analysis model, underlying the work, and then make a brief description of its structure, at different levels. If we interpreted him correctly, Aron wanted to build a "praxeology", a combinational logic that does not necessarily involve quantitative models and that could serve as a guide for the statesman or politician. Adapted from the source document.

AbstractIn the United States, African Americans face stark inequalities in health. The life course perspective offers a unique viewpoint through which racial disparities in morbidity and mortality may be understood as the result of repeated exposures to risk factors during both childhood and adulthood. However, the utility of this approach is limited by its failure to investigate the degree to which racial/ethnic minorities are able to translate gains in socioeconomic status into favorable health outcomes, both for themselves and for their children. In order to adequately reflect the realities of marginalized groups, life course models must explore the interactive nature of linkages across lifecourse stages, pay particular attention to the unique processes that create and maintain health disparities over time, and consider the specific contexts in which these processes occur. To this end, I examine the ways in which exclusionary forces and discriminatory conditions are likely to prevent African American women and their children from reaping the health benefits typically associated with upward socioeconomic mobility.

[Excerpt] Kimberley Brownlee is a professor of philosophy at the University of Warwick, wellknown for her controversial challenge to the 'conventional' view of the idea of civil disobedience. Brownlee is, namely, the author of Conscience and Conviction (Oxford: OUP, 2012) and of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on the topic. Most of her more recent work may be said to focus on ethics and politics of 'sociability', within the perspective of applied ethics. Her most important book along these lines, until the publication of the present one, was Disability and Disadvantage (Oxford: OUP, 2009), coedited with Adam ...

[Excerpt) Speaking Truth to Power addresses an ethical and political problem that is current, controversial, and which surely catches the eye. Related headlines and political novels are innumerable. Moreover, there are about half a dozen recent movies on the topic (not a small feat even by Hollywood standards).

The two papers published here for the first time were written by Leo Strauss
(1899–1973) in or around 1945, when he was teaching at the New School
for Social Research in New York City. One of Strauss's colleagues at
the New School was Kurt Riezler (1882–1955). Riezler had earned a PhD
in classics, but had an even more distinguished career as a practical
politician; he had been a high-ranking cabinet member in both Imperial and
Weimar Germany and a drafter of the Weimar constitution. He had wide-ranging
scholarly interests, having written books on the theoretical foundations of
politics, art, ancient philosophy, and the fundamental structure of social life.
Because they shared an interest in the foundations of social science, he and
Strauss co-taught a couple of courses in the mid-1940s (on
Aristotle's De anima and Descartes's
Passions of the Soul [along with Solomon Asch], and on
Plato's Theaetetus [along with Alexandre
Koyré]). Strauss indicated the enduring respect he had for Riezler in
a eulogy he wrote for him in 1955 and republished as the concluding essay in
What Is Political Philosophy? and Other Studies in
1959.