Bücher von Gregory Bruce Smith

If participation in self-government is not central to citizens' vision of the political good, is despotism inevitable? Gregory Bruce Smith's study evolves around reconciling the early republican tradition in Greece and Rome as set out by authors such as Aristotle and Cicero, and a more recent tradition shaped by thinkers such as Machiavelli, Locke, Montesquieu, Adam Smith, Madison, and Rousseau.

Between Eternities reflects on the possibility of political philosophy as an ongoing, architectonic activity that is necessarily linked to both the past and future. Almost all contemporary work in political philosophy either studies the subject with an eye to past tradition-choosing a winner from that tradition and then deducing what follows from the posited premises in a thoroughly modern, constructivist fashion-or else limits itself to drawing out what follows from already accepted premises and principles. There is almost no effort to reflect upon the prerequisites for the tradition being an ongoing undertaking that can have a unique future. Between Eternities attempts to set loose that thinking toward the future.