Plato, Schmitt, Agamben

This issue of Telos examines questions of political theory and philosophy central to the western tradition and therefore of enduring relevance in the current crises. Is political power compatible with the good life? Can the individual examine one’s own actions without falling into narcissistic introspection? What is the standing of morality in the face of brutal power and tyranny? The collection of articles here begins with reflections on the implications of the death of Socrates and ends with a diagnosis of the totalitarian potential in our modernity: the arc of our culture’s narrative.

Russell A. Berman
Introduction

James V. Schall
A Catholic Reading of the Gorgias of Plato

Jakob Norberg
Day-to-Day Politics: Carl Schmitt on the Diary

Ulrike Kistner
The Exception and the Rule: Fictive, Real, Critical

Jeffrey Bussolini
Ongoing Founding Events in Carl Schmitt and Giorgio Agamben

Emily Zakin
The Image of the People: Freud and Schmitt's Political Anti-Progressivism

Mark Chou
Morgenthau, the Tragic: On Tragedy and the Transition from Scientific Man to Politics Among Nations

Wesley Phillips
Melancholy Science? German Idealism and Critical Theory Reconsidered

David Randall
Humean Aesthetics and the Rhetorical Public Sphere

Marcia Pally
Non-Market Motives at Work in the Market: "New Evangelicals" in Civil Society in the United States and Overseas

Peter A. Redpath
Justice in the New World Order: Reduction of Justice to Tolerance in the New Totalitarian World State