On Statesmanship: The Case of John Adams

This article is the first of two parts and is based on a talk delivered to a Colloquium on Statesmanship and the Constitution at the Rochester Institute of Technology, April 13–14, 2012.What kind of person is worthy of being called a “statesman”? What type of...

The Arrogant Elite

The New Communitarians and the Crisis of Modern Liberalism by Bruce Frohnen. University Press of Kansas, 1996. vii + 271 pp., $30 cloth.In seven concisely written chapters, Bruce Frohnen has captured in The New Communitarians the misguided arrogance and deceit of...

Longshoreman, Philosopher, Mystery

Eric Hoffer: The Longshoreman Philosopher by Tom Bethell. Hoover Institution Press, 2012. Hardcover, 328 pages, $30.None of Eric Hoffer’s ten slim and streamlined books allowed room for photographic inserts. His biography, Tom Bethell’s Eric Hoffer: The Longshoreman...

A Philosopher of Ordinary Language

Wittgenstein: From Mysticism to Ordinary Language by Russell Nieli. SUNY Press 1987, 261 pp., $32 paper. One of the persistent themes of the Enlightenment was the need to simplify philosophy, to disentangle it from the rhetoric and methods of scholasticism, and to...