Anti-Climacus

For awhile the meme was kicking around the political theory blogosphere wherein you name the five works that have most influenced you. Since I'm indulging myself today (and proctoring the last exam from the Spring semester*). My shot, interpreting the question rather broadly:

1. "Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands," Michael Walzer. In Winter 2003, I took Intro to Political Philosophy, and after reading Machiavelli, we read this and a long-ish piece by Isaiah Berlin (which impressed me less). As you may recall, the 2003 also saw a somewhat active debate about Iraq, which I was plenty interested in at the time (check the archives). I liked the political journalism I read, especially the longer arguments in Dissent and The Atlantic Monthly, but it wasn't until I read this that I realized what was missing: the long, sustained involvement with complicated political arguments that leaves you with more questions than answers, but much better questions that you started out with. My relationship with Walzer has become more complicated since then--I'm not much of a communitarian, and his theory of intervention is less plausibly useful the more time you spend with it--but he's basically the source.

2. The Contract of Mutual Indifference, Norm Geras. Got me to watch Shoah (totally worth it) and read Jean Améry, and fixed me to my interest in humanitarian catastrophes and the importance of solidarity amongst humans.

3. The Rights of War and Peace, Richard Tuck. First semester here, I had to read this alongside Strauss' Natural Right and History and comment on both. As I am not a believer in Strauss' thesis (there or much of anywhere), Tuck's book had the virtue of at least being plausible to me; he also spent a lot of time talking about some Dutchman named Hugo Grotius. Since, I have come to the opinion that the thesis of the book (as it concerns Grotius) is wrong, but, intellectually, this is where the interest started.

4. De jure belli ac pacis, Grotius. Fecundity of source material is one of the goals of political theory: you want to choose a book you can happily return to over and over, finding new inspiration, and material that forces you to interrogate your assumptions. De jure belli is that book for me. Running to 1000 pages or more, it took me years of reading to even get a sense of its structure, how it flows from one section to the next (even when it appears not to). It's a masterful book: judgments are given and withheld throughout the course of the book, and set up just so, because the process mirrors the reader's thinking on the subject; like Virgil with Dante, he's careful to not give too much until you have the proper foundation to understand it. His flaws are evident: a fascination with piling on source material long beyond the amount needed to establish his point, and a qualified defense of some human practices, including slavery, that no contemporary thinker could embrace. All the same, justly famous.

5. Humanitarian Intervention: Legal, Ethical and Political Dilemmas, J.L. Holzgrefe and Robert Keohane, eds. By now, you've probably figured out I'm not one of those theorists who reads Plato and Aristotle over and over (though I like both well enough). Rather, I like to sit at the boundary between political theory, political philosophy, international law, and international relations. This book convinced me that combination could work.


*What's that you say? All the rest of the exams were graded six weeks ago? I know, believe me, I know. As always, however, I will strive for the right mixture of iustitia and caritas. I will need to look up the rubric again to remember how we graded.