Excerpt #7 — Dean Hammer on Cicero on the Res Publica

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We use the word “Republic” for a number of things in modern American English — to designate a kind of political system (i.e., a Republican form of government), to designate a U.S. political party (vi&, the Republican Party) — we even use it in our collective mythologies to positively describe fictional periods of bliss (e.g., Star Wars, where the good Republic gives way to the evil Empire).

The English word comes from two Latin words: Res publica. It might be rendered into English as “a thing of (or belonging to) the people”, but even with this clunky phrase, the meaning of the Latin “does not translate easily”. [1]  Continue reading →

Deadlines

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I’m on an out-of-state working retreat to produce a rough draft of what I expect will be Part 10 of the current series on “The Monastic and Ecclesio-political Origins of Some Elements of our Modern Polities”. I have a University deadline to meet for it.

Part 2b, which is basically done, will need to wait until I return home, where my books and notes are, so I can finish adding the needed primary and secondary texts, and do something resembling smoothing-out the transitions.

I’ll post Part 10 here when I’m done with the first draft of it, and will back-fill the other entries. Hopefully having parts 1 and 10 will give people a framework, and so some sense of where this is going, even if the road is still obscure without the other entries.

Until then: stay thirsty, my friends.

The Monastic and Ecclesio-political Origins of Some Elements of our Modern Polities, Part 2a (Revision 1)

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Two important features of all modern polities are (1) an emphasis on proper procedure and (2) a systematic ensurance of popular consent. Contrary to common expectation, these do not come directly from ancient Greece, leapfrogging into the present, nor do they spring ex nihilo from later Enlightenment conceptions of political life. Rather, they first take on their later forms by way of Late Antique and Medieval monastic and ecclesiastical environments. While we should not wish to make history tidier than it is –the lines of influence are messy ones– this particular line is significant enough that, even if it is later joined by other tributaries, it deserves to be singled out.

In this set of posts we shall look at a trajectory from roughly Benedict of Nursia to Marsilius of Padua, looking over our shoulder, later on, at Aristotle and Cicero. At the end, we shall ask some questions about the meaning of the secular, secularism, and secularity, as illuminated by this history.

In the previous entry, we looked at the Rule of Benedict. Here, we look at the lead-up to a crucial stage in the secularization (i.e., an exportation into the saeculum) of features of the Rule in the writings and life of Gregory I, Roman Pope, also known as Gregory the Great, or (less fortunately) as Gregory the Dialogist.  

Continue reading →

Sorting the Unsettle Debris

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The world does not hold together;

judge it as a ship that were but papered-over debris,

break-up the broken, weathered

parts, take a stand in the fractures: Continue reading →

The Monastic and Ecclesio-political Origins of Some Elements of our Modern Polities, Part 1 (Revision 4)

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Two important features of all modern polities are (1) an emphasis on proper procedure and (2) a systematic ensurance of popular consent. Contrary to common expectation, these do not come directly from ancient or Enlightenment conceptions of political life, but first take on their later forms by way of Late Antique and Medieval monastic and ecclesiastical environments. 

In this set of posts we shall look at a trajectory from roughly Benedict of Nursia to Marsilius of Padua, looking over our shoulder, later on, at Aristotle and Cicero. 

Continue reading →