The distinction between “political” and “legal” is particularly difficult because the scope, purpose, and assumptions of one and the other are the same, or similar, or, at least in part, coincident. If, for example, one asks “what is the purpose of politics?” the prevailing answer is the “common good,” understood as security (and protection) from … Read More
The latest book by Brian Bolger has just been published. Nowhere Fast. Democracy and Identity in the Twenty First Century is a close and thorough analysis of the structural and cultural decline of western democracies, particularly the UK. The book examines the economic crisis of globalization, the emergence of a new “knowledge class,” and the … Read More
Uncontrolled and uncontrollable, the sea is the realm of immoderation and universal transience, of pirate nomadism and uncontainable wandering: “in the sea it is not possible to sow or even to dig straight lines. The ships that sail the sea leave no trace behind them.” The trails that are drawn in the sea disappear almost … Read More
It is rare for a magazine of political thought to survive for forty years—that is almost three generations. A lot of water has passed under the bridge since the founding of the leading Hispanic conservative magazine Razón Española in 1983, but this exceptional longevity deserves to be highlighted. Throughout this period, “RE” has been a … Read More
The modern occidental world, roughly from the Renaissance onwards, sprang from a secularization of culture and its culmination is the main reason for the polarization of the contemporary world. The modern phase of culture has seen an antinomy of opposite values squeezed together, like a nuclear fission, a building of energy and dissonance and spewing … Read More
A genealogy is here understood as analogous to a genetic analysis or family history. Later thinkers “inherit” or appropriate some genes from one source but some genes from other sources. Earlier thinkers would not necessarily understand, approve of, or agree with what later thinkers did with the original inheritance. In its intellectual journey, the key … Read More
The world order is changing so rapidly today that institutions related to international politics do not have time to adequately respond and fully comprehend it. In Russia, there is a tenuous theory that international law is something solid and stable, taking into account the interests of all parties, while the theory of “rules” and the … Read More
In politics, whether we know it or not, we are always fighting against an enemy, whether stationed on our borders or camouflaged within the city. But there is also another form of enmity, much more subtle than the one that bubbles at ground level, incarnated by men who have an ideology or a culture, perhaps … Read More
Introduction The war in Iraq raised again a number of questions about the legitimacy of the use of force, many of them occasioned by propaganda needs, others by sincere doubts. That conflict essentially fulfilled two of the conditions identified by Late Scholasticism for justum bellum: that it took place between justi hostes, although the participation … Read More
Today’s society presents itself as “liquid,” if not “aeriform,” according to Berman’s diagnosis of the modern dissolution of stable forms in the air. This depends eminently on the fact that in it there is no reality that can escape the quality that distinguishes liquids, which is the adaptability to the container that houses them and, … Read More