The Social Institutions Through The Contrasting Visions Of Plato And Aristotle

Many of the fundamental questions philosophers and social scientists ask, necessarily entail examining the role of the social institutions. Social institutions are synchronized systems of self-enforcing regulative rules, behaviors, and practices designed for the perpetuation of important societal functions and which give durable structure to social interactions. Everything in human life entails aspects of one or more of these institutions. There are people in academia that want to sweep “dead white males” under the historical carpet, but two dead white men we cannot ignore when examining the social institutions are Plato and Aristotle. These men have been at the heart of Western culture for more than two millennia and still continue to shape it. There are few social or political issues today that were not thought about by these two great men. They had a lot to say about the social institutions, but they had contrasting visions on most things pertaining to them that may be broadly viewed as liberal and conservative, or what economist/philosopher Thomas Sowell calls unconstrained and constrained visionaries, respectively. The book is a scholarly work on these two foundational philosophers, but will also serve as a supplementary text for a sociology class (introduction to sociology, or one specifically devoted to the social institutions).

Criminologists can benefit from questioning the underlying assumptions upon which they rest their work. Philosophy has the ability to clarify our thoughts, inform us of why we think about things the way we do, solve contradictions in our thinking we never knew existed, and even dissolve some dichotomies we thought were cast in stone. One of those dichotomies is free will vs. determinism. Criminology must reckon with both free will and agency, as posited by some theories, and determinism, as posited by others—including the ever more influential fields of genetics and biosocial criminology. Criminological Theory: Assessing Philosophical Assumptions examines philosophical concepts such as these in the context of important criminological theories or issues that are foundational but not generally considered in the literature on this topic. The uniqueness of this treatment of criminological theory is that rather than reporting what this person or that has said about a particular theory, Walsh exposes the philosophical assumptions underlying the theory. Students and scholars learn to clarify their own biases and better analyze the implications of a broad range of theories of crime and justice.

Examines the implications of Aristotle’s political thought for contemporary political theory.

The first of three volumes, this definitive study explores the politics of social institutions, from the time of the ancient Greeks to the Reformation in the sixteenth century. Tony Burns focuses on those civil-society institutions occupying the intermediate social space which exists between the family or household, on the one hand, and what Hegel refers to as ‘the strictly political state’, on the other. Arguing that the internal affairs of social institutions are a legitimate concern for students of politics, he focuses on the notion of authority, together with that of an individual’s station and its duties. Burns discusses the work of such key thinkers as Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, St. Paul, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Marsilius of Padua, Nicholas of Cusa, Jean Bodin, Charles Loyseau, John Calvin, Martin Luther and Gerrard Winstanley. He considers what they have said about the relationship that exists between superiors in positions of authority and their subordinates within hierarchical social institutions.

This text, with its definitions of contract theories and political concepts and its treatment of constitutionalism builds, a link from Plato and Aristotle to the present. It compares Plato and Aristotle's principle points of agreement and disagreement including neglected and misunderstood concepts. Concluding that Plato and Aristotle are not too relevant to the modern scientific-industrial ago (and outdated with regard to women and slavery), but they did contribute to eventual development of the scientific attitude and modern limited government (constitutionalism).

The True Wealth of Nations arises from the conviction that implementing a morally adequate vision of the economy will generate sustainable prosperity for all. It sets forth the beginnings of an architecture of analysis for relating economic life and Christian faith-intellectually and experientially-and helps social scientists, theologians, and all persons of faith to appreciate the true wealth of any nation.