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Monthly Archives: September 2006

Envy

With a great deal of envy, graduate students in North America – except those, of course, who think that attending the Ivy League connotes a degree of relative superiority – look to England and Australia as wonderful, wonderful places to study: a doctorate (they even sound better: “D.Phil”!) takes between three and four years; you [...]

Naming

I’ve adopted the term “aristocratic political theory” to describe eighteenth century French thought that opposed itself to both the king and the bourgeoisie. Montesquieu, of course, is the most famous example, but there are a number of other people we’d want to include in this list: Fenelon, Saint-Simon, Boulainvilliers, and Mably, at the very least, [...]