I decided to move some discussion from this post up to the top level here. Specifically, Watoosh wrote: "Well, if violence is defined as initiation of force (which, of course, presupposes certain property rights), then I think Rockwell is correct..." Well, if we define cats as elephants, then many people keep elephants in their house. More seriously, firstly, violence is not usually defined that way. It's defined as, you know, violence, so that, say, someone may respond violently or non-violently to someone who aggresses against them. Otherwise, it would make no sense to say, for instance, "He punched me, but I did not stoop to violence in response." And, secondly, the libertarian usage of "initiation of force" is very offbeat. If I wander onto someone's meadow, most people would not say I had "initiated force" -- I mean, sure, I used "force" against the earth to push off walking, but that's not force directed against...
Congrats. Do you get to pick the title?
ReplyDeleteI certainly will have input into the title.
ReplyDeleteYou might want to make "Oakeshott on Rome and America" the subtitle, and use something flashier—perhaps a pithy line from Oakeshott himself (cf. this)?—for the title itself.
ReplyDeleteI certainly DO want a flashier title -- I just don't have one yet! Suggestions are welcomed.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations. I'm greatly looking forward to it.
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to judge a work by its table of contents, so these titles might be hilariously inapposite. Even so, they are the best I could come up with:
ReplyDelete1. Constitutionalism's Empty Promise: Oakeshott on Rome and America
2. Rome, America, and the Failure of Rationalism: Oakeshott on the Fate of Two Civilizations
3. The Imaginary Chains of a Constitution: Oakeshott on the Roman and American Experiments
That last one is of course an allusion to the famous Jefferson quotation.
Good work, PSH.
ReplyDelete