Brian A Smith
Biographic Data
| ID | 3982714 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Brian A Smith |
| GIVEN NAMES | Brian A |
| FAMILY NAME | Smith |
| SIGNATURE | SMITH B A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Georgetown University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2540-0839 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 8 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 9 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 8 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Friends in the State of Nature
This article explores an overlooked element of Locke’s international thought, namely that political communities emerge out of human sociability, friendship, and trust. The argument developed here diverges from both the dominant, modernist-realist interpretation of Locke, which sees him as crypto-Hobbesian, as well as the liberal-legalist tradition, which sees Locke portraying states as voluntarily complying with a set of normative requirements qu…
Burke and Clausewitz on the limitation of war
Restraining the violence of war is difficult under the best of circumstances. In their observations on the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, Edmund Burke and Carl von Clausewitz consider the peculiar violence of wars fought for abstract and world-transformative goals. While the beliefs that animated those wars have faded, in this essay we argue that Burke and Clausewitz offer insight into the ways that modern political violence becomes unmoo…
Badiou's Deleuze
Jon Roffe, Durham, Acumen Publishing, 2011, 240 pages, £18.99, 978 18,44655,090 Jon Roffe's book, Badiou's Deleuze, is a study narrowly focussed on examining Badiou's book Deleuze: the clamour of b
Losing Sight of Man
Social scientists rarely seem troubled by the ways their work evades the questions that animate people in everyday life. The terms of most social science inquiries into the causes of large-scale human behavior force scholars into a set of explanations that represent our motivations as essentially materialistic. At best, social science work provides its readers with a limited guidance for their actions; at worst, the nature of the inquiry itself l…
Statesmanship and the Problem of Theoretical Generalization
In this article we argue that in their quest for parsimony and through their denial of human agency, international relations scholars often endorse deterministic theories. The field of international relations suffers greatly for its devotion to excessive theoretical generalization. In rejecting the more pluralistic methodology of early international relations work, scholars may produce superficially valid predictive theories. Yet these theories r…
Edmund Burke, the Warren Hastings Trial, and the Moral Dimension of Corruption
Recent literature dealing with problems of corruption has done much to advance our understanding of how to approach many of the practical issues of combating it. However, this scholarship normally engages in a self-conscious move away from dealing with questions of morality. This essay argues that an explicit invocation of moral language may in some cases aid anticorruption efforts. Edmund Burke's long effort to bring Warren Hastings to justice a…
Roger Scruton and the Conservation of Culture
The Rift in the Modern Mind
Alexis de Tocqueville and Walker Percy are two of the most insightful commentators on the conditions of modernity. Placed in dialogue with one another, their work betrays startlingly parallel modes of thought and a complementary diagnosis of modernity's ills. In essence, they claim that the rise of Cartesian doubt robs men of their ability to cope with the world. They argue that by undermining the capacities for both authentic, face-to-face commu…
Statesmanship and the Problem of Theoretical Generalization
In this article we argue that in their quest for parsimony and through their denial of human agency, international relations scholars often endorse deterministic theories. The field of international relations suffers greatly for its devotion to excessive theoretical generalization. In rejecting the more pluralistic methodology of early international relations work, scholars may produce superficially valid predictive theories. Yet these theories r…
Edmund Burke, the Warren Hastings Trial, and the Moral Dimension of Corruption
Recent literature dealing with problems of corruption has done much to advance our understanding of how to approach many of the practical issues of combating it. However, this scholarship normally engages in a self-conscious move away from dealing with questions of morality. This essay argues that an explicit invocation of moral language may in some cases aid anticorruption efforts. Edmund Burke's long effort to bring Warren Hastings to justice a…
Friends in the State of Nature
This article explores an overlooked element of Locke’s international thought, namely that political communities emerge out of human sociability, friendship, and trust. The argument developed here diverges from both the dominant, modernist-realist interpretation of Locke, which sees him as crypto-Hobbesian, as well as the liberal-legalist tradition, which sees Locke portraying states as voluntarily complying with a set of normative requirements qu…
The Rift in the Modern Mind
Alexis de Tocqueville and Walker Percy are two of the most insightful commentators on the conditions of modernity. Placed in dialogue with one another, their work betrays startlingly parallel modes of thought and a complementary diagnosis of modernity's ills. In essence, they claim that the rise of Cartesian doubt robs men of their ability to cope with the world. They argue that by undermining the capacities for both authentic, face-to-face commu…
Edmund Burke, the Warren Hastings Trial, and the Moral Dimension of Corruption
Recent literature dealing with problems of corruption has done much to advance our understanding of how to approach many of the practical issues of combating it. However, this scholarship normally engages in a self-conscious move away from dealing with questions of morality. This essay argues that an explicit invocation of moral language may in some cases aid anticorruption efforts. Edmund Burke's long effort to bring Warren Hastings to justice a…
Roger Scruton and the Conservation of Culture
Statesmanship and the Problem of Theoretical Generalization
In this article we argue that in their quest for parsimony and through their denial of human agency, international relations scholars often endorse deterministic theories. The field of international relations suffers greatly for its devotion to excessive theoretical generalization. In rejecting the more pluralistic methodology of early international relations work, scholars may produce superficially valid predictive theories. Yet these theories r…
Losing Sight of Man
Social scientists rarely seem troubled by the ways their work evades the questions that animate people in everyday life. The terms of most social science inquiries into the causes of large-scale human behavior force scholars into a set of explanations that represent our motivations as essentially materialistic. At best, social science work provides its readers with a limited guidance for their actions; at worst, the nature of the inquiry itself l…
Badiou's Deleuze
Jon Roffe, Durham, Acumen Publishing, 2011, 240 pages, £18.99, 978 18,44655,090 Jon Roffe's book, Badiou's Deleuze, is a study narrowly focussed on examining Badiou's book Deleuze: the clamour of b
Burke and Clausewitz on the limitation of war
Restraining the violence of war is difficult under the best of circumstances. In their observations on the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, Edmund Burke and Carl von Clausewitz consider the peculiar violence of wars fought for abstract and world-transformative goals. While the beliefs that animated those wars have faded, in this essay we argue that Burke and Clausewitz offer insight into the ways that modern political violence becomes unmoo…
Friends in the State of Nature
This article explores an overlooked element of Locke’s international thought, namely that political communities emerge out of human sociability, friendship, and trust. The argument developed here diverges from both the dominant, modernist-realist interpretation of Locke, which sees him as crypto-Hobbesian, as well as the liberal-legalist tradition, which sees Locke portraying states as voluntarily complying with a set of normative requirements qu…
Philosophy (8 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Political science (7 works) · Epistemology (6 works) · Law (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Law (5 works) · American Constitutional Law and Politics (3 works) · Law and economics (3 works) · Politics (3 works)