Beginning and the Beyond of Politics

With Paleolithic Politics, Barry Cooper is the first political scientist to propose new interpretations of some of the most famous extant Paleolithic art and artifacts, using his background in political theory and philosophical anthropology. This book is inspired by Eric Voegelin, one of the major political scientists of the last century, who developed an interest in the very early symbolism associated with the caves and rock shelters of the Upper Paleolithic but never finished his analysis. Cooper, who has written extensively on Voegelin's political science, takes up the enterprise of applying Voegelin's ideas to an analysis of portable and cave art. He specifically applies Voegelin's philosophy of consciousness, his concept of the compactness and differentiation of consciousness, his argument regarding the experience and symbolizations of reality, and his notion of the primary experience of the cosmos. Cooper demonstrates the political significance of the earliest expressions of human existence and is among the first to argue that political life began 25,000 years before the Greeks. The book will be of interest to archaeologists and prehistorians. Political scientists, who conventionally date the origin of their discipline to Plato and Aristotle, will find plenty to discuss regarding the analysis of the cosmological symbolism developed many thousands of years earlier.

In The Priority of the Person, world-class philosopher David Walsh advances the argument set forth in his highly original philosophic meditation Politics of the Person as the Politics of Being (2015), that "person" is the central category of modern political thought and philosophy. The present volume is divided into three main parts. It begins with the political discovery of the inexhaustibility of persons, explores the philosophic differentiation of the idea of the "person," and finally traces the historical emergence of the concept through art, science, and faith. Walsh argues that, although the roots of the idea of "person" are found in the Greek concept of the mind and in the Christian conception of the soul, this notion is ultimately a distinctly modern achievement, because it is only the modern turn toward interiority that illuminated the unique nature of persons as each being a world unto him- or herself. As Walsh shows, it is precisely this feature of persons that makes it possible for us to know and communicate with others, for we can only give and receive one another as persons. In this way alone can we become friends and, in friendship, build community. By showing how the person is modernity's central preoccupation, David Walsh's The Priority of the Person makes an important contribution to current discussions in both political theory and philosophy. It will also appeal to students and scholars of theology and literature, and any groups interested in the person and personalism.