Steven B. Smith > Quotes

“the Apology and the Crito represent a tension—in fact a conflict—between two more or less permanent and irreconcilable moral codes. The one represented by Socrates regards reason—the sovereign reason of the individual—as the highest authority. It is precisely the philosopher’s reliance on his or her own reason that frees him or her from the dangerous authority of the state and safeguards the individual from complicity in the injustice and evil that are a necessary part of political life. The other moral code is represented by the speech of the Laws in the Crito, where it is the law or nomos of the community—its oldest and deepest customs and institutions—that are obligatory. The one point of view takes the philosophic life, the examined life, to be the life most worth living; the other takes the political life, the life of the citizen engaged in the business of deliberating, legislating, making war and peace as the highest calling. These two constitute fundamentally irreconcilable alternatives, two different callings, and any attempt to reconcile or synthesize the two can only lead to doing an injustice to each.”
― Steven B. Smith, Political Philosophy

“One thing you will quickly discover is that there are no permanent answers in the study of political philosophy, only permanent questions.”
― Steven B. Smith, Political Philosophy

“The study of political philosophy has always revolved around such questions as “Why should I obey the law?” “What is a citizen and how should he or she be educated?” “Who is a lawgiver?” “What is the relation between freedom and authority?” “How should politics and theology be related?” and perhaps a few of others.”
― Steven B. Smith, Political Philosophy

“Political philosophy is the study of the deepest, most intractable, and most enduring problems of political life.”
― Steven B. Smith, Political Philosophy

“There may be strength in numbers, but not necessarily truth.”
― Steven B. Smith, Political Philosophy

“I awaken and persuade and reproach each one of you, and I do not stop settling down everywhere upon you the whole day. (30d–e)”
― Steven B. Smith, Political Philosophy

“In this sense it is less a branch of political science than the very foundation and root of the discipline.”
― Steven B. Smith, Political Philosophy

“Today it is the hope of many both here and abroad that we might some day overcome the basic structure of regime politics and organize our world around global norms of justice and international law. Is such a hope possible? It cannot be entirely ruled out, but such a world—a world administered by international courts of law, by judges and judicial tribunals—would no longer be a political world. Politics is only possible within the structure of the regime.”
― Steven B. Smith, Political Philosophy

“which approach is more scientific: Aristotle’s, which is explicitly and necessarily evaluative, which offers advice and exhortation about how to care for the political order, or contemporary political science, which claims to be neutral and nonpartisan, but which smuggles its values and preferences in through the back door.”
― Steven B. Smith, Political Philosophy

“If all ideas are limited to their own time and place, then this must also be true for the idea that all ideas are limited to their own time and place.”
― Steven B. Smith, Political Philosophy

“The problems we confront today, to the extent that they remain political problems, are precisely the same as those confronted in fifth-century Athens, fifteenth-century Florence, or seventeenth-century England.”
― Steven B. Smith, Political Philosophy

“the ills of the human race would never end until either those who are sincerely and truly lovers of wisdom come into political power, or the rulers of our cities, by the grace of God, learn true philosophy.3”
― Steven B. Smith, Political Philosophy

“To tolerate Socrates would be to say to him that we care so little for our way of life that we are willing to let you challenge and impugn it every day.”
― Steven B. Smith, Political Philosophy