Introduction to Mimesis in Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan
Mimesis as an expression of Human Self-Assertion Chapter 1: Between Renaissance Humanism and the early modern mechanical sciences Chapter 2: Mimesis as Ekphrasis Chapter 3: Mimesis as the 'imitation of…
Leo Strauss Natural Right and History
If there is no standard higher than the ideals of one’s society, there exists no possibility of taking a critical distance from those ideals. But the mere fact that we can raise the question of the worth of the ideals of our society shows that there is something in man that is not altogether enslaved to his society, and therefore that we are able, and even obliged, to look for a standard with reference to which we can judge of the ideals of our society, as well as of any other society. This standard cannot be found in the needs of the society concerned.
John Locke Second Treatise on Government
212 Besides this over-turning from without, governments are dissolved from within. p.107
Arendt, What is Freedom?
Political institutions, no matter how well or how badly designed, depend for continued existence upon acting men; their conservation is achieved by the same means that brought them into being. Independent existence marks the work of art as a product of making; utter dependence upon further acts to keep it in existence marks the state as a product of action. p.153
De Tocqueville Democracy in America
The most natural privilege of man, next to the right of acting for himself, is that of combining his exertions with those of his fellow-creatures, and of acting in common with them. I am therefore led to conclude that the right of association is almost as inalienable as the right of personal liberty. No legislator can attack it without impairing the very foundations of society.