On Political Resurrections

"Very few political ideas die so thoroughly that they are beyond hope of resurrection," writes the English-born Princeton political theorist Alan Ryan towards the end of his millennia-spanning two-volume survey, On Politics. That is just another way of saying that many of the political rules we consider trustworthy today will themselves come to seem silly. We know the arc of the political story that runs from Hellas to Dallas, but Ryan will be among the very last scholars to tell it as it has been told for centuries, through what he calls "a mixture of philosophical analysis, moral judgment, constitutional speculation, and practical advice." Now in his seventies, he is among the youngest to possess a native fluency in the Europe-centered, territorial, polyglot, pre-televised culture that does not appear to have survived the 20th century intact. Future histories of the West will be different.