Schaefer, David Lewis 1943-

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Schaefer, David Lewis 1943-

PERSONAL:

Born May 28, 1943. Education: Received Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Office—College of the Holy Cross, 1 College St., Worcester, MA 01610. E-mail—dschaefe@holycross.edu.

CAREER:

College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA, professor of political science.

WRITINGS:

Justice or Tyranny? A Critique of John Rawls's "A Theory of Justice," Kennikat Press (Port Washington, NY), 1979.

(Editor) The New Egalitarianism: Questions and Challenges, Kennikat Press (Port Washington, NY), 1979.

(Editor, with Roberta R. Schaefer) Sir Henry Taylor, The Statesman, Associated Faculty Press (Millwood, NY), 1988, revised edition, Praeger (Westport, CT), 1992.

The Political Philosophy of Montaigne, Cornell University Press (Ithaca, NY), 1990.

(Editor, with Peter Augustin Lawler and Robert Martin Schaefer) Active Duty: Public Administration as Democratic Statesmanship, Rowman & Littlefield (Lanham, MD), 1998.

(Editor) Freedom over Servitude: Montaigne, La Boétie, and "On Voluntary Servitude," Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 1998.

Illiberal Justice: John Rawls vs. the American Political Tradition, University of Missouri Press (Columbia, SC), 2007.

Contributor to The Future of Cities: Essays Based on a Series of Lectures Sponsored by the Worcester Municipal Research Bureau. Contributor to periodicals, including National Review,Fenwick Review, and American Enterprise.

SIDELIGHTS:

A professor of political science at the College of the Holy Cross, David Lewis Schaefer has written and edited numerous works on political philosophy in general, as well as on American political thought. His book The Political Philosophy of Montaigne attracted particular scholarly attention. In this book Schaefer argues that French writer Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) intended his Essays to be, in essence, a work of political philosophy articulating an early version of bourgeois liberalism, which theorizes that society functions optimally when individuals seek to satisfy their own interests and government plays a correspondingly minor role. In Schaefer's view, Montaigne wrote in such a manner as to make it seem that he was not interested in politics, so as to avoid trouble with Roman Catholic Church authorities; nevertheless, his work exhibits similarities with that of Machiavelli and can, Schaefer argues, be seen as a coherent, if disguised, commentary on political ideas. In the Review of Metaphysics, Jill Kraye considered The Political Philosophy of Montaigne's thesis unconvincing. "Schaefer gives himself carte blanche to dismiss whatever he finds inconvenient in the surface level of [The Essays]," she wrote. The critic further contended that Schaefer's perspective on Montaigne is distorted by his focus on "later developments, which leads him to transform Montaigne's sixteenth-century Christian Epicureanism into a whole-hearted endorsement of the consumer society."

Symposium contributor Francis M. Wynne, by contrast, considered The Political Philosophy of Montaigne an "interesting and tendentious study" that presents an reasonable argument. "Fervent admirers of Montaigne," wrote Wynne, "will welcome this controversial and highly original interpretation of one of France's most subtle and profound writers."

Among Schaefer's other works on Montaigne is Freedom over Servitude: Montaigne, La Boétie, and "On Voluntary Servitude," a collection of five essays that Schaefer edited and which explore the political dimensions of Montaigne's writings. The book also includes new translations of two works attributed to La Boétie.

Schaefer again provoked controversy in Illiberal Justice: John Rawls vs. the American Political Tradition. The book, published only a few years after the philosopher's death in 2002, challenges the dominant view of Rawls as one of the preeminent political thinkers of the twentieth century. Rawls is particularly known for his belief that "justice is fairness." According to this theory, a society can be considered just only if its basic structure is organized according to principles that individuals in the "original position" would choose behind a "veil of ignorance" which precluded any scrutiny on basis of race, class, religion, or other divisive categories. Such principles would include a broad spectrum of individual rights and freedoms and would require a radical redistribution of wealth.

As Schaefer argues, Rawls's philosophy of justice fails to take into account any serious analysis of human nature or realistic understanding of politics—a flaw that, in Schaefer's view, reveals a crisis in current liberal theory regarding politics and jurisprudence. Furthermore, Rawls's work actually undermines liberalism and weakens the political processes guaranteed by the Constitution. Deeming Illiberal Justice an "important" book, National Review critic Edward Feser noted that Schaefer is "particularly keen to emphasize how radically at odds Rawls is with the American political tradition and the assumptions that have informed it historically and at present." In Feser's assessment, Schaefer demonstrates that Rawls's abstract claims "are either hopelessly vague or pointlessly tautological" and that his more concrete ideas are "sheeer undefended assertion." In conclusion, Feser stated that Shaefer's achievement in the book is to reveal that admiration for Rawls is based on emotion rather than reason.

With Peter Augustine Lawler and Robert Martin Schaefer, David Lewis Schaefer edited Active Duty: Public Administration as Democratic Statesmanship, a collection of fourteen essays intended, as the editors claim to "contribute to the education of present and prospective American civil servants" and "to encourage and assist the public administrator to become a democratic statesman." Schaefer also contributed to the collection The Future of Cities: Essays Based on a Series of Lectures Sponsored by the Worcester Municipal Research Bureau. In this work, Schaefer presents an argument in favor of restoring a sense of local democratic participatory citizenships, along the lines of that advocated by de Tocqueville.

Schaefer also edited, with Roberta R. Schaefer, Sir Henry Taylor's The Statesman, originally published in 1836 and the first modern book on the subject of public administration. The editors provide a comprehensive introduction to the book in which they argue that Taylor's insights demonstrate the merits of a healthy civil service in a constitutional democracy.

In addition to contributing articles to numerous scholarly journals, Schaefer writes on general topics, such as public schools and politics, for publications including National Review, Fenwick Review, and American Enterprise.

Schaefer told CA: "I write in order to convey to others the insights that I have gained from the study of political philosophy. Of course, the enterprise of writing also compels me to sharpen my own thoughts.

"Among the books that I have published, two are most important. The Political Philosophy of Montaigne was intended not only to articulate Montaigne's standing as a political philosopher and help the reader to understand the subtle character of his philosophic rhetoric, but also to show how studying the Essays enables us to gain a deeper appreciation of the differences as well as the connections between modern and classical (ancient) political philosophy. Illiberal Justice, the culmination of a number of previous writings on John Rawls, highlights the radical divergence between Rawls's ‘philosophical’ methodology, which I contend serves in reality as an attempt to rationalize the author's rather superficial political preferences, and the enterprise of political philosophy proper as that enterprise was understood from Plato to Nietzsche. It is also intended to clarify and defend the fundamental principles of the American Constitutional order in light of what I regard as Rawls's distortions as well as his presumptuous denunciation of our polity's supposedly ‘grave injustices.’

"The greatest influence on my writing was the work of Leo Strauss (1899-1973), the thinker most fully responsible for the restoration of the proper study of political philosophy in the twentieth century, along with four other great teachers under whom I studied (besides Strauss himself): Allan Bloom, Joseph Cropsey, Herbert Storing, and Walter Berns.

"I hope that my writings on Montaigne and other great philosophers and serious political thinkers will encourage other readers to study their works with the care they deserve, so as to profit from their insights as I have done. And I hope that my critiques of Rawls will not only make readers aware of the deficiencies of the mode of ‘analytic’ discourse on politics and ethics that now dominates philosophy departments in much of the English-speaking world, but also encourage a prudent appreciation of the American system of political and economic liberty that is threatened by Rawls's spirit of egalitarian envy and moral libertarianism."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Administration & Society, February 1, 1988, "Response to Schaefer," p. 399.

American Political Science Review, June 1, 1992, Michael Platt, review of The Political Philosophy of Montaigne, p. 514.

Canadian Journal of Political Science, December 1, 1991, J.A.W. Gunn, review of The Political Philosophy of Montaigne, p. 882.

Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, June 1, 1999, M.E. Ethridge, review of Active Duty: Public Administration as Democratic Statesmanship, p. 1869; September 1, 2007, S. Vanderheiden, review of Illiberal Justice: John Rawls vs. the American Political Tradition, p. 177.

Ethics, April 1, 1994, Michael Wood, review of The Political Philosophy of Montaigne, p. 667.

French Studies, April 1, 1995, James J. Supple, review of The Political Philosophy of Montaigne, p. 190.

Journal of Modern History, June 1, 1993, Peter Burke, review of The Political Philosophy of Montaigne, p. 407.

Journal of Politics, February 1, 1992, Nannerl O. Keohane, review of The Political Philosophy of Montaigne, p. 296.

Modern Language Review, October 1, 1993, Keith Cameron, review of The Political Philosophy of Montaigne, p. 972.

National Review, March 5, 2007, Edward Feser, "St. John of Harvard Yard," p. 51.

Reference & Research Book News, May 1, 1999, review of Freedom over Servitude: Montaigne, La Boétie, and "On Voluntary Servitude," p. 124; August 1, 2007, review of Illiberal Justice.

Renaissance Quarterly, winter, 1991, Floyd Gray, review of The Political Philosophy of Montaigne; summer, 1994, review of The Political Philosophy of Montaigne.

Review of Metaphysics, March 1, 1993, Jill Kraye, review of The Political Philosophy of Montaigne, p. 640.

Review of Politics, fall, 1994, A.J. Beitzinger, review of The Political Philosophy of Montaigne.

Symposium, winter, 1993, Francis M. Wynne, review of The Political Philosophy of Montaigne, p. 306.