Contemporary thinkers featured in new online resource
Isaiah Berlin. John Maynard Keynes. Leo Strauss. Michel Foucault. James Q. Wilson. These are some of the influential intellectuals whose life and work are featured at the newly launched ContemporaryThinkers.org. To date, there are microsites for 30 scholars of politics, philosophy and economics, with more in the works.
Each thinker’s microsite provides readers with a concise and authoritative introduction to his or her life and work. Many of the microsites also offer video and audio recordings of the intellectuals. For example, the Edward C. Banfield site, which I helped create, carries my short biography of Banfield and an essay on his research on government and politics, along with an exhaustive bibliography of his publications, and a curated collection of his most provocative essays (like “Policy Science as Metaphysical Madness”). The site also directs readers to free, online copies of Banfield’s work. One can hear Banfield muse on America’s problems, nihilism and more in this 1977 recording.
ContemporaryThinkers.org went online last month. It is a project of the Foundation for Constitutional Government, an organization “devoted to supporting the serious study of politics and political philosophy both online and on campus, with particular attention to the vonstitutional character of American government and the founding of the United States.” The foundation contracts with experts in academia and think-tanks who write and organize the sites’ content. The full list of sites is at http://www.contemporarythinkers.org.
