While the idea of human rights and humanitarian assistance has ancient roots--evidence can be seen in such examples as the Ten Commandments, the Bhagavad Gita, and the teachings of Confucius and Socrates--it wasn't until the 1800s that the first modern humanitarian and human rights organizations came to be. The 19th century saw the beginning of the abolitionist movement, the forming of a variety of women's suffrage organizations, the formation and consolidation of national labor unions, and the founding of the Red Cross. This was followed by the inextricably intertwined story of war,...

Over the course of two millennia, the Catholic Church has served as one of the key institutional influences on the development of political science. Papal writings on the social teachings of the Church and their application to the modern world reflect the important role the Church has played as a political evaluator and social critic of political ideas and realities and the concepts and methods through which we seek to understand them. Toward the Common Good critiques political science from a distinctly Catholic perspective. Essays in this work engage forthrightly with the origins and destiny...

A widely accepted truism says that luxury corrupts, and in both popular and scholarly treatments, the ancient city of Sybaris remains the model for destructive opulence. This volume demonstrates the scarcity of evidence for Sybarite luxury, and examines the vocabulary of luxury used by the Hellenic world. Focus on the word truphe reveals it means an attitude of entitlement: not necessarily a bad trait, unless in extreme form. This pattern holds for all Classical evidence, even the historian Herodotus, where the idea of pernicious luxury is commonly thought to be thematic.
Advancing...