James Stoner, Author at The Imaginative Conservative

About James Stoner

James R. Stoner, Jr. is Hermann Moyse, Jr., Professor and Director of the Eric Voegelin Institute in the Department of Political Science at Louisiana State University. He specializes in political theory, English common law, and American constitutionalism.

Are Self-Evident Truths True?

By James Stoner|2021-08-01T16:51:24-05:00August 2nd, 2015|Categories: American Founding, Declaration of Independence, Featured, Republicanism|

Is there a political philosophy in the Declaration of Independence? One step toward answering this question—not the only step, but from the philosopher’s point of view the most fundamental—is to ask whether the “self-evident truths” of the Declaration are really true after all. I have to admit that “fact or fiction” struck me at first [...]

Is the Civil War Long Gone and Far Away?

By James Stoner|2022-07-08T17:51:33-05:00July 6th, 2015|Categories: Civil War, Slavery, War|

I want to suggest two big lessons that we today might learn from the Civil War: The first concerns how to recognize when moral evil threatens to become increasingly intractable, even to the point of overwhelming the good. Sitting at my desk in Louisiana the other week, where it was already as hot as it [...]