Victor Nuovo
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Victor Nuovo: Plato and the moral universe
Editor’s note: Sixth in a series. The previous essay concluded on a new note: the idea of a moral universe, and I have returned to Plato as my…
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Victor Nuovo: A platonic digression
The title of this essay calls for an explanation. Four weeks ago, I began a series entitled “The Life of the Mind in America.” This essay, the fifth…
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Victor Nuovo: The mind of Jonathan Edwards
It is regrettable that Jonathan Edwards (1703–58) is mostly remembered for a sermon, “Sinners in the hands of an angry God.” As his biographer Perry Miller once remarked,…
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Victor Nuovo: The first Great Awakening
Editor’s note: Third in a series. A variety of motives caused Europeans to hazard crossing the Atlantic Ocean to settle in America 300 years ago. For some, it…
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Victor Nuovo: The American Sublime
Editor’s note: This is the second in a series called “The Life of the Mind in America.”Perry Miller did not live to complete “The Life of the Mind…
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Nuovo leaves public service to ponder more of life’s mysteries
MIDDLEBURY — Middlebury Selectman Victor Nuovo has resigned from the selectboard, citing his desire to probe the philosophical mysteries of life during the balance of his golden years.…
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Victor Nuovo: Discovering what America means
This essay begins a new series about American intellectual history. I have entitled it “The Life of the Mind in America,” which is the title of an unfinished…
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Victor Nuovo: Sovereign law makes us free
Thomas Hobbes perceived that politics was all about power; the power to govern, to command, to make laws, and to enforce them, along with the power to levy…
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Victor Nuovo: Democracy seems in mortal peril
This week’s writer is Victor Nuovo, professor emeritus of Philosophy at Middlebury College and a Middlebury selectboard member. “If a man die, shall he live again?” The question…
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Victor Nuovo: Creating Civil Society
Thomas Hobbes’ political philosophy is a paradoxical fabric. On the one hand, his view of mankind is uncomplimentary, bordering on the defamatory; and yet he also imagines our…
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Victor Nuovo: The death of a nation
In the introduction to his magisterial work, “Leviathan,” Thomas Hobbes invites his readers to imagine the civil state as an animal, an artificial life created by human art in imitation of the divine.…
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Victor Nuovo: Hobbes would view Trump as unfit
Calvin and Hobbes are well known names, although mostly because of the celebrated comic strip figures who bear them, and not because of the historical personages whose names they bear.…
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Victor Nuovo: Indivisibility, liberty, justice
Editor’s note: This is the 68th and last in a series of essays on the history and meaning of the American political tradition. This is the final essay…
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Victor Nuovo: Kennedy’s ‘New Frontier’
Editor’s note: This is the 67th in a series of essays on the history and meaning of the American political tradition. “The New Frontier” was the keynote of…
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Victor Nuovo: The indomitable Frances Perkins
Editor’s note: This is the 66th in a series of essays on the history and meaning of the American political tradition. “Frances Perkins” is not a household name,…
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Victor Nuovo: Franklin Roosevelt’s women
Editor’s note: This is the 65th in a series of essays on the history and meaning of the American political tradition. Franklin Roosevelt delighted in the company of…