SelectedWorks - Scott Yenor

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Selected Works of Scott Yenor

Professor, Department of Political Science

Dr. Scott Yenor joined the Department of Political Science at Boise State University in 2000 after earning a Ph.D. in Political Science from Loyola University in Chicago. He teaches political philosophy and is the Director of the American Founding Initiative at Boise State. He has published on a variety of subjects, including the Scottish Enlightenment, the philosophic status of revealed religion, American literature, and the family in modern political thought. Dr. Yenor published his book "Family Politics: The Idea of Marriage in Modern Political Thought" in 2011. The book explores the treatment of the family in the philosophies of leading political thinkers of the modern world.

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About Scott Yenor

Dr. Scott Yenor joined the Department of Political Science at Boise State University in 2000 after earning a Ph.D. in Political Science from Loyola University in Chicago. He teaches political philosophy and is the Director of the American Founding Initiative at Boise State. He has published on a variety of subjects, including the Scottish Enlightenment, the philosophic status of revealed religion, American literature, and the family in modern political thought. Dr. Yenor published his book "Family Politics: The Idea of Marriage in Modern Political Thought" in 2011. The book explores the treatment of the family in the philosophies of leading political thinkers of the modern world.

2000 - Present	Professor, Boise State University ‐ Department of Political Science
Institution Organization Position Type Position Title Time Period to Options Current Position Affiliate my profile with this Institution

Political Science, American Politics, and Political Theory

Political Philosophy

2011 - Foundation for the Defense of Democracies Fellow, Tel Aviv, Israel
2007-2010 - Co-PI and Academic Director for Treasure Valley Teaching American History Grant, $1 million
2008-2011 - Jack Miller Center Distinguished Fellow

POLS 101 American National Government
POLS 141 Contemporary Political Ideologies
POLS 331 American Political Theory
POLS 351 Constitutional Law
POLS 441 Classical Political Thought
POLS 442 Modern Political Thought
POLS 443 Contemporary Political Thought
POLS 445 Philosophy of Law
POLS 497 Political Philosophy in American Film
POLS 497 The Family in Modern Political Thought

E-mail: syenor@boisestate.edu

Peer-Reviewed Articles (6)

Feminism—What the Critics Missed (Scott Yenor) Modern Age (2021)

In the article, the author discusses the accomplishments of the feminist revolutions in areas like religion, marriage and job markets. Also cited are the works of first-wave feminists like Mary Wollstonecraft and John Stuart Mill ...

Willa Cather's Turns (Scott Yenor) Perspectives on Political Science (2007)

Examining Willa Cather's corpus of literary works reveals several phases of her illustrious career. After defending commercial culture in O Pioneers! and My Ántonia, her later novels, especially her One of Ours, diagnose an unmediated ...

Revealed Religion and the Politics of Humanity in Hume's Philosophy of Common Life (Scott Yenor) Polity (2006)

Hume's philosophy of common life consists in two moments: philosophic agnosticism about deep irresolvable metaphysical issues and a willingness to assume the common sense of the matter so that philosophy can proceed. This method works ...

Humanity and Happiness: Philosophic Treatment of Happiness in a Non-Teleological World (Scott Yenor) Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy (2004)

Natural Religion and Human Perfectibility: Tocqueville's Account of Religion in Modern Democracy (Scott Yenor) Perspectives on Political Science (2004)

Few issues are as troublesome as the problem of technology. On the level of common opinion, people wonder whether our consumptive culture will destroy the ecosystem necessary to sustain human life, whether the proliferation of ...

Between Rationalism and Postmodernism: Hume's Political Science of our “Mixed Kind of Life” (Scott Yenor) Political Research Quarterly (2002)

Many recent studies of David Hume emphasize his criticism of Enlightenment rationalism, but these studies risk making Hume into a paleoconservative advocate of local attachment. This article suggests that Humes political science can best be ...

The Recovery of Family Life: Exposing the Limits of Modern Ideologies (Scott Yenor) Faculty & Staff Authored Books (2020)

The Sexual Revolution, which has been underway since the 1950s, is a rolling revolution--a set of unfinishable ambitions, all affecting marriage and family life. Feminists want to "liberate" women from childrearing as well as the ...

Reconstruction: Core Documents (Scott Yenor) Faculty & Staff Authored Books (2018)

This volume continues the Ashbrook Center’s collection of primary documents covering major periods, themes, and institutions in American history and government. It is the third of a planned trilogy on the conflict over slavery. Causes ...

David Hume's Humanity: The Philosophy of Common Life and Its Limits (Scott Yenor) Faculty & Staff Authored Books (2016)

Scott Yenor argues that David Hume's reputation as a skeptic is greatly exaggerated. In David Hume's Humanity, Yenor shows how Hume's skepticism is a moment that leads Hume to defend a philosophy grounded in the ...

Family Politics: The Idea of Marriage in Modern Political Thought (Scott Yenor) Faculty & Staff Authored Books (2011)

With crisp prose and intellectual fairness, Family Politics traces the treatment of the family in the philosophies of leading political thinkers of the modern world. What is family? What is marriage? In an effort to ...

Hate Crimes: Protected Prejudice or Punishable Motive? (Scott Yenor and Jon Schaff) Moral Controversies in American Politics (2011)

Federalism and David Hume's Perfect Commonwealth (Will R. Jordan and Scott Yenor) The Ashgate Research Companion to Federalism (2009)

Alexander Hamilton bemoans, in Federalist No. 9, the disappointing record of Republican forms of government. It is impossible, he writes, "to read the history of the petty republics of Greece and Italy without feeling sensations ...

Spontaneous Order and the Problem of Religious Revolution (Scott Yenor) Liberalism, Conservatism, and Hayek’s Idea of Spontaneous Order (2007)

Hayek uses spontaneous order to explain how free markets operate and how they arise. Explaining how markets operate, Hayek argues that economic efficiency on a global scale arises as the consequence of many discrete, individual, ...

The Framers Intended the Nation to be Based on Christian Values (Scott Yenor) Debating the Issues: American Government and Politics (2005)

Locke and the Problem of Friendship in Modern Liberalism (Scott Yenor) Love and Friendship (2003)

Two Regimes without Civic Courage: Solzhenitsyn's the Red Wheel (Scott Yenor) Perspectives on Political Science (2021)

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Red Wheel is coming to the English-speaking world, one thick volume at a time. The series weaves fictional characters and historical figures through decisive events leading up to Red October, in an effort ...

A Feminist Capstone (Scott Yenor) American Conservative (2021)

Review of The Future of Marriage by Mark Regnerus, Oxford University Press.

Sparta’s First Attic War: The Grand Strategy of Classical Sparta by Paul A. Rahe (Scott Yenor) Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy (2020)

The Kingdom of Man: Genesis and Failure of the Modern Project (Scott Yenor) Journal of Church & State (2020)

Rémi Brague’s The Kingdom of Man: Genesis and Failure of the Modern Project is the third in a trilogy on the place of humanity in the cosmos. Wisdom of the World (2003) traced man’s place in the natural order, ...

Orestes Brownson's Republican Remedies (Scott Yenor) Claremont Review of Books (2017)

Orestes Brownson (1803-1876) spent 50 years thinking through the tensions between the American experiment and modernity. His voluminous writings display a critical mind, a man of principle willing to question his own principles. Richard Reinsch’s ...

A Modest Proposal to Create a New Humanity (Scott Yenor) Library of Law and Liberty (2017)

Henry T. Greely’s The End of Sex and the Future of Human Reproduction defends the idea that “Easy PGD” (Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis) will soon replace sexual reproduction as the primary way human beings enter the ...

Up from Polyamy (Scott Yenor) Claremont Review of Books (2016)

Modern feminism's leading thinkers believe their core project is to expose the ancient "myths" that guide our thinking about men, women, and families. In The Second Sex (1949) Simone de Beauvoir identified the "feminine myth" ...

Innovation and the Families of the Future (Scott Yenor) Library of Law and Liberty (2016)

Steven Horwitz’s Hayek’s Modern Family: Classical Liberalism and the Evolution of Social Institutions uses the Austrian economist’s mode of analysis: marriage and the family are seen as the products of undirected environmental changes, products that ...

"Hobbes, Bramhall and the Politics of Liberty and Necessity/Hobbes and Republican Liberty" (Scott Yenor) Review of Politics (2009)

Includes conference presentations, invited talks, and podcasts

Political Philosophy in The Sun Also Rises (Scott Yenor) 4th Annual Ernest Hemingway Symposium (2012)