ABSTRACT
Introducing and presenting his own ‘Neo-Hegelian Orthodoxy’, Shanks articulates a theo-political vision which calls upon the strengths of first and second modernities (the instigation of the post-axial religion and Christian universality, and the foundation of the democratic nation-state and political party, respectively) to develop and endorse the ‘third modernity’ of civil society associations. This third modernity, which Shanks notes in its embryonic stages in the eighteenth-century British campaign for the abolition of slavery, is characterised, Shanks argues, by associational groups which defy unilateral religious and political affiliation, preferring instead the defence of the universal dignity and vocation of human kind. These subjects are pursued through an engagement with the life and works of the ‘Catholic Left’ writer and campaigner, Fr Daniel Berrigan.
