Tocqueville's writings on pauperism have gained renewed attention in the last decade. Scholars study his Memoir on Pauperism (1835) to contextualize his thought in the nineteenth century, to question the extent of his liberalism, or to locate his policy solutions on a spectrum from private charity to state welfare. Yet Tocqueville's response to pauperism must be interpreted in light of “the social question,” or the problem of how to alleviate not only the material ills of poverty, but also the phenomenon of social exclusion that accompanied it. His discussion of the social question, I argue, illuminates his particular theory of rights and their possibilities. His thoughts on the poor laws culminate in a novel theory of the educative potential of property rights. This theory of rights prompts us to revisit his position on extending political rights and on the role of political participation in overcoming class division.

This article moves on two fronts. It continues the challenge to the belief that politics is not central to the concerns of Friedrich Nietzsche but questions attempts to transvalue Nietzsche into a democrat. With their illiberal and inegalitarian political views, Nietzsche's writings best serve democratic political theory in an antidotal way. The article discusses Nietzsche's aesthetic approach to political action and architectonic conception of politics. It also explores some of the qualities he believes future rulers would need and the mechanisms they could use to exercise and legitimate their power. Just as Nietzsche thinks of political action in aesthetic terms, so his own art has a political purpose for he envisages the formation of a social, cultural and political élite and hopes, through his writings, to galvanize this élite.

Long an icon of the American cultural tradition, Henry Thoreau has recently been welcomed into political theory as a theorist whose political writings go beyond the essays on resistance to government, and contain ideas deeply important for understanding the American contribution to democratic experience. I extend this new appreciation by showing how Thoreau presents a specific model of self-government, individual self-government, that occurs under the frequently irrelevant roof provided by liberal democratic state institutions. Thoreau's model of self-government imagines women and men who are largely free of, or indifferent to, the state; but fully involved in an everyday experience that is deeply political because it allocates values for the individual. Walden is, in this sense, less an escape from government than it is an escape to it. Thoreau spans the spectrum of political philosophy, from Socrates′ concern with justice in the individual, to Nietzsche's model of the self as a governable community, but Thoreau's work is unique, and distinctively American, in its model of a hard-headed individual self-government based upon an unsentimentalized natural world.

Few centuries have been as sanguinary as the twentieth. Leaving behind as their monuments the ruins of concentration camps and the work camps of the Gulag Archipelago, temporarily discredited, fascism and communism may have slouched into the shadows. Still, the forces of liberty have not succeeded in laying the foundations for a world of free republics. During the twentieth century, both in Europe and in the United States, the moral life of the free societies has been severely weakened. Families are a shadow of what they used to be. Traditional virtues and decencies, a sense of honor, and respect for moral character have given way to vulgar relativism. Thus, the dark underground river of the twentieth century has not been fascism nor communism but their presupposition: nihilism. And nihilism has not yet been abandoned.

It is frequently suggested, today, that toleration and relativism are the same thing. This essay focuses on how John Locke dealt with this issue, that is, how he defended his principle of toleration against the charges of Jonas Proast that it would devolve into unbelief and moral relativism. In replying to Proast, Locke attempts to demonstrate that his principle of toleration will not become a sanction for unbelief and that while it extends to competing conceptions of salvation it does not extend to competing conceptions of the good. That is to say, Locke builds a fire wall between the two areas, the aim of which is to confine toleration to the realm of mere theology—it is this barrier, its basis and its extent and its durability, which I explore.

Liberalism has always had a powerful concern with the education of its citizens. But who should exercise final authority over the education—parents or the state? The answer rests, in large part, on our understanding of the character of the self-rule or autonomy to be taught. For as “autonomy” comes to mean unpredetermined “choice,” it becomes ever more difficult to justify parental control of education. In fact, parental control, supported by the earliest liberals, is now thought to produce “ethical servility.” Liberal theorists—such as John Dewey, Amy Gutmann, and Eamonn Callan—break with thinkers like Locke and Mill in allowing the state to override parental preferences in the name of greater equality, preparation for autonomy, and democratic deliberation. We argue that taking educational authority away from parents and giving it to the state is an illiberal policy, meaning one that fails to abide by Locke's central distinction of political and parental power. This failure will lead both to greater ethical servility and to fewer reasonable alternatives from which autonomous individuals can choose.

On the face of it, there would seem to be little evidence suggesting that the political science of Thomas Jefferson owed much, if anything, to the speculation of Niccolò Machiavelli. The Virginian appears to have mentioned the Florentine by name but once, and he did so in a manner conveying his disdain for the author of The Prince. And yet, as I try to show in this article, Jefferson's commitment to limited government, his advocacy of a politics of distrust, his eager embrace of a species of populism, his ultimate understanding of the executive power, and the intention guiding the comprehensive legislative program that he devised for Virginia make sense only when understood in terms of the new science of republican politics articulated by Machiavelli in his Discourses on Livy.

The “fall” of Lucrezia in Machiavelli's play La Mandragola is a puzzlement. She is presented as an intelligent and virtuous wife who by play's end not only agrees to commit adultery but murder as well. Any attempt to interpret the play must address the significance of Lucrezia and her fall. It is argued here, however, that the real deception is that Lucrezia does not undergo a conversion—she is of questionable character from the start. Upon examination, her similarity with the Goddess Fortuna reveals a deeper tale being told within the play. Machiavelh uses her to mock the Church, and St. Augustine in particular, and to deliver a frightening message that the free will is no match for the goddess.

THE last decade has seen the proliferation of organizations and institutions which have broadened the scope of social communication between African peoples. The sophistication of a broad African perspective, which tended to be a monopoly of top-level leadership, is now permeating the lower strata of African society. Previously, consciousness of a common African destiny had to be induced by the elite, but in recent times the masses have become sensitive enough to events in the continent to cause anxiety to leaders whose performances have to be constantly compared. This nascent psychological unity is standardizing expectations throughout the continent. Thus events in one part of the continent tend to echo in another. Following the alleged plot against Houphouet-Boigny's regime, the Ivory Coast National Assembly passed a law on January 17, 1963, authorizing the government to impress into public service anyone whose activities it considered detrimental to national security. Anticipating a similar plot the legislature of the Upper Volta passed a law on January 29 creating a High Court of State to deal with offenses against the state committed by deputies, ministers, and other officials and also empowered the government to impress any person into forced labor in the national interest. Colonel David Thompson, the leader of the abortive coup d'état in Liberia, was reported to have argued that there was no reason why 5,000 Liberian soldiers could not capture a government if 250 Togolese soldiers succeeded. The recent crop of mutinies in East Africa centered around the common theme of Africanization and the improvement of the service conditions of the army.

It is widely acknowledged that the style of Plato's political philosophizing is radically different from the systems and doctrines approach established by Hobbes and confirmed and redirected by Kant. But what about Aristotle? Does he intend to produce systematic political theory in sharp contrast to Plato's question-centered dialectics? This essay argues that Aristotle's political science is equally as dialogical as Plato's. Taken together, the Nicomachean Ethics and the Politics form a single set of lectures, craftily organized to lead its immediate Greek audience (the equivalent of Socrates' interlocutors in Plato) deeply into the questions and problems that are Aristotle's theoretical basis for the paradigmatically human activities of practical reason (phronêsis) and thoughtful choice (prohairesis). He accomplishes this goal by allowing none of the answers he or his audience might propose to stand unchallenged, thus acting as another, albeit soberer, Socrates to his politically concerned audience then and, potentially, now.

While Plato's political dialogues give much attention to the relation of the legal and the divine, this subject receives scant notice in Aristotle's Politics. But this is not a sign that Aristotle neglects or dismisses the subject; it is in fact perfectly consistent with what the author understands to be Aristotle's view of the proper political relation of laws and gods. This view emerges indirectly, and only after reflection on the substance and manner of Aristotle's “umpiring” of a staged debate over the rule of the “best laws” versus that of the “best man” (Politics III). From the standpoint of the highest, Aristotle finds law to be both regime-derivative and somewhat prudence-impeding. At the same time, the “apolitical” character of the best man's rule necessitates the rule of law, and with it —for largely utilitarian reasons — Aristotle's public acquiescence in the apotheosis of the legal. But this teaching, and its basis, emerge fully only when the Politics' relative “silence” is interpreted in light of the open statements of a text much less palatable and thus much less accessible to statesmen and citizens (and even to political scientists): the Metaphysics. The Politics' obliqueness, argues the author, owes to the fact that Aristotle's final understanding of the relation of laws and gods cannot be fully disclosed publicly if it is to achieve its end of improving public life.

Whereas traditionally self–love was considered a moral evil, Rousseau contended that some self–love is benign—and not only benign, but morally necessary and even praiseworthy. The following article offers an interpretation of Rousseau's criteria for distinguishing between good self–love and bad. The distinction between good and bad self–love is neither as simple as many readers think—it does not correspond exactly to the distinction between amour de soi and amour–propre—nor as blurry as many others think. It is, rather, both subtle and coherent. And it might well prove useful in our current efforts to inculcate pride and self-esteem without encouraging complacency or exploitation, efforts which themselves owe much to Rousseau's influence.

This article discusses the democratic side of Locke's political thought, which is generally not appreciated. How is it that Lockean constitutionalism is also “popular government,” institutions, that is, but institutions considerably informed by a democratic spirit? The answer involves Locke's three characteristic innovations in institution-planning: “civil” government, a supreme “legislative” power coupled with a responsible executive, and, inter alia, a vigilant “majority”—a party or movement of the people with authority to elect to government and to rebel against any non-popular government. While Locke does raise up a powerful executive, he also makes it dependent as a rule on a rather democratic legislative. What Locke wishes to induce over time is something like parliamentary government, with the executive vested in a cabinet and the whole more or less responsible to the people in his sense, especially to a majority.

To what extent are liberal democracies democratic? That question guides this reconsideration of the first and fundamental plan for liberal government, that of John Locke. I shall argue that Locke's plans are more democratic, and more radical too, than is generally believed. True, important parts of Locke's teaching correspond to undemocratic features with which we are now quite familiar. Liberal democracies have more or less capitalist economies in which wealth and big corporations are protected, they are moved not only by public opinion but also by liberal opinion-leaders of one stripe or another, they are governed not by the people in assembly but by constitutional governments.

Berlin is often taken to have exaggerated his case against positive liberty, since contrary to what he seems to argue, several versions of it do not logically justify coercion. A more historical interpretation of his warnings may save him from this accusation, yet on the other hand suggests his message is of little relevance for contemporary liberalism. In contrast to both these approaches, this essay considers a third and largely neglected aspect of “Two Concepts of Liberty,” that speaks more directly to the challenges facing liberalism today: Berlin's warning that positive liberty invites the specific kind of coercion that parades as liberation, and that it does so according to a psychologically predictable pattern. After reconstructing this undercurrent in Berlin's critique of positive liberty, this essay also considers the relevance of Berlin's warnings to contemporary European debates on banning the Muslim veil in the name of liberation.

Scholars often link the emergence of welfarism and socialism to a loss of religious faith. Yet an examination of the beliefs of secularists who had lost their faith suggests that the loss of faith did not result in an emotional need that social reformism sometimes met. Nonetheless, an examination of welfarists and ethical socialists such as T. H. Green suggests that there was an intellectual or rational link between faith and social reformism. Here many Victorians and Edwardians responded to the dilemmas then besetting faith by adopting immanentist theologies, and this immanentism often sustained a moral idealism that inspired various social reformers.

American society over the past dozen years has undergone a general and continuing crisis. Almost everyone agrees on that point, but on the deeper meaning and significance of the crisis, on its origins and precise nature, there is massive disagreement. From all points of the political spectrum flow streams of mutually exclusive analyses and prescriptions.

Both critics and defenders of the modern American administrative state have recognized the influence of Hegelian ideas upon the American progressives. But existing scholarship on this connection has not delved into the institutional details of Hegelian political theory and its transformation in progressivism. This article traces the continuities and adaptations between Hegelian and American progressive theories of the administrative state through three conceptual pairs: individual rights and social welfare, civil society and the state, and legislation and execution. For both German Hegelian legal scholars and the American Hegelian progressives, these conceptual pairs staked out the basic normative and institutional tensions underlying the modern state. The progressives, however, gave these concepts a democratic interpretation, and thus sought to involve the public at multiple levels of the policy-making process. This Hegelian progressive theory provides a compelling basis for a public philosophy of the contemporary American state.

This article demonstrates the radical character of Locke's attack on patriarchalism in the Two Treatises of Government, in part by showing that that attack implies the rejection of the natural and divine order to which patriarchalism appealed to justify itself. In this way, Locke's attack on patriarchalism, which prepared the way for his individualistic liberal politics, is also shown to be an important part of his solution to the political problem of religion. Special attention is given to Locke's disagreement with the Bible concerning the family and its place in political life.

This article examines the foreign policy of Prince Clemens Metternich of Austria, the chief architect of the Vienna Treaty of 1815, in the light of Enlightenment political thought. Metternich is commonly considered a reactionary and practitioner of callous balance-of-power diplomacy, and this article seeks to refute this conclusion. By examining Metternich's deeply held theoretical beliefs on the nature of the European state system, and above all his Kantian belief in progress and federalism, this essay concludes that Metternich pursued a reformist, and indeed idealistic, program in international politics which cannot be divorced from late Enlightenment philosophy. His Conference System, which was designed to regulate European politics in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, represented a novel experiment in European union which remains a pressing concern in the contemporary international system.