No minority group in the United States is probably as formless and yet at the same time as rigid as the American membership of the Roman Catholic Church. The rigidity of the Catholic organization arises from the fact that there has never been a real heresy during the three centuries and more of Catholic life within the boundaries of the present United States. Even the so-called heresy of Americanism existed more in the minds of European theologians than in the Catholics of the new world. There have been divergencies among American Catholics on such questions as the application of Gregory XVI's condemnation of the slave trade, the timeliness of die declaration of papal infallibility or the extent of the papal condemnation of secret societies, but there has been no difference on the essential doctrines involved in these disputes.

Communitarian thinkers have counterposed their views to those of liberalism as providing a more adequate basis for a political morality—a morality that deals with issues relevant to a political unit, such as liberty, equality, and fairness. Communitarians face the difficulty that the common understandings they rely on to back up a political morality are not easy to find in the form they need. This is because social units fracture along various lines, giving rise to diverse and often conflicting discourses. Where, despite such fractures, common understandings emerge as a result of either desperation or the manufacture of consent, they do not seem appropriate as a basis for a valid political morality. To avoid the weaknesses of communitarianism, it is not necessary to abandon the importance of social context for political morality. Instead, one can make use of a social theory that stresses social divisions in order to lay the base for political morality. A political morality appropriate to a group can be developed on the basis of the interests associated with such divisions.

The view of Rousseau as a romantic for whom history is a fatal acquisition negating what is most essential and valuable in human nature has been powerfully renewed in many recent interpretations. It remains possible, however, to reinterpret Rousseau's view of history as both the key to the whole of his work and his most important contribution to the tradition of radical political thought. The identification of history with fatality is insufficient and misleading in as much as it misunderstands both the substance and the import of his philosophical anthropology. Rousseau's critique of liberalism and the Enlightenment rests not simply upon an intuitive transcendence of civilized artifice, but upon the first major attempt to construct a historical anthropology which, by undoing the identification of man with bourgeois man, poses the problem of human historicity as a social process entailing increasing alienation and repression.

While Isaiah Berlin considered himself principally as a political theorist in the liberal tradition, his was an unorthodox liberalism in both method and substance, rooted in the confluence of three traditions—British, Russian, and Jewish. Unlike many liberals, he wrestled with the tension between universalism and particularism, and also between individualism and communalities. He rejected all monistic approaches to morality (including liberal monism) but repudiated as well the moral relativism of much modern thought, espousing instead value pluralism. While we cannot arrive at a universally valid conception of the summum bonum, we can specify the summun malum—the great evils of the human condition. Berlin saw political theory as a branch of moral philosophy but drew political morality from political life rather than imposing it on politics. The range of goods and principles that human beings rightly prize cannot be combined into harmonious wholes in either our individual or collective existence. Some goods exclude others, and we must choose among them.

Although scholars use the term moral ecology and commentators frequently employ environmental analogies in depicting the cultural milieu, the profound implications of such formulations remain unexplored. This article provides the first systematic analysis of the theory of moral ecology as a philosophical, empirical, and practical construct. It applies environmental thought, particularly insights from the “tragedy of the commons,” to the moral and cultural realm. It suggests that the concept of moral ecology is a compelling depiction of genuine human dynamics. Corroboration flows from the way the theory of moral ecology synthesizes a vast empirical literature on media violence, family decline, and gambling into a parsimonious nomological formulation.

Tradition has it that upon returning from his first Sicilian voyage in 388/387 B.C. Plato founded the Academy. It is also commonly held that, following the example of the Pythagorean brotherhoods with which he had come in contact in Southern Italy, he intended to make the Academy a center of philosophicor scientific studies, as well as a cult society (thiasos) dedicated to the worship of the Muses. Plutarch points out that “in his writings Plato advanced some excellent arguments concerning the laws, the government and the commonweal. But even more important is the fact that he inspired his pupils to positive political action.“ This suggests the further possibility, hardly ever considered, that the Academy itself was indeed a school for aspiring statesmen — perhaps the first organized “institute of political science” in the Western world.

This article is a study of the concept of local self-government (difang zizht) in the context of reform efforts from 1898 to 1911. Of the institutional changes proposed, local self-government rapidly gained much support among China's educated elites. The author explores the reasons behind much enthusiasm for self-government institutions by analyzing the works of two key reformists, Kang Youwei (1858–1927) and Liang Qichao (1873–1929). While the reformist approach to local government indicated the continuing influence of the fengjian (feudal) tradition on the one hand, and the reformist notion of citizenship was suggestive of the Neo-Confucian conception of self-cultivation on the other, the article argues that the reformist thought on local self-government represents an important step in moving China beyond an imperial political order.

There exists a substantial body of revolutionary analysis focused on those elusive objective conditions that permit rebels to rise with some hope of success. There is, of course, no more a general consensus on how to begin an insurrection than on how to prevent one. At one extreme there exist the more simpleminded adherents of Règis Debray who have suggested that a small band of the brave, a foco, may alone spark an insurrection against an oppressive regime. At the other are those reluctant rebels who insist on so extensive a roster of assets that the moment to rise continues to recede into the distant future. Still within the middle ground conditions have sufficiently encouraged some so that, possessed of a just cause and hopeful of ultimate victory, the armed struggle has been launched. As a result in southern Africa and Latin America, on Mindanao and in the Basque country of Spain, there are insurrections under different banners. Some appear close to victory and others on the verge of disaster, a few are little more than the disorderly residue of past hopes and others scarcely begun. For all a crucial question remains how to escalate the initial thrust. An insurrection may begin as the act of an urban conspiracy, spring from the operations of a rural foca, evolve out of the spontaneous rising of the masses; but unless the moment is ripe any insurrection can flicker out in the recriminations of exiles or be interned with the dead. And, perhaps, no set of potential rebels have had as much experience and as little luck in identifying the moment to strike as the Irish. Yet, the news from Northern Ireland indicates that this time they must be doing something right—or the British something wrong.

Ronald Dworkin's effort to distinguish multiple layers of “intention” that are embedded in the constitutional text has been taken as a substantial critique of traditional originalist jurisprudence. Dworkin has strongly argued that the constitutional text embodies abstract principles. These principles are understood to be both fundamental to the Founders' intentions and the primary focus of correct constitutional interpretation faithful to those intentions. This article argues that Dworkin's reconceptualization of originalism is theoretically flawed. Although there may be normative reasons for preferring that the judiciary always enforce broad constitutional principles, such a jurisprudence cannot be understood as either consistent with or required by an originalist interpretative method whose primary commitment is to fidelity to founding intent.

The article examines two different types of “tolerant” dialogues, represented by Desiderius Erasmus and Jean Bodin. Erasmus offers a traditional conception of dialogue, in which the speakers are engaged in a common search for truth. This search for truth justifies toleration. To discover truth, the speakers must be free to question the other speakers' views, as well as their own. And they must respect each other because civility promotes the discovery of truth. Bodin, by contrast, presents an alternative version of the tolerant dialogue in his Colloquium heptaplomeres, a dialogue between representatives of seven different religions. While the Erasmian dialogue presupposes that (1) there is a single truth and that (2) the greater the consensus, the more successful the dialogue, in Bodin's Colloquium, the speakers do not pursue a common truth. Rather, they offer up their own particular versions of truth, unwilling to change their positions. The speakers do not agree on the truth because truth—especially religious truth—is complex, and each speaker represents a different facet of that multifaceted truth. And though the speakers remain firm in their initial convictions, they gain from the dialogue a clearer perception of their own opinions. By comparing their views with one another, the speakers come to better understand their separate truths, the sum of which constitutes the whole truth.

The quarrel between Socrates and Callicles has long been recognized as the highpoint of Plato's Gorgias. But the acceptance of an overly simple view of Callicles has kept this quarrel from being understood in its full complexity. While Callicles appears to be a cynical immoralist, this appearance hides his deepest convictions; and while he and Socrates never come to a genuine meeting of the minds, the unbridgeable gap between them is due to Callicles′ unwillingness to acknowledge his moral convictions rather than to his lack of them. Through a close examination of their quarrel, the essay attempts to uncover true character of the irreconcilable differences between Socrates and Callicles and thus provide a pathway for a new understanding of Plato's Gorgias.

Several recent commentaries on Hannah Arendt's political thought have suggested strong connections and affinities between Arendt and Nietzsche or between Arendt and various later Nietzschean, aestheticist, or postmodernist thinkers. But a close reading of Arendt's critiques of Nietzsche and Heidegger suggests that an overemphasis on the more Nietzschean or aesthetic aspects of Arendt's work risks obscuring some vital distinctions Arendt makes or preserves concerning politics and aesthetics. More significantly, the Nietzschean or aestheticist interpretation of Arendt tends to conceal or distort Arendt's actual, highly original, and more promising response to various facets of the modern political condition.

Those not well acquainted with Karl Marx often believe that the founder of “scientific Communism” was a militant atheist who considered the extermination of religion and, in particular, of Christianity one of his major tasks. This belief is, to say the least, inexact.

The relationship between politics and religion in the United States has been studied by political scientists from many perspectives. Church-state relations, religious bloc voting, political issues with strong religious overtones—these and other politico-religious phenomena have long been subjects of scholarly activity within the discipline. However, the use of religious symbols in politics has been much neglected by political scientists (though not by sociologists, psychologists and scholars). Long ago Harold D. Lasswell said “It is of the utmost importance to political science to examine in detail … the processes of symbolization.” Religious symbolization in American politics urges itself upon the political analyst, moreover, because of “the unique relationship” which has existed between religion and politics throughout the history of the nation. And there are, perhaps, no richer and more concentrated examples of politico-religious symbolism than those found in the campaign oratory to which the American public is regularly subjected. Candidates for the American presidency have long resorted to the manipulation of such symbols. Hence, a presidential campaign is a good situation for the study of the political use of religious symbols. The 1972 contest between George McGovern and Richard Nixon is an excellent case study. Frequently characterized by the public press as an election to choose “a national minister” because of the manifest use of politico-religious symbols by the candidates, the campaign provides ample evidence of the uses to which religious symbolization can be applied in American politics.

While scholars have argued that in Emile Rousseau uses Robinson Crusoe as a model of self-sufficiency to further his ideal of a “natural” man, this essay argues that Rousseau's presentation of Defoe's hero points in precisely the opposite direction. Crusoe is not a natural man but rather a social man in isolation, and makes his solitude an object of reflection. He therefore assists in the development of Emile's awareness of himself as an individual, which marks the transition between Emile's existence as a merely physical being and his existence as a moral being. Crusoe prepares Emile to address the question, “What is society good for?” by expanding Emile's understanding of what is good. The implications of these considerations for understanding Rousseau's ideas about authorship, identity, and the possibility of a truly self-sufficient individual are developed.

The “demos paradox” is the idea that the composition of a demos could never secure democratic legitimacy because the composition of a demos cannot itself be democratically decided. Those who view this problem as unsolvable argue that this insight allows them to adopt a critical perspective towards common ideas about who has legitimate standing to participate in democratic decision-making. We argue that the opposite is true and that endorsing the demos paradox actually undermines our ability to critically engage with common ideas about legitimate standing. We challenge the conception of legitimacy that lurks behind the demos paradox and argue that the real impossibility is to endorse democracy without also being committed to significant procedure-independent standards for the legitimate composition of the demos. We show that trying to solve the problem of the demos by appeal to some normative conception of democratic legitimacy is a worthwhile project that is not undermined by paradox.

Over the past two decades, Philip Pettit has consistently argued for an understanding of “republican” liberty in terms of nondomination. Yet in his major published studies, he has almost nothing to say about markets, nor about the economy more generally. I contend that this is a seriously problematic omission, insofar as markets represent a major problem for republican views of freedom. In short: if freedom requires the absence of the mere possibility of arbitrary interference (as Pettit maintains), then the widespread existence of markets indicates that on a republican view the vast majority of people in the world today exist in the dominated position of slaves. As a result, Pettit cannot adopt the “complacency” towards market transactions that he officially avows. But in turn, we ought to be highly skpetical that the republican account of freedom is a viable one.

The Origins and the development of the national idea in Europe have been in recent years, particularly since the first World War, a favorite topic of culturo-historical studies. These studies have traced the gradual movement of European peoples toward national self-determination, and have described as normal the development from a vague feeling of warring tribal solidarity to a more conscious patriotism which customarily crystallizes around the prince, the king, in brief, the sovereign. According to these studies, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries national culture was more and more emphasized; the claims of national language increased and finally reached a culmination in the Reformation.

I contrast two perspectives adopted to theorize political authorities. The first is the modern perspective. It conceives of political society as a civic union of free and equal citizens and regards the state as the political organization of this society. This perspective is primarily concerned with the principles that should govern the use of state power. The second is the political pluralist perspective. It recognizes a multiplicity of normative orders as equally legitimate. The focus is put on the civic processes by which a diverse citizenry should negotiate its interactions. I illustrate these perspectives by considering how they approach diversity, and more specifically the political claims of indigenous peoples. The pluralist perspective is argued to be normatively motivated by a consideration for the actual freedom of citizens to sustain diverse normative orders, to negotiate the structure of political society, and to jointly search for justice.

The revolutions of 1640 and 1789 were carried forward with a positive enthusiasm for freedom. The drama and the failure of each revolution were dominated by this fact; each revolution provided the stage for long-drawn-out struggles to write a constitution. Each produced a crop of such constitutions; and eventually a dictator emerged to carry out by force the authority that could not be arranged by cooperation. But the lesson of the struggle for constitutional freedom was not lost; the idea of the rights of man was not dead. In England, in France, this impulse produced constitutional systems in the course of the next generation; and these systems remained.