Among environmentalists today, there is a widespread opposition to the “Enlightenment project.” Deep ecologists, in particular, aspire to ground environmental ethics and politics in premodern modes of life and thought. This move fails to account for the myriad important connections between Enlightenment themes and those of contemporary ecophilosophy. Notions of a public sphere, cosmopolitanism, multiculturalism, and deep time, as well as new approaches to the self and doubts about the market, persist from the Enlightenment into current environmental theory and practice. The essay warns against severing environmentalism from its Enlightenment antecedents and urges instead an ethic drawn from the revered nature writer and ecologist Aldo Leopold, who was profoundly indebted to Enlightenment ideals.

In recent years a rift has opened up between some currents of environmental philosophy and the legacy of the Enlightenment. Prominent eco-philosophers have blamed the latter for our contemporary environmental crisis. William Ophuls, for example, describes the Enlightenment as a desperate attempt to defy the ecological implications of the laws of thermodynamics by erecting a political order based on untrammeled growth rather than selflimiting virtue. One of the reviewers of Ophuls's book regards this indictment as “old news”; he criticizes Ophuls, in fact, for clinging to the Enlightenment paradigm in seeking to derive environmental ethics from natural laws. It would be fair to say that many, if not most, green intellectuals have come to define their enterprise as a counter-Enlightenment.

That Machiavelli is an innovator of political philosophy is universally acknowledged. The program of innovation is outlined in The Prince, chapter 15: he wants to depart from the orders of his predecessors. The goal of the new philosophy is “effectual truth,” and not the imagination of it. Actual states, not “imagined republics and kingdoms” are its real concerns. The distinction between how one lives and how one ought to live is still made, but only in order to point out that what is done should never be abandoned for what should be done. Preservation of the state has emerged as the new summum bonum, in the interest of which everything becomes permitted. The distinction between virtue and vice is no longer important; and the new type of ruler, if he is good, must learn how to be not good. The Preface to Discourses I also proposes a similar program: he is determined “to enter a path not yet trodden by anyone” and to introduce “new modes and orders.”

Rousseau's concept of human perfectibility and his suggestion that a group of anthropomorphic animals might actually be human beings in a primitive state of nature have led an increasing number of studies to cite his Discourse on Inequality for offering an early version of Darwinian evolution. I argue that a different picture emerges once we examine Rousseau's discussion against the backdrop of eighteenth-century debates on the viability of the chain of being and the possibility of multiple human species. The significance of his speculation has less to do with his special insights on human descent than with the political point to be made were it true. Rousseau uses orangs-outang like the pongo to construct a viable model for criticizing his contemporary Europe and to defend his claim that the kind of political inequalities associated with late European society do not issue from God or nature but are accidental events in the life of the species.

The name of Niccolo Machiavelli (1469–1527), to the public at large, still lies in the shadow of moralistic condemnation. The anti-Machiavellian propaganda of the Counter-Reformation concentrated on the principles of political craftsmanship, developed in the Prince, as its target; and, apart from a narrower circle of historians, Machiavelli has ever since remained the author of the famous work, while the morality of his advice to rulers has remained the great issue of evaluation. It is hardly necessary to say that such preoccupations with moralistic propaganda cannot form the basis for a critical analysis of Machiavelli's ideas. All we can retain from the caricature is the consciousness that something extraordinary has occurred, a severe break with the traditions of treating political questions, the consciousness that with the author of the Prince we are on the threshold of a new, “modern” era. Even this element of the caricature, however, needs qualification. The furious concentration on the evil book has created the illusion that its author was a solitary figure, something like a moral freak. That, of course, is not so. There is nothing solitary or enigmatic about Machiavelli. His ideas, like everybody's, have a solid pre-history stretching over generations; and they were shared in his time by others. Historically unique, however, is the genius of Machiavelli as well as the strange disposition of circumstances directing his genius toward the crystallization of die ideas of die age in the symbol of die Prince who, through fortuna and virtù, will be the savior and restorer of Italy.

Tocqueville's juxtaposition of aristocracy and democracy as the regimes characteristic of different historical periods gives rise to the question whether he accepts or rejects the category of human nature. In the juxtaposition of the distinct “worlds” of aristocracy and democracy and their respective conceptions of “man,” some perceive an implicit rejection of the idea of a universal human nature. Others, however, see an attempt to portray human nature comprehensively by highlighting the truth of both aristocratic inequality and democratic equality. While generally endorsing this latter interpretation, the essay maintains that most of its variants are too “democratic” in two respects. First, they underestimate the difficulties Tocqueville must confront in establishing the naturalness of the equality principle, and second, they wrongly insist that he understands nature to privilege the democratic principle. Tocqueville ultimately defends the naturalness of equality, but his claims about the greater justice of the equality principle should be understood as rhetorical rather than as reflective of his conclusions about nature.

This essay examines various intellectual challenges posed by John Rawls's conception of an overlapping consensus, both in terms of his own approach and also that of Charles Taylor. Two questions are entertained: (1) whether various criticisms of Rawls's view are indeed justified and (2) if they are, whether Taylor puts them to rest. Though the latter question is answered somewhat in the negative, Taylor's version of overlapping consensus is interestingly different from that of Rawls in that Taylor introduces an important distinction between a tradition on the one hand and what Rawls terms a “comprehensive doctrine” on the other. The advantage of this distinction, among other things, is that it clarifies what is at stake in moving to any sort of overlapping consensus.

This article distinguishes between a competitive individualist process-oriented vision of equality and an egalitarian results-oriented vision of equality, and examines the changing relationship between these visions of equality in the American past. What is “exceptional” about the United States is not, as is often claimed, that it lacked a tradition of equal results but that those who favored equalizing results believed that equal process was a sufficient condition for realizing equal results. This study contends that these rival visions of equality, once believed to be mutually supportive, have become increasingly divorced in 20th century America.

Modern politics is at times a balancing act between universal claims about the human (equal rights, dignity, and respect) and political actions which may seem to violate these claims (torture, just wars, repudiation of certain cultural practices, tacit discrimination). An exploration of some of the philosophical roots of the modern understanding of the person, when it was the subject of debate, provides a perspective at the origin of Modernity from which to evaluate the tenuous relationship between moral universalism and alterity at the heart of this tension. The debates at Valladolid in 1550–51 between Las Casas and Sepúlveda, arguing their conceptions of the human, can shed light on how and why arguments for inequality creep back into the modern discourse on alterity. The lessons from Valladolid, therefore, might help to limit or clarify recourse to such arguments.

The concept of the General Will has been criticized as being either tyrannical or empirically unattainable. From a social choice perspective, Riker (1982) and others have merged the substance of both perspectives. The new argument maintains that Arrow's Theorem and similar impossibility results imply that the General Will is both dangerous and “intellectually absurd.” While not denying the relevance of the collective choice literature, it is argued that such apocalyptic conclusions are premature.

The unique relationship between religion the state, and society is perhaps the most fundamental—certainly it is the most distinctive—feature of American religious as well as American political life. It is not only central to any understanding of American institutions. It also constitutes the sharpest difference between American and European institutions, concepts, and traditions.

In America, as elsewhere, Catholic effort to reform the modern economic order antedates by some years Rerum Novarum, Leo XIII's masterly encyclical on the condition of labor, issued in May, 1891. For a full generation Catholics in France and Germany had been organizing to ameliorate social conditions, and in all industrialized lands the more progressive members of the Church insisted that a sincere attempt to apply Christianity to the social order must be made without delay. The reformers, nevertheless, needed aid and encouragement from the Pope, preferably a reasoned analysis of the industrial situation showing the desirability and means of bettering labor's condition. Everywhere, the few Catholics who championed labor's cause in the Church's name met unyielding resistance from highly placed Catholics intent on protecting vested interests or sincere in thinking that social reform meant social convulsion. As for American Catholics, if their leaders, ecclesiastics for the most part, had not, in many instances or to a conspicuous degree, deferred to great wealth, as a group they had seen in the struggling labor movement little more than a revolutionary uprising, a projection on these shores of the Socialist and Anarchist movements of the Old World.

Announcement of the so-called Brezhnev Doctrine by Soviet spokesmen in 1968 has been widely regarded in the West as a development marking a new epoch in the evolution of the world communist system. The Doctrine has been commonly viewed as a Soviet response to the exigencies of Great Power politics in circumstances of continuing loss of revolutionary dynamism or as a reaction to the threat to Soviet hegemony in its inner bloc posed by uncontained polycentrism, or both. Much attention has been devoted to the concept of “limited sovereignty,” with this concept being treated as the heart of the Doctrine and as evidence of a major new departure in the Soviet approach to world politics. This assessment, interestingly enough, is generally favored both by Western analysts and by anti-Soviet spokesmen within the world communist system.

The study of national communal feeling is often limited by the reluctance many theorists have to consider the manifest, affective meaning which so many discover and embrace through their nations. The writings of Johann Gottfried Herder suggest a way to theorize about that affectivity without treating it as either incidental to the real nature of national communities, or as a threat to the individuals who inhabit them. Herder's approach is based on language, and involves a metaphysical assumption about the aesthetic operation of human thought and collective belonging. Herder's linking of the history and nature of nation-building with a vision of linguistic revelation through one's Volk presents a fairly original take on the question of nationality, one which approaches communal affections with a moral (and ultimately theological) seriousness, but is also flexible enough to recognize (and even anticipate) contemporary critiques of metaphysics which have complicated our traditional assumptions about national identity.

Alexander Hamilton and James Madison agreed in the Federalist that the Constitution authorizes both political and judicial processes to define and safeguard the boundaries of federalism, but disagreed on public opinion's role in a republic and how to cultivate public sentiment for the Constitution. Hamilton preferred resolving intergovernmental disputes via political and public processes because public endorsement would legitimize broad national powers. Madison favored building public sentiment for the Constitution through strict limits on the national government enforced in part by the judiciary. He thought resolving intergovernmental disputes via public processes would confirm widespread suspicions of imperium in imperio and might provoke a popular backlash that would upset the constitutional equilibrium and undermine even legitimate national powers. This difference foreshadows Hamilton and Madison's later constitutional disagreements, reveals fundamental ambiguities in America's federal system, and confirms the need to consider how institutions and policies affect public sentiment for the constitutional order.

The moral theory of “mixed modes” John Locke presents in his Essay concerning Human Understanding is beset with paradoxes. On the one hand, he tells us that all mixed modes, including moral concepts, are “arbitrary” mental constructs. On the other hand, he speaks of an “eternal law” of right and wrong, and is well known as a champion of objective, universally valid natural law. This paradox stems from problems created by the new natural science. That science is predicated on the demolition of Aristotelian Scholasticism. Locke participates in that demolition on behalf of science, but it leaves him with limited options in building his own moral theory. Samuel Pufendorf responded to this situation by devising a theory of “moral modes,” and Locke follows Pufendorf's model. The essay concludes by noting some similarities and differences with the moral metaphysics of Immanuel Kant.

Are we justified when we care more about “our own kind” than about all others? Some scholars have tried to provide an answer based on what they consider human nature. Others—on self-interest. The author examines the implications of the constitutive roles community has in our life for this question, as well as the differences it makes when considering what kind of human flourishing we deem of value.

If three children go hungry in a community, the members of this community are more distressed than if thousands starve in some far away country. Moreover, people not only care more about members of their own communities, but maintain that they are justified in doing so, that one has a higher level of obligation to one's “own kind” than to all others. Are such particularistic obligations justified, and on what grounds?

This question has been the subject of an immense amount of deliberation, which is not reviewed here. This exploration is limited to an examination of communitarian justifications for particularistic obligations, and only to those in a societal rather than political context. That is, if concerns the obligations of members of communities, not those of citizens of states.

African Socialism represents the most comprehensive doctrinal and programmatic attempt to deal with the complex problems of the African continent. During the second decade of the second half of the twentieth century, in the effort to deal with those problems, African Socialism established itself as the ideological rationale for mass movements of solidarity in Ghana, Senegal, Tanzania, Guinea, and Mali. Outside the immediate confines of these countries, the influence of African Socialism has been impressive. Even countries as traditionally conservative as Ethiopia and Liberia have had to acknowledge its existence and in some cases adopt at least its vocabulary.

It is by now a commonplace among American political scientists that the philosophical grounding of political inquiry is in dire need of critical reflection and serious repair, if not radical reconstruction. The sources of this widespread recognition are no doubt diverse, but not the least resides in the impact of the key ideas of Thomas Kuhn's celebrated work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. For, although Kuhn's work was narrowly interpreted by Almond, Truman, and other key figures in the behavioral elite corps to conform to their image of science (basically a naive positivist image), the very breadth and subtlety of Kuhn's work, his commitment to formulating his conception of science from the history of science as practiced, and his ultimate antagonism to that tradition of the philosophy of science (logical positivism/empiricism) which behavioralists have embraced ensured that a lively and contentious debate would ensue.

From the end of the religious wars to the First World War, the modern state system was kept together by the intellectual and moral tradition of the Western world. That tradition imposed moral and legal limitations on the struggle for power on the international in a certatin measure, maintained order in the international community and secured the independence of its individual members. What is left of this heritage today? What kind of consensus unites the nations of the world in the period following the Second World War?