The article is a comparative study of Hegel and Marx on the nature and function of the political state and it argues that Marx's critique of Hegel on this topic is aimed not at the “idealism” of the state, which concerns the principle of universal freedom, but rather at the “material” presuppositions of the state. Indeed, Marx's critique of political institutions is premised upon the way in which they are infected with the egoism and self-seeking of civil (bürgerliche) society. The relationship between the views of Hegel and Marx on these points is explored by (1) giving an exegesis of Hegel's conception of civil society as a foundation for freedom, (2) examining Marx's critique of Hegel's theory of the state, (3) distinguishing the Hegelian and Marxian philosophical conceptions of freedom, the individual, and community, and (4) evaluating the fairness and cogency of Marx's critique of Hegel.

This article argues that we can best understand the Massachusetts patriot James Otis as a practical political thinker whose writings reacted to changing circumstances and to other writers. He began his career arguing that the British Constitution and natural law both mandated that Parliament not tax unrepresented colonists, but when Blackstone published his opinion that Parliament had a natural and constitutional right to compel the submission of the colonists, Otis became convinced that, however valid his argument had been in theory, it would never convince Parliamentarians. Ultimately he engaged the problem of imperial structure, trying to collapse the political distance between the imperial periphery and the imperial center to overcome the constitutional distance that threatened to separate them for good.

Anarchism is one of those concepts about which there generally is deep ignorance or profound misunderstanding.* “In the popular mind,” says Bertrand Russell, “an Anarchist is a person who throws bombs and commits other outrages, either because he is more or less insane, or because he uses the pretencse of extreme political opinions as a cloak for criminal proclivities.” Yet in the history of political thought, as well as in the history of social movements, anarchism has played a role which cannot be overlooked.

Interest in natural law theory regularly revives but the question of whether Aquinas' classic version is viable depends on whether his doctrine has the resources to respond to the classic early modern critiques that were made of it. It is argued that he does have the resources to so respond, although the response pushes the ultimate philosophic question back to the issue of the validity of his natural theology.

William Ockham, the Venerabilis Inceptor and the Doctor plus quam subtilis, started his academic career simply as a theologian and philosopher who did not have, or at least did not evince, the slightest interest in political questions. By 1324 or at least by 1327, he had composed all his purely theological or philosophical works of which we have any knowledge. In all these writings there is no trace of any political idea worth mentioning. Even the struggle about the Franciscan ideal of poverty had left no impression on the lines written by Ockham prior to 1327. While he was in England he was either too remote from the theatre of war or (and this seems to be more likely) he was too much engrossed in the construction of his conceptualistic system of philosophy and theology. In any case, we know from his own words that he did not take part in the struggle about poverty—not even to the extent of reading the pertinent documents—before or during his enforced stay at Avignon until the beginning of 1328.

Theories of social justice are either hegemonic (defending a single determinate standard), skeptical (finding social justice to be radically indeterminate if not meaningless), or pluralistic (claiming that we can disqualify all but a handful of standards, but that we cannot definitively adjudicate among these). I offer here a variation of the pluralistic view, arguing that a single standard cannotbe definitive because of what is termed the antinomies of social justice. These antinomies arise where the demands of justice collide with elements of the gratuitous that are morally valid or are practically unavoidable. Where this occurs, all possible distribution rules turn out to be unfair. An important implication of the argument is that liberal democracies cannot find their grounds for consensus, as John Rawls contends, in a common attachment to principles of justice. Instead, common interests and civic friendship will always be necessary supplements to the sense of justice as a source of social bonds in a free society.

From the beginning of his career in the First Discourse to its end in the Reveries of the Solitary Walker, Rousseau makes clear that the problem of self-knowledge is a central problem—perhaps the central problem—that his thought seeks to address. This essay studies Rousseau's thought in the light of that problem. I argue that attention to the problem of self-knowledge is essential to understanding the rank order of Rousseau's five major human types—the citizen, natural man, the bourgeois, Emile, and Jean-Jacques. I further argue that self-knowledge remains stubbornly problematic even for Rousseau's most exemplary figures—the solitary walker of the Reveries and Emile. The persistence of the problem of self-knowledge in Rousseau's thought makes it clear that he was more concerned with presenting a comprehensive depiction of human problems than he was with teaching us how to solve them.

The question of tradition,* its nature as well as the binding power it might have, was formulated in a most precise and ideal manner at the beginning of the modern age. This occurred in the course of a remarkable and rather dramatic episode in the history of ideas in which several important characters of the time took part, Galileo, Descartes, and Pascal. Pascal did more than take part. At the age of twenty-four he attempted a critical estimate of the sum total of historical knowledge by clearly defining tradition with respect to the range and limits of its validity. This thesis can be found in a short dissertation bearing a title which at first glance looks rather strange: “Fragment of a Preface for a Tract on Empty Space” —the tract itself was never written.

Machiavelli, one of the most famous of political writers, wrote a play which many critics regard as one of the best comedies of the Italian Renaissance. The question which inevitably arises is whether there is a connection between the serious and the comic works of Machiavelli, whether the Mandragola stands alone, a tribute pure and simple to the versatility of Machiavelli's mind, or whether the themes of the Mandragola are an extension of the themes found in the bulk of his writings. Is there, in short, a political message, cleverly disguised, in the Mandragola? Some of Machiavelli's commentators think so, but they flatly contradict one another. Alessandro Parronchi regards the Mandragola as an “allegoria del ritorno dei Medici in Firenze,” while Theodore Sumberg interprets the play as a call to overthrow the Medici. Not surprisingly, then, the literary critic is apt to insist that students of politics should mind their own business: literary studies should be left to literary critics, political studies to political critics.

Consensus both serves and threatens democratic inclusion. On the one hand it provides the means for individuals to will in common. On the other hand, it can impose assimilatory pressures that marginalize perspectives at odds with the prevailing point of view. Agonists have responded to this tension with a call to abandon consensus-oriented politics, contending an adversarial democracy more credibly advances inclusionary and egalitarian goals. I argue this wholesale rejection of consensus is unsustainable from the very pluralist perspective agonists wish to promote. In place of the view of consensus as an unattainable and undesirable absolute, I put forward an understanding of it as a matter of degree. I contend this understanding better captures the complexity of human relations and allows us to distinguish the potential accomplishments of consensus from its potential hazards.

In late May of this year the Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government, commonly known as the Hoover Commission, submitted its concluding report to the Congress. This was the nineteenth in a series of reports released at intervals beginning early in February. The relatively brief individual printed reports of the Commission were accompanied by appendixes containing the most important substantiating evidence garnered from an estimated total of two and a half million words contained in studies made for the use of the Commission.

This documentary output contains the results of the most extensive study ever made of the problem of executive reorganization in the federal government. The Commission on Organization, created by act of Congress in the summer of 1947, started under the most auspicious circumstances, was liberally supplied with appropriations for its work, and has enjoyed widespread public interest in its recommendations. With a distinguished membership drawn from public and private life, from the executive and legislative branches of the federal government, and from both major political parties, the Commission was given an extremely broad assignment by die Congress.

The key to the problem of the expulsion of the Germans from Hungary* was the Potsdam Conference, where the representatives of the three major Allies declared “that the transfer to Germany of German populations, or elements thereof remaining in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, will have to be undertaken.” Thus the three major Allies assimilated the problem of the Germans in Hungary with the problems of Germans in Poland and Czechoslovakia, although in reality the situation in Hungary differed greatly from that in the other two countries. The terms of the Potsdam decision might have been suitable for the Polish and Czechoslovak situations, but were most misleading when applied to Hungary.

IT IS a painful paradox that the defeats suffered by the democratic myth abroad have coincided with the rise of a critical realism toward democratic institutions at home. No trend is more marked in contemporary American political science than that of comprehending the polity in terms of “pressure groups” competing for control. Such atomistic segregation inevitably minimizes the essential function of a firmly established ideological framework. Without it, the state is limp; allegiance is reduced to considerations of material satisfaction, changing with demand and supply; individual freedom lacks a dedication to superindividual objectives.

The central claim of this article is that Habermas's program of discourse ethics fails to “detranscendentalize” the Enlightenment subject. On the contrary, tacit assumptions concerning a transcendental conception of reason and a subject that is teleologically predisposed toward its rightful end are the logical pillars of Habermas's two most crucial claims. First, unless Habermas presupposes an abstract and decidedly unencumbered moral discussant, he cannot maintain his claim concerning the rationality—and hence the unconditionality—of the moral principle he describes. Secondly, unless Habermas begs the question of the proper end of individual and collective development, he fails to support the claim that discourse ethics speaks to the emphatic dimension of moral reason.

When discussing citizenship Rousseau insists on the primacy of instrumental and discursive reasoning, whereas when discussing patriotism he accords primacy to intrinsic reasons of sentiment. The essay explores the different meanings of the two concepts and points to their inherent tension as well as to the possibility of their coming into conflict. It finds that Rousseau, evidently doubting the adequacy of instrumental reasons as explanations or justifications of political commitment, tends to elevate intrinsic sentiment above discursive rationality. Implicit therefore in Rousseau's position on patriotism and citizenship, the essay concludes, is not merely the potential of a dual theory of political willing and political rationality but also the potential of a threat to rational discourse as a mode of determining and accounting for political action.

Plato's Crito articulates the problem of political obligation by clarifying the paradoxical relation between Socratic philosophy and citizenship embodied in the relationship between Socrates and Crito. Scholars obscure the dialogue either by taking the arguments Socrates gives to the laws of Athens as his own reasons for obeying the law rather than as agents of Crito's edification or by severing Socrates from the laws while misunderstanding Crito's significance to political obligation. Socrates bolsters Crito's commitment to civic virtue and the rule of law while revealing their parameters and the self-sufficiency of Socratic philosophy by implicitly raising the issue of voluntary injustice. The tension between Socratic philosophy and citizenship shows the need to view Socrates' defense of citizenship in the light of his defense of philosophy.

Leo Strauss's writings reveal a subtle but consistent set of accusations against the influence of Christian thinkers on political philosophy. These accusations may be summarized in three charges. First, the attempt by Aquinas and other Christian scholastics to synthesize faith and reason led later philosophers to eschew prudence in favor of a humane project to employ science to transform political life. The result was the destruction of the modus vivendi, safeguarded by classical political philosophy, between pious citizens and diffident but inwardly free philosophers. Second, the rationalization of political life implies that a universal regime is possible. But, unless all men become philosophers, this universal regime can be only a universal tyranny, ruled by means of perverted faith in the guise of a final philosophy. Third, Christian thinkers must bear ultimate responsibility for precipitating the early modern rejection of classical political philosophy. Without the Christian appropriation of Aristotle, there might never have been a Machiavelli or a Hobbes.

Recently, Mr. Nehru, in one of his more censorious moods, complained of the manner in which words lose their meaning in cold war terminology. Such a complaint might well have provoked the reply that Mr. Nehru is as much a sinner as sinned against, and that the varying descriptions of India's foreign policy display a degree of slipperiness equal with that of “free world,” “peace,” and “democracy” — the “masked words” he mentioned. Ironically, it was the cold war which engendered the connotations that have given neutralism its chameleon cloak. And while popular usage readily applies the term to India, Indian spokesmen provide implicit support for the firm contention of those who insist that neutralism is essentially “a subjective term.” No doubt Indian equivocation, which is far from unique, is easily explicable. For a language attuned to the compulsions and contingencies of political life is often unavoidably ambiguous; and the political “isms,” which so proliferate today, seem to act as semantic vortices, blurring and engrossing the meaning of words of more ancient lineage.