This article examines the political and philosophical problem of partisanship—the false inflation of a part into a semblance of a whole—in Plato's Timaeus. Timaeus's “likely story” about the cosmos both exemplifies and addresses this problem, which first comes to light in the dialogue's opening pages. Reflection on the problem of partisanship allows us to grasp Timaeus's understanding of the simultaneously erotic and thumotic work of philosophy, the work of making things whole. While Timaeus is moved by a Socratic love of wisdom, I argue that he implicitly corrects the picture of the erotic philosopher Socrates sets forth in the Republic.

The article evaluates Michael Novak's theory of the common good by comparing it with Yves Simon's writings. Simon's insights reveal that Novak's argument for a “new concept” of the common good, incorporating liberal claims, falters on both theoretical and practical grounds. Theoretically, Novak's version of the common good opens the door to considerable exclusion from participation in the material benefits of society. Related to this is Novak's problematic contention that political authority should not intend the common good materially considered. Practically, his idealized version of capitalism plays down or ignores problems raised by Simon, particularly “one-way” exchanges, unequal exchange, and “illusory services”.

While this century has witnessed large-scale attempts to actualize political Utopias, the study of such regimes is as old as political philosophy. The most famous of such imaginary republics is More's Utopia. In the form of a dialogue, Utopia presents the best regime of a philosophic character, Raphael Hythlodaeus. In constructing a regime based on the belief that happiness consists in the acquisition of pleasure, Utopia presents one of the first proposals for political hedonism. While the Utopian understanding of happiness restricts their pursuit of pleasure to those austere pleasures which are natural, their hedonism nevertheless causes problems which require strict political control. More important, an analysis of the text reveals that the Utopian understanding of the requirements of human nature is simplistic. Thus, the proper understanding of the dialogue reveals that More's purpose is not to recommend such radical change but to show the dangers of such idealistic proposals.

This essay explores Nietzsche's attitude to the Enlightenment, which the author argues underwent a major reversal between his so-called middle works and his later writings. The author examines the nature of this change and considers some of the reasons behind it. In the process, some of Nietzsche's “postmodern” admirers are taken to task for appropriating his criticisms of the Enlightenment without acknowledging his ambivalence toward it. Furthermore, the radical change in Nietzsche's view of the Enlightenment is taken as evidence of the periodization of his thought, which some prominent Nietzsche scholars (e.g. Walter Kaufmann) have disputed.

The difference between legal terms such as “person” and “human being” represents more than a question of standing or mere semantics. Within liberal democratic societies, such as the United States and Canada, such distinctions may indicate substantive differences regarding fundamental concepts such as citizenship, membership in society, and the scope and essential nature of rights and liberties. In particular, judicial decisions regarding abortion have relied upon such distinctions in order to articulate some of the fundamental issues upon which such controversies are based.

By the spring of 1914 Woodrow Wilson was clearly doing everything in his power to ingratiate the new Democratic Administration with the nation's business groups. He abandoned the Brandeisian spirit of trust-busting as part of his program for corporation control in favor of regulation by commission, a policy more in line with the sentiment among leading businessmen. (Indeed, the Federal Trade Commission established in 1915 soon showed that it would serve as the friend and not the enemy of business.) He directed personal appeals to businessmen both by letter and by informal conversations at the White House, and he made nominations to regulatory agencies like the Federal Trade Commission and Federal Reserve Board that left no doubt as to his sincerity in attracting business support. One of his choices for the Reserve Board, Thomas D. Jones, was at once a personal friend and a former trustee of Princeton University. But Jones was also a well-known member of the “Zinc Trust” and a director of the International Harvester Company then under indictment as a conspiracy in restraint of trade. Wilson campaigned hard for this appointment against strong Senatorial opposition even within his own party. At the same time, he declared publicly: “It would be particularly unfair to the Democratic Party and the Senate itself to regard it as the enemy of business, big or little.” Wilson was outraged when the Senate Banking Committee rejected his friend. “I believe the judgment and desire of the whole country cry out for a new temper in affairs,” he wrote rather despairingly to Jones. “We have breathed already too long the air of suspicion and distrust.”

This essay takes its bearings from an epistolary dialogue between Arthur de Gobineau and Alexis de Tocqueville about the contours of modern politics. Their dispute illuminates in a remarkable way the theological-political problem that suffuses the emergence of modern politics and, as a consequence, provides a helpful frame of reference for understanding several contemporary controversies bearing on the relationship between religion and liberal democratic politics. Moreover, their correspondence casts new light on the underpinnings of Tocqueville's thought. The frankness of this exchange together with the relentless character of Gobineau's arguments, provoke in Tocqueville an articulation of the larger context within which he understands modern politics and, in so doing, reveals an important, though largely neglected, intellectual framework that informs much of his published work.

Richard Rorty makes the case that Friedrich Nietzsche shared a common pragmatism with William James in order to incorporate certain Nietzschean themes into neo-pragmatism and to give his philosophy stronger pragmatic credentials. In making this connection, he establishes a version of pragmatism that rejects both epistemology and metaphysics, reduces the pragmatic theory of truth to “truth is what works,” places the Darwinian account of man at the center of the human narrative, and makes Nietzschean “self-creation” the chief end of a postmodern, post-religious liberal society. But if one reads James more faithfully (a task that Rorty rejects), it is clear that James does not succumb to the nihilism, perspectivalism, and atheism characteristic of Rorty's Nietzschean pragmatism. A more comprehensive reading of James's philosophy brings together James's pragmatism, his pluralism, and his radical empiricism. And this more complete interpretation of James's pragmatism offers a pluralistic and hopeful approach to politics that does not suffer from Nietzsche's and Rorty's nihilistic, relativistic, and antipolitical tendencies.

The treatment of the natural law in the Roman law is puzzling because the relationship between jus naturale and the two other forms of law, jus gentium and jus civile, is far from clear in the texts. Moreover, the jus naturale does not appear to have the dignity most readers expect it to have. This article attempts to sort out the relationships among the three types of jus by showing that the various classifications the jurists use are based on their perceptions of the complexities of nature as a source of right and on the attempt to work out a political embodiment of natural right.

Although the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) did not officially abandon Marxism until the Bad Godesberg Parteitag in 1959, both intellectually and politically the party's ideology was revised under the leadership of Kurt Schumacher whose “passion, intellect, and will” dominated the SPD for seven years following World War II (1945–52). The final disintegration of German Marxism under Kurt Schumacher can be demonstrated by examining the three crucial elements of Marxist socialist ideology: (1) motivation for socialism, (2) theory of the socialist movement, and (3) relations between German nationalism and socialism.

The period in American politics from Rutherford B. Hayes to William McKinley has been kicked and scuffed among historians until there is little left of its reputation. “No period so thoroughly ordinary has been known in American politics since Christopher Columbus first disturbed the balance of power in American society,” wrote Henry Adams. “One might search the whole list of Congress, Judiciary, and Executive during the twenty-five years from 1870 to 1895 and find little but damaged reputation. The period was poor in purpose and barren in results.” The impulse to spring to the aid of the underdog has brought forth champions of the cultural, literary, and technological achievements of the Gilded Age, but none to defend its political record. “Even among the most powerful men of that generation,” said Adams, speaking of the politicians, there was “none who had a good word for it.” Most historians believe that at no other time in American history was the moral and intellectual tone of political life so uniformly low nor were political contests so preoccupied with patronage.

Feminist critics of Locke perceive a conflict between his promise of political liberty and equality and women's individual and social circumstances. Many feminists point to an incongruence in Locke's thought between formal political rights and the substantive inequalities women experience in a variety of social relationships. Emphasizing Locke's liberal distinction between private and public, these feminists explore how women's actual personal, marital, familial and economic (i.e., private) positions mitigate against the possibility of political emancipation for women. Opposing this interpretation, this article will argue that Locke's feminist critics misread Locke and misinterpret his distinction between private and public. What some feminists represent as a dichotomy between public and private is actually for Locke a multitude of interacting spheres in which individuals live. An examination of these spheres will reveal a latent potential in Locke's philosophy for addressing women's particular circumstances.

If democracy in the sense of popular rule is to have a significant degree of realization in the modern world, it will have to mean popular control of cultural meaning and cultural change rather than public policy. While the impact of cultural values on public policy is problematic, there is more at stake in political struggle than specific policies. In fact, the most important personal consequences of politics are thoroughly symbolic, and the symbolic rewards of “cultural democracy” are likely to be more meaningful than the tangible rewards of distributive policies. Although popular control of these meaningful symbolic rewards is possible, such control could occur only through the mediation of charismatic leaders.

In October 1950, John Courtney Murray, S.J., wrote for the use of Msgr. Giovanni Battista Montini of the Vatican Secretariat of State a memorandum: “The crisis in Church-State Relationships in the U.S.A.” An attempt by Murray to encourage a development of Catholic teaching on church and state and religious freedom that would enable American Catholics to give support in principle to the First Amendment of the U.S Constitution, the memorandum was submitted to some American churchmen and to the Vatican's Holy Office. The dossier here published for the first time includes the texts of Murray's memorandum and of responses to it written by Samule Cardinal Stritch and Fr. Francis J. Cornell, C.SS.R. The introduction to these texts sets the memorandum in context and explains the Holy Office's actions against Murray.

Rational choice scholars argue that there is no such thing as legislative intent, and that courts should abandon futile efforts to find and enforce that intent. Faced with ambiguous statutes, these scholars suggest judges either actively interpret statutes to achieve the best public policy possible; or they advise the judges to accept a default assumption that congressional ambiguity will be read as implicit delegation of interpretive discretion to the executive branch. Both options pose problems for the American system of separated institutions. Though legislative intent may be impossible to discern, an effort to identify legislative purpose may be critical to assure the maintenance of a balance of institutional power. How that purpose is identified is a problem not only for the Court, but for the legislative institutions responsible for statutory drafting and approval.

Liberal political thought has fractured into “classical” and “modern” camps. This division is rooted in differing reactions to the rise of capitalism and democracy, which are institutional outgrowths of liberal principles, unanticipated by its seminal thinkers. Both “classical” and “modern” liberalism are led astray by classifying liberal democracy as a kind of state. But democracies are not states; they are selforganizing systems. When the nature of this error is grasped, a more coherent liberal vision emerges, where the key tension in liberal society is between selforganizing systems and instrumental organizations. Possibilities in public policy take on new dimensions as well.

The world we know is largely the institutional outcome of liberalism's political triumph, first in the West and increasingly worldwide. Yet today liberal thought is deeply divided against itself and, in this division, often unable to comprehend a world in many ways its product. This division grows primarily from tensions between two liberal institutions: liberal, or representative, democracy and the market, and also from the near universal failure of liberals to grasp democratic government's unusual systemic character. Tensions between liberal democracy and the market are central issues, whereas the character of democratic government receives far less attention. Yet how the first issue is evaluated depends in part on understanding the last. Liberalism has strengthened the intellectual, legal, economic and political status of individuals within society, emphasizing equality of status for all people.

Judicial architecture and iconography play important roles in the symbolic lives of courts. Political scientists have noted that symbols of justice, judicial objectivity, and neutrality convey to the public “legitimizing messages” about the judiciary. In the United States these legitimizing symbols frequently expressed themselves through the temple-like attributes of courthouses. Modern architects, however, have rejected this classic paradigm and replaced it with dignified, yet open, edifices. The Israeli Supreme Court building, dedicated in 1992, is an outstanding example of such innovative design. Its emblems of legitimacy include historical, religious, and judicial symbolism. Within a comparative framework, this article explores the unique architectural images of Israel's high court and argues that they may help it to survive the fractious Israeli political milieu into which the tribunal has inserted itself.

The symbolism of judicial structures can convey voluminous messages about classic themes in the study of law, history, and politics. Judicial images reflected in court architecture and art may reveal the importance of the rule of law, judicial independence, and judicial power in a political and legal culture. The physical manifestations of a court structure, and how they are transmitted to the public, may also influence media and other public perceptions of tribunals, judges, and their decisions. The architecture of the Israeli Supreme Court building, which opened to rave reviews in 1992, adds two other facets to this mix, namely, religion and historic location.

The importance of the countryside (rief) for the social and economic development of Arab societies whose populations are still greatly peasant in composition and whose wealth is still based on agriculture seems incontestable. Less obvious, but equally important, is the political role of the peasantry and the rural areas in the process of transition from traditional to more modern types of social and political systems in the Middle East. There is plenty of evidence that political modernization cannot take place without a solution to the peasant problem — without their incorporation into the political system. Huntington holds that in modernizing countries where the bulk of the population is rural but where politics remains a predominately urban game, governments are likely to be ephemeral, unstable and ineffective. He argues that the establishment of stable and effective regimes requires bridging the urban-rural gap through some coalition of urban and rural forces which will bring the peasantry into the system. Furthermore, both Huntington and Barrington Moore argue that the particular type of leadership under which the peasants are brought into the political system greatly shapes the whole subsequent development of the system. The countryside, according to Huntington, plays a crucial swing role and this role varies from very conservative to very revolutionary. Three possibilities seem to be typical. One outcome is where peasants are brought into the system by upper-class leadership, sometimes through a formally liberal type electoral system, informally based on patronage and traditional symbolism, sometimes through a conservative authoritarian system.

We propose a two-step method for studying the history of political thought roughly in line with the contextualism of the Cambridge School. It reframes the early Cambridge School as a bug-detecting program for the outdated conceptual baggage we unknowingly accommodate with our political terminology. Such accommodation often entails propositions that are inconsistent with even our most cherished political opinions. These bugs can cause political arguments to crash. This reframing takes seriously the importance of theories of meaning in the formative methodological arguments of the Cambridge School and updates the argument in light of new developments. We argue the new orthodoxy of Saul Kripke's causal theory of meaning in the philosophy of language better demonstrates the importance of contextual analysis to modern political theory.

It is now almost a third of a century since George Orwell's publication of Animal Farm made him famous in the United States. Outside of certain radical and literary circles Orwell was virtually unknown in America before 1946. He had written an occasional piece for journals like the New Republic, Dwight Macdonald's idiosyncratic Politics, plus a series of “London Letters” for Philip Rahv's radical magazine, Partisan Review. In the early 1930's Harper's had published some of his earlier works, novels like A Clergyman's Daughter and Burmese Days, and non-fiction pieces like Down and Out in Paris and London. They were largely ignored, unread, and unreviewed.