It is a Common heritage of English and American liberals to denounce state absolutism, to deny it as regimentation, paternalism, etc. etc. Indeed, Englishmen and Americans have always been inclined to adopt a condescending attitude towards other traditions which seemed to exalt state power. French and German, Russian and Italian tendencies have in turn been pictured as “naturally” inclined toward state “absolutism,” and when anyone in rebuttal mentioned Hobbes or Bentham or Austin, the “exceptional” position of these thinkers has been emphasized. Still, can there be any question that the idea of the state as an ultimate source of authority has been as strong in Great Britain as anywhere? For reasons which will become plainer in the course of the argument, English-writing thinkers have accordingly been in the vanguard of those who sought to construct the “state” as the “highest” of all human communities, thus following out the Aristotelian heritage. In spite of all the titter-tatter about national character, muddling through and the rest, the fact remains that Britain has provided us with the most radical, deep-laid expositions of an “absolute” state. This much admitted, one might add that the limited state also has found eloquent and epoch-making exponents in English-speaking lands. In short, the whole gamut of modern political philosophy has been most thoroughly expounded in English.

Nationalism like all political doctrines is at root normative, that is, it makes a claim that matters ought to be arranged in a certain way. The root claim of nationalism is that a nation should be self-governing. This article is concerned with the normative basis of that claim: upon what understanding of value, principle, norm, etc., does it rest? The exercise is thus abstract; it is not a concrete investigation into the causes of nationalism, and it is also less about the substantive doctrine or theory of nationalism than about what might be called its metatheory; finally, the paper does not presume to pronounce on the validity of nationalism as normative doctrine.

Jacques maritain is firmly convinced that every philosopher has some primary intuition that permeates his whole doctrine, and that, consequently, his philosophy can be understood only if one is aware of that primary intuition. For Maritain, as for St. Thomas Aquinas, that primary intuition is the intuition of being (ens) in which both recognize the primacy of esse (the act of existing), and therefore its primacy for the philosopher who studies being. Maritain is constantly aware, from the very beginning of his philosophical reflections, that the philosopher who studies being, starts from the being that is given to him through the senses. This being, which is given to him, actually is but need not be. It is, in short, composed of that which is and the act whereby it is, or, if you will, of essence and existence. Existence must be recognized as having primacy over essence; and the philosopher will be true to reality, and therefore will be in a position to solve problems of reality, only if he respects that primacy.

Throughout history, the control of public funds has been considered a cornerstone of political power. If it is true that all societies, from die dawn of civilizations to the present, have been divided into two classes, one that rules and the other that is ruled, it may be expected that the methods of raising and spending government money have been determined by one social group, generally a minority, to the complete or almost complete exclusion of the rest of the population. Such control would be intended to kill two birds with one stone, serving the direct purpose of administering the state and the indirect purpose of strengthening the privileged position of the governing group and thus prolonging their predominance. Yet studies in fiscal sociology are still in tlieir infancy. Because of their casual and hapo hazard character, they are not as yet a match for political sociology. Only during recent decades has a broader and more systematic approach been attempted.

Several significant works on post-1945 American politics have dealt with the career of Henry A. Wallace. These studies have tended to depict Wallace as a one-dimensional character, either a fuzzy-minded idealist influenced and manipulated by Communists and fellow travelers or a wise and dedicated apostle of peace fighting a losing battle to prevent the Cold War. Both views have in common the assumption that Wallace stood for the same thing in foreign policy from the end of World War II through his Progressive Party campaign for the presidency. It is true that there were important continuities; there were also significant transformations in the content and quality of his thinking.

The essay clarifies the relationship between Locke's political and his religious thought. To the extent that Locke's political thought is an outgrowth of a particular strand of Christianity, its claims to universality would be significantly diminished. Several plausible interpretations of his political thought rely on his religiosity. Others maintain that this religiosity was a façade. Close attention to Locke's analysis of the Hebrew text of Gen. 1:28 unambiguously points to a critique of the Bible on semantic grounds. Locke subtly argues that the wording of the Bible makes the interpretation of scripture by scripture alone impossible. The fact that Locke goes out of his way to critique the Bible refutes interpretations of Locke's thought that rely on his religiosity and reestablishes the universalist claims of his political thought.

Tocqueville says that the superiority of American women is the chief cause of the power and prosperity of American democracy. That superiority is the result of an education that treats women as capable of freedom, but the use of that freedom is to maintain the bonds that restrict women to the household. The present article examines the role of the family and women in the new political science Tocqueville thought necessary for the defence of democratic liberty. It is argued that as the primary influence of democracy upon the family for Tocqueville has been to eliminate the authority of fathers who were the “arbiters of mores” and thereby the defenders of liberty in aristocracy, so democratic liberty depends for him above all upon the new role of women as the makers of mores. Through the agency of women, otherwise fragile religion constitutes an effective limit to the authority of the majority, but what makes it possible for religion to operate through women is their exclusion from the world of commerce, and what maintains this exclusion is the strict conjugal morality that women themselves defend in America. How far the role of women as guardians of democratic liberty might be justified is shown to depend for Tocqueville upon arguments for it that are other than those commonly accepted by American men.

Although Machiavelli has been widely condemned as a misogynist, his three central political works feature dozens of women who engage in efficacious and often praiseworthy political action. To appreciate fully the character and value of their activity and ultimately Machiavelli's views on women as potential political agents, one must first carefully attend to his conception of animo. Usually translated as “spiritedness,” animo represents the natural assertiveness, energy, and resoluteness that forms the basis of virtù if properly disciplined – usually by a city's modes and orders. By examining the plight of women, however, Machiavelli turns to those persons who stand outside the city's political institutions and thus tend to exercise unbridled animo, for better or for worse. In addition to revealing his deep preoccupation with political outsiders, Machiavelli's appreciation of the political problems associated with womanhood also discloses one of his most radical impieties-the denaturalization of gender norms, an impiety we are only beginning to appreciate today

I am grateful to all the participants in this symposium for the attention they have paid to my arguments in God, Locke, and Equality (GLE) and for the kind things they say about the book. I am grateful, too, to the editors of this Review for offering me the opportunity to respond. In this brief note, I want to answer some of the criticisms that have been made of my interpretation, particularly in regard to Locke's account of the underpinnings of basic equality. I shall not say much about the suggestion which I advanced at the beginning and the end of GLE to the effect that we—even now, in the twenty-first century—ought to take seriously the view that the principle of basic equality requires for its elaboration and support something along the lines of Locke's religious views and that, just as basic equality was not conceived or nurtured on purely secular premises, so it cannot be sustained on purely secular premises. A full elaboration and defense of this suggestion would require much more space than I allotted it in GLE or than I can allot it here. I hope eventually to provide this in a book, which will deal with basic equality directly rather than through the lens of John Locke's work. Here I will discuss this aspect only by way of brief response to the efforts by Professors Zuckert and Reiman to show (not just to say) that basic equality can be supported on purely secular foundations.

Most readers have not agreed with Mark Twain in liking Joan of Arc best of all his novels, particularly because his hand is almost invisible in it. He presents the story as a translation by “Jean Francois Alden” of the remembrances of “Sieur Louis de Conte.” He did not think readers would take a work by “Mark Twain” seriously. Only the initials S. L. C. indicate the connection between the actual and the presumed author. Twain considered Joan to be “the most extraordinary person the human race has ever produced.” She was a woman—and a general. She genuinely believed that she was acting on the basis of commands from God. In relating her story, Twain nevertheless shows that nothing human, and certainly no government and no ruler, is entitled to divine honors or right.

It has become commonplace in the 1960's to talk about the alienated American, the disinherited American, the culturally different American. Most people talk in general terms but they almost always mean the Negro American. For the Negro is an alienated American of the largest minority group in the United States. In its historical quest for a unified society, the nation has called upon the public schools to live up to their traditional socializing responsibilities. At the present time, however, the focus is not upon the European immigrant coming from foreign shores but rather upon the segregated black man living in the most alienated ghettos of America. Martin Luther King spoke about educating the minds and hearts of white Americans in a concerted attempt to usher in the true kingdom of an integrated and just society. And what better place to begin this process than in the schools! Yet many Negroes have begun to lose faith in the schools as they have come to view them as an unreconstructed part of a basically racist society. A few are calling for the total rejection of the white man's society including his inflexible school structure. Others are demanding community — and this often means black — control of the schools in order to make them more responsive to the total needs of their youngsters. They want schools that will nurture the self-identity of the Negro child, deepen his pride in his color and heritage, and develop his capabilities to help create a truly democratic society which is “worthy, lovely, and harmonious.” That grand old lady of the social settlement movement in America, Jane Addams, once stated these desires in another way — indeed quite a contemporary way — when she concluded “that unless all men and all classes contribute to a good, we cannot even be sure that it is worth having.”

SCHOLARS, theoreticians, and statesmen in the West and in the Communist world have propounded numerous explanations of the political, economic and social underdevelopment of Africa and Asia. But few have sought to determine exactly what the leaders of the underdeveloped countries themselves think about the problems of underdevelopment. To what do they attribute their retarded status? Answers to this question are important for at least three reasons. First, their views serve as basic theoretical and empirical foundations for domestic measures designed to ameliorate the relatively backward conditions. Second, their answers also temper and condition their attitudes and policies toward the West and the Communist world. Third, a comprehension of their views gives us an opportunity to assess their current ideological tendencies and thus it provides an added dimension in which to discuss future Western policy alternatives. This paper, therefore, attempts to describe and analyze the various explanations for underdevelopment advanced by the leaders of six West African states — Ghana, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Mali, Nigeria, and Senegal.

Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence defends an inherent and individual right to the pursuit of happiness. For Jefferson, this right dramatically limited Christianity's role in politics. In any case, when drafting the Declaration, Jefferson thought Christianity largely irrelevant, if not inimical, to America's well-being. However, shortly before becoming president, several events transformed Jefferson's private thoughts about Christianity and its public utility. Careful attention to both the text and context of Jefferson's First Inaugural (a significant Jeffersonian document, but one that has never been examined in great detail by political theorists and intellectual historians) reveals that Jefferson came to embrace the teachings of a rationalized version of the New Testament in a way that lightly amends the liberal paradigm of his Declaration. Without significantly altering his commitment to a rights-based government of limited proportions, Jefferson's First Inaugural bespeaks the new political importance he placed on widely cultivating a largely demystified sense of Christian charity.

From earliest apostolic and patristic times, Christian writers have generally been suspicious of the common human desire to improve one's economic status. In Britain, however, by the end of the seventeenth century, this suspicion had all but vanished as most Christians began to accommodate themselves to the exigencies of an increasingly dynamic commercial society. This article takes up the early eighteenth-century controversy over the compatibility of traditional Christian moral virtues with the demands of economic and material progress as reflected in the writings of the two most important antagonists in the controversy, Bernard Mandeville and William Law. Although both Mandeville and Law spoke the language of Christian rigorism and perfectionism, and proclaimed attachment to the full austerity of the Christian Gospels, Mandeville, it is explained, was really a hedonist in disguise who feigned attachment to traditional Christian and Stoic ascetic principles merely to be able to discredit those principles. Law, it is explained, was a man of uncommon piety and devoutness who was shocked by the increasing secularism and materialism of his age, and who sought to recall his contemporaries to a life of true Christian holiness. The article concludes with an evaluation of the relative merits of the positions of each of the two thinkers.

Despite the Supreme Court's repeated invocations of America's Founding Fathers for First Amendment religion jurisprudence, George Washington's political thought regarding religious freedom has received almost no scholarly attention. This is unfortunate, for Washington's words and actions speak to contemporary Establishment Clause and Free Exercise issues. Washington, moreover, offers an alternative to Jefferson's and Madison's approach to church-state matters. The scholarly exclusion of Washington thus has led to a narrow view of the Founders' thought on religious liberty. This article sets forth Washington's understanding of the right to religious liberty. It pays particular attention to Washington's disagreement with Madison on the propriety of government support of religion. It also draws attention to the limits Washington placed on an individual's right to religious free exercise by focusing on how Washington dealt with Quaker claims for religious exemptions from military service.

Individuals entering into society, must give up a share of liberty to preserve the rest. The magnitude of the sacrifice must depend as well on situation and circumstance, as on the object to be obtained. It is at all times difficult to draw with precision the line between those rights which must be surrendered, and those which may be reserved.—G. Washington, Letter submitting the proposed constitution to the President of Congress 17 September 1787

There is a growing literature on the theological roots of Schmitt's theory, however, such interpretations depart from the same position as Schmitt: from the political into the theological. In this quarrel between politics and theology, there is a less known contender, the theologian Erik Peterson, who developed a theological critique of Schmitt and shows the impossibility of a Christian political theology. In Political Theology II (1970), Schmitt criticizes the apolitical nature of Peterson's theology, but he ignores Peterson's theology of martyrdom. This paper recovers the centrality of martyrdom in Peterson's theology and argues that the martyr represents a counter model to Schmitt's sovereign. For Peterson, martyrdom is not apolitical act, but a public claim in which the martyrs testify in the public sphere that the highest human good is not political but eschatological. By recovering this eschatological dimension, Peterson shows the limits of Schmitt's interpretation of the political.

Scholars of race in antiquity commonly claim that Aristotle holds protoracist views about barbaroi or non-Greeks. But a careful examination of Aristotle's remarks in his Politics about slavery, non-Greek political institutions, and Greek and non-Greek natural qualities calls into question such claims. No doubt, Aristotle held views at odds with modern liberalism, such as his views about gender subordination and the exploitation of slave and nonslave labor. But claims that Aristotle holds protoracist views are regularly but erroneously asserted without careful consideration of relevant textual evidence. I argue that Aristotle neither categorically distinguishes Greeks and non-Greeks nor does he endorse the claim that Greeks are categorically superior to non-Greeks. Indeed, Aristotle regularly draws upon non-Greek political institutions in his own formulation of the best constitution and he praises the non-Greek constitution of Carthage as superior to that of Greek constitutions such as Sparta and Crete.

This paper examines the kind of genealogical project Rousseau undertakes in the Discourse on the Origins of Inequality. It explains what it is for Rousseau to discover the “origins” of inequality and examines the normative implications of such an account, especially the relation his genealogical claims have to his critique of society. After arguing that the Discourse singles out l'amour propre as the psychological source of inequality, the paper reconstructs Rousseau's account of the origin of inequality and its criteria for judging the legitimacy of inequalities. It also highlights similarities among Rousseau's use of genealogy and later genealogical projects, such as Nietzsche's.

Through his modern “Yankee,” Mark Twain reveals to his readers the underlying desire to overcome the very material world he seems to want to instantiate. Although the Yankee seems a modern man who simply wants to create the conditions in Arthurian England by which his body will be most comfortable, both his zeal for this project and the trajectory of his soul's course during the book betray an underlying hope to overcome his “mortal coil” through first technological and then political projects. In charting the impetus and evolution of the Yankee's psychology for us, Twain teaches us much about the nature of the “modern project”—its underlying hopes and its potential for dangerous, even totalitarian, excesses. As appealing as the starkly contrasting Arthurians might be, given this insight, Twain does not ultimately endorse this position but shows that its explicit claim does not ultimately satisfy our desire for noninstrumental goods.