What is the proper relation of religious moralities—and of moralities generally— to politics, especially to the politics of a society as religiously and morally pluralistic as our own. May a person rely on her religious-moral beliefs in making political choices? In deliberating about political choices with persons who do not share — who may even reject — her religious-moral beliefs? In defending her political choices to such persons? In this article, which is mainly critical rather than constructive, I indicate some basic respects in which the principal contemporary liberal responses to the question of the proper relation of morality to politics are deeply problematic.1 Elsewhere in the work of which this article is a part, my effort is mainly constructive: I elaborate and defend a postliberal conception of the proper relation of moral beliefs, especially religious-moral beliefs, to the politics of a pluralistic society like our own; in particular, I elaborate and defend a conception of the proper relation of religious communities to the religiously and morally pluralistic political community of which they are a part.2

This essay questions whether it is as appropriate as it is common to speak of the federal judiciary as legitimately engaged in “statesmanship”— however that rather slippery concept may be denned or elucidated. Scholars of both the “interpretivist” and “noninterpretivist” schools in constitutional law appear to subscribe to the expectation that judges should be statesmen. Some point to Tocqueville for support of this notion. The argument here is that Tbcqueville is unreliable on this point, for he parts company not only with his contemporary, Joseph Story, but with the framers of the Constitution. The Federalist is examined for its thoughts on the meaning and location of statesmanship in the constitutional order, and it is argued that the essays on the judiciary reveal a conspicuous absence of any expectation that that branch should contain statesmen. Indeed, Publius advances an argument that Congress should act to restrain (through the threat of impeachment) judicial temptations to engage in any adventures that can be called statesmanship.

Liberals and communitarians differ most basically on the justification of values, a disagreement that leads to alternative approaches to social criticism. Liberals insist on cosmopolitan justification, which has universalistic criteria, while communitarians are committed to local justification based on the shared values of particular societies. Although communitarians correctly believe that justification cannot be foundationalist, the universalism of cosmopolitan justification is essential to the defense of values like freedom that are supported by both communitarians and liberals. Moreover, cosmopolitan justification is possible when understood in contextual terms. An exploration of the political implications of the human capacities of rationality and moral agency can derive universal principles as criteria for social criticism.

As our Bicentennial celebration of our Constitution approaches its conclusion, one is struck with what can only be called wonder by the extent of the diversity among the celebrants. There seems to be at least general agreement that we are celebrating the Constitution because it establishes by a variety of means limited government. However, in this essay I show that there is vast disagreement on the precise meaning or fundamental mark of limited government. I identify the various definitions and defenses of limited government that can be derived from our Constitution and proceed to unveil their contradictory assumptions and implications. I then proceed to present our original and fundamental definition and defense of limited government as proposed by Publius in the Federalist Papers and to explore two questions: first, whether that definition is compatible with the other limiting features of the Constitution; and, second, whether that definition can render those diverse limiting features mutually coherent.

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.