It could be said that Isaiah Berlin has written more extensively on freedom than anyone since John Stuart Mill, but the essentially rational dimension of freedom has become virtually obliterated in his writings. What Berlin has concealed from himself is the fact that abstract freedom, like other mere abstractions, is not to be found, but at least he has sensed that the limited latitude of alternatives implicit in his moral pluralism would circumscribe the unlimited extension of freedom. It is not enough, however, for him to recognize the precariousness of the full and unrestrained exercise of freedom implicit in that pluralism, for he must face up to the realization that only a standard other than freedom can make limitations on freedom possible. But we are not aware from his published writings that he ever considered that as a possibility.

Although scholars use the term moral ecology and commentators frequently employ environmental analogies in depicting the cultural milieu, the profound implications of such formulations remain unexplored. This article provides the first systematic analysis of the theory of moral ecology as a philosophical, empirical, and practical construct. It applies environmental thought, particularly insights from the “tragedy of the commons,” to the moral and cultural realm. It suggests that the concept of moral ecology is a compelling depiction of genuine human dynamics. Corroboration flows from the way the theory of moral ecology synthesizes a vast empirical literature on media violence, family decline, and gambling into a parsimonious nomological formulation.

In the modern, extant world of practical history, the dominant “democratic” tradition splits sharply into three, often hostile strands. These strands are liberal democracy, social revolutionary democracy, and participatory democracy. Especially for analytical purposes, it is important to see these strands as distinct sharing only the vaguest general commitment to government by and for broad reaches of the population (the demos). However, the three strands, for all their differences—and hostilities—should be seen historically as standing in profound and significant dialectical relationship with each other. In this light, liberal and social revolutionary democracy are opposites in an antithetical tension that is increasingly extreme. Participatory democracy will then appear as a third term, a still emerging synthetical response arising out of attempts to resolve the tension between the two earlier democratic variants, and clearly showing marks of its inheritance from them.

Leo Strauss wrote only rarely about American thought, but he pointed his students and readers toward the “high adventure” of the American political tradition as a serious encounter with the great questions of political philosophy. Strauss saw American theory as a contest—one fought less between Americans than within them—pitting modernity's “first wave”, with its appeal to reason and natural right, against the more radical individualism and the historicism of later modern doctrine. Religion and classical rationalism, offering their own standards of a right above opinion, had been historically the allies of “first wave”, modernity, but those voices, Strauss recognized, were growing weaker in American life. In recent American teaching and culture, by contrast, Strauss saw that the increasingly dominant ethics of self—interest and success, other political inadequacies aside, were incapable of speaking to the highest aspirations or winning the deepest allegiance of the young. By reviving classical teaching, Strauss also sought to contribute to the rearticulation and reanimation of the American ideal.

Whereas traditionally self–love was considered a moral evil, Rousseau contended that some self–love is benign—and not only benign, but morally necessary and even praiseworthy. The following article offers an interpretation of Rousseau's criteria for distinguishing between good self–love and bad. The distinction between good and bad self–love is neither as simple as many readers think—it does not correspond exactly to the distinction between amour de soi and amour–propre—nor as blurry as many others think. It is, rather, both subtle and coherent. And it might well prove useful in our current efforts to inculcate pride and self-esteem without encouraging complacency or exploitation, efforts which themselves owe much to Rousseau's influence.

This article is a study of the concept of local self-government (difang zizht) in the context of reform efforts from 1898 to 1911. Of the institutional changes proposed, local self-government rapidly gained much support among China's educated elites. The author explores the reasons behind much enthusiasm for self-government institutions by analyzing the works of two key reformists, Kang Youwei (1858–1927) and Liang Qichao (1873–1929). While the reformist approach to local government indicated the continuing influence of the fengjian (feudal) tradition on the one hand, and the reformist notion of citizenship was suggestive of the Neo-Confucian conception of self-cultivation on the other, the article argues that the reformist thought on local self-government represents an important step in moving China beyond an imperial political order.

John Rawls claims that his system of political liberalism represents the “completion and extension” of liberty of conscience, a grand solution to the problem of religious diversity that accompanied liberalism's emergence in the early modern world. I argue that such a claim cannot withstand historical scrutiny, that Rawlsian liberalism instead represents a retreat from the commitments that drove liberal tolerationists. Rawls's political liberalism forces individuals with non-mainstream comprehensive doctrines either to change the doctrine to fit Rawls's conditions of publicity; to manufacture a “public” justification for comprehensively derived political stances; to seek to change the parameters of public debate through, for example, civil disobedience; or to advance comprehensively derived views only so long as public reasons follow in due course. The first two of these solutions run counter to the historical development of liberty of conscience, and the third fails due to Rawls's pervasive emphasis on stability. The fourth misrepresents the nature of moral reasoning and comprehensive doctrines themselves. In conclusion, I argue that underlying Rawls's liberalism is a belief-action split that has historically suppressed religious liberty and, more troubling, a type of repression that undermines the very notion of comprehensive doctrines.

Alexis de Tocqueville is not easily characterized as either a liberal or a conservative. In this respect he resembles Edmund Burke. Both may be best understood as “liberal conservatives”—figures who straddled both camps. On a number of specific dimensions, including their attitudes toward aristocracy, colonialism, property, rationalism, the tyranny of the majority, pluralism, and the meaning of history, they are remarkably similar. Their thinking foreshadows the rapprochement between liberals and conservatives in the latter half of the twentieth century reflected in the prominence of right-of-center parties and leaders and in the work of such political thinkers as Raymond Aron and Michael Oakeshott.

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.

Courts in both the United States and Canada have been forced to consider the constitutionality of laws disenfranchising convicted offenders. Despite similar legal traditions, courts in the two countries have reached diametrically opposed results, with the U.S. Supreme Court upholding broad state power to disenfranchise offenders and Canadian courts rejecting progressively less severe restrictions on offenders' right to vote. Using these decisions as its focus, this article analyzes contemporary theories of judicial review and argues that neither interpretive nor noninterpretive theories of review capture the complex relationship between legal positivism and moral principle that is at the core of liberal constitutionalism. Consequently, neither the Canadian nor American decisions have fully grappled with the normative principles underlying criminal disenfranchisement. The paper further argues that there is a principled defense of criminal disenfranchisement that is grounded in the relationship among citizenship, civic virtue, and punishment.

Neither cultural conversion to Western liberalism nor resort to local traditions such as Confucianism adequately deals with the hybrid nature of democratization in a postcolonial context. With its assortment of Chinese, Japanese, American, and Taiwanese hegemonic legacies, Taiwan offers a case in point. Its version of democratic politics operates across three contending normative domains: liberal political institutions, Confucian rationales for power, and Taiwanese nativist/nationalist sensibilities. Some may despair at this “distortion” of the (Western) liberal democratic ideal. We suggest, alternatively, that the contentious and unstable nature of liberal politics in Taiwan may render its polity more open-ended and organic, with simultaneous potential for both authoritarianism and democratization.

Tocqueville's account of judging unites two concerns separated in recent debates over constitutional interpretation, use of discretion to serve the rule of law and respect for tradition. In Planned Parenthood v. Casey the majority upholding Roe is properly concerned with rule of law, while Justice Scalia properly criticizes departures from text and tradition. However, both evince a skepticism which undermines these concerns. This raises differences between American constitutionalism prior to Holmes and the rival strains of legal realism now dominant. Tocqueville's judicial statesmanship would perpetuate the Constitution by preserving the principles of its letter and spirit. Holmesean judges lack the classic common law basis of this jurisprudence and should not exercise discretion unguided by our founding principles. The jurisprudence of individualism yielded by activist Holmesean skepticism is inadequately opposed by Holmesean skeptical restraint and better addressed by a common law constitutionalism.

This article moves on two fronts. It continues the challenge to the belief that politics is not central to the concerns of Friedrich Nietzsche but questions attempts to transvalue Nietzsche into a democrat. With their illiberal and inegalitarian political views, Nietzsche's writings best serve democratic political theory in an antidotal way. The article discusses Nietzsche's aesthetic approach to political action and architectonic conception of politics. It also explores some of the qualities he believes future rulers would need and the mechanisms they could use to exercise and legitimate their power. Just as Nietzsche thinks of political action in aesthetic terms, so his own art has a political purpose for he envisages the formation of a social, cultural and political élite and hopes, through his writings, to galvanize this élite.

Throughout his corpus, Joseph Cropsey reflects upon the tradition of political philosophy. Those reflections can be fruitfully approached under four headings. First, Cropsey questions the nature and origins of political philosophy as well as its cosmological or metaphysical foundations. Second, Cropsey questions the customary periodizations of the tradition of political philosophy. He especially questions the usefulness of the ancients-moderns distinction. Third, Cropsey reflects upon the relation between the tradition of political philosophy and concrete political life past and present. In the process, he tries to show the ways in which comprehensive constellations of ideas work their way into and inform everyday life. Fourth, Cropsey reflects upon the nature of the American regime and its prospects for the future. Throughout, it becomes clear that Cropsey has engaged in an ongoing dialogue with his mentor Leo Strauss. Finally, it also becomes clear, contrary to recent assertions made in response to Plato's World, that Cropsey engages in a series of subtle critiques of Nietzschean and Heideggerian historicism and thereby of contemporary postmodernism as well.

Two striking features of Alfarabi's Book of Religion remind us of Machiavelli's Prince. Alfarabi is very much concerned with what Machiavelli would call a new prince, the founder of a political order. Like Machiavelli, Alfarabi emphasizes the extent to which the founder needs prudence, understood as the faculty by which political men make sound determinations about particular circumstances. The status of prudence is enhanced by the pervasiveness of change over time as Alfarabi sees it. The pervasiveness of change entails that any political founding will require repeated, and prudent, renewal. For Alfarabi, as for Machiavelli, the varying dictates of prudence in response to specific political situations pose a challenge to the universal rules or laws found in religion. Alfarabi differs from Machiavelli in carefully distinguishing prudence from mere cunning or cleverness, depending on whether or not the end sought is morally good.

This paper explores the process of constitutional dialogue through the consideration of anarea of case law—separation of powers—where the U. S. Supreme Court issued significant decisions in the 1980s and where there was much discussion among the Court's attentive listeners about the significance of the legal changes represented in the Court's opinions. The implications of the separation of powers cases were not well understood by “the interpretive community.” Many observers believed that the Court was prepared to dismantle the administrative state, abandoning its long-standing precedent supporting independent regulatory agencies. This outcome did not occur. Using internal memoranda, briefs, court opinions, and other public documents, I explore the manner in which this institutional communication took place and the factors that interfered with the ability of the Court to express clearly its intent and its audience to understand that intent.

Despite considerable recent scholarly attention to the constitutional amending process, no contemporary work on the subject has analyzed the set of seven proposed amendments that Francis Lieber published in 1865, after circulating them in Congress the previous year. These proposals are important both because of Lieber's role in the founding of American political science and because of the manner in which Lieber justified change at a time when many had come to regard the Constitution as a sacred and untouchable document. Lieber was able to strike an appropriate balance between respect for the Constitution and a willingness to adapt it to change. Unlike some theorists who followed, Lieber further advocated an organic view of society, law, and Constitution, without undermining the importance of formal processes of change. There is circumstantial evidence that Lieber's proposals may have influenced the formation of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth, albeit not the Fifteenth, Amendment. As importantly, Lieber offered important justifications for formal amendment at a time when others were advocating extraconstitutional change. Because Lieber placed his proposals within a wider philosophical context, his justification for prudent use of the amending process continues to be relevant at a time when much different issues are on the national agenda.

Walking in Ernest Fortin's scholarly universe is a great pleasure. One breathes an atmosphere of serenity, good sense, and profound erudition. Fortin is at once highly serious yet often amusing; he is both learned and unpretentious; he is frequently skeptical but never unpleasant or destructive. The traveler in his universe encounters not only a great number of interesting discussions but also particularly brilliant pieces, such as “The Bible Made Me Do It: Christianity, Science, and the Environment,” where the author fully exposes the absurdity of the claim that Genesis 1, in which God grants humanity dominion over the rest of creation, bears responsibility for the damage done in recent times to the physical environment. In bringing together the essays and reviews that make up these volumes, Brian Benestad has performed an important service not only for the community of Christian scholars and thinkers but for all who are interested in the history of philosophy and political theory.

This article examines the foreign policy of Prince Clemens Metternich of Austria, the chief architect of the Vienna Treaty of 1815, in the light of Enlightenment political thought. Metternich is commonly considered a reactionary and practitioner of callous balance-of-power diplomacy, and this article seeks to refute this conclusion. By examining Metternich's deeply held theoretical beliefs on the nature of the European state system, and above all his Kantian belief in progress and federalism, this essay concludes that Metternich pursued a reformist, and indeed idealistic, program in international politics which cannot be divorced from late Enlightenment philosophy. His Conference System, which was designed to regulate European politics in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, represented a novel experiment in European union which remains a pressing concern in the contemporary international system.