This essay examines Aristotle's account of justice as a virtue in the Nicomachean Ethics by considering two related parts of it: Aristotle's elevated account of justice as lawfulness and his description of equity as a virtue. I focus on moral rather than legal questions by emphasizing Aristotle's identification of justice as lawfulness with complete virtue, and a broad sense of equity as superlatively good character. Some of the more difficult passages in book 5 prove to be tied together by the question of the goodness of justice and I argue that Aristotle points to a specific confusion in this regard characteristic of virtuous people. I conclude that Aristotle's critique of our ordinary opinions about justice offers crucial, albeit limited, support for the superiority of the contemplative life announced at the end of book 10.

Debates regarding obligation in Hobbes have turned on either natural right or natural law interpretations. Both interpretations tend to take up the question of obligation from the perspective of teaching those who contend “for too great Liberty” “how to obey.” But Hobbes also has a second audience, and a second goal in mind: those who contend “for too much Authority” must be taught “how to govern.” From that perspective, a different discussion of obligation emerges. What is revealed is a contiguous set of reflections in Leviathan that pivot on the character of the sovereign and the citizens’ judgment thereof, all of which inform effective obligation and have little in common with received interpretations of obligation. It further reveals a relationship between the failure to manifest sovereign virtue and the natural punishment of pusillanimous and barbaric sovereigns. That is, it speaks to a sovereign virtue ethic in Leviathan.

In On Liberty, John Stuart Mill famously excluded children and so-called barbarians from his otherwise broad grant of liberty to human beings. While many scholars have analyzed and criticized the barbarian exclusion, little attention has been focused on the denial of liberty to children. This article argues that Mill's theory of liberty rests on an untenable dividing line between childhood dependence and adult autonomy. The processes of discipline and socialization to which children are subject render them incapable as adults of achieving the kind of autonomy that Mill prescribes. Using relational autonomy as an alternative to Mill's model of autonomy, I propose that we should neither flatly deny liberty to children nor present absolute independence as a normative ideal for adults.

In recent years, William E. Connolly has argued that the phenomenon of complexity in the physical sciences carries radical implications for political theory: namely, that political theorists should now be revising their concepts of agency, responsibility, and freedom. This very recent project of Connolly's has not (yet) attracted much opposition. Here I offer a critique of Connolly's argument which focuses on three key areas: (1) how he interprets and deploys “evidence” from physical science; (2) his theory of “creative freedom”; and (3) the impact that his recent philosophy has on the idea of the intellect. I argue that Connolly's scientific evidence is not what he claims it is; that the theory of “creative freedom” he offers fails; and that his critique of the intellect fails in theory, and would be highly damaging in practice.

One of the enduring problems in democratic theory is its inability to specify who should belong to the demos. In recent years, several scholars have been arguing that democratic theory should try to overcome this “boundary problem” through different kinds of global reform. I argue, however, that the boundary problem is an analytical distraction in thinking about global reform. I begin with general doubts as to whether the boundary problem can ground global reform. I then join the developing conversation on Arash Abizadeh's and Robert Goodin's boundary problem arguments. I offer new reasons for why both arguments encounter fundamental difficulties. I conclude by anticipating the concern that my argument does not take the need for global reform seriously enough.