This paper examines problems of the liberal democratic order through an analysis of the political thought of a neglected American thinker, William Graham Sumner. Sumner argues that the liberal order is inextricably linked to laissez-faire, and is under siege from the closely interrelated threats of socialism, plutocracy, imperialism, and the degeneration of democracy. He recognizes that the liberal-democratic capitalist state has significant deficiencies, including atomization, “cold” economic relations, and a loss of “poetry.” It also seems to depend upon values which are not readily propagated by liberalism. But efforts to address deficiencies through government action amount to attempts to intermix philosophically incompatible elements and serve to hasten the system's collapse. Sumner's work unwittingly suggests that the usual “Lockean” liberal model may be so flawed that a revised public philosophy, with new language and paradigms, is needed for the effective pursuit of his goals of freedom, dignity, and human development.

Scholars have long debated the relationship between Kant's doctrine of right and his doctrine of virtue (including his moral religion or ethico-theology), which are the two branches of his moral philosophy. This article will examine the intimate connection in his practical philosophy between perpetual peace and the highest good, between political and ethico-religious communities, and between the types of transparency peculiar to each. It will show how domestic and international right provides a framework for the development of ethical communities, including a kingdom of ends and even the noumenal ethical community of an afterlife, and how the transparency and trust achieved in these communities are anticipated in rightful political society by publicity and the mutual confidence among citizens that it engenders. Finally, it will explore the implications of this synthesis of Kant's political and religious philosophies for contemporary Kantian political theories, especially those of Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls.

In book VII of the Politics, Aristotle requires that the best regime be eusunoptos, “easily taken in at a glance.” Throughout the history of political thought, the attendant ideal of the polis as a compact and surveyable society was particularly influential. However, closer scrutiny of the way in which Aristotle uses eusunoptos suggests that it designates a problem rather than a solution, to wit, the problems of defining political unity and of attuning the individual and the common good. Exploring the different contexts in which eusunoptos occurs in Aristotle's works, this paper argues that it has political, rhetorical, and poetical meanings that cannot be entirely distinguished from each other. As such, the notion is shown to be germane to the general design of book VII, which constructs the best regime in order to bring to light the limits of politics.

Modern politics is at times a balancing act between universal claims about the human (equal rights, dignity, and respect) and political actions which may seem to violate these claims (torture, just wars, repudiation of certain cultural practices, tacit discrimination). An exploration of some of the philosophical roots of the modern understanding of the person, when it was the subject of debate, provides a perspective at the origin of Modernity from which to evaluate the tenuous relationship between moral universalism and alterity at the heart of this tension. The debates at Valladolid in 1550–51 between Las Casas and Sepúlveda, arguing their conceptions of the human, can shed light on how and why arguments for inequality creep back into the modern discourse on alterity. The lessons from Valladolid, therefore, might help to limit or clarify recourse to such arguments.

The relationship between pluralism and liberalism has been at the center of recent considerations of Isaiah Berlin's thought. In particular, liberal theorists have asked whether the value pluralism Berlin endorses actually undermines his liberalism. A common interpretive approach resolves this problem by presenting Berlin's pluralism as “limited” rather than “radical,” and therefore capable of serving as a moral foundation authorizing liberalism. I challenge this re-construction of Berlin's work, arguing that such readings are premised on a conception of judgment Berlin does not share. While many of his readers believe that a judgment on behalf of liberalism requires the identification of a transcontextual ground, Berlin invites us to see human judgment as a meaningful practice that occurs in the absence of absolutes yet does not simply mirror local norms. Berlin's defense of liberalism models this kind of judgment—a judgment that is neither mandated, nor ruled out, by pluralism.

This essay investigates Xenophon's claim in the Memorabilia that political ambition is a qualification for the study of political philosophy, through an examination of three conversations between Socrates and politically ambitious men. These conversations reveal that the basis for the ambition to serve the public welfare is a concern not only with one's political community but also with one's own character and its excellence or virtue. Politically ambitious men hold virtue to be the greatest good, but they may not know what virtue is. For someone who is conscious of his concern with virtue and of his ignorance of virtue, there is no more urgent task than to search for the knowledge of virtue through the study of political philosophy.

The agonistic critique of liberalism argues that liberal theory unwisely eliminates conflict from the design of liberal-democratic institutions and understandings of liberal citizenship. John Stuart Mill anticipates and resolves the agonistic critique by incorporating several theories of antagonism into his political theory. At the institutional level, Mill places two antagonisms at the center of his political theory: the tension between the popular and bureaucratic elements in representative government, on the one hand, and that between the democratic and aristocratic elements in modern society, on the other. These tensions guarantee the fluidity of the political sphere. At the experiential level, Mill's embrace of antagonism is even more complete, as he argues that even our objectively correct opinions must be ceaselessly contested to become properly ours. The theory that emerges is both agonistic and liberal; further, it calls into question current liberal attitudes concerning conflict and antagonism.

Communitarians are derided for their commitment to closed borders. According to their critics, if we balance the claims of cultural preservation (deployed primarily by wealthy countries) against the claims of economic betterment (deployed primarily by the very poor), the correct moral ordering will prioritize the claims of economic betterment, and thus support claims for open borders over closed borders. Yet, this standard way of framing the debate ignores the deep connection between cultural claims and freedom of movement. In the near-exclusive focus on the relationship between cultural preservation and the alleged importance of closed borders, free movement advocates have lost sight of how frequently culture bolsters claims in favor of freedom of movement. I argue that cultural claims should not be ignored in discussions of free movement. To do so fails to give a full account of the reasons we have to favor free movement, oftentimes across borders.

Upon close examination of Rousseau's accounts of human development, we find that Rousseau presents us with paradoxical chronologies in which the experience of supposed immediacy from which humans are said to originate always seems to be informed by, and even require, previous mediation. More specifically, reflection, comparison, and imagination are thought to exist only after the onset of perfectibility, but these mediating capacities are always already present in pity and self-love, as well as for the “independent” savage, calling into question the possibility that any human sentiment or condition could be immediately accessible and fundamentally imbuing human life with ambiguity, fluidity, and disorder. Consequently, morality and freedom for Rousseau require the negotiation, stabilization, or management of the unstable “things between” human beings and their experiences, the object world, and others, even as such management is best hidden from view and experienced as given and true.

Francis Bacon's New Atlantis is considered with a view to the problematic unity of its author's oeuvre. Beginning from the question of the genre or literary character of the work and proceeding through a consideration of the Platonic precedent announced in the title, an attempt is made to reconcile Bacon's rejection of the classical, utopian tradition of political thought with the apparently utopian character of the island of Bensalem. Such an interpretation suggests that the title announces a project shown to be possible, even necessary, in the course of the travel story that is the drama of the work.

Whether in the service of aristocratic radicalism or radical democracy, Nietzsche's political thought has most often been associated with transformation rather than limitations. This paper argues that Nietzsche offers a realism that presents politics as driven by grand aspirations and bound by tragic limitations. Nietzsche draws on Thucydides as a source for a realism that is neither reductionist nor transformative, but rather looks to the grandest of human aspirations and the limits to those aspirations. The paper analyzes Nietzsche's treatment of the character of modern idealism, the source of conflicting values, the effects of liberalism, and the consequences of democratic modernity in order to flesh out his tragic realism. Rather than advocating the tyrannical decay he expects in the short term, Nietzsche points the way to a new politics shaped by grander goals and more moderate expectations than the idealistic leveling of modernity.

Histories of political theory have framed the story of the emergence of sovereign states and sovereign selves as a story about secularization—specifically, a story that equates secularization with self-deification. Thomas Hobbes's investment in modesty and humility demonstrates the need for, and the possibility of, an alternative secularization narrative. Scholars have long insisted that “vainglory” is a key term for the interpretation of Leviathan. But Hobbes's task is not complete once he has discredited vainglory. Hobbes must also envision, and cultivate, contrary virtues—and modesty is one virtue that Hobbes would cultivate. An analysis of Hobbes's attempt to redefine and rehabilitate the virtues of modesty shows that Hobbes warns against the temptation to self-deification. In Leviathan, the political task is not to enthrone humans in sovereign invulnerability, but rather to achieve the right balance between bodily security and consciousness of finitude.

Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Orientalists such as Schlegel and Müller sought to broaden narrow European scholarly horizons by comparing ancient Indian ideas with those of classical Greece and Rome and modern Europe, and thus to transform the human sciences. These aims are similar to contemporary comparative political theory's concerns to remedy the Eurocentrism of the field of political theory and to identify valuable ideas in non-Western sources. These similarities suggest that we ought to revisit our understanding of Orientalism, reconsider how and when epistemological appropriation has political consequences, and recognize the limits of text-based approaches to political theory.

Simone Weil's work has always been appreciated for its evocative beauty, but not always for its potential contributions to political thought. In this essay, we engage in a reappraisal of her political thought, and of her relevance to contemporary politics, by way of her discussion of the power of words. Weil shares much with contemporary approaches that view the world as a text to be interpreted. But for Weil, the power of interpretation carries with it an illusion, exemplified in Weil's example of Achilles watching over his war-work, in which the world can be seen, measured, and shaped according to one's will. For Weil, the illusion of control that accompanies this perspective is undermined by our encounter with a world of physical causes and sensations that impact us, quite without us being able to control them.

Rousseau refers to the Jews in major and minor works, setting them alongside the Greeks and Romans as models for republican politics. Yet Rousseau's use of the Jewish example has been almost entirely neglected. I argue that this example, which for Rousseau stands between paganism and Christianity, plays a unique role in Rousseau's political thought. In particular, Judaism, as Rousseau presents it, surpasses Christianity in its this-worldly emphasis on compassion and justice, an emphasis that even the classical republics that are Rousseau's usual models for social and political well-being cannot match. It does so, moreover, without fostering the dogmatism that, along with Christian otherworldiness, has, in Rousseau's estimation, helped to spoil European politics.

In this reading of William Blackstone's Commentaries the jurist is neither a conservative promoter of arbitrary power nor a modern liberalizer of the common law. He is a proceduralist who emphasizes due process of law as the way to reconcile political liberty with parliamentary sovereignty. Blackstone's jurisprudence reflects a particular reading of political history, one that sees Parliament at the forefront of the protection of English liberties. While the legislature is capable of tyranny, it is in the king and the courts that historically he finds the greatest examples of arbitrary rule. And it has been the exercise of parliamentary sovereignty that has reinstated and guarded due process—in particular, habeas corpus—thereby preserving and facilitating public liberty.

Thomas Paine is customarily regarded as a pamphleteer, rhetorician, and polemicist rather than a significant political theorist. This article takes the philosophical content of Paine's thought seriously and argues that his account of property rights constitutes a distinct contribution to theoretical debates on the subject. Drawing on Paine's Agrarian Justice and other writings, this article shows that his theory of property defends a libertarian concern with private ownership that contains within its logic an egalitarian commitment to the redistribution of resources. Paine's justification of property is distinct from that of various other important figures in the history of ideas (including Grotius, Pufendorf, and Locke) and represents his simultaneous commitment to foundational liberal values of individual freedom and moral equality.

Michael Gillespie speaks of the “theological origins of modernity,” in order to describe both the profoundly religious character of the modern West, and tensions within the Enlightenment and within the progressive philosophies of history that it generated and that are instantiated in the works of Kant, Hegel, Marx, Kojève, and the like.

Giorgio Agamben's critique of Western politics in Homo Sacer and three related books has been highly influential in the humanities and social sciences. The critical social theory set out in these works depends essentially on his reading of Aristotle's Politics. His diagnosis of what ails Western politics and his suggested remedy advert to a “biopolitical paradigm,” at the center of which stand a notion of “bare life” and a purported opposition between bios and zoē. Agamben claims that this distinction is found in Aristotle's text, in ancient Greek, and in a tradition of political theory and political society stemming from fourth-century Athens to the present. However, a close reading of Aristotle refutes this assertion. There is no such distinction. I show that he bases this view on claims about Aristotle by Arendt and Foucault, which are also unfounded.