The difference between legal terms such as “person” and “human being” represents more than a question of standing or mere semantics. Within liberal democratic societies, such as the United States and Canada, such distinctions may indicate substantive differences regarding fundamental concepts such as citizenship, membership in society, and the scope and essential nature of rights and liberties. In particular, judicial decisions regarding abortion have relied upon such distinctions in order to articulate some of the fundamental issues upon which such controversies are based.

Love of a friend and gratitude for the benefactions of a teacher have moved Paul Caringella, Juergen Gebhardt, Thomas A. Hollweck, and Ellis Sandoz to shoulder the gigantic task of publishing all of the major writings of Eric Voegelin in a uniform edition.1 Louisiana State University Press, Voegelin's publisher of choice since 1956, has committed itself to bringing out thirty-four volumes in which his works will be grouped in formal categories, and arranged in roughly chronological order within each classification.

Most of the official obituaries which followed the death of Michael Oakeshott were so inadequate, paid so little attention to what really mattered to him, that one can only hope that something better can be achieved.1 If one believed the New York Times (20 December 1990) he was a “right-wing guru,” a high-Tory oracle centrally concerned with interpreting (and usually decrying) current political events; if one did fractionally better and gave credence to the London Times he was, though a philosopher who “stood fastidiously aside” from politics, nonetheless the “articulator” of “the real philosophical foundations of Mrs. Thatcher's policies” (22 December 1991).