In ancient Greece and ancient China, small states engaged in intense military competition and incessant warfare. In such contexts, there was naturally much emphasis on the training of soldiers. One might have expected state-sponsored physical education to develop as a by-product of the need to train soldiers, but the historical record shows that ancient Greek states placed far more emphasis on physical education compared to their counterparts in ancient China. This essay attempts to (partly) explain the divergent outcomes with reference to the idea of citizenship. The first part outlines the practice and philosophy of state-sponsored physical education in ancient Greece and ancient China and addresses the question of why the two ancient civilizations should be compared in this respect. The main body of the article discusses the political differences between ancient Greece and ancient China that help to explain the different outcomes regarding state-sponsored physical education. The last part ends with some normative reflections that may be relevant for present-day societies.

The facts about friendship (objections a-d) used to support the view that the circumstances of justice are displaced by the circumstances of friendship (the Inverse Proportionality thesis) are, in Aquinas's own understanding of friendship, either not true —(a), (b), (d)—or (in my own view) irrelevant to the Inverse Proportionality thesis—(c).

Aquinas's theological view that there is no merit without (or “outside”) charity can also be expressed non-theologically: when two persons are separated by a wide gap, the actions of the inferior do not lay just claims on the superior unless the inferior is a friend. The inferior's actions become effective in entitling him to just deserts only when proportional equivalence between the superior's and the inferior's actions becomes possible. Proportional equivalence obtains only when the inferior's actions are seen as the common actions of both friends. An action is common to two persons when neither of the persons is merely a part or tool of the other, both cooperate freely, and both share reasons. Friends' actions are common actions.

It must be stressed that this reading of Aquinas's view does not lend support to the notion that friendship takes precedence over justice (“you only have justice if you have friendship first”). In this reading, Aquinas believes that, in the transition from a superiorinferior relationship to a relationship between partners, friendship and the possibility of just interaction arise concomitantly.

Locke can speak interestingly to the problem of transitional justice, that is, how to deal withthose who committed human rights abuses under authoritarian regimes once those regimes democratize. The essay focuses mainly on the “hard case” of transitional justice, in which former members of an authoritarian regime retain significant capacity for violence, and so the ability to threaten the new polity if attempts are made to punish them. Locke's law of nature suggests that human rights abusers should be punished, although not at the expense of social stability.But it also grounds the apparently un-Lockean claims, consistent with some of Locke's occasional writings, that abusers qua eschewers of reason may be treated as beasts that do not enjoy natural rights, and that little account need be taken of the victims of such abusers. Using Locke's thought in this way both illuminates it and clarifies what is at stake in the debate about transitional justice.

Leo Strauss's “political” interpretation of Maimonides′ doctrine of prophecy is well known, as is his claim that the Guide of the Perplexed has two fundamentally different teachings: a literal teaching, and a more radical philosophic teaching. This essay attempts to show that, in Strauss's view, Maimonides′ doctrine of the prophet as philosopher-statesman belongs to the former only, while according to the latter, prophecy (revelation) simply does not exist. It does so by showing that, in Strauss's view, Maimonides indicates that the preconditions he lays down for the existence of prophecy—in particular, the combination of intellectual perfection with extreme asceticism—cannot possibly be met. It attempts to explain, moreover, why in Strauss's view Maimonides denies the existence of prophecy: namely, because irrational moral opinions are an essential cause of all so-called prophecy.

Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), unlike her later books, is centrally concerned with the nature and fate of the modern state. The book presents a series of political pathologies – antisemitism, imperialism, tribalism, and totalitarianism – that Arendt regards as the result of failures in the state's dual mission to integrate diverse social groups into a single body politic, and to uphold the uniform rule of law for all. Her underlying conception of the state bears a striking, though unacknowledged affinity to that of Hegel. Like Hegel, moreover, she argues that citizens' mutual recognition of one another's human rights, as mediated through state institutions, is an indispensable condition for full human self-consciousness and agency. Her version of this argument is developed first through an excursus on the origins and effects of racism among Europeans living in Africa, and then through an analysis of the unique plight of stateless refugees.