Scholars often assume Émile seeks to educate readers to become like Émile. However, I suggest that by calling upon his readers to act as judges, Rousseau's aim is not for readers to copy Émile, but to educate them to act as independent judges. The first section of this article argues that Émile's education fails to teach him this kind of judgment. He never learns to navigate the interdependent relationships created by property ownership or family life. Rather, as explored in the second section, Sophie's education offers a better style of judgment. The article concludes with a consideration of the reader's education as distinct from that of either Émile or Sophie. By emulating Sophie readers do not become like her. Rather, through comparing the characters and situations Rousseau presents in Émile and “Émile et Sophie,” readers learn to judge for themselves.

John Zammito attacks Kant for bending over backwards to enlightened autocracy in Part Two of Conflict of the Faculties. Zammito calls for more creative exponents to explain how Kant's supposed advocacy of absolutism could possibly be “best.” This paper answers Zammito's request, explaining how Kant's view can be considered best by reading Kant's argument politically, in three senses of that term: the substance of Kant's argument is political in nature; its mode of argumentation should be read as politics-first, not ethics-first; and in light its publication history, Conflict's very publication should be viewed as a political act in its own right. Resituating the text and its argument shows Kant to be attacking absolutism, not defending it. As a subsidiary aim, the paper interprets the argument of Part Two of Conflict as exhibiting more internal unity than has previously been thought.

In this article, I offer a novel account of why compromising in politics is likely to involve the kind of politically admirable but morally wrongful behavior at stake in the dirty hands thesis. On the view I defend, politicians do not dirty their hands just because they compromise on matters of principle. Rather, when forging a political compromise, negotiators can either comply with the requirements of ethical compromise-making or abide by the special obligations they have to their representees, but will struggle to satisfy both demands. As a result, subsequent to such compromises, residual moral claims about how the compromise was negotiated will almost inevitably emerge and compromise-makers will not be able to explain their conduct in a way that can cancel these grievances. It is in this sense that forging political compromises can be “dirty” even if choosing to compromise is the politically responsible thing to do.

This interview with the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor was designed and realized to celebrate his ninetieth birthday in November 2021. The interview touches on all the main themes of Taylor's oeuvre, from his view of philosophy to the inherent link between human intelligence and strong evaluations, from the Immanent Frame to postsecularity, from today's democratic crisis to the 1980s debate between liberals and communitarians, from Xi Jinping's China to the global health emergency, from spirituality to Philosophical Romanticism. It is both a hindsight analysis by a first-class thinker and a glance into the future by an incurable optimist.