Leading liberal theorist Ronald Dworkin builds a case against paternalism, rooted in his liberal ethical theory, especially the requirement of ethical integrity. But his case is successful only against less sophisticated forms of paternalism. His argument focuses too much on profound ethical convictions, failing to recognize the frequency with which people hold relatively unreflective convictions and the inevitable role of the law in helping to shape convictions. He makes concessions regarding paternalistic actions that come to be endorsed by the persons who are subject to them, but then tries to impose arbitrary limits on such endorsement. Finally, he rests his case against paternalism on the denial of transcendent standards, but is unable to avoid employing such standards himself. Building a case for certain forms of paternalism in a pluralistic liberal democracy is a difficult but necessary task, that can only proceed after removing fallacious objections like Dworkin's.

This article demonstrates the radical character of Locke's attack on patriarchalism in the Two Treatises of Government, in part by showing that that attack implies the rejection of the natural and divine order to which patriarchalism appealed to justify itself. In this way, Locke's attack on patriarchalism, which prepared the way for his individualistic liberal politics, is also shown to be an important part of his solution to the political problem of religion. Special attention is given to Locke's disagreement with the Bible concerning the family and its place in political life.

This article examines the contrast between philosophy and sophism in Xenophon's Memorabilia, focusing chiefly on the two dialogues between Socrates and Aristippus. In two crucial respects, Socrates and the sophist appear as opposites. He accepts what the sophist rejects: the obligations and restraints imposed by the city's laws; and he rejects what the sophist accepts: the vulgar notion that everyone knows what the good things are. In the first dialogue, Socrates defends the self-discipline proper to citizen-soldiers against Aristippus' complete rejection of political responsibility. In the second, he points to the substitution of the beautiful for the good as the proper object of philosophical investigation, hi both dialogues, Socrates walks a middle road: he is more political than the sophist, but less so than the politician. Yet he proves to be close to the politician qua philosopher than he is qua citizen.

This article examines Hegel's philosophy of history with the intention of once again rendering it strange. Hegel's “historicism” has been accepted for so long that the actual terms of his history are rarely examined afresh. But his account of the past, it is argued here, is best understood through the vocabulary of art and beauty that he develops in the Aesthetics. Historical forms cannot be wholly grasped through the vocabulary of dialectical reason, but ought to be seen as “shapes” in a strong sense. Two principle conclusions follow from this reassessment: The first is that the Philosophy of History is best understood neither as an optimistic account of rational progress, nor as a tale of the “end of history” in liberal democracy, but as an attempt to “seduce us to life”—that is, an attempt to reconcile us to the world through the beauty of history. The second conclusion is that this attempt must fail. It fails because, in his effort to discern beauty in the past, Hegel imposes a completeness upon time that excludes the possibility of a future. Whether intentionally or not, Hegel's pessimism about art is transmitted to his philosophy of history. The Temple of Memory that Hegel builds to shelter our souls ends up imprisoning them instead.

When and in what way does it make sense to think of philosophical and scientific activity or simply the act of thinking as acts of resistance to political corruption? This article examines Eric Voegelin's extended answer to that question. Voegelin gradually developed a conception of scientific inquiry that distinguished between science, philosophy, and the wider context within which these activities take place. He showed thereby that scientific inquiry may be a valuable form of political resistance, without its practitioners being fully aware philosophically of what they are doing