In the more than fifty years since the publication of Carl Mannheim's classic essay “Conservative Thought,” a sizable body of literature has come into being concerning the nature of modern European and American conservatism. In this article I propose to review and assess some of the more significant pieces of this literature, to indicate my own views on the nature of conservative thought, and to map out some areas I think students of conserivatism might want to explore further. Such a study of the problem of defining conservatism is, I believe, a worthwhile enterprise, not only because of the intrinsic historical importance of modern conservatism, but also because of the light which our understanding of conservative thought may shed on the development of political theory as a whole during the last two centuries.

This paper explores Simone Weil's objections to a philosophy grounded on human rights. Weil thinks impersonal justice cannot be expressed in terms of personal rights. Rights, for Weil, are personal possessions; they are claimed or borne by some subject or person (me, you, her or them). The right or the just, however, is not susceptible to possession. When one substitutes a personal pronoun for the definite article before the word right (my right or their right instead of the right), justice is articulated in the manner of liberal contractualism but is biased against a notion of impersonal justice which Weil champions. The incompatibility of Weil's understanding of justice and a rights-based notion of justice is the subject-matter investigated in this article.

About twenty-five years ago, the fields and methods of the different academic disciplines concerned with the study of man and his works, and the relations between these disciplines, were a favorite theme of discussion. At that time, the so-called social sciences were experiencing a spectacular expansion in scope simultaneously gaining depth through the constant refinement of their methods. Increasing division of labor in research focused attention on marginal areas, giving rise thereby to several new specialties which threatened to encroach upon already established disciplines. These sometimes heated discussions were, as a whole, a healthy sign of the progress made by the new science of man, which then went through the growing pains of its adolescence. They also meant a staking out of claims between professional groups, a search for new labels and standards, and a reshuffling and re-naming of college courses and text books. This process of reorientation resulted in the organizational structure within which both research and teaching in the American institutions of higher learning have been carried out ever since. Once the demarcation lines had been drawn, however, interest in problems pertaining to the logic of science decreased; and the scholars in the different fields settled down to putting in practice what had now been defined as their proper task.

Democracies do not fight one another. This is because they are self-organizing systems and therefore fundamentally distinct from other states. As systems, liberal democracies have more in common with science and the market than they do with undemocratic states. By contrast, undemocratic states are best conceived as instrumental organizations pursuing relatively well defined goals. Liberal democracies do not normally pursue particular goals, are rarely comprehensible as rational actors, have unusually open boundaries, are self-transforming, and handle greater complexity than instrumental organizations. These characteristics provide the foundation for their mutually pacific relationships. The U.S. president's partial insulation from these characteristics explains why the United States has sometimes undermined small quasi-democratic states. This analysis sheds light on how norms and institutions help maintain the democratic peace.

Nietzsche and Tocqueville share a common concern with the tendency to mediocrity and loss of human greatness in democratic life. This essay explores the many similarities in their diagnoses of this problem, which they both view from the distinctive standpoint of aristocracy. Both thinkers focus on the way in which the individualism, preoccupation with material comfort, restlessness, and valorization of compassion that belong to democracy undermine human aspiration, intellectual excellence, and spiritual depth. Nevertheless, they differ sharply in their responses to the problem of human greatness in democracy. Tocqueville calls chiefly upon religion to elevate democratic citizens but otherwise resigns himself to the mediocrity that comes with democratic life. Nietzsche starts from the pessimistic premise that God is dead but more optimistically affirms the possibility of reestablishing aristocracy and finding a new greatness for human beings. The essay ultimately finds Nietzsche's solution more convincing but not without difficulties.

In recent years two ideas concerning America's republicanism have gained fairly general currency. First, there is now a growing recognition that a shift in understanding occurred in the decade after the revolution over the nature of republicanism and the political, social, and moral prerequisites necessary for establishing such a government. In particular, the notion of the absolute necessity of “virtue” or “public spiritedness” as the operative principle of republicanism became, for most American political thinkers, not only problematic but nearly indefensible. Second, there is a growing body of literature, journalistic and popular as well as scholarly, calling upon us to reopen the question of civic virtue and to reexamine anew its connection with republican health. After briefly reviewing the theoretical and practical connections made in the revolutionary era between virtue and self-government, this article will attempt to trace the causes for the early declension of the necessity of virtue in America's understanding of the foundations of republicanism. This accomplished, concerned citizens might then be able to evaluate more carefully the contemporary rediscovery of the links between moral character and modern republicanism by contemporary scholars and public men.

Berlin is often taken to have exaggerated his case against positive liberty, since contrary to what he seems to argue, several versions of it do not logically justify coercion. A more historical interpretation of his warnings may save him from this accusation, yet on the other hand suggests his message is of little relevance for contemporary liberalism. In contrast to both these approaches, this essay considers a third and largely neglected aspect of “Two Concepts of Liberty,” that speaks more directly to the challenges facing liberalism today: Berlin's warning that positive liberty invites the specific kind of coercion that parades as liberation, and that it does so according to a psychologically predictable pattern. After reconstructing this undercurrent in Berlin's critique of positive liberty, this essay also considers the relevance of Berlin's warnings to contemporary European debates on banning the Muslim veil in the name of liberation.

This article explores the writings of Michel Chevalier, a contemporary of Alexis de Tocqueville, on America. Despite widespread praise, Chevalier's text Lettres sur l'Amérique du Nord has been largely ignored in the scholarly literature. This article, therefore, reveals the nature of the account of America provided by Chevalier and, thereby, compares and contrasts his account with the more famous account penned by Tocqueville. In particular, it shows that Chevalier, viewing America from a Saint-Simonian background, was more aware of the economic dimensions of American culture and society than was Tocqueville. However, both recognized the differences that separated a democratic America from an aristocratic Europe and that the future lay with the former. The article concludes by examining the views of both Tocqueville and Chevalier on America in the wake of the Revolution of 1848, showing how America now figured as the model of a moderate republic for both authors.

This article deals with the evolving role of the Greens (Die Grünen) in the West German political system. It focuses on the “parliamentarization” of the Greens in the Bundestag (federal parliament) and in the Landtage (state parliaments) of Baden-Württemberg, Hesse, and Hamburg. Utilizing personal interviews, parliamentary archives, opinion polls, and party documents, it considers both the impact of the Greens upon the parliamentary system and the impact of the system upon the Greens. The study finds that, despite serious situational and organizational constraints, the Greens in these parliaments have generally been a “creative” oppositional force. However, parliamentary learning experiences have contributed inevitably to the classical dilemma confronting the Greens: How can the “alternative” party become more influential in parliamentary politics without also becoming more like the established parties?

Political theory is not an independent realm of thought. Ultimately it must always refer back to some metaphysical presuppositions of Weltanschauung that is not in itself political. This does not imply that every metaphysical position entails logically necessary political consequences. But it does mean that implicitly or explicitly political theories depend on more general religious, epistemological, and moral considerations. This condition of political thinking serves to explain much of the narrowness of contemporary political theory. For the dominant currents of philosophy neither can, nor wish, to provide a basis for political speculation, which is increasingly regarded as an undisciplined form of self-expression. On the other hand, the naive hope that political studies might fruitfully emulate the methods of the natural sciences, and so share their success, has all but evaporated. The result is that political theory is now concerned to insist on its own limitations, to be critical and even negative in character. This is not a new thing. The lack of philosophical inspiration combined with the decline of “scientific” aspirations has plagued politically sensitive minds at least since the very beginning of the present century. And, from the first, one of the responses to this frustration has been the effort to escape philosophical difficulties by grasping at intuitive short-cuts to truth. The most remarkable of these flights to intuition was political Bergsonism. Moreover, this is not an entirely closed chapter in the history of ideas. Even if Bergson no longer enjoys his earlier popularity, he is still widely read, especially in America. Again, the recent vogue of existentialist “politics” points to an analogous trend, while the penchant for “action,” which is inherent in intuitive politics, is as strong as ever among French intellectuals.

Since the early 1930's but especially during and since the war of 1941–1945, the Kremlin has made increasing use of symbols and terms designed to elicit “patriotic” responses in the population under its control. While never completely abandoned, the ideology of “proletarian internationalism” has receded ever further into the background in Soviet doctrine and propaganda. The concept of the “Soviet fatherland” was developed in connection with Stalin's program of “socialism in one country” and of rapid industrialization and the formation of a new Soviet bureaucracy. This process was expressed most vividly in connection with the adoption of the “Stalin Constitution” in 1936, and the claim, maintained ever since, that a new type of “socialist” democracy and citizenship had been established and embodied therein.

Plato's Lysis addresses the problem of Plato's Republic—the tension between individual and communal good—by exploring the question of what or who is the friend. Friends, I argue, experience another as their own, and themselves as not wholly their own. Unlike the guardians of Plato's Republic, friends say both mine and not mine of one another. Grounded in both self-awareness and belonging, friendship serves as a model for philosophy, and demonstrates the possibility of associations that support our complex identity as human beings and citizens.

While it may not be surprising that Mill's proposal for a “plural voting” scheme that would award more votes to citizens with more education has few contemporary supporters, it is surprising that so many interpreters take him to regard plural voting as merely a temporary measure meant to ease the transition from restricted to universal suffrage. Contra Amy Gutmann, Maria Morales, Wendy Donner, David Brink, Wendy Sarvasy, Bruce Baum, and Jonathan Riley, I argue that Mill believes that plural voting should always accompany universal suffrage and thus that it should be in place indefinitely.

It is widely claimed that Mencius's account of punitive expedition can be understood as a Confucian justification of humanitarian intervention and thus has the potential to play the role of constraining China's imperial ventures abroad. This paper challenges this optimism, by drawing attention to internal and external obstacles—the problem of virtue's self-indulgence and the problem of justification to non-Confucians—that prevent Mencius's virtue-based political theory of punitive expedition from developing into a modern theory of humanitarian intervention. It argues that for the Mencian theory to be relevant in the modern world marked most notably by moral pluralism, it must be transformed into a democratic theory, at the center of which is the stipulation that humanitarian intervention be morally justified internally, that is, to the people of the intervening state, as well as externally, first to the people to be intervened state, and second to international society.

Rousseau first glimpsed the principle of the natural goodness of man in the so-called “Illumination of Vincennes,” and he made it his mission as an author to persuade his readers of the truth of that vision. Rousseau must persuade his readers that they are deceived by what they see before their own eyes and that they must learn to see anew—through his eyes. In order to educate his reader, Rousseau consistently uses rhetorical and literary techniques that are meant to change the reader's perspective. His use of these techniques is particularly pervasive in Emile. The present analysis examines Rousseau's education of the reader of his pedagogical treatise, especially through comparisons he draws between his imaginary pupil, Emile, and actual children that are meant to persuade the reader of the truth of what first appears to be imaginary and the falsity of what the reader previously believed was real.

Anarchy is rarely or never upheld with consistency. In the pedagogy of Rousseau, there is a set purpose to let the child be guided by natural necessity rather than by human command, and to let him learn from the experience of physical facts rather than by obedience. “Keep the child solely dependent on things; you will have followed the order of Nature in the process of his upbringing. Never oppose to his unreasonable wishes any but physical obstacles or punishments resulting from the actions themselves — he will remember these punishments in similar situations. It is enough to prevent him from doing evil without forbidding him to do it …” (Emile, II). Remarkably, the theory that the method of authority is a poor substitute for the pedagogical power of nature has been accepted, in varying degree of enthusiasm or reluctance, by most schools of pedagogy and has demonstrated lasting power. Yet the authority of parents and tutors is present throughout pedagogical theories, even when it is passed over in silence. Childhood is the domain where the suppression of all authority is obviously impossible. The most radical constructs of anarchy, as soon as they rise above the level of idle rhetoric, admit of qualifications so far at least as the immature part of mankind is concerned. Anti-authoritarian theorists, with few exceptions if any, do not mean that authority should disappear or that it can ever cease to be a factor of major importance in human affairs. What thinkers opposed to authority generally mean is that authority can never be vindicated except by such deficiencies as are found in children, in the feeble-minded, the emotionally unstable, the criminally inclined, the illiterate, and the historically primitive.

Tradition has it that upon returning from his first Sicilian voyage in 388/387 B.C. Plato founded the Academy. It is also commonly held that, following the example of the Pythagorean brotherhoods with which he had come in contact in Southern Italy, he intended to make the Academy a center of philosophicor scientific studies, as well as a cult society (thiasos) dedicated to the worship of the Muses. Plutarch points out that “in his writings Plato advanced some excellent arguments concerning the laws, the government and the commonweal. But even more important is the fact that he inspired his pupils to positive political action.“ This suggests the further possibility, hardly ever considered, that the Academy itself was indeed a school for aspiring statesmen — perhaps the first organized “institute of political science” in the Western world.

There exists a substantial body of revolutionary analysis focused on those elusive objective conditions that permit rebels to rise with some hope of success. There is, of course, no more a general consensus on how to begin an insurrection than on how to prevent one. At one extreme there exist the more simpleminded adherents of Règis Debray who have suggested that a small band of the brave, a foco, may alone spark an insurrection against an oppressive regime. At the other are those reluctant rebels who insist on so extensive a roster of assets that the moment to rise continues to recede into the distant future. Still within the middle ground conditions have sufficiently encouraged some so that, possessed of a just cause and hopeful of ultimate victory, the armed struggle has been launched. As a result in southern Africa and Latin America, on Mindanao and in the Basque country of Spain, there are insurrections under different banners. Some appear close to victory and others on the verge of disaster, a few are little more than the disorderly residue of past hopes and others scarcely begun. For all a crucial question remains how to escalate the initial thrust. An insurrection may begin as the act of an urban conspiracy, spring from the operations of a rural foca, evolve out of the spontaneous rising of the masses; but unless the moment is ripe any insurrection can flicker out in the recriminations of exiles or be interned with the dead. And, perhaps, no set of potential rebels have had as much experience and as little luck in identifying the moment to strike as the Irish. Yet, the news from Northern Ireland indicates that this time they must be doing something right—or the British something wrong.

No minority group in the United States is probably as formless and yet at the same time as rigid as the American membership of the Roman Catholic Church. The rigidity of the Catholic organization arises from the fact that there has never been a real heresy during the three centuries and more of Catholic life within the boundaries of the present United States. Even the so-called heresy of Americanism existed more in the minds of European theologians than in the Catholics of the new world. There have been divergencies among American Catholics on such questions as the application of Gregory XVI's condemnation of the slave trade, the timeliness of die declaration of papal infallibility or the extent of the papal condemnation of secret societies, but there has been no difference on the essential doctrines involved in these disputes.