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.

Communitarian thinkers have counterposed their views to those of liberalism as providing a more adequate basis for a political morality—a morality that deals with issues relevant to a political unit, such as liberty, equality, and fairness. Communitarians face the difficulty that the common understandings they rely on to back up a political morality are not easy to find in the form they need. This is because social units fracture along various lines, giving rise to diverse and often conflicting discourses. Where, despite such fractures, common understandings emerge as a result of either desperation or the manufacture of consent, they do not seem appropriate as a basis for a valid political morality. To avoid the weaknesses of communitarianism, it is not necessary to abandon the importance of social context for political morality. Instead, one can make use of a social theory that stresses social divisions in order to lay the base for political morality. A political morality appropriate to a group can be developed on the basis of the interests associated with such divisions.

The view of Rousseau as a romantic for whom history is a fatal acquisition negating what is most essential and valuable in human nature has been powerfully renewed in many recent interpretations. It remains possible, however, to reinterpret Rousseau's view of history as both the key to the whole of his work and his most important contribution to the tradition of radical political thought. The identification of history with fatality is insufficient and misleading in as much as it misunderstands both the substance and the import of his philosophical anthropology. Rousseau's critique of liberalism and the Enlightenment rests not simply upon an intuitive transcendence of civilized artifice, but upon the first major attempt to construct a historical anthropology which, by undoing the identification of man with bourgeois man, poses the problem of human historicity as a social process entailing increasing alienation and repression.

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.

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.

The “demos paradox” is the idea that the composition of a demos could never secure democratic legitimacy because the composition of a demos cannot itself be democratically decided. Those who view this problem as unsolvable argue that this insight allows them to adopt a critical perspective towards common ideas about who has legitimate standing to participate in democratic decision-making. We argue that the opposite is true and that endorsing the demos paradox actually undermines our ability to critically engage with common ideas about legitimate standing. We challenge the conception of legitimacy that lurks behind the demos paradox and argue that the real impossibility is to endorse democracy without also being committed to significant procedure-independent standards for the legitimate composition of the demos. We show that trying to solve the problem of the demos by appeal to some normative conception of democratic legitimacy is a worthwhile project that is not undermined by paradox.

While scholars have argued that in Emile Rousseau uses Robinson Crusoe as a model of self-sufficiency to further his ideal of a “natural” man, this essay argues that Rousseau's presentation of Defoe's hero points in precisely the opposite direction. Crusoe is not a natural man but rather a social man in isolation, and makes his solitude an object of reflection. He therefore assists in the development of Emile's awareness of himself as an individual, which marks the transition between Emile's existence as a merely physical being and his existence as a moral being. Crusoe prepares Emile to address the question, “What is society good for?” by expanding Emile's understanding of what is good. The implications of these considerations for understanding Rousseau's ideas about authorship, identity, and the possibility of a truly self-sufficient individual are developed.

Those not well acquainted with Karl Marx often believe that the founder of “scientific Communism” was a militant atheist who considered the extermination of religion and, in particular, of Christianity one of his major tasks. This belief is, to say the least, inexact.

Ronald Dworkin's effort to distinguish multiple layers of “intention” that are embedded in the constitutional text has been taken as a substantial critique of traditional originalist jurisprudence. Dworkin has strongly argued that the constitutional text embodies abstract principles. These principles are understood to be both fundamental to the Founders' intentions and the primary focus of correct constitutional interpretation faithful to those intentions. This article argues that Dworkin's reconceptualization of originalism is theoretically flawed. Although there may be normative reasons for preferring that the judiciary always enforce broad constitutional principles, such a jurisprudence cannot be understood as either consistent with or required by an originalist interpretative method whose primary commitment is to fidelity to founding intent.

The article examines two different types of “tolerant” dialogues, represented by Desiderius Erasmus and Jean Bodin. Erasmus offers a traditional conception of dialogue, in which the speakers are engaged in a common search for truth. This search for truth justifies toleration. To discover truth, the speakers must be free to question the other speakers' views, as well as their own. And they must respect each other because civility promotes the discovery of truth. Bodin, by contrast, presents an alternative version of the tolerant dialogue in his Colloquium heptaplomeres, a dialogue between representatives of seven different religions. While the Erasmian dialogue presupposes that (1) there is a single truth and that (2) the greater the consensus, the more successful the dialogue, in Bodin's Colloquium, the speakers do not pursue a common truth. Rather, they offer up their own particular versions of truth, unwilling to change their positions. The speakers do not agree on the truth because truth—especially religious truth—is complex, and each speaker represents a different facet of that multifaceted truth. And though the speakers remain firm in their initial convictions, they gain from the dialogue a clearer perception of their own opinions. By comparing their views with one another, the speakers come to better understand their separate truths, the sum of which constitutes the whole truth.

Mosca's and Pareto's elite conceptions have had a curious fate. Mosca's work, in many ways an anticipation of Pareto's, has been overshadowed by his more brilliant and renowned antagonist from the very beginning, and perhaps only the circumstance that his American editor chose as the title for his Elementi di scienza politica the two words which fairly epitomize his theory (“the ruling class”) enables many a student of sociology to associate Mosca's name with at least a vague notion about the nature of his contribution. Pareto himself, the skeptically disinterested “maître de Céligny,” whose only ambition was to “tell the complete truth and nothing but the truth,” has generally come to be regarded as a “Karl Marx of bourgeoisie,” an intellectual precursor of Fascism, and worse. Both are seen, unjustifiably, as enemies of democracy and detractors of the “new belief in the common man.”

The quarrel between Socrates and Callicles has long been recognized as the highpoint of Plato's Gorgias. But the acceptance of an overly simple view of Callicles has kept this quarrel from being understood in its full complexity. While Callicles appears to be a cynical immoralist, this appearance hides his deepest convictions; and while he and Socrates never come to a genuine meeting of the minds, the unbridgeable gap between them is due to Callicles′ unwillingness to acknowledge his moral convictions rather than to his lack of them. Through a close examination of their quarrel, the essay attempts to uncover true character of the irreconcilable differences between Socrates and Callicles and thus provide a pathway for a new understanding of Plato's Gorgias.

Over the past two decades, Philip Pettit has consistently argued for an understanding of “republican” liberty in terms of nondomination. Yet in his major published studies, he has almost nothing to say about markets, nor about the economy more generally. I contend that this is a seriously problematic omission, insofar as markets represent a major problem for republican views of freedom. In short: if freedom requires the absence of the mere possibility of arbitrary interference (as Pettit maintains), then the widespread existence of markets indicates that on a republican view the vast majority of people in the world today exist in the dominated position of slaves. As a result, Pettit cannot adopt the “complacency” towards market transactions that he officially avows. But in turn, we ought to be highly skpetical that the republican account of freedom is a viable one.

The revolutions of 1640 and 1789 were carried forward with a positive enthusiasm for freedom. The drama and the failure of each revolution were dominated by this fact; each revolution provided the stage for long-drawn-out struggles to write a constitution. Each produced a crop of such constitutions; and eventually a dictator emerged to carry out by force the authority that could not be arranged by cooperation. But the lesson of the struggle for constitutional freedom was not lost; the idea of the rights of man was not dead. In England, in France, this impulse produced constitutional systems in the course of the next generation; and these systems remained.

The easy conflation of god(s) and country—what might be called the dual foundations of justice—is challenged and explored in Sophocles′ Philoctetes. Odysseus's consistent appeal to the common good and Philoctetes′ troubled attachment to a divinely sanctioned principle of justice are set at odds in a play where the fate of the entire Greek expedition at Troy hangs in the balance. While most read the play as a celebration of young Neoptolemus as he frees himself from the corrupt influence of Odysseus and, through his encounter with Philoctetes, grows in personal integrity, this essay maintains that Neoptolemus comes under the influence of both antagonists because each has something important to teach him. Rather than offering a simple morality tale, Sophocles′ investigation of justice in this play both reveals the depth of the conflict between the requirements of politics and those of piety, and criticizes the extreme embodiments of these perspectives in the figures of Odysseus and Philoctetes.

Interest in the study of international relations has considerably increased in American universities since the close of World War II. A School of World Affairs has been established by Columbia University which is also planning institutes for special areas, the first of which, the Russian Institute, will open soon. To promote research and teaching, grants have been given to universities, such as that by the Rockefeller Foundation to Yale University. It is reported that in almost all educational institutions the students, particularly veterans, show an especially great interest in international affairs. The Council on Foreign Relations, keenly aware of this situation, has organized conferences in various parts of the country to investigate problems of teaching and research in international relations.

In his 24 September 1981 television address presenting the argument for a second round of budget cuts, President Reagan concluded by citing an old authority:

More than a century ago a Frenchman came to America and later wrote a book for his countrymen telling them what he had seen here. He told them that in America when a citizen saw a problem that needed solving he would cross the street and talk to a neighbor about it and the first thing you know a committee would be formed and before long the problem would be solved. And then he added, “you may not believe this, but not a single bureaucrat would have been involved.”

Despite the impact of Leo Strauss on American political science and political theory, where, exactly, Strauss was “coming from,” in both senses of that phrase, has been far from clear. Carl Friedrich, reviewing the, at that point, unknown author's book on Hobbes, noted that Strauss might have been more forthcoming about his own position, but he believed that it was safe to conclude that he was a “historical relativist.” Friedrich may have been closer to the mark than many subsequent commentators realized, but in order to understand Strauss's work, it is necessary to return to the universe he inhabited before “coming to America.” Since Strauss's death, his enterprise has been subject to careful scrutiny, but his early life and work have remained opaque.

Some Thoughts Concerning Education offers the theory of governance the Two Treatises lack. Education is the key to Lockean politics: self-government and public order require virtuous citizens, and these citizens, as Locke suggested in the Essay and explains in the Education, are made rather than found, constructed from the ground up by discipline. Through early and careful practices of education, they are enmeshed in a net of habit and custom that naturalizes the moral commitments they are taught, rendering the process, and the artifice, invisible. Locke entangles his subjects in an architecture of power of which they become the bearers, thereby providing the foundation for public order and limited government. Locke's disciplinary liberalism allows us to better appreciate late modern subjectivity as an achievement, rather than a given of political life, albeit an achievement that involves some uncomfortable compromises and a willingness to accept, if not laud, our disciplinary commitments.

Machiavelli often seems to advocate a conception of religion as an instrument of political rule. But in the concluding chapter of The Prince Machiavelli adopts a messianic rhetoric in which politics becomes an instrument of divine providence. Since the political project at stake in The Prince, especially in this last chapter runs against both the interests and the ideology of the Catholic Church in Italy, some commentators have argued that Machiavelli appeals to providence merely in order to fool the Church and the Medici. This article argues that it is not necessary to appeal to such exoteric readings of the 26th chapter of The Prince if one envisages the possibility that Machiavelli may have drawn upon an alternative, non-Christian conception of divine providence coming from medieval Arabic and Jewish sources that is more compatible with his desire to return to Roman republican principles than is the Christian conception of divine providence.