Hobbes's linguistic conventionalism is one of the most obvious themes of his work. But it has not been considered as closely as it should be, given its prominence. I argue that Hobbes reworked quite traditional materials in such a way as to produce a novel doctrine, but that this novelty did not involve him in the implausible claim that issues of scientific truth and proof could be settled simply on the basis of linguistic agreement. Rather, he grounded his conventionalism in the prelinguistic, naturally given experience he called “mental discourse,” and then linked it to the effort to outflank contemporary skepticism. For these reasons, Hobbes's specific form of conventionalism can then be seen to be central both to the limits of his claims and to what he thought could be established with a certainty robust enough to withstand skeptical challenge.

This article assesses the recent use of contractarian strategies for the justification of cosmopolitan distributive principles. It deals in particular with the cosmopolitan critique of political membership and tries to reject the claim that political communities are arbitrary for the scope of global justice. By focusing on the circumstances of justice, the nature of the parties, the veil of ignorance, and the sense of justice, the article tries to show that the cosmopolitan critique of political membership modifies the contractarian premises in a way that is both unwarranted and unnecessary. While failing to establish principles of global distributive justice, existing cosmopolitan adaptations of the social contract device simply weaken the method's justificatory potential.

The ascension to power of Chile's Christian Democratic Party (PDC) in 1964 generated a great deal of optimism on the future of Latin American politics. Eduardo Frei Montalva, the party's successful presidential candidate, was a thoughtful, politically astute intellectual who preferred careful analysis to florid demagoguery. To a continent enamored of ideologies, his movement proposed a social-Christian value system rooted in individual dignity, in the uniqueness of the human being, in economic pluralism, and in social and political democracy. Roman Catholicism with which the Christian Democrats were associated, but not officially connected, was one of the “few crosscutting and unifying forces” in Latin America and served to legitimize the movement with both traditional and modernizing elites. Frei's party evinced a mass membership with a branch structure3 linked to auxiliary agencies (which provide medical, dental, legal services, and the like). It relied on an efficient, paid bureaucracy rather than a coterie of notables to operate the organizational apparatus; public opinion polls rather than uninformed guesses to chart political strategy; dues and voluntary contributions rather than ”mordidas” and graft for financial sustenance; and specialized organs rather than personalism to aggregate such increasingly important sectors as women, peasants, urban poor, and students under the Christian Democratic standard.

Settlement workers during the Progressive era were probably more committed to political action than any other group of welfare workers before or since. Charity organization workers also cooperated on occasion in political reform projects, but Robert Hunter, the itinerant radical, settlement worker, and charity expert was probably right in 1902, even if he exaggerated, when he decided that the settlement worker and the charity worker had basically different temperaments. The charity worker was hesitant to get involved with reform, Hunter decided; he had a philosophy of “don't, don't” and was constantly troubled by the fear that his relief would destroy independence. The settlement worker, on the other hand, was more often the victim of unbounded enthusiasm than of moral questioning. “He is constantly doing, urging; he is constantly pressing forward, occasionally tilting at wind mills, at times making mistakes, often perhaps doing injury, but filled with enthusiasm, warmth and purpose, without much question”.

On July 23, 1953, a tax official paid a visit to the town of Saint-Cere in southwestern France, hoping to examine the accounts of some of the local shopkeepers. Barring his access to the books, however, he discovered a resolute, and rather menacing, band of merchants, formed the previous evening to prevent him from carrying out his duty. The tax official discreetly withdrew, and the books remained unaudited.

An important strand of the republican tradition warns that liberal education harms republics by promoting aristocracy, breeding an idle and skeptical class of philosophers and undermining the civic virtues on which republics depend. The American Founding generation, in its writings on education, rejected this warning and maintained instead that the open cultivation and wide dissemination of liberal learning is favorable to republican government, if not essential to its very existence. The aristocratic tendencies of liberal education would by mitigated by the diffusion of knowledge. Philosophy would show its usefulness by increasing man's power over nature and multiplying the conveniences of life. The republican virtues would be strengthened by the elucidation of their rational ground.

The legal system of Thailand is a product of history. For 10 centuries it evolved in an eclectic process. Territorial expansion and external threats eventuated in new legal values and institutions. Contact with the West caused an amalgamation of indigenous and foreign laws to maintain and strengthen the kingdom. Today the law is a vital factor upholding national unity and progress during a time of international tension in Southeast Asia. In this article I propose to survey the development of law in Thailand and analyze its role in the political affairs of the nation.

The present crisis has generated intense debate over the instruments of foreign policy the United States has at its disposal and controversy over their use in particular stages of a dispute or conflict. The debate has centered over the meaning and use of power and force. A little more than a decade ago, writing On Violence in an era when its primary manifestation was within national boundaries, the American political philosopher, the late Hannah Arendt, sought to distinguish between violence and power, saying: “… power always stands in need of numbers, whereas violence up to a point … relies on implements.” Writers differ on concepts such as power and violence. Power for some is conceived as the ability of the individual or the group to impose its will on others. Power for Arendt implied the human ability to act in concert —potestas in populo; without a people or group there is no power in politics. Power for individuals and groups is linked with prestige and authority. In politics, authority requires respect either for a person or an office; its enemy is contempt or laughter directed at the person or office. In both foreign relations and domestic affairs, “violence appears as a last resort to keep … power … intact against individual challengers — the foreign enemy, the native criminal …” or to overthrow authority. It would seem, therefore, that force and violence are the prerequisites of power and power nothing but a facade. In a violent world, it is force that counts not power which is dependent on force.

The study of leadership in local government for small- and middle-sized towns is a neglected phase of political science research. For many years scholars have accounted for the urban boss and machine; but its complementary counterpart at the grassroots has been taken for granted. Millions of Americans prefer to live and govern themselves in towns. Their politics warrants analysis not only because it will continue as a vital and characteristic contribution to our way of life but also because it frequently plays a superior rôle in state and national representation than it numerically is entitled to do

Charles I was charged in the indictment before the High Court of Justice, at the trial before his execution, with entertaining “a wicked design to erect and uphold in himself an unlimited and tyrannical power to rule according to his will.” To this end he had “traitorously and maliciously levied war against the present parliament.” It is usual to scoff at this. How could a king commit treason? Indeed he could not. Yet if he had set out to make himself a tyrant this was a grave offense which, though unknown to English law courts, had often been accounted in political theory as deserving death. The issue of treason is therefore without importance: however bad in law, there was certainly no lesser charge on which to bring a king to execution. The important question concerns tyranny.

My direct experience with the Bulgarian aspect of the interallied rivalries following the Second World War extended from the planning of postwar policy in the Department of State in 1943–44 through the first year (1944–45) of American participation in the implementation of the Bulgarian armistice.

The totalitarian state appeared as a state engaged in war. In the World War, for the first time in the twentieth century, the total reserves of national strength were concentrated in one great effort to destroy the enemy. The war was not the concern of the mobilized armies alone. It engaged the whole nation. “It was no longer possible (in the World War) to determine at what point the strength of the civilian population passed into the strength of the army and navy.” The army and the people constituted a single unit and as such they conducted the war. As a unit they faced their threatening opponent, who presented a similar common front. “The fighting ability of the forces at the front was conditioned by the fighting ability of the people at home.”

Francois-Etienne, due de Choiseul-Stainville, chief foreign policy-maker of France between 1758 and1770, sought to reverse the Peace of Paris which marked France's humiliating defeat by England in the Seven Years War. The objective of his “Revanche” was the restoration of the prewar maritime, commercial and colonial equilibrium with the British. To accomplish it, he relied on the Family Pact of 1761 with Spain, then the world's third naval power, and on the defensive Franco-Austrian alliance concluded in 1756 and revised in 1759, which Choiseul believed would suffice to keep the European continent at peace while the Bourbon powers concentrated all their forces, military and financial, for a purely naval war with Great Britain.

The political thought of Fyodor Dostoevsky grows out of his opposition to nihilism, atheistic humanism, and socialism in much the same way as the philosophy of Plato grew out of his opposition to the sophists. Indeed, the parallel of Dostoevsky's thought with that of Plato is to be seen in some further aspects of this fundamental opposition. Both the Russian master of the novel and the Hellenic founder of political science confronted adversaries for whom “Man is the measure of all things” and each based his opposition on the principle “God is the Measure,” to use Plato's formulation. This declaration, echoing like a thunderclap across more than twenty centuries of history, found consummate expression in the last great work of each writer: the Laws and The Brothers Karamazov.

I must begin by expressing my deep appreciation to Paul Rowe for bringing my work on theopolitics before a different audience than the ones to which I am accustomed and for bringing his own expertise in political science and political theory to bear on my writings. The depth and incisiveness of his critique provide me an opportunity to rethink and clarify my ideas. It also gives me the opportunity to prove that I do not deserve being mentioned in the same sentence as Che Guevara and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi!

This article argues that Nietzsche uses a rhetorically modern appeal to enact the self-overcoming of modernity and the aim of enlightenment. It demonstrates how Nietzsche aims to move his readers from a prejudice in favor of truthfulness, by appearing to radicalize that aim, to a new measure of nobility. In contrast to some who present Nietzsche's styles as the means to convey a dispersion of meanings, this article argues that, designs his writing to move his age. He adopts the prejudices of his time in Beyond Good and Evil, his mature “critique of modernity” in order to demonstrate the self-overcoming of those prejudices. Beyond merely questioning the value of truth, Nietzsche evaluates by the measure of psychological strength, and describes the character of nobility beyond good and evil and beyond truth and falsity.

Spain entered the twentieth century as a relatively underdeveloped nation still deeply rooted in her traditional past. Spanish life had barely begun to experience the stresses of social and economic transformation that recent scholars have identified with the modernization process. Toward the end of the last century, Spanish industry grew at a rapid pace, particularly in the Basque and Catalan regions, but the nation as a whole continued to lag behind the rest of Western Europe in the years before 1914. Although the recently formed trade union movements expanded in response to the new complex of urban-industrial problems, their organizational and political strength remained ineffective until World War I. In the other regions of Spain an agrarian economy, replete with strong anarchist movements, dominated and determined a social order in which provincialism, widespread subsistence living standards, and extensive illiteracy persisted.

Republican leaders have always sought to “crack” the Democratic South in the hope of making their party a majority one in all of the major sections of the country. The current proposals of Senator Karl E. Mundt of South Dakota for uniting northern Republicans and southern Democrats are not new; they have been tried in the past with little success. This was especially true of the post-Reconstruction years when the memories of Republican ascendancy in the South during die early years of Reconstruction were still fresh and vivid.