The United Kingdom, already beleaguered in the mid-1970's by a number of serious problems—economic, social, political, diplomatic and even climatic—in addition has had to contend with a far-reaching constitutional crisis. Involving the subject of devolution of power (better known as home rule), it has been described as “the most crucial constitutional issue which has confronted the United Kingdom since it came into being.” The controversy over devolution has reached a new level of intensity since November, 1975, when the government, in an effort to resolve the dispute, published a White Paper entitled Our Changing Democracy: Devolution to Scotland and Wales. This article examines the following aspects of the devolution issue: its background, why it has emerged at this time, why the White Paper was issued, reasons for the hostile reaction to the White Paper, the prospects for parliamentary passage of devolution legislation, and the issue's political repercussions and implications, both domestic and international.

Through his modern “Yankee,” Mark Twain reveals to his readers the underlying desire to overcome the very material world he seems to want to instantiate. Although the Yankee seems a modern man who simply wants to create the conditions in Arthurian England by which his body will be most comfortable, both his zeal for this project and the trajectory of his soul's course during the book betray an underlying hope to overcome his “mortal coil” through first technological and then political projects. In charting the impetus and evolution of the Yankee's psychology for us, Twain teaches us much about the nature of the “modern project”—its underlying hopes and its potential for dangerous, even totalitarian, excesses. As appealing as the starkly contrasting Arthurians might be, given this insight, Twain does not ultimately endorse this position but shows that its explicit claim does not ultimately satisfy our desire for noninstrumental goods.

The article argues that feminist theory needs a concept of objectivity as part of its working epistemology. “Objectivity” is not, as has been argued by some contemporary feminists, inevitably a “dichotomist male epistemological construct,” leading to psychological distance and the hierarchies of “knower” and “known” that have victimized many groups in liberal society. The article analyzes Catherine MacKinnon's critique of “objectivity” as one of the most explicit, sophisticated and compelling theories demonstrating current feminist mistrust of “objectivity.” It finds that even MacKinnon uses “objectivity” in a one-dimensional manner, equating epistemological objectivity with political objectification.

This essay questions the seemingly laudatory judgment of Cesare Borgia in The Prince, chapter 7, by highlighting its emphasis on Borgia's dependence on the arms of others, which Machiavelli equates with “fortune.” During their encounters in 1502–1503, Machiavelli became keenly aware of Borgia's dependence on his papal father, on France, and on mercenaries. The praise of the “foundations” Borgia allegedly laid to remedy this dependence (including a fantasized conquest of Tuscany) is not Machiavelli's own assessment but the voice of Borgia's self-dramatizing and self-deceiving exaggerations. Knowing the weakness behind Cesare's bravado, Machiavelli could not have considered him the model of the “new prince,” still less of the “redeemer” invoked in chapter 26. On the contrary, Borgia is the negative model of the new prince who depends on the arms of others, inevitably fails, and blames fortune misconstrued as malicious fate.

This article challenges the prevailing interpretations of Hobbes's thought as providing only minimal protection for the natural right of individuals in political society. Natural right requires the protection of not just the subjects' lives, but their ability to live commodiously, and as a result the protection that natural right receives in political society places substantive constraints on the actions of the sovereign. When those entrusted with sovereign power overstep this constraint, they cease to be sovereign and the former subjects are returned to the state of nature to seek protection as each judges fit. I develop the substance of commodious living more thoroughly than similar analyses and demonstrate that this understanding is not limited to Leviathan but can be found in Hobbes's earlier political work as well.

This article offers an interpretation of British philosopher William Godwin's theory of property ownership, as outlined in his Enquiry Concerning Political Justice. Godwin's work can be read as presenting an incoherent account of property rights, which, on the one hand, justifies its existence on seemingly utilitarian grounds while, on the other, impugns its legitimacy on egalitarian grounds. But the contradiction apparent in Godwin's position is actually illusory and can in fact be plausibly interpreted as comprising a coherent two-level understanding of political morality, wherein the right to own private property is best comprehended as a “right to do wrong.”

Many readers have taken the garden scene in Richard II and the voice of its Gardener to constitute a relatively straightforward statement of Shakespeare's notions of good government and constancy in political conduct, in stark contrast to the political disorder depicted in the play. I argue, however, that read in the context of the political and moral issues Shakespeare explored, its value or even relevance to his political world is questionable. The choric voice of the Gardener was not necessarily Shakespeare's. The dramatic point may have been to present, without resolving, the dissonance between the Gardener's vision and the imponderables of political conduct lying beyond his tiny realm.

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.

The essay addresses the construction of the common good as viewed by one of the most controversial thinkers of the later Middle Ages. Marsiglio of Padua presents an extended argument for the compatibility of the material advantage of individuals with civil association by basing his conception of the community on the benefits that accrue to human beings from realizing their “natural” self-interests. According to Marsiglio, it is in the nature of human beings to seek their own physical well-being, which is best achieved by living communally. Hence, Marsiglian society is ultimately arranged according to the principle of promoting the goal of private advantage, the fulfillment of which is equivalent to the common good. The argument contains distinct elements of some of the main themes of modern economic rationality, yet also builds a bridge to a substantial idea of community.

In historical retrospect,* the period between the last great formations of European nationalism, German unification and the Italian Riorgimento, and the second world war, must appear as among the most crucial and decisive eras in the political life of the West. The single, but ultimately all-embracing, phenomenon which gives this period its special character is the emergence of the ethical and monistic lay state—the state which, from the sociological point of view, and hence ethically, juridically and politically, seeks the effective subordination to itself of all forms of social life. In Italy, this process, as the result of conditions prevalent there, was especially articulated; and the logic of the new state was developed almost hyperbolically in certain of its dimensions and aspects. In that same country, also as a result peculiar to its conditions, the diagnosis and the contraindications of the monistic state emerged simultaneously with the emergence of that state itself. The ideas and the forces which were effectively to stabilize and then to reverse the process of the lay state were present and active from the moment that state made its effective appearance. For this reason the history of Italy must possess as especial interest during this period. The man who has been, perhaps beyond all others, the expressive and dynamic symbol of those ideas and forces, is Don Luigi Sturzo. As a consequence his career, like the history of his country, has arresting, if not unique, interest.

The article defends the proposition that the distinctive diplomatic legacy of John Quincy Adams constitutes an important case study documenting the significance of moral reasoning in the statesman's obligation to uphold the national interest in a universal system of power politics. Recourse to political ethics afforded Adams a vantage point from which to evaluate the volatile problem of intervention—viewed in terms of the moral responsibilities and limits of American power—at a crucial turning point in the diplomatic history of the young republic. Important in this connection is how Adams attempted to reconcile the blessings of liberty with the methods and purposes of American diplomacy within and beyond the Western Hemisphere.An attempt is made to evaluate the sources and meaning of statesmanship for Adams who—as perhaps the nation's most experienced diplomat and accomplished Secretary of State—judged the limits and opportunities of American power from a perspective that considered moral precepts and international law as compatible with the prudent pursuit of American national interest in world affairs.

It is a strange quirk of intellectual history that essays in the comprehensive interpretation of history seem to have become fashionable in inverse proportion to the decline of system-building in philosophy. Given this tendency, however, it is not surprising that philosophical historians have again focussed their attention upon America and that new systematic interpretations of American development have come to light. One such interpretation returns to the theories of one of the most praised but most neglected students of American society: Alexis de Tocqueville. According to this view the crucial fact in American history is the absence of a European ancien régime. The leading exponent of the “back to de Tocqueville” movement adverts to what might be called “the storybook truth about American history: that America was settled by men who fled from the feudal and clerical oppressions of the Old World.” If this view is correct, “then the outstanding thing about the American community in Western history ought to be the nonexistence of those oppressions, or since the reaction against them was in the broadest sense liberal, that the American community is a liberal community.” But in this sense of the term, “liberal” America was not the only “liberal” community, for America was not the only country which created a frontier existence free of many of the restraints of the old European society. Australia developed a comparable frontier life, and it had no entrenched aristocracy of the European sort.

Current literature on recent Soviet industrial and agricultural reorganizations emphasizes the economic rather than the political significance of the reforms. Because economists have written on these developments more than political scientists, the importance of politics and the political meaning of these changes have not been adequately recognized. This article does not purport to minimize the economic significance of these reforms; it will examine some of the political factors which hitherto have been overlooked or de-emphasized.

The challenge of fascism led Italy's most distinguished philosopher, Benedetto Croce, to focus on the condition of the philosophical foundations of liberalism. Partly as a result, Croce became a central figure in the liberal opposition to fascism, and when, in the early 1940's, it became possible to envision the reconstruction of a liberal political order in Italy, he had no choice but to play a major role, even though he was seventy-seven years old in 1943. Largely because of Croce's direct involvement, the ensuing debate over political priorities brought to the surface, to an unusual degree, major questions about the intellectual underpinnings of liberalism. Croce had been seeking to bring liberal theory up to date, with some promising results, but his immediate practical preoccupations during the 1940's diluted the force of his argument, so the contribution which he could have made to a modern recasting of liberalism, both for Italy and for modern culture in general, was not appreciated. Instead, Croce's stance contributed to tensions that quickly caused Italian liberalism to fragment — and to shrink — and of course the resulting weakness has been crucial to postwar Italian history. On the European level as well, the new liberalism he had in mind never fully coalesced, and thus in part, liberalism has been widely considered passé among European intellectuals.

At the close of hostilities geography proved decisive in the mis-fortune of Hungary, a country that had been in the inner circle of the German power sphere. From this came the basic problem of Hungarian diplomacy—attempting to preserve Hungarian independence in an almost impossible situation. None of the Axis satellites was in so precarious a position. The peripheral location of Italy, Finland, Rumania and Bulgaria made possible their early surrender, but events in Hungary inevitably turned out differently. Hungary could hardly succeed in changing sides during the war. She did not enjoy the trust of the Germans, her supposed partners. She did not enjoy much sympathy in the West. And she was positively disliked by the Russians. Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden said to President Franklin D. Roosevelt that he “thought Stalin would want to be pretty arbitrary about Hungary.”

Among recent American historians, few topics have provoked more controversy than the character of the Confederation period. On one side, scholars like Forrest McDonald have contended that the era from the end of the revolutionary war to the creation of the federal constitution was a time of economic confusion and political chaos, a “critical period” in which popular protest became violent enough to threaten civil war. On the other side, critics of this view led by Merrill Jensen have argued that the period was in fact prosperous and relatively stable, that political protests were few and mostly well behaved, and that, in short, the “critical period” was really not very critical at all. This article does not enter into this debate. Instead, it works from the premise that events are often less important than the perception of events. That is, actual conditions aside, it considers how Americans of the day perceived these conditions. In particular, it describes how they viewed their politics through the filter of their understanding of history.