Conservatives and liberals have been living together these past two centuries in the intellectual house which Edmund Burke built. It ought to give conservatives pause that Burke's most intelligent admirer in recent times was Harold Laski. Indeed, Laski thinking to hand Burke the ultimate encomium called him the father of the welfare state. One suspects in reading Laski on the subject of Burke that Laski imagines himself to be what Burke might have become had he had the insights of Marx and the advantages of a Fabian education available to him.

Rousseau's injection of the human element onto the austere scene of politics drawn in Du Contrat Social comes as a surprise. This element, personified by the legislator in Chapter 7 of Book II, serves two purposes. It dramatizes the political forces in Rousseau's scheme for not the most perfect, but perhaps the best attainable, regime. As the contemporary condition of civic slavery called for radical reform, that is, a regeneration, man must reassure himself that the birth of a good order is possible by delving back to the foundation of government. In doing so man might also learn something about how and why it takes place. The second reason for introducing the legislator relates to the vital threefold functions he performs as the eyes, brain and motive force of the people.

This paper constructs, within the American liberal consensus, a conceptual frame into which the great paradoxes of American politics can be fitted without significant omission or unexplained contradiction. The foundation of the American liberal consensus is seen to be a Protestant-bourgeois individualism divided against itself. This fundamental division issues into conflicting visions of America as a democracy. In national, legitimizing myth, America is seen as a Protestant-tinctured social democracy organized in terms of sovereignty of the people, confederalism, separation of powers, and popular government. On the other hand, in the ideology of America as a legally functioning state, it is a bourgeois, liberal democracy organized in terms of constitutionalism, federalism, mixed government, and representative government. These distinctions make possible a consistent explanation of the consensus-cleavage paradox that lies at the core of American political life. They also explain the persistent ambiguity that confuses the democratic character of the American political system and also the biformalism of its major institutions.

The international protection of human rights has in recent years become a prominent topic in the literature on international law and on the agenda of international conferences. The explanation for this is not far to seek. The experiences of two world wars and the ‘oppression of dictators’ would in themselves be sufficient reasons for such interest. Re-assertion of the inalienable rights of man serves as a reminder of the truth that man is not meant to be merely a means to the attainment of transient ends. Though the academic character of the many schemes propounded is only too apparent, they evoke sympathy; for they voice widely-felt anxiety over the ever-increasing pressure of organized groups upon the individual, the ultimate basis of life in national and international society. Charters of human rights, suitably formulated in the abstract, have also an undeniable utility value in war and peace. They provide a convenient common denominator for allies who are primarily united in negatives, that is to say, by common enmity towards their adversaries. Once victory has eliminated the unifying element, the functions of such wartime ideologies change. They become ‘artillery of popular excitation’ in the peacetime struggles of world power politics and, like religion in former times, a ‘cloak to shadow divers factious designes.’

The article explores a cross-cultural approach to the history of political thought. With reference to Maruyama Masao's classic equation of fourteenth-century European scholasticism with eighteenth-century Japanese Confucianism, a comparison between Marsilius of Padua and Ogyu Sorai reveals, behind their ostensibly similar “communal functionalist” outlook, their contrasting views on the role of language as a medium for political communication. Marsilius believed in human's associative power by means of such linguistic communication as oratory and discussion, whereas Sorai underrated speech to favor government by ritual. This contrast has repercussions for the two traditions of political thought in Western Europe and Japan. The exalted status of speech in political communication constituted a mainstream of late medieval and early modern political discourse in Western Europe, whereas the Japanese Confucian idea of government by ritual survived until the mid-nineteenth century when it clashed with European thought then being imported into Japan.

It is a terribly responsible task to write on Polish-Russian relations at the present moment. It is a moment of dangerous tension in these relations, perhaps even of decisive crisis. Therefore, everything should be avoided that could contribute on either side to excitement which would be equally harmful to the two countries concerned and to the United Nations as a whole. Since the reciprocal misunderstanding has, to a large extent, historical bases, the more realistic approach to the problem would seem to be simply to forget the whole historical background and to look for an entirely new start.

It is not surprising that the United States produced a Socialist Party; it would be astonishing if one had not developed. American history is filled with radical and protest parties, ranging through every shade of the political spectrum and sharing the conviction that the major parties did not or would not represent their particular interests.

Almost from the time that the Spanish-American republics achieved their independence in the 182O's, there has existed a movement known as hispanismo, hispanoamericanismo and panhispanismo. For sake of simplicity, this movement is referred to as hispanismo throughout the present paper. What is hispanismo? This can best be answered by describing some of the fundamental beliefs of those men who have shaped and guided the movement. Although divided on innumerable matters of detail and even on some issues of fundamental significance, the champions of hispanismo, generally referred to in Spain as hispanoamericanistas, shared an unassailable faith in the existence of a transatlantic Hispanic family, community or raza.

Karl Marx and the United States is a subject which immediately elicits interest, but also surprise. Interest, because of its contemporary importance; surprise, because Marx and America have appeared so remote from one another. Marx has definitely influenced America, but that will not be the theme of this essay —instead, we will concern ourselves with the role of America in the thought of Marx. The magnitude of this role is illustrated by a statement made in Marx's letter to Abraham Lincoln, written in 1864 on behalf of the International Workingmen's Association:

The workingmen of Europe feel sure that as the American war of independence initiated a new era of the ascendency of the middle-class, so the American Anti-slavery war will do for the working-class.

The article considers Machiavelli's terza rima poems on Ingratitude, Ambition, Fortune and Occasion, generally called I Capitoli, in the context of Renaissance hermeticism, cabbala, erotic magic, and astrology. It argues that these poems, taken together and read as a whole, reveal Machiavelli's playful yet subversive cosmology that ousts the old gods by instituting a new theogony. At the same time, I Capitoli, addressed and dedicated to his friends, discloses Machiavelli's own ambitions and desires, delineating the subtle link between Niccolò the poet and Niccolò the prophet and benefactor.

The conventional wisdom on the basic philosophy of the constitutional concept of the separation of powers is well stated in The Federalist. In No. 47, citing the authority of the “celebrated Montesquieu,” James Madison wrote that “the accumulation of all powers legislative, executive and judiciary in the same hands, whether of one, a few or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” Clearly the Founding Fathers feared the corrupting influence of power. As Madison asked in No. 51, “what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” Another concise statement of the separation of powers concept is found in the famous remark made by Justice Brandeis in 1926, in his dissenting opinion in the Myers case, that “the doctrine of the separation of powers was adopted by the Convention of 1787 not to promote efficiency but to preclude the exercise of arbitrary power. The purpose was not to avoid friction, but, by means of the inevitable friction incident to the distribution of governmental powers among three departments, to save the people from autocracy.”

In October, 1936, the King of the Belgians, Leopold III, announced that the small Western European state planned to withdraw from her policy of alignment and adopt a policy which was “exclusively and completely Belgian.” Within six months, by the spring of 1937, Belgium signed an agreement with the French and British that replaced the defunct Locarno Pact and released her from the consultations and commitments involved in the Franco-Belgian Military Accords of 1920. The foreign policy of Belgium was altered to one of “independence” or neutrality and the two major powers of the West formally guaranteed her territorial integrity.

This paper has a twofold intention.

The first is to discuss the problem of political parties, — their justification and status, — in a society which requires political democracy as the set of political institutions appropriate for the government of men living under modern social and economic conditions. (By these modern conditions I mean such things as the economic forms of production and distribution in the industrial era; the organization of labor in relation to economic enterprise; the intensity and extensity of communication among men living in geographical separation and, consequently, the physical enlargement of the civic association; the approximation to universal education; the spread of literacy, etc.) There are two points to be noted here:

(1) That modern society is or tends toward a democracy in its physical and economic conditions, whether in a given instance its political forms are outwardly democratic, as in France, England and the United States, or anti-democratic, as in Italy, Germany and Russia.

(a) Not only does Russia publicize its claim to being democratic and make constitutional efforts in that direction which are, of course, at once vitiated by the persistence of its totalitarian regime; but even Germany and Italy give an appearance of democracy, — though they abominate the thought and word, — an appearance which is a reverse and distorted image. Thus, by the pressure of propaganda and the exercise of brutal force, the rulers of Germany and Italy try to make it appear that they have a mandate from the people for their policies.

I find myself in a difficult situation, beleaguered on all sides. According to Finnis, Aquinas derived a doctrine of natural rights from his teaching on natural law. According to Kries, echoing Fr. Fortin, the two ideas, natural rights and natural law, are radically opposed to one another. This leaves me with a hope that some readers, faced by these extremely opposed assertions, may find a note of sweet reasonableness, a sort of golden mean, in my own position, namely that Aquinas did not himself articulate a doctrine of natural rights, but that this doctrine was not inconsistent with his teaching on natural law. The two doctrines could coexist, as they did in some later neoscholastic writings.

Let us consider first the criticisms of Finnis. My own position was set out succinctly in a previous work. “When Aquinas was writing unreflectively and following the common practice of his age, he did use the word ius in a subjective sense in phrases like ius dominii. … Yet it remains true that he developed no explicit doctrine of subjective rights or natural rights.” This still seems to me a correct judgment. Moreover it corresponds quite closely to Finnis's reading of Aquinas in his earlier book.

Hegel's philosophy of history is conventionally regarded as a part of his mature “system of science.” And so it is. What is less frequently understood, however, is that this philosophy grew out of or can at least be understood as an attempt to come to terms with a crisis in the tradition of modern natural right.

THANKS to Richard Ellmann's definitive biography of James Joyce we know quite a lot about the genesis and writing of ‘The Dead,’ the concluding story in Dubliners. Joyce wrote no other short stories after it, but in a letter (January 6, 1907) to his brother Stanislaus, from Rome, in which he first referred to ‘The Dead,’ he mentioned it as one of five stories “all of which … I could write if circumstances were favorable.” The others, which seem not to have been attempted were ‘The Last Supper,’ ‘The Street,’ ‘Vengeance,’ and ‘At Bay.’ It must have been immediately thereafter that ‘The Dead’ took precedence in his thought, for in a letter written only five days later he remarked that the news of the controversy in Dublin over The Playboy of the Western World had “put me off the story I ‘was going to write’ — to wit, The Dead.” Shortly afterwards he decided to give up his job as a bank cashier in Rome and return to Trieste, which on March 5, 1907, he did. Apparently he worked at the story intermittently in the ensuing months.

Perhaps surprisingly, one of the founders of the modern technological world, Francis Bacon, has a penetrating and sustained lifelong engagement with the phenomenon of love or eros. Bacon's reflections on eros come in two stages. He first examines the human and moral meaning of love. Bacon attends to the exorbitant promises of love—to bring us into a perfect condition, to grant us eternity—and finds them confused or unreasonable. Bacon then moves away from an engagement with the simple experiences of love and their promises. Departing from the human perspective, he proceeds to examine love, from the point of view of natural science or cosmology, as a fundamental property or principle of matter. This departure tends to lead, at least in the case of Bacon's followers, if not in Bacon's own case, to an obliviousness to both his cynical and appreciative insights into love.

Let's begin by presenting some newly discovered documents concerning Niccolò Machiavelli. The biographical detail may at first appear overwhelming, but the light these documents shed on the chronology of Machiavelli's composition of The Prince helps to answer some old questions concerning the character of Machiavelli's little treatise. The new documents date from the year 1515. They were drawn up at a time of financial difficulty and profound personal disappointment in the life of the former Florentine secretary and second chancellor. In 1512 Machiavelli had been fired from the chancery of the Florentine Republic. In 1513 he had been arrested on a probably false charge of conspiracy, tortured (although he gave no confession), and then unexpectedly freed in a general amnesty following the election of a Florentine, Giovanni de' Medici, as Pope Leo X. In 1515, at the time these documents were drawn up, Machiavelli was still out of favor. But he was also putting into prose the theoretical work that established the extraordinary reputation still associated with him today.