This paper calls attention to the interpretive, and humanist liberal, strand of thinking that is most clearly evident in the development of Charles Taylor's ideas. Recovering it makes it possible to see why the differences between Taylor and Rawls should be seen, not in terms of the erstwhile disputes between liberals and communitarians, but instead as over issues of method, and in particular about the independence or autonomy of political philosophy. Rawls and Taylor exemplify distinct modes of postanalytic liberal theorizing that emerged in the late twentieth century out of two very different responses to challenges within analytic philosophy's discursive beginnings that continue to divide the discipline to this day. Their juxtaposition, therefore, sheds light on how such methodological commitments animate normative prerogatives and generates important resources for thinking about the very powers and limits of political theory.

The contemporary position of Roman Catholics in Northern Ireland (Ulster), is inextricably entwined in historical origins of religious, political, economic and social webs. Depending upon one's knowledge of history or emotional disposition, it can be traced back to Strongbow in the tenth century, or to the defeat of James II in 1690. For the more pragmatic and less academic, the Government of Ireland Act of 1920 and the London Agreement of 1925, which divided Ireland into the North and South, will suffice. While many will disagree, it seems that most Irish, North or South, if pressed long and hard enough, admit that the basis of the conflict is partition of the six counties in the North (Antrim, Armagh, Derry, Donegal, Fermanagh and Tyrone) from the 26 counties in the South.

Michael Oakeshott's concerns about political developments in twentieth-century Europe seem to shape his philosophical writings. Yet Oakeshott persistently portrays himself as a philosopher who has little practical interest in politics. This essay argues that Oakeshott's genteel conception of the good life leads him to develop a political doctrine for practical reasons while disclaiming any practical motives. His diagnosis of collectivist politics in the 1930s reluctantly solicits a philosophical defense of a pluralist political order that is hospitable to his ethical ideal. His writings concerning the self, society, and state develop such a defense. Yet for Oakeshott, political engagement is incompatible with gentility because it conflates worldliness with spirituality. Oakeshott, therefore, disavows the practical aspirations that shape his work.

GeorgeVonLengerkeMeyer learned, not at all happily, that he was to be American Ambassador to St. Petersburg. This was a disappointment to himself and his family, for President Theodore Roosevelt had earlier suggested that Meyer be sent to Paris. And St. Petersburg seemed a long way off — in distance, time, culture, and atmosphere — from Paris. Nevertheless Meyer recognized that the appointment was a presidential compliment. For almost a year the President had been working to end the bloody war that had begun with the Japanese attack on the Russian naval base at Port Arthur on February 8, 1904, and had surprisingly resulted in one Japanese victory after another. Roosevelt had urged peace throughout the conflict. He quickly saw the necessity of a first-class ambassador in St. Petersburg to replace Robert S. McCormick, the Chicago businessman who was a political asset but a diplomatic failure.

Although volumes are now written about basic human needs, few of them issue from the subjects of those needs: the desperately poor. And a recent Third World document warns that:

While the satisfaction of basic human needs of the people, and the eradication of mass poverty must have a high priority in economic and social development, the idea is unacceptable and erroneous that these goals can be achieved without the all-round and comprehensive economic development of the developing countries and the establishment of the New International Economic Order.

He was a man of many friends and a friend to all of them, men and women, priests and laymen, people in many countries and from practically all walks of life. Friendship was what made him at home in this world and he felt at home wherever his friends were, regardless of country, language or social background. Knowing how sick he was, he made his last trip to Europe because, as he said, “I want to say farewell to my friends before I die.” He did the same when he came back and stayed a few days in New York, did it consciously and almost systematically, without a trace of fear or self-pity or sentimentality. He who throughout his life had never been able to express personal feeling without the greatest embarrassment could do this in a kind of impersonal manner, without feeling, and therefore without causing, embarrassment. Death must have been very familiar to him.

Bruno bauer (1809–1882) took an active part in the Young Hegelian movement, which developed in the eighteenthirties, some years after Hegel's death. He is generally regarded as the outstanding representative of left Hegelianism until Marx, who occupied a central place in the group, had reached philosophical maturity. By then the movement had completely disintegrated, and the rise of Marx, who detached himself from the group, symbolizes its end.

Machiavelli was a man of the Italian Renaissance; yet Mazzini shows no trace of Machiavellian thought, and Mussolini's attempt to revive Machiavelli in his homeland failed lamentably and ignominiously. Italy lacked the power and the hardness of character which Machiavellianism presupposes. Piedmont was an imitation Prussia, but only an imitation Prussia. Machiavelli's ideas bore real fruit in nineteenth century Germany. The German inclination to force ideas in the “free realm of the mind” to their logical and absurd conclusions without regard for the limitations of reality and common sense, combined with Prussia's power and hardness of character to implant Machiavellianism firmly in Germany. While German statesmen like Frederick II and Bismarck were its ablest disciples, its noblest teacher and prophet was Heinrich von Treitschke.

The name of Vladimir Soloviev, insofar as it is familiar to the Western world, is known as that of a philosopher and religious thinker. This was, of course, the field in which he was particularly prominent. Russia can boast only a few formal philosophers (as distinguished from philosophizing novelists, poets or historians), and among those Soloviev is probably the most outstanding. Moreover, in the history of modern Russian religious thought, he occupies a central position, serving as a connecting link between the mid-nineteenth century Slavophils and such contemporary writers as Berdiaev and Bulgakov.

But Soloviev's was a versatile and many-sided nature, and many other aspects of his life and activity deserve attention and study. He wrote interpretive essays on Russian poetry, some of which were landmarks in Russian literary criticism, and he was a poet himself—not a great poet, perhaps, but one with a strongly marked individual character.

Among the many discussions stirred by recent searchings after the source and substance of a conservative tradition has been that of the place of natural law in the thought of Edmund Burke. One view which has received renewed emphasis is that Burke's natural law is essentially Thomistic. Those who support this view frequently cite Burke's many references to “the law of nations and of nature.” The purpose of this paper is to show, by particular reference to the subject of international law, that it is misleading to place Burke in the older natural law tradition. In ideas as well as in time, he stands more nearly at a mid-point between that tradition and the positivist approach to law. Revelation and the interpretive aid of a Universal Church, which were crucial to the traditional concept of natural law, do not play a similar role in Burke's thought. The same meaning, therefore, cannot be attributed to his references to the natural law.

A half century ago Herbert Hoover entered the presidency and the “Great Engineer” of the 1920's became, after 1930, the butt of Depression era jokes. The economic collapse which began in 1929 not only broke Hoover's presidency, it obscured his accomplishments as a key public figure in American life during this century.

The extent to which American businessmen have shed the rhetoric of the 192O's — in particular, the suspicion of or opposition to government and labor — has been a subject of no little significance to recent business historians. Although few analysts take exception to James W. Prothro's contention that business thinking in the twenties reflected a too narrow or selfinterested view of the roles of government and labor and granted that researchers recognize the problems of assessing business thought in any era, an examination of the interpretations of the rationale of contemporary businessmen has revealed imprecision in definition and resultant lack of synthesis. The summary results of this historiographical examination are set forth below.

Part of the Heritage bequeathed by the Habsburg Empire to the First and Second Austrian Republics was German ethnic nationalism. The movement was a response to what its adherents considered the difficulty of preserving German cultural practices and institutional patterns within a state composed of diverse nationalities. Challenged by the growth of nationalism among the other linguistic and ethnic groups of the Habsburg lands during the latter half of the nineteenth century and stimulated by the appearance of a German national state after 1871, Austro-Germanism grew in size and diversity until 1914. In its more moderate form, the persuasion went no further than stubborn resistance of German Austrians to any cultural or political concessions to non-Germans in the Empire. In the hands of the rabid Pan-Germanist Georg von Schonerer, it was a frankly subversive ideology dedicated to the detachment of the German sections of Austria from the Danubian monarchy and their fusion with imperial Germany.

The biographers of Alexander Hamilton have been almost unanimous in absolving him from any complicity in the enactment and enforcement of the Alien and Sedition Laws of 1798. Most of them deny that he supported those now discredited laws and portray him as a defender of civil liberties who stood against the whole Federalist party. One writer asserts that by passing the laws the Federalists “mutinied” against Hamilton's recommendation of moderation. In the only thorough study of the acts, John C. Miller concludes that they “were passed by Congress against the advice of Alexander Hamilton.” Praising him as one not easily “led into error by the anxiety or the excitement of stirring and perilous times,” an early biographer describes the Federalist leader's position as “sensible and moderate.” Two of Jefferson's most widely read biographers credit Hamilton with opposing the law, and Albert J. Beveridge pictures him as an earlier and stronger opponent of the bills than Jefferson.

Canada and India have hybrid systems of government. Both experienced constitutional crises in the 1970's. These crises have usually been treated as sui generis. It is the hypothesis of this article that the crises raise fundamental questions regarding the very nature of such systems, which are based on “parliamentary federalism,” a political system invented in Canada to provide strong central government. This hybrid system combines two classical models: British tradition, based on parliamentary supremacy and conventions, and American principles, which require a written constitution, the separation of powers and judicial review. The two models are contradictory, since parliamentary supremacy and constitutional supremacy are incompatible.

“Slavic Studies”—the very expression implies their comparative aspect and raises the question: what enables us to refer to Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Lusatian Sorbs, Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, Macedonians, Bulgarians, Ukrainians, Byelorussians and Russians by the single all-encompassing term, the “Slavic” peoples? What is their common denominator?

It is indisputable that the Slavic peoples are to be defined basically as Slavic-speaking peoples. If speech is the point of departure, the problem becomes primarily a linguistic one. Since the pioneering work of the Czech Abbé Dobrovský (1753–1829), comparative linguistics has proved the existence of a common ancestral language for all the living Slavic languages and has largely reconstructed the sound pattern, grammatical framework and lexical stock of this Common (or Primitive) Slavic language. The problem of where and by whom this Common Slavic language was spoken is being gradually solved by persistent efforts to synchronize the findings of comparative linguistics, toponymy, and archeology. The archeologists' data are like a motion picture without its sound track; whereas the linguists have the sound track without the film. Thus, interdepartmental teamwork becomes indispensable.