Hume's concern to promote public virtue is a central element of his philosophical project which deserves more attention than it has received. This article examines one of his most focused efforts at public moralism: his largely forgotten autobiography, My Own Life. By attending to its account of how Hume employed his vanity and ambition in his pursuit of fame and fortune—and discovered such virtues as temperance, industry, moderation, and independence in the process—it is argued that My Own Life was intended to serve as a “mirror-for-citizen.” for citizens of modern commercial republics, offering a model of civic virtue and worldly success for them to emulate. To show this Hume's didactic autobiography is compared to that of his friend Benjamin Franklin, which may have served as a model for Hume's.

Notwithstanding the manifold activities of the Soviet Government in world affairs since Nikita Khrushchev took over the heritage of Stalin, there is still a wide-spread lack of understanding in the non-communist world of the international aims and policies of Stalin's successor. This situation islargely due to the image of Khrushchev's goals and policies which communist propaganda has built up throughout the world — an image which is a pretty complete misrepresentation of the reality. A very effective role in this propaganda has been played by the term, policy of peaceful coexistence, which Khrushchev has chosen to describe his new course. The selection of this term was a master strokeon the part of the communist leader in view of the great success which this slogan has had in blurringand confusing the thinking of Western writers and commentators on Soviet foreign policy.

The so-called Madisonian dilemma has dominated recent debates over the role of the Supreme Court and suggested a “majoritarian paradigm” for constitutional interpretation. But a reexamination of James Madison's unique contributions to republican theory indicates that the “Madisonian dilemma” is in many ways misleading and unfaithful to his political vision. Madison, argues the author in Section I, worked a conceptual change in republican theory. Madison did so because he was convinced that republican liberty (and government) was primarily threatened by popular majorities and legislative majoritarianism in Congress and the states. For that reason, Madison advanced his well-known “naturalist” argument for republicanism and, on that basis, argued for buttressing the political architecture of republican government with “auxiliary precautions” for securing republican liberty. From Madison's reconstruction of republicanism, Section II moves to his conversion to the project of amending the Constitution with a declaration of rights and the basis he laid for the Supreme Court's role in defending republican government and liberty. Finally, Section III takes up Madison's view of the role of the Supreme Court and his articulation of a novel theory of pragmatic constitutional interpretivism.

We live in a world of constant change. Western society as opposed to Eastern society has always been characterized by change, though perhaps today Eastern societies such as China and Japan are changing faster than we of the West.

Our folklore in America pictures the “new” world that Rip van Winkle found when he awakened. Every day we listen for the news. What's new in the world? We have a newspaper. We have newscasters on the media. We greet each other with, “What's new?” Our scientists set out for New Worlds to conquer. We have New Math and Art Nouveau. We change washing machine models every year. We change dress and hair styles. In most cases anything 100 years old is fit only for discard. We tear down our old buildings and move to the suburbs. Things change so fast we don't have time or the inclination or the ability to evaluate whether it was really necessary to have a new style of car or washing machine or a new design for the detergent box. We are driven by maximizing of profits, by being efficient, and by moving people and things.

This article examines Jeremy Waldron's concept of the “circumstances of politics” (CoP), which he describes as the felt need for a common decision in the face of disagreement. Waldron uses the CoP to detach certain issues surrounding civic virtue and institutional design from questions about substantive principles such as justice and human rights. While emphasis is often placed on the fact of disagreement, I argue that the other aspect of the CoP, the need for collective action, is in fact the more fundamental. Waldron's arguments rely on an understanding that there is expressive value in citizens affirming commitment to the political community and on an awareness of how the nature of politics as public collective action is structured by the constitutional architecture. I argue that a lopsided focus on disagreement threatens to obscure the fact that the political sphere is itself a fragile achievement that is in need of continual support.

The victims of the wars of religion and persecution had their revenge in the growth of a temper indifferent to the claims of particular churches. There were others too who, adopting ancient materialisms, rationalism or the outlook of physical science, rejected theology and abandoned religion altogether. For both, the Enlightenment meant a polemic against the Christian churches, as well as Judaism, and the articulation of new beliefs. Since religions touched in different degrees all spheres of life, the battleground included philosophy, morality and history. Superstition and persecution were the themes of Enlightened church history. God's hand, if there was a God, might direct history in some ultimate way, but not by direct intervention. As there was no “sacred history,” the meaning of history or, at any rate, a way of looking at history, had to be sought anew. After the first quarter of the eighteenth century, this task attracted a remarkable and numerous response, to which the Romantic period added the dense and challenging Idealist philosophies of history. The philosophes, the gurus of Enlightenment, presented history's meaning as not in the past but to come, as salvation from the irrational and the brutal, presented it with a clarity as misleading as it was persuasive.

The extension of human life is one of the central goals that Francis Bacon posits for science, and this goal shapes his political thought significantly. Bacon's interest in life extension appears throughout his corpus, but the Wisdom of the Ancients contains his most extensive treatment of its political and philosophical consequences. Here, I interpret a series of myths in the Wisdom of the Ancients and argue, first, that through them Bacon presents key political strategies for promoting life extension and tending to its hazards; and, second, as he does so, he sketches a new portrait of philosophy, which directs some of its energies to understanding what makes longer life worth living. My reading addresses a profound and neglected subject at the heart of Bacon's politico-scientific project, and advances the growing literature on Bacon that turns to the Wisdom of the Ancients to explain unexamined goals of his science.

Political Science has long been interested in opinion. It is supposed that expressed views are indicators of behavior or potential behavior and are therefore worthy of attention as aids in understanding the present and predicting the future. While there can be little doubt that people's feelings guide their actions, we can sometimes be deceived because manifest opinion may be merely an epiphenomenon derivative from other factors, rather than vice versa. This is a problem most evident when trying to relate the true designs of an ideological movement's leadership to its pronouncements.

Scholars disagree about the correct interpretation of Alfarabi's Political Regime and Virtuous City, treatises that have striking similarities, yet notable differences. For some, the treatises encapsulate Alfarabi's philosophy; for others, they express only politically salutary opinions. Both interpretations fail to explain why he wrote parallel works. If both reflect Alfarabi's genuine philosophic doctrines, why did he compose separate but parallel treatises, both written when his philosophy was mature? Alternatively, if the treatises are political or rhetorical, why did Alfarabi compose two versions, and why did he choose these two accounts rather than others? To answer these questions, I discuss several overarching differences between the treatises, concluding that each work has an inner coherence and develops a distinctive narrative. I offer suggestions to account for the works’ distinctive orientations, both to persuade doubtful readers of their philosophic significance and to suggest to both groups of scholars reasons for their systematic differences.

Negotiation, the essential activity of diplomats, is an important phase in the process of shaping and executing foreign policy.* “Il faut négocier, négocier et toujours négocier,” suggested Talleyrand. Sir Harold Nicolson has even expressed the wish that the word “negotiation” be substituted for the word “diplomacy” because of the disagreeable flavor of the latter to many people. Success or failure of foreign policy is greatly influenced by the skill of negotiators, whose behavior can be more important for the course of history than is generally recognized. The skill of a negotiator, however, is determined not only by personal ability, but, more importantly, by the total political context, domestic and foreign, within which he operates.

New York State provides institutional aid to nonpublic institutions of higher learning within the context of its constitutional prohibitions against aid to denominational institutions. To qualify for state aid, New York's private colleges and universities must prove they are constitutionally eligible, a process which has prompted extensive self-evaiuation and frequently some changes by many of those institutions with traditional religious affiliation. State aid administrators have chosen to restrict their constitutional approach to state standards and ignore the United States Supreme Court's tripartite standards articulated in Lemon v. Kurtzman, as modified by the Tilton-Hunt-Roemer decisions. The state law has been cautiously and diplomatically administered, but the possibility of future state “entanglement” with church-related institutions remains.