Few centuries have been as sanguinary as the twentieth. Leaving behind as their monuments the ruins of concentration camps and the work camps of the Gulag Archipelago, temporarily discredited, fascism and communism may have slouched into the shadows. Still, the forces of liberty have not succeeded in laying the foundations for a world of free republics. During the twentieth century, both in Europe and in the United States, the moral life of the free societies has been severely weakened. Families are a shadow of what they used to be. Traditional virtues and decencies, a sense of honor, and respect for moral character have given way to vulgar relativism. Thus, the dark underground river of the twentieth century has not been fascism nor communism but their presupposition: nihilism. And nihilism has not yet been abandoned.

Rousseau and Kant both argue for contractarian theories of justice. In spite of their common contractarianism, however, Rousseau and Kant argue for conceptions of legitimacy which differ markedly. The substantive differences between their accounts of legitimacy, I suggest, illustrate the political implications of disagreement regarding the status of practical reason. Rousseau, in assigning reason to a merely instrumental status, anticipates both postmodern and empiricist skepticism regarding the power of reason to ground the choice of ends. Kant is the forerunner of contemporary accounts of justice which reject such skeptical views of practical reason. Rousseau's skepticism about practical reason ties his criterion of legitimacy directly to the actual preferences of individuals. Kant's more robust conception of practical reason (1) allows him to argue for a criterion of great generality and flexibility, but (2) ties the plausibility of his account of legitimacy directly to the soundness of his conception of practical reason.

This article examines Kant's What is Enlightenment? and The Conflict of the Faculties with a view to recovering certain neglected aspects of his defense of freedom in the public use of reason. Kant's arguments in the two works are the most tangible expression of the concern with the scope and limits of reason in politics that runs throughout his political philosophy. Yet the political purpose and rhetorical strategy of that defense has received less attention than it deserves. Kant contends the possibility of establishing ends set by reason as critical standards in politics depends on rulers being persuaded that their interests are best served by cooperating with philosophers. The famous distinction in What is Enlightenment? between the public and private uses of reason proposes the terms of this cooperation. In The Conflict of The Faculties Kant makes similar arguments in defense of the university. He presents it as an institution that exists to serve governments but that can also pursue enlightening ends if government grants it the freedom to do so. The article attempts to show Kant's awareness of enduring conflicts between reason and authority in politics, and it argues that his defense of the public use of reason addresses them in a way that is still worthy of our attention.

Martin Heidegger's rectorate (1933–1934) was characterized by an incontestable involvement with Nazism. However, neither the rectorate, nor Heidegger's ambitious project for the transformation of the university within which it was embedded, was reducible to Nazism. Indeed, Heidegger's project to transform the university dates from his earliest lecture courses at Freiburg University in 1919 and was a hallmark of his thinking long before the rise of Nazism. That project was itself linked to the long-standing dispute in German academia over the role of the university in the modern world, which involved such thinkers as Kant, Schelling, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche. Despite the entanglement with Nazism, which stamped his rectorate, Heidegger's thinking about the university as a site for the transformation of human existence is especially pertinent today.

An analysis of Leo Strauss's difficult and relatively neglected criticism of Max Weber in Natural Right and History reveals the fundamental difficulties that political science, and social science more generally, must overcome in order to be a genuine science. In Strauss's view, the inadequacy of the fact-value distinction, which is now widely acknowledged, compels a re-examination of Weber's denial of the possibility of valid knowledge of values. Strauss identifies the serious ground of this denial as Weber's insight that modern philosophy or science cannot refute religion. Believing that philosophy or science cannot ultimately give an account of itself that meets the challenge of religion, Weber maintained a “tragic” view of the human situation. Strauss also expresses profound doubt about the possibility of philosophy or science, but ultimately he suggests that a certain kind of study of the history of political philosophy might resolve the conflict between philosophy and divine revelation, and, therewith, the “value problem.”

The driving forces of modern society—whether economic, technological or nationalistic—do not encourage a very strong sense of citizenship. It is a notion that is either taken for granted, systematically devalued or simply ignored. But we are beginning to realize that this weak sense of citizenship may be at the root of many of our social pathologies. Social theory is increasingly making a noticeable and not insignificant effort to include citizenship theory. The volumes here under review testify to the fruitfulness and indeed energy of this effort. They range widely and do not present a unified picture.