UNTIL the time Alexis de Tocqueville wrote Democracy in America, the problem of tyranny of the majority had dominated the political thought of no other nation as it had that of America. In the half century before the appearance of Tocqueville's great work, Americans had maintained a virtual monopoly of concern over the question of how popular sovereignty and individual liberty could peacefully coexist. The French Revolution, it is true, raised similar questions abroad, and if we take Burke's concern as representative, we see that he too was seriously troubled over the prospect that democratic tyranny would become the inevitable offspring of popular sovereignty. But despite Burke's eloquent and penetrating analysis, majority tyranny did not become a major preoccupation of English political thought, and to the extent that there was concern with the problem, as in the debate over the Reform Bill of 1832, discussion was confined to the obvious and straightforward issue of whether the suffrage should be extended. In America, on the other hand, the majority problem continued to be a persistent political issue from the beginning and, even today, a host of public questions revolves around the scope of majority rule. Yet for all the attention Americans paid to the majority question before Tocqueville entered upon the scene, they had hardly scratched the surface, and the Frenchman, therefore, was able to suggest an approach that they had not even considered.

C. p. snow suggests that it is a short way to the grave for individual human beings, but the life of society can be made immortal. Many of the groups to which we belong, of which we are conscious, and to which we feel a sense of allegiance, such as our nation and our class, may indeed survive for centuries or longer. There is, however, one group to which we belong that need not fear immortality: our generation. If, as has sometimes been argued, it is the sense of a common destiny which unites all Frenchmen and all Germans, all members of the working class and of the middle class, surely no shared destiny is more fundamental than that of members of the same generation. These members have in common, not necessarily language or income, but the agonies and triumphs of life itself. If the ability to communicate helps to define membership in a group, surely our generation exists both as an objective reality and, in human motivations, even more important, as a personal commitment. This ability to communicate is shared by our generation, but at the same time we are cut off from other generations. Some things we can share only with others of our own age. Even if, by some quirk of fate, we should wish to evade our destiny as members of a generation, we cannot. Anyone who tries to escape from his generation is faced with cold hard reality: “You belong to it, too.… You came along at the same time. You can't get away from it. You're a part of it whether you want to be or not.”

Locke is at once a traditional and a subversive author for us. As an authority for the American Founders he stands at the source of our tradition. But he was an authority for those revolutionaries because his political teaching culminates in the last chapter of the Second Treatise, a defense of the right of resistance. Insofar as we remain a revolutionary or rebellious people (with a particular proclivity to tax rebellions), Locke's political teaching lives in us. But insofar as we have become traditional and taken our revolution for granted, even coming to look at our founding with “sanctimonious reverence” and ascribing to our founders “a wisdom more than human,” as Jefferson feared we would, Locke has lost his vitality for us. It is no wonder then that we do not read his defense of the right of resistance with the care it deserves, even as we sometimes see or feel its revolutionary spirit still around us. But careful attention to the structure of Locke's argument for the right of resistance shows that he was more consistent and more radical than is usually supposed.

Book 4, chapter 8, of the Social Contract, on civil religion, presents a puzzle. According to Rousseau, no state has ever been founded that did not have religion as its base. But which religion? Christianity is not an option. Paganism is not an option. Monotheistic theocracy is not an option. What does that leave? By a process of elimination, we are left with an Enlightenment religion of tolerance and mutual forbearance, which even readers sympathetic to Rousseau (or perhaps especially readers sympathetic to Rousseau) might say is no religion at all. I argue that Machiavelli and Hobbes share Rousseau's fundamental concern, which is that the otherworldly aspirations of Christianity are subversive of political requirements, but each of them thinks he can solve the problem by “de-transcendentalizing” Christianity: Machiavelli, by treating the papacy as if it were a pagan institution; Hobbes, by reinterpreting the New Testament as if it were the Old Testament. The article examines why Rousseau rejects the Machiavellian and Hobbesian solutions to his problem, and why he has no solution of his own to offer.

Through a critical analysis of the positions of Rawls and Habermas, the article argues against the proviso that religious language be “translated” into an allegedly neutral vocabulary as a condition for full inclusion within public political reasoning. Defending and expanding the analysis of Maeve Cooke, it maintains that both Habermas and Rawls mischaracterize the nature of religious reasons in relation to reasons alleged to be “freestanding,” “secular,” or “postmetaphysical.” Reflection on the origins of religious discourse and the component thought to be retained when such discourse is “translated” demonstrates the untenability of a sharp distinction between “rational” and “religious” discourse on matters pertaining to morality. The article nonetheless affirms the need for common acceptance of the justificatory language of coercive political policies, but contends that this language is best conceived as a historically evolving wide (not universal) agreement, and as a confluence of various types of agreement.

Scholars have long debated the relationship between Kant's doctrine of right and his doctrine of virtue (including his moral religion or ethico-theology), which are the two branches of his moral philosophy. This article will examine the intimate connection in his practical philosophy between perpetual peace and the highest good, between political and ethico-religious communities, and between the types of transparency peculiar to each. It will show how domestic and international right provides a framework for the development of ethical communities, including a kingdom of ends and even the noumenal ethical community of an afterlife, and how the transparency and trust achieved in these communities are anticipated in rightful political society by publicity and the mutual confidence among citizens that it engenders. Finally, it will explore the implications of this synthesis of Kant's political and religious philosophies for contemporary Kantian political theories, especially those of Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls.

The essay examines medical metaphors in the discourse on government from a cross-cultural perspective. Drawing on George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's theory of metaphor, a comparison of medical metaphors in the political writings in late medieval Europe (c. 1250–c. 1450) and Tokugawa Japan (1602–1867) demonstrates that the European notion of medical treatment as the eradication of the causes of diseases magnified the coercive and punitive aspects of government, while the Japanese notion of medical treatment as the art of daily healthcare served to accentuate the government's role of preventing conflicts and maintaining stability. These differing images of medical treatment metaphorically structured contrasting conceptions of government in the two historical worlds.

In recent years a powerful body of literature has emerged that challenges contemporary liberal thought on a series of related fronts, which can usefully be described as “realist.” This article focuses on the realist criticism of the dominant liberal account of legitimacy and explores the possibility of developing a political theory that can overcome this challenge while remaining distinctively liberal (hence “liberal realism”). Drawing on the work of a wide range of thinkers who fall outside of the standard Rawlsian tradition in contemporary liberal thinking, the article pursues three different directions in which a theory of liberal realism might be developed—negative, minimal, and partisan—and explores the advantages and shortcomings of each. It attempts to further demonstrate the salience and force of the realist challenge to liberal legitimacy and the need for liberalism to develop an adequate response to it, and offers some proposals concerning the appropriate theoretical framework for doing so.

Locke's Second Treatise of Government argues for the rule of law as just and rightful politics, not only in the fundamental legislation that is the constitution but also in regular governance by the legislature. Locke also argues for executive prerogative, the power of doing good without or even against law during contingency and necessity. Rule by legislation and rule by prerogative each preserve the political community and reflect its foundation out of the state of nature. But they do not easily coexist in the constitution, which provides no means to judge the rightful use of prerogative. President Lincoln's strong, discretionary actions during the crisis of the Civil War illustrate Locke's argument about prerogative's fundamental importance and its problematic relation to ordinary lawfulness. However, as Lincoln recognized, both the Constitution and Congress formally provided for an executive power that was remarkably compatible with the rule of law—and that thereby responded to the Lockean problem.

Widely divergent views exist among modern scholars concerning the relationship between natural law and natural rights. Some hold that the two concepts are logically incompatible with one another. Others maintain that natural rights were derived from natural law in the work of Aquinas or, alternatively, that natural law was derived from natural right in the work of Hobbes. All these views seem open to criticism. An alternative approach is suggested by a consideration of the idea of permissive natural law.

Questions of exclusion, membership and the status of resident foreigners press upon liberal political thought and society with a particular sharpness, given the universalist underpinnings of the liberal commitment. How within the horizon of liberalism and rights discourse are we to think of the foreigner? The article suggests some reasons why we should consider suspect the cluster of notions surrounding alienage and sketches why the moral salience of the foreignness of these outsiders at our door and present among us has diminished, and thus brought under scrutiny our traditional comportment toward them. But it is not so much intended here to seek a resolution of these issues as to motivate a cluster of questions, to argue for their importance and to show the inadequacy of the treatment of them that we have inherited.

Herodotus, who has been rightly called the Father of Western history, tells us in the first sentence of the Persian Wars that the purpose of his enterprise is to preserve that which owes its existence to men (ta genomena ex anthrôpôn), lest it be obliterated by time, and to bestow upon the glorious, wondrous deeds of Greeks and Barbarians sufficient praise to assure their remembrance by posterity and thus make their glory shine through the centuries.

In arguments for a more tolerant Hobbes, Leviathan's endorsement of “Independency” is often Exhibit A; however, the conditionals Hobbes attached have received little attention. These—and the dangers of “contention” and sectarian “affection” they identify—are essential for understanding Hobbes's views on toleration. Together, they express a vision of “difference without disagreement” in which the accommodation of diversity in religious worship and association depends on the suppression of disagreement through sovereign- and self-discipline over speech. This expressly antievangelical ideal of toleration as a civil silence about difference presents a challenge to the more tolerant Hobbes thesis, particularly in its recent “Erastian Independency” guise. It also raises deeper questions about what might be at stake in applying the labels of “intolerant” or “tolerant” to Hobbes today.

The political ideal of neutrality toward conceptions of the good is unsustainable at the extremely abstract level proposed by some liberal theorists. Neutrality is nonetheless a valuable political ideal. One of the many ways that government can go wrong is to take a position on some question that it would, all things considered, be better for it to abstain from deciding. The classic example is the question of which (if any) religion is true. The idea of neutrality holds that government ought to avoid this pathology.

This paper defends the traditional distinctive notion of the common good against the claim that it is normatively redundant on the aggregative conception. The first two sections of the paper outline the different candidate conceptions of the common good and the normative role of the common good within natural law theories. The paper then considers some difficulties faced by the instrumental and aggregative conceptions, before developing an Aristotelian account of the distinctive conception of the common good and demonstrating its normative significance for a natural law account of political and legal authority.

The close relation between language and politics was noted by George Orwell many years ago. Undoubtedly, no other political phenomenon brings this relationship more sharply into focus than that of nationalism.

“In our time, the national community has assumed paramount power,” notes Frederick Hertz. Along with this development, “the national language has become one of the idols of a new religion. All nations regard it as a symbol of their independence and honour, as the supreme expression of their personality, and they esteem its exclusive domination within their national territory more highly than obvious spiritual and material advantages.” Indeed, language has been widely (though in some cases erroneously) accepted as one of the prime indicators of national identity.

This essay examines in detail Tocqueville's paradoxical moderation by focusing on his rich correspondence and notes for Democracy in America. As Tocqueville's critique of the politics of the July Monarchy shows, he was a political moderate and an immoderate mind, and this uncommon combination explains the ambiguities and contradictions in his view of democracy. After exploring Tocqueville's views on moderating democracy, the essay examines the main elements of his new science of politics at the heart of which lies the idea of a wise balancing of various social elements, principles, and ideas. The final section comments on Tocqueville's elusive moderation and his search for greatness in modern politics.

Although there has been substantial academic interest in the New Christian Right, to date there has been little effort to place it in a larger historical context. There have been three waves of fundamentalist Christian Right activity in this century, and there are a number of similarities between the contemporary organizations and earlier ones. The contemporary fundamentalist Right, however, is a more sophisticated political movement than its predecessors, with an expanded issue agenda and more widespread public awareness. More recently, a pentecostal Right has begun to become active in politics. For a number of historic reasons, this pentecostal Right may have greater potential to unite conservative Christians than does its fundamentalist counterpart.

Liberalism and Deep Ecology are usually regarded as mutually exclusive. However, the “evolutionary” tradition of liberal thought, rooted in David Hume and Adam Smith, and including Michael Polanyi and F. A. Hayek, provides a foundation for their reconciliation. Linkage is through Hume and Smith's conception of sympathy, which today means empathy. For Hume, sympathy extends into the animal realm. Sympathy is essential for certain scientific work, and provides an foundation for both liberal and ecological ethics. Deep ecologists such as Arne Naess use the same concept. Linkage is first to biocentric ethics, and then, through examining natural beauty and, via Michael Polanyi's tacit knowledge, ecocentric ethics. The work of Hayek suggests how modern society might be harmonized with the requirements of nature. This deepens J. Baird Callicott's pioneering approach, uniting it with Lewis Hinchman's recent analysis. Liberalism's and Deep Ecology's foundations both benefit from their mutual integration.