Plato's Hipparchus is generally not taken particularly seriously; it is thought either spurious or negligible. Yet its theme, love of the good, places it at the summit of philosophy, at least as Socrates presents it in the Republic. Why, then, is such a slight writing the locus of the discussion of so monumental a question? As is so often the case in Platonic dialogues, in the Hipparchus, we find our way to the deepest questions by way of reflecting on the puzzles revealed in apparently superficial particulars. The most obvious such puzzle in the Hipparchus is its title, for Hipparchus is not a participant in the dialogue but rather the famous, or perhaps infamous, character for whom it is named.

The present essay sketches the outline and the intention of Hesiod's Works and Days. Hesiod's principal task appears to be the identification (and praise) of the best way of life for his wayward brother Perses, but in carrying out this task, Hesiod speaks of justice and its human and divine supports in such a way as to go well beyond what would be of benefit to his brother. For in the course of his analysis of justice, or as a result of it, Hesiod praises also the life of autonomous understanding, the life that appears to be the poet's own. In crucial ways, then, Hesiod explores the chief themes of what was to become political philosophy, and for this reason, among others, he deserves the attention of all those who are also concerned with it.

Plato's Lysis addresses the problem of Plato's Republic—the tension between individual and communal good—by exploring the question of what or who is the friend. Friends, I argue, experience another as their own, and themselves as not wholly their own. Unlike the guardians of Plato's Republic, friends say both mine and not mine of one another. Grounded in both self-awareness and belonging, friendship serves as a model for philosophy, and demonstrates the possibility of associations that support our complex identity as human beings and citizens.

Constitutional theorists have had relatively little to say about the identity of what they study. This article addresses this inattention with a philosophical and comparative exploration of the concept of constitutional identity. Without such attention, a major preoccupation of theorists—constitutional change—will continue to be inadequately considered. The argument is advanced that there are attributes of a constitution that allow us to identify it as such, and that there is a dialogical process of identity formation that enables us to determine the specific identity of any given constitution. Representing a mix of aspirations and commitments expressive of a nation's past, constitutional identity also evolves in ongoing political and interpretive activities occurring in courts, legislatures, and other public and private domains. Conceptual possibilities of constitutional identity are, herein, pursued in two constitutional settings—India and Ireland—that highlight its distinctive features.

Examining the special relations between On the Social Contract and the Constitutional Project for Corsica, this essay argues that Rousseau conceives of constitutionalism on the basis of his understanding of the “natural development” of any state. What is “natural” is a certain order in which developmental periods best emerge, such that any state's disordered development will always result in its premature “death.” The essay explains four aspects of Rousseau's conception of properly ordered political development: the nature of a state's beginning; the relation between the two “great springs” of human conduct; the influence of external nature on human nature and justice; and the inevitable “end” of even the best state.

Political theorists have long disagreed about what Rousseau's account of conscience means. While most approaches to that account focus on the “Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar,” this essay focuses on another aspect of Emile, the development of conscience in Emile himself. First, I argue that conscience is transformed from problem to solution when self-love is transformed, first into gratitude, then, with the aid of religion, rhetoric, and imagination, into duty. Those who insist that conscience is rooted in passion are right, though that passion is not necessarily low. Second, those who argue that Rousseau's teaching on conscience, as set forth in the First Discourse and elsewhere, is a salutary untruth are right. Emile's conscience shouts “virtue!” not because conscience always does so in uncorrupted souls once they enter the moral world but because it has had voice lessons from Emile's governor, who makes liberal use of illusion and rhetoric.

This article explores the writings of Michel Chevalier, a contemporary of Alexis de Tocqueville, on America. Despite widespread praise, Chevalier's text Lettres sur l'Amérique du Nord has been largely ignored in the scholarly literature. This article, therefore, reveals the nature of the account of America provided by Chevalier and, thereby, compares and contrasts his account with the more famous account penned by Tocqueville. In particular, it shows that Chevalier, viewing America from a Saint-Simonian background, was more aware of the economic dimensions of American culture and society than was Tocqueville. However, both recognized the differences that separated a democratic America from an aristocratic Europe and that the future lay with the former. The article concludes by examining the views of both Tocqueville and Chevalier on America in the wake of the Revolution of 1848, showing how America now figured as the model of a moderate republic for both authors.

This essay seeks to demonstrate that the different generic parts of Cicero's corpus are but different sides of the mind of the same man, and, thus, that all parts of the corpus—including the forensic speeches, once they have been corroborated by other passages in his corpus—should be regarded as valuable evidence for understanding Ciceronian political thought. A comparison of Cicero's Peripatetic criticism of the Younger Cato's Stoicism in the Pro Murena to the view of Cato's politics expressed in his private correspondence of 61–60 BC and in De Finibus 4.61 reveals that this criticism is more than just a humorous digression to win the case. As an extended expression of Cicero's belief that the inflexible moral certainties of Cato's Stoicism could be detrimental to the managing of the consensus necessary to political life in a republic, the Pro Murena should also be recognized as an articulation of Cicero's philosophical approach to the practice of politics.

Locke claims that his moral and political teaching is capable of a fully rational demonstration. It would seem then that Lockean citizens are expected to grasp the rational bases of their regime. But Locke was notoriously vague or incomplete on what the rational demonstration entailed, in matters of theology especially, but in other matters as well. I examine this question in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, the Two Treatises of Government, and Some Thoughts Concerning Education, and conclude that Locke did not expect most citizens to grasp the full philosophical demonstration of liberalism, but they would understand a simplified version of it. This, however, risks leaving liberal culture in an unsettled state.

Contemporary theorists critical of the current vogue for compassion might like to turn to Friedrich Nietzsche as an obvious ally in their opposition to the sentiment. Yet this essay argues that Nietzsche's critique of compassion is not entirely critical, and that the endorsement of one's sympathetic feelings is actually a natural outgrowth of Nietzsche's immoralist ethics. Nietzsche understands the tendency to share in the suffering of their inferiors as a distinctive vulnerability of the spiritually strong and healthy. Their compassion, however, is an essential element of the imaginative creativity that Nietzsche holds to be the goal of human existence. Although shared suffering may prove debilitating for some, great individuals must come to affirm their compassion as necessary in achieving accurate knowledge of the human condition.

This article examines the relation between John Locke's doctrine of prerogative and constitutional government. Scholars have shown increased interest in Locke's doctrine in recent years, yet there is disagreement about its precise character. The Two Treatises of Government can be read such that this power is the result of the social compact and, thus, is a constitutional means of addressing emergencies. This paper instead argues that prerogative as it appears in the Two Treatises must be understood to be a natural power and, consequently, beyond constitutional control. It stands outside of the constitution because its logic denies that a good constitution is sufficient for liberal government.

Some critics of John Stuart Mill understand him to advocate the forced assimilation of people he regards as uncivilized and to defend toleration and the principle of liberty only for civilized people of the West. Examination of Mill's social and political writings and practice while serving the British East India Company shows, instead, that Mill is a tolerant imperialist: Mill defends interference in India to promote the protection of legal rights, respect and toleration for conflicting viewpoints, and a commercial society that can cope with natural threats. He does not think the principle of liberty is waived for the uncivilized or that the West should forcibly reshape them in its own monistic image. Mill's tolerant imperialism reflects a tension between liberty and moral development that also surfaces when Mill thinks about the scope of government in civilized societies.

In Plato's Republic, Glaucon tells a story about Gyges' ring that, on the surface, suggests a radical opposition between appearances and truth. We argue that, contrary to Glaucon's intentions, what his story actually reveals is that appearances are always and inevitably implicated in the attempt to tell the truth about justice or the soul. This mutual implication is confirmed by Glaucon's own commentary on his story as well as by Socrates' arguments about the city and the soul. We argue that knowing the soul “in itself” requires that one examine it not by itself, but as it is immersed in human life. It is a question of how the soul “looks” – meaning not simply how it seems or appears, but of where it is looking, or what it desires. Taking its looks into account, in this sense, is very different from being taken in by appearances. We explore the implications of this idea for the possibility of attaining philosophical knowledge about justice, and for the relationship between philosophy and politics.

Political and comprehensive liberals are both pessimistic about finding a satisfactory way to resolve the debate over whether and how to expose students in public schools to religion. An examination of John Tomasi's Liberalism beyond Justice and William Galston's Liberal Pluralism reveals that a central cause of this pessimism is the presumption that an education for autonomy must encourage students to become rational choosers of their beliefs. This essay suggests that it is possible to found an education for autonomy on the more modest goal of ensuring that students have a reasonable ability to exit from their communities when they feel that membership is too painful. An education for exit would involve exposing students at the high school level to alternative religious beliefs to ensure they are aware that it might be possible to lead tolerable lives and achieve salvation outside of their communities of origin.

Whereas Eric Voegelin's main works from the 1950s to the 1980s are well known and have been widely discussed, his early work has gained academic attention only recently. Voegelin scholars have now entered into a wide-ranging discussion of the specific nature of those early writings. The following reflections seek to contribute to this general discussion by focusing on one of the most interesting—and, at the same time, the most puzzling—of Voegelin's early unpublished texts. Concentrating on the fragment entitled the Theory of Governance, this article will also present certain sources that have not yet appeared in English. Its aim will be to clarify some of the crucial questions and principles of Voegelin's early conception of political science in general. After presenting that conception, the article will indicate that Voegelin's later critique of the modern ideologies of political collectivism has not yet come into focus in this early text.

Should judges play a prominent policymaking role through their exercise of judicial review, or should judicial review be exercised to strike down only those acts that clearly violate the Constitution's text or historical context? Prevailing scholarship maintains that the Constitutional Convention debates provide little relevant guidance with which to answer this question. The truth is essentially the opposite: the Convention delegates extensively considered the role that judges should play in policymaking, particularly during their debate over a proposed council of revision. This essay revisits the council of revision debate. It argues that beneath the delegates' clear disagreements lies an apparent consensus, one heretofore largely unrecognized: that whether or not judges should have been invited to play the policymaking role they would have played as members of a council of revision, they should not play a policymaking role while serving on the judicial bench.

Can we gain any fresh insight into the problem of mediating among competing truth claims in political life? This essay will demonstrate that the political theory of Mahatma Gandhi provides us with a novel way to understand and arbitrate the conflict among moral projects. Gandhi offers us a vision of political action that insists on the viability of the search for truth and the implicit possibility of adjudicating among competing claims to truth. His vision also presents a more complex and realistic understanding, than do some other contemporary pluralists, of political philosophy and of political life itself.

This paper seeks to locate Adam Smith's thought within corruption debates and traditions. The discussion commences by outlining the material and intellectual context within which Smith wrote, after which it disputes claims that Smith may be readily aligned with either a classical or proto-Marxist “corruption and decline” tradition. The remainder of the paper is devoted to exploring in detail how he approached the topic. It is argued that he does not fit easily into any of the recognizable corruption frameworks but that he forges one all his own, borne of his anxieties about the activities of the English state in a rapidly expanding economy and his desire to develop the new science of political economy.

In this essay, I explore some connections between Rousseau's works and modern environmental works in which the author experiences what Rousseau characterizes as “reverie,” the blissful loss of consciousness of the self in the awareness that the self is truly only part of the all-encompassing whole, “Nature.” While others have recognized that Rousseau's writings share much of the form and substance of later nature writing, no one has explored how Rousseau's work helps us understand the character of nature writing as a genre of political thought. Based on a careful reading of some key passages from the Reveries and comparisons to the writings of Thoreau, I argue that Rousseau's peculiar approach to his own self-consciousness provides a key for understanding the character of writings of this sort and the limits that are always present within them. Environmentalists must reflect on Rousseau's suggestion “that the price paid for experiencing anything is the experience of ourselves as alienated.”

Philosophers and lawyers have long argued about the relation of law to politics: “does the king make law” or “does law make the king”? This persistent debate stems from two different perspectives on the nature of law. Professors of law have long noted that laypersons tend to speak of “a law” and the “laws” while lawyers tend to speak more holistically of “the law.” After discussing how rival perspectives in legal theory can be compared and evaluated, several dimensions of this contrast between the lay and the lawyerly conceptions of law: the individuation of laws, the sources of law, the ethical and imperative aspects of law, and the nature of the rule of law are analyzed. The distinction between a lawyerly and a lay perspective on law is reflected in the traditional linguistic and conceptual distinction between ius and lex. Many of the classic philosophers of law, from Plato to Hobbes, are rank laymen when it comes to their descriptions of law since the lawyerly understanding of law has only very recently achieved philosophical articulation.