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.

The imperative for a people to become bearers of light and proselytizers of truth is present in differing degrees and modes in the great monotheistic religions. This set of mind has struck some philosophers in the past as problematic, especially when it manifested itself as a call for a war of civilization. It is from this perspective that the present essay reexamines a relatively neglected small dialogue by Sir Francis Bacon, An Advertisement Touching a Holy War. The anarchy resulting from religious conflict in 16th- and 17th-century Europe casts its shadow over every page of this puzzling little work. Bacon's enactment shows that while zeal is in some sense the problem, it might also contribute toward a solution. Religious passions ought to be tamed and redirected, not extirpated. In proposing that Christianity itself be reconstituted, Bacon sees a way of rendering it a willing handmaiden in his farreaching humanitarian project to make man comfortably at home in this world.

Are we justified when we care more about “our own kind” than about all others? Some scholars have tried to provide an answer based on what they consider human nature. Others—on self-interest. The author examines the implications of the constitutive roles community has in our life for this question, as well as the differences it makes when considering what kind of human flourishing we deem of value.

If three children go hungry in a community, the members of this community are more distressed than if thousands starve in some far away country. Moreover, people not only care more about members of their own communities, but maintain that they are justified in doing so, that one has a higher level of obligation to one's “own kind” than to all others. Are such particularistic obligations justified, and on what grounds?

This question has been the subject of an immense amount of deliberation, which is not reviewed here. This exploration is limited to an examination of communitarian justifications for particularistic obligations, and only to those in a societal rather than political context. That is, if concerns the obligations of members of communities, not those of citizens of states.

Thomas More advocated religious freedom in Utopia to promote civic peace in Christendom and to help unify his fractious Catholic Church. In doing so, he set forth a plan for managing church-state relations that is a precursor to liberal approaches in this area. Most scholars locate the origins of modern religious freedom in Protestant theology and its first mature articulation in Locke's A Letter on Toleration. This reading of Utopia shows that modern religious freedom has Catholic, Renaissance roots. The essay discusses how scholars have treated Utopian religious freedom and considers the much vexed question of whether More actually favored this principle. It also presents the historical context for More's analysis, his rationale for religious freedom, its effects on Utopian religion and politics, and More's strategy for promoting religious reform in Europe.

Of course Aquinas uses the term ius in an “objective” sense, to mean “the just,” “the just thing,” or the “just state of affairs” called for by the virtue of justice. But he also uses ius in a “subjective” sense, to refer to a right or rights that someone, the “subject,” has. Brian Tierney fails to see this, for three reasons, I think: though he has been an effective critic of Villey's historical analyses, he now seems gripped by Villey's non sequitur (if objective then not subjective); he looks to Aquinas's “phrases,” “usages,” and “terms,” sometimes neglecting the arguments in which Aquinas uses them; and, at least in this new essay, he employs a simplistic understanding of the modern idea of rights.

Aristotle's discussion of the great-souled man (megalopsuchos) is crucial to any interpretation of the Nicomachean Ethics. Yet there is no scholarly consensus about the nature and significance of the megalopsuchos. This article examines Aristotle's treatment of the great-souled man within the context of the Ethics as a whole and in connection with other relevant passages elsewhere in the Aristotelian corpus. In particular, Aristotle's identification of Socrates as a great-souled man in the Posterior Analytics provides an interpretative key to his discussion of greatness of soul in the Ethics. Aristotle's presentation of the great-souled man reflects an ambiguity at the heart of virtue itself, and underscores the Socratic character of the fundamental lessons of the Ethics. According to Aristotle, the true megalopsuchos is Socrates.

Plato's Lesser Hippias asks who is the better man in Homer, Achilles or Odysseus. Socrates argues on behalf of Odysseus and his argument ultimately leads him to the conclusion that “he who voluntarily goes wrong and does what is shameful and unjust, if indeed there is any such person, would be no one else than the good man.” This conclusion is repellant to Hippias and Socrates agrees with him while insisting nevertheless that the argument requires this conclusion. But Socrates also says he “vacillates,” sometimes holding this view, sometimes its opposite. Why does Socrates argue for the superiority of Odysseus? Why does he insist on a repellant conclusion? And why does he say he vacillates? The answer to these questions points to indispensable elements in Socrates′ political philosophy.

The article reflects on the place of building (both as an activity and as an object) in modern, organic nationalism. In particular, it studies the role of building in the movement that epitomizes the Promethean aspect of modernity—Zionism. In this Jewish national movement metaphors ofbuilding are used very often to connote belonging on three different levels: in the material world produced by human beings, in a historically meaningful and humanized space, and in a community of constructors that willfully reshapes both space and matter. But by conceptualizing their collective project as a building, and by envisioning themselves as builders, many Zionists espoused a problematic understanding of democratic politics: the practical skills required by builders do not foster the critical thought, independence, and moral judgment required of the citizen, and the nonverbal solidarity among builders is essentially different from the solidarity required by a plurality of citizens. In other words, the ethos of builders that was essential for establishing a commonwealth from scratch is fundamentally at odds with the ethos required from an ongoing, democratic polity.

The problem addressed by Professor Tierney is also a problem on which Professor Ernest Fortin, a member of this journal's editorial advisory board, has written extensively and forcefully. Unfortunately, the lingering effects of an untimely stroke make it impossible for him to respond to Tierney's essay. The editor of the Review of Politics has consequently asked me to respond in his stead. My goal is to be faithful to Fortin's position, but of course the following remarks must be taken as my own. It would be contrary to Fr. Fortin's generous spirit for me not to note at the outset that he is genuinely impressed with Tierney's tireless research on the question of the origin of modern natural rights theories, even if he does not always agree with Tierney's assessment of the matter.

Strauss's historical investigation of the use of exoteric writing in Farabi, Maimonides, Halevi, and Spinoza, is in fact his history of the philosophers' exoteric accommodations to the permanent difference in human natures, the difference between the many who require a categorical moral teaching and the few who are capable of ordering their own lives in the face of the hypothetical status of all moral commands. The men of the Enlightenment aspired to render the moral law superfluous for all by constructing a machinery of government powerful enough to compel all to live justly. Strauss critiques this aspiration by leading his reader to face the permanency of the difference between the few and the many. Strauss uses historical scholarship to force the reader to rethink the possibility of contemplation of the eternal or permanent, the possibility that the Enlightenment's historicist epigones have sought to foreclose.

The article examines Voegelin's understanding of nous as the ground for theorizing, and relates this back to Aristotle. Aristotle is shown to have understood the activities of nous in two distinct ways. On the one hand, nous is the divine activity of the soul exploring its own ground. But nous is also induction (epagôgê) of the first principles of science through sense perception, memory and experience. The two basic activities of nous are related, but they have different values when it comes to the world of particulars. The argument is that a substantive ethical and political science—one that sheds light on particulars—must include the inductive employment of nous and that the exclusion of this from Voegelin's political science results in some discernible limitations.

The limitations of Eric Voegelin—s work are sometimes difficult to keep in view, particularly while he is expounding upon the totality of Being, the myriad dimensions of human consciousness, and the nature of order in personal, social, and historical existence. But in fact Voegelin's work is more limited than his magisterial tone might suggest. The argument of this article is that while Voegelin offers his readers profoundly important insights into the structure of human consciousness and into what Aristotle called first philosophy, the study of being qua being, he does not offer his readers much in the way of a substantive ethical or political science.

The quarrel between Socrates and Callicles has long been recognized as the highpoint of Plato's Gorgias. But the acceptance of an overly simple view of Callicles has kept this quarrel from being understood in its full complexity. While Callicles appears to be a cynical immoralist, this appearance hides his deepest convictions; and while he and Socrates never come to a genuine meeting of the minds, the unbridgeable gap between them is due to Callicles′ unwillingness to acknowledge his moral convictions rather than to his lack of them. Through a close examination of their quarrel, the essay attempts to uncover true character of the irreconcilable differences between Socrates and Callicles and thus provide a pathway for a new understanding of Plato's Gorgias.

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.

When I was an undergraduate I barely missed taking a course from Brian Tierney—he was on leave the year I studied medieval history—but I have been instructed by him ever since. His work on the medieval origins of the concept of rights has changed the landscape of thinking about rights. In this present essay he continues his role as chief archaeologist of the doctrine of rights, laying bare here the shards of a version of natural law that, he argues, naturally grew into, or grounded the notion of rights.

Twentieth-century feminist scholarship has largely ignored the foundational role of theology in Wollstonecraft's moral and political philosophy, and its role in shaping the development of her philosophy of the family through three distinct stages. Wollstonecraft was a traditional trinitarian Anglican in her early writings, a rationalistic unitarian Christian Dissenter in her middle writings, and a Romantic deist, skeptic and possible atheist in her late writings. The early Wollstonecraft views the traditional family as a cave that traps humanity in a morass of corruption with no hope of escape except in the next life; the middle Wollstonecraft believes that once the family takes a new, egalitarian form, it can serve as a “little platoon” (to use Burke's phrase) that instills the moral, social and political virtues in each generation of citizens; while the late Wollstonecraft fears that the traditional family is a prison from which women have little hope of escape, either in this world or through passage to the next.

Despite recent interest in Michael Oakeshott's work, his aesthetics have yet to receive an extended consideration. The paper surveys Oakeshott's writings on the character of art and provides a critical account of how his aesthetics complements his moral philosophy. Through his aesthetics Oakeshott provides his moral philosophy with an idea of authenticity. Societies and individuals that have failed to recognize the poetic dimension in the moral life suffer a corruption of consciousness. Far from the poetic dimension of the moral life being responsible for nihilism and aestheticism as some critics have argued, its recognition saves the moral life from becoming a pursuit of arbitrary preferences.

Within the last twenty years, a number of scholars have challenged the prevailing “Hamiltonian” interpretation of the content of James Madison's political thought and the trajectory of his political career. This essay analyzes these contributions, placing them in the context of other interpretations of Madison and suggesting that they merit the most serious attention from political theorists. In general, my hope is to confront political theorists—many of whom hold a radically different interpretation—with this revision and to renew a discussion about the character of Madison's political thought and his place within the American Founding.

I find myself in a difficult situation, beleaguered on all sides. According to Finnis, Aquinas derived a doctrine of natural rights from his teaching on natural law. According to Kries, echoing Fr. Fortin, the two ideas, natural rights and natural law, are radically opposed to one another. This leaves me with a hope that some readers, faced by these extremely opposed assertions, may find a note of sweet reasonableness, a sort of golden mean, in my own position, namely that Aquinas did not himself articulate a doctrine of natural rights, but that this doctrine was not inconsistent with his teaching on natural law. The two doctrines could coexist, as they did in some later neoscholastic writings.

Let us consider first the criticisms of Finnis. My own position was set out succinctly in a previous work. “When Aquinas was writing unreflectively and following the common practice of his age, he did use the word ius in a subjective sense in phrases like ius dominii. … Yet it remains true that he developed no explicit doctrine of subjective rights or natural rights.” This still seems to me a correct judgment. Moreover it corresponds quite closely to Finnis's reading of Aquinas in his earlier book.

While recent scholarship has attempted to clarify the Founders′ opposition to religious establishment, few pause to consider public establishment as a viable alternative. This study examines one of the eighteenth century's least likely proponents of religious establishment: David Hume. Despite his reputation as an avowed enemy of religion, Hume actually defends religion for its ability to strengthen society and to improve morality. These salutary qualities are lost, however, when society is indifferent about the character of the religion professed by its citizens. Hume's masterful History of England reveals that a tolerant established church is best equipped to reap the advantages of religion while avoiding the dangers of fanaticism. Hume's differences in this respect from Adam Smith and Alexis de Tocqueville are explored.

In the last few years, we have witnessed a remarkable increase in public discourse about the role of religion in American life. From the spirited campaign rhetoric of vice-presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman to George W. Bush's faith-based initiative, our national leaders have demonstrated a growing willingness to bring religion into the public square. One result has been a renewed debate about the meaning of both the First Amendment and the Founders′ principle of nonestablishment. Often missing from this debate is a discussion of the deeper issues at play in the relationship between church and state. What exactly do individual citizens have to fear from a union of church and state?

While scholars have argued that in Emile Rousseau uses Robinson Crusoe as a model of self-sufficiency to further his ideal of a “natural” man, this essay argues that Rousseau's presentation of Defoe's hero points in precisely the opposite direction. Crusoe is not a natural man but rather a social man in isolation, and makes his solitude an object of reflection. He therefore assists in the development of Emile's awareness of himself as an individual, which marks the transition between Emile's existence as a merely physical being and his existence as a moral being. Crusoe prepares Emile to address the question, “What is society good for?” by expanding Emile's understanding of what is good. The implications of these considerations for understanding Rousseau's ideas about authorship, identity, and the possibility of a truly self-sufficient individual are developed.