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.

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.

This paper aims to illuminate the ongoing significance of Locke's political philosophy. It argues that the legitimacy of political authority lies, according to Locke, in the extent to which it collaborates with individuals so as to allow them to be themselves more effectively, and in its answerability to the consent such individuals should thereby give it. The first section discusses how the free will inevitably asserts its authority; the second shows the inevitability of the will's incorporation of authority as a kind of prosthesis, which in turn transforms the operation of the will; and the third treats the issue of consent, arguing that Locke is less interested in explicit acts of consent than in the norm of consent, in answerability to which structures of authority should be shaped so as to honor the beings whose capacity to consent is definitive for them.

In his political writings, Hobbes consistently distinguishes between “natural” and “artificial” commonwealths—those that arise from the family, and those created by mutual covenants. Although he insists that “both have the same right of government,” closer examination of Hobbes's accounts of the family reveals that it is a radically deficient model for the state, and that Hobbes was engaged in a polemic against both republicans and absolutists who claimed that parental power was natural, prior to, and even a model for the power of civil sovereigns. For Hobbes, a state based on parental rule is dangerously unstable, exacerbating the mutual fears of parents and children. The “office of the sovereign representative” defuses this conflict, and within the commonwealth, the family is denaturalized and reconstituted as an educative institution whose purpose is to reinforce the artificial sovereign by schooling both parents and children in the miseries of personal rule.

Hume's famous “Conclusion” to Book I of the Treatise of Human Nature has been an enduring source of interest and controversy to scholars, with some going so far as to argue that the Treatise is inconsistent. Yet in the opening pages of the book Hume makes an odd, rarely noticed allusion to Socrates that helps explain the “Conclusion.” This article argues that the “Conclusion” is Hume's version of calling philosophy down from the heavens, establishing it in the cities, and compelling to inquire into morality and human affairs. Recognizing Hume's Socratic allusion focuses our attention on the centrality of moral and political topics to his mature thought and sheds light on the character of his skepticism. Far from being a confession of despair, Hume's skeptical crisis is an argument for a new conception of philosophy that takes self-knowledge as the indispensable condition of philosophizing about anything.

The account of “democracy” presented in the writings of Alfarabi differs considerably from all other treatments of the subject, both ancient and modern. The goal of this article is to elucidate the falāsifa's view of democracy and account for its unusual character, by showing how appropriate it is to both the meaning of the term in medieval Arabic and the political situation of their own time. Questions such as internal order, war, immigration, philosophy, and their relationship to democracy as understood by the falāsifa are all duly considered. The article concludes with the suggestion that this peculiar sort of democracy nonetheless resembles modern democracy in one small but crucial respect.

Both critics and defenders of the modern American administrative state have recognized the influence of Hegelian ideas upon the American progressives. But existing scholarship on this connection has not delved into the institutional details of Hegelian political theory and its transformation in progressivism. This article traces the continuities and adaptations between Hegelian and American progressive theories of the administrative state through three conceptual pairs: individual rights and social welfare, civil society and the state, and legislation and execution. For both German Hegelian legal scholars and the American Hegelian progressives, these conceptual pairs staked out the basic normative and institutional tensions underlying the modern state. The progressives, however, gave these concepts a democratic interpretation, and thus sought to involve the public at multiple levels of the policy-making process. This Hegelian progressive theory provides a compelling basis for a public philosophy of the contemporary American state.

In an unsent 1860 letter, Abraham Lincoln mocked Sidney Fisher's claim that the “institution [of slavery] is a necessity imposed on us by the negro race.” And yet, Lincoln himself had often said that while slavery was an evil, the founders had to tolerate it where it existed owing to “necessity.” This raises the questions: What kinds of arguments about slavery and “necessity” did Lincoln find legitimate, and what kinds did he find to be illegitimate? In Lincoln's view, what exactly was it that necessitated the toleration of slavery where it existed at the time of the founding and into the 1850s? Lincoln's answers to these questions depart from the answers offered by Fisher, Thomas Jefferson, and Henry Clay; this departure helped pave the way not only to Lincoln's later embrace of emancipation, but also his eventual movement toward the position that African-Americans would and should be full citizens.

While it may not be surprising that Mill's proposal for a “plural voting” scheme that would award more votes to citizens with more education has few contemporary supporters, it is surprising that so many interpreters take him to regard plural voting as merely a temporary measure meant to ease the transition from restricted to universal suffrage. Contra Amy Gutmann, Maria Morales, Wendy Donner, David Brink, Wendy Sarvasy, Bruce Baum, and Jonathan Riley, I argue that Mill believes that plural voting should always accompany universal suffrage and thus that it should be in place indefinitely.

Looking to the relatively recent “religious turn” in Locke scholarship, this paper argues for an interpretation that reconciles two apparently contradictory aspects of his thought: on the one hand, property rights, thought absolute by many of Locke's readers; on the other hand, Locke's notion of duties of charity. On the basis of a rereading of the “Essay on the Poor Law,” I argue that Lockean charity may ground coercively enforceable distributive obligations. Nevertheless, I contend that the redistributive poor-relief system grounded on the principle of charity does not infringe property rights. The reason for this is that the right to charity and the right to property are both based on Locke's theological commitment to the right of each man to the means of preservation.

This essay examines the role of “critical spectatorship” in the writings of two distinguished European intellectuals, José Ortega y Gasset (1883–1955) and Raymond Aron (1905–1983). We begin the paper by commenting on the struggle between civilization and barbarism, a fundamental topic in their works. We then examine the rhetoric of going beyond the political left and right, which both Ortega and Aron used in their writings. Next, we turn to the concept of “critical spectatorship” that is central to their thought and comment on the similarities and differences between their forms of social and political criticism. We conclude by drawing a few conclusions on the relevance of Ortega's and Aron's ideas for us today.

Consensus both serves and threatens democratic inclusion. On the one hand it provides the means for individuals to will in common. On the other hand, it can impose assimilatory pressures that marginalize perspectives at odds with the prevailing point of view. Agonists have responded to this tension with a call to abandon consensus-oriented politics, contending an adversarial democracy more credibly advances inclusionary and egalitarian goals. I argue this wholesale rejection of consensus is unsustainable from the very pluralist perspective agonists wish to promote. In place of the view of consensus as an unattainable and undesirable absolute, I put forward an understanding of it as a matter of degree. I contend this understanding better captures the complexity of human relations and allows us to distinguish the potential accomplishments of consensus from its potential hazards.

According to Isaiah Berlin's influential characterization, value monism holds that there are discoverable, axiomatic ethical principles from which all ethical knowledge may be derived, that ethical reasoning is algorithmic and mechanical, and that it seeks permanent, “final solutions” to all ethical conflicts. Berlin's account of monism oversimplifies and distorts the idea of monism and its relation to liberal values. There is a fundamentally distinct conception of monism, “asymptotic” monism, that is not only compatible with liberty and liberal toleration but is required by these values. I present this alternative through an exposition and defense of Immanuel Kant's monistic conception of ethics and public law, where it finds full expression. Berlin's warnings that monism tends to support political despotism ignore the distinctive character of Kant's asymptotic monism.

It is now conventional in both pedagogical and scholarly venues to characterize Thucydides as a “realist.” Few, however, have noted that the first major writer to describe him in these terms is not Machiavelli or Hobbes (alongside whom he is frequently placed), but Friedrich Nietzsche. This article seeks to investigate the particular character of Thucydides's realism through a close reading of Nietzsche's discussions of Thucydides and his History. Three interpretations are explored: realism as a mode of investigating or understanding the world, realism as a set of ideas about the possibilities of establishing grounds for justice in the world, and realism as a matter of character.

This article examines the influence of Fyodor Dostoevsky on Albert Camus's political philosophy of revolt. The aim is to clarify Camus's reactions to the problems of absurdity, nihilism, and transcendence through an analysis of his literary and philosophical engagement with Dostoevsky. I make three related claims. First, I claim that Camus's philosophy of revolt is informed in crucial ways by Dostoevsky's accounts of religious transcendence and political nihilism. Second, that Camus's conceptualization of the tension between nihilism and transcendence corresponds to and is personified by the dialogue between Ivan Karamazov and Father Zossima in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. Finally, that Camus uses his novel The Plague to bridge the moral and metaphysical divide between these two characters. In particular, I argue that Camus offers a distinct vision of revolt in The Plague, which clarifies both the practical implications of revolt and his philosophical rejoinder to Dostoevsky.

“Political theology” is now a fixture within political theory's lexicon. Although Carl Schmitt's Political Theology (1922) is identified as the contemporary locus classicus for the concept, that work's primary task is only to elaborate a “sociology of juristic concepts.” Beginning in the 1990s, however, Schmitt's entire corpus has increasingly been interpreted as one motivated by “political theology” in a stronger sense—as political action based upon faith in (Christian) revelation. I challenge this thesis by (1) examining its history, (2) drawing attention to the many aspects of Schmitt's (mostly Weimar-era) work that are deeply at odds with this thesis, and (3) reexamining his (mostly postwar) remarks ordinarily cited to bolster the thesis. Ultimately, the core of Schmitt's thought lies elsewhere; returning to the purported father of political theology brings clarity to the bourgeoning discussion of this topic within the discipline.

Robert Caro's biographies of Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson prove fruitful for political theory, particularly when approached in tandem, along the lines of Plutarch's comparative profiles. Building on the supposition that general insights into political power and its ethics lie in biographical particulars, Caro demonstrates that the most exhaustively detailed research of the most extreme subjects can yield otherwise inaccessible findings. Similarities between Moses and Johnson expose common mechanics of accumulating power, converting personal relationships into institutional authority, and show that norms are given effect as tools used by politicians. Contrasts offer the career as a unit of moral evaluation and suggest that although power may corrupt, it also “reveals.” A praiseworthy career should aim at ends distinct from both ideals and means. Assessment depends not only on intents or accomplishments, but on means, weighing their morality against their necessity.

This paper calls attention to the interpretive, and humanist liberal, strand of thinking that is most clearly evident in the development of Charles Taylor's ideas. Recovering it makes it possible to see why the differences between Taylor and Rawls should be seen, not in terms of the erstwhile disputes between liberals and communitarians, but instead as over issues of method, and in particular about the independence or autonomy of political philosophy. Rawls and Taylor exemplify distinct modes of postanalytic liberal theorizing that emerged in the late twentieth century out of two very different responses to challenges within analytic philosophy's discursive beginnings that continue to divide the discipline to this day. Their juxtaposition, therefore, sheds light on how such methodological commitments animate normative prerogatives and generates important resources for thinking about the very powers and limits of political theory.