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.

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.

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.

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.

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.