Although the relatively flexible state constitutional amendment and revision procedures are generally considered to be inferior to the corresponding procedures in the U.S. Constitution, there have been few efforts to explain why state constitution-makers adopted these procedures, and as a result we have not been in a position to assess adequately the merits of the state approach. This article undertakes to explain the development of state constitutional amendment and revision procedures by examining the state convention debates that have been conducted throughout American history. The adoption of these procedures can be attributed, in part, to a different theoretical understanding of constitutionalism than prevailed at the national level, and, in part, to a desire to overcome various problems of governance at the state level, including the need to overcome entrenched geographic interests in the nineteenth century, and the need to overcome powerful special interests, as well as intransigent judges, in the twentieth century.

Ronald Dworkin's effort to distinguish multiple layers of “intention” that are embedded in the constitutional text has been taken as a substantial critique of traditional originalist jurisprudence. Dworkin has strongly argued that the constitutional text embodies abstract principles. These principles are understood to be both fundamental to the Founders' intentions and the primary focus of correct constitutional interpretation faithful to those intentions. This article argues that Dworkin's reconceptualization of originalism is theoretically flawed. Although there may be normative reasons for preferring that the judiciary always enforce broad constitutional principles, such a jurisprudence cannot be understood as either consistent with or required by an originalist interpretative method whose primary commitment is to fidelity to founding intent.

The question implies that the First Amendment's “separation of church and state,” as interpreted by the Supreme Court, is an insufficient solution to the old conflict between American democracy and Catholicism. Catholicism has become unsafe in contemporary American democracy in ways that the original constitutional arrangement, of which the First Amendment was only a part, does not help. The contemporary danger is rooted partly in the old conflict between classical liberalism and revealed religion as such. But the more proximate danger is the secular “civil liberties” regime that has been instituted by the Supreme Court since 1940. That regime permits Catholics to follow their religion in public affairs only insofar as it is in agreement with the secularism which the “civil liberties” regime both instituted and understands liberal democracy to require.

The collision between the philosopher and his fellow citizens is the central dramatic event that ties together all three of our primary sources on Socrates. According to the literary, or Straussian, approach to the Socratic problem this collision was paradigmatic of a permanent tension between political life—which is founded on cherished opinions, and philosophy—which tries to replace opinions with knowledge. Socrates dies because he arouses pious indignation. This article concurs in part and dissents in part. Political life is represented not by one but two speeches—the Just and the Unjust. And while the tension between philosophy and the piety that sustains cities and families is quite real, it is not this tension that kills Socrates. He offends not the piety of the Athenians, but their sophism.

Plato's Crito articulates the problem of political obligation by clarifying the paradoxical relation between Socratic philosophy and citizenship embodied in the relationship between Socrates and Crito. Scholars obscure the dialogue either by taking the arguments Socrates gives to the laws of Athens as his own reasons for obeying the law rather than as agents of Crito's edification or by severing Socrates from the laws while misunderstanding Crito's significance to political obligation. Socrates bolsters Crito's commitment to civic virtue and the rule of law while revealing their parameters and the self-sufficiency of Socratic philosophy by implicitly raising the issue of voluntary injustice. The tension between Socratic philosophy and citizenship shows the need to view Socrates' defense of citizenship in the light of his defense of philosophy.

Montesquieu's theory of separate powers is elaborated in a discussion of the constitution of England in Book XI, chapter 6 of The Spirit of the Laws, which is by far the most discussed section of that work. Many commentators have interpreted the English system straightforwardly as Montesquieu's ideal regime. But while he greatly admires the legal separation of powers in the English constitution, he worries that the spirit of “extreme” liberty among the English could undercut the constitutional separation of powers that protects their liberty. Montesquieu's ambivalence thus raises questions as to what sort of “spirit” a regime must have to sustain a constitution of separate powers and so to preserve individual liberty. His reservations about England are important for understanding his philosophy of liberalism and have broad significance for any polity that seeks to protect individual liberty through a constitution of separate powers

I am sympathetic to the problem enunciated by Professors Glenn and Stack, viz., “that contemporary American democracy, by constitutionally privileging secularism, offers Catholics in public life a strong inducement to abandon, relativize, or remain silent about, their moral beliefs, insofar as these conflict with secularism. Catholics have to act like, not necessarily be, secularists. That makes it spiritually and politically unsafe, not to say impossible, for Catholics to be democrats now.” However, while they have circled in on an important problem—the totalitarian impulse of contemporary liberals—they have not hit the bull's-eye exactly

I outline from a non-foundational standpoint why knowledge does not rest on a circular argument and why the nonunivocality of language is compatible with scientific truth and objectivity. The theory sketch is advanced as the form of scientific theory appropriate to homeostatic systems. A rebuttal to the arguments against my theory sketches of international systems permits a concrete and systematic investigation of why the theory sketch—rather than formal theories of the type of physics or historical generalizations - is the appropriate method. I later explore more briefly how theory sketches apply to other types of homeostatic systems. I discuss how the homeostatic control metaphor informs the vicarious test-in-principle that I employ in the area of moral analysis and why other types of moral analysis, including those of Rawls and Nozick, fail. How my position on moral analysis accords with and differs from that of Aristotle is noted.

According to Isaiah Berlin's influential interpretation, J. G. Herder (1744–1803) deserves to be recognized as the first cultural pluralist in the West, and thus also as an important historical source of the pluralistic ideas espoused by increasing numbers of political theorists today. Herder's importance actually lies in the ambivalent stance he takes toward his own pluralistic insights. That is, convinced that it is impossible to adhere to a completely pluralistic view of the world, Herder sets out to combine pluralism and its theoretical opposite (“monism”) into a novel theory of historical progress according to which history reaches its culmination in the realization of a purified form of Christianity. Contemporary pluralists have much to learn—both historically and theoretically—from Herder's confrontation with his pluralism.

As a protest, the argument of Professors Glenn and Stack is valid and important. That the realm of public debate is largely closed to those who stand explicitly on Judaic and Christian principles is an intellectual scandal. This closure, of course, is the doing not of the courts (even though it accords with attitudes quite evident in the courts) but of academicians, journalists, and various political activists who are quick to rule any appeal to religious premises, as well as any moral judgments thought to derive therefrom, such as the evil of abortion, out of order. Their ostensible justification is that public discourse must be based on premises common to all participants. Such a justification may be superficially plausible, but it is worse than dubious. It enables opponents of religion to narrow their minds without compunction and to constrict the public realm. In effect, contemporary secularists say to would-be religious interlocutors, “Yours are arguments we refuse even to face or consider.”

In the Cleitophon, Cleitophon abandons Socrates because he could not provide an art of justice that would bring an end to strife by eliminating cities, families, and the love of one's own on which they depend. Cleitophon's disappointment in reason prepares us for the misology of his legal positivism in the Republic. Although Socrates does not refute Cleitophon, Plato points to the deficiencies of art and legal positivism by pointing to poetic foils. By pointing to the poetic, Plato shows what is sound in poetry and the city informed by it, and, therewith, what they share with Socrates despite their ultimate differences. By not having his Socrates succumb to the promises of art and the irrational conformism of legal positivism, and by pointing to the humane learning of the poets, Plato opens a window on to the meaning of Socratic wisdom and the Socratic life.

Liberalism has always had a powerful concern with the education of its citizens. But who should exercise final authority over the education—parents or the state? The answer rests, in large part, on our understanding of the character of the self-rule or autonomy to be taught. For as “autonomy” comes to mean unpredetermined “choice,” it becomes ever more difficult to justify parental control of education. In fact, parental control, supported by the earliest liberals, is now thought to produce “ethical servility.” Liberal theorists—such as John Dewey, Amy Gutmann, and Eamonn Callan—break with thinkers like Locke and Mill in allowing the state to override parental preferences in the name of greater equality, preparation for autonomy, and democratic deliberation. We argue that taking educational authority away from parents and giving it to the state is an illiberal policy, meaning one that fails to abide by Locke's central distinction of political and parental power. This failure will lead both to greater ethical servility and to fewer reasonable alternatives from which autonomous individuals can choose.

Gary D. Glenn and John Stack advance two important claims; one explicit, the other implicit. Their explicit claim is that the “new regime of civil liberties” is dangerous to Catholicism. Here I am in qualified agreement, though important ambiguities cloud the argument. Their implicit claim is that it is a bad thing for Catholicism to be in danger. This proposition is flawed. Glenn and Stack cite (without irony) American Catholics “who have spent several generations seeking to become accepted and acceptable to the American democratic culture.” A large part of the danger seems to be “the punishment of exclusion from respectability in the culture.” This assumes that the “normal” mode for Catholicism is comfortable accommodation to political culture and institutions.

Hegel's concept of patriotism helps specify an account of the just association of collective identity and state power. This concept has three main features. First, as a distinctly modern virtue, patriotism is limited by Hegel's account of modernity and its link to “subjective freedom.” Second, patriotism forges an important connection between critical reflection and habitual practice, illuminated in a comparison of Hegel's thoughts on ethical education with Aristotelian practical philosophy. Third, these first two dimensions are brought together with a decision grounded in the acceptance of the irreducibly collective dimension of freedom— the will to war for one–s country. Hegel's account of war is also a “test case” for his internally limited patriotism, as a comparison with Kant's argument for “perpetual peace” reveals. In conclusion, this account connects traditional liberal institutions with a republican concern for self-rule in a framework that offers legitimate bounds to a “right to national self-determination”.

“As I returned, here—I did not return.” With these words of Alfred Doeblin, Eric Voegelin could also have described his German experience of the years 1958 through 1969. That is valid in a general sense, to speak with the poet: “You are no longer the one who left, and you no longer find the home that you left. You don&t know it when you leave, but you suspect it on the way back.” And it is valid in a special sense too, namely, for Voegelin's relationship to German political science. Here too he remained a stranger among strangers, although his presence in Munich left behind important and lasting impulses. Yet a wider reception of his work in Germany came only with delays, and more outside than inside the guild, so that to this day there exists a substantial need of reconsideration by scholars as well as students. Beginners above all encounter in handbooks and introductions only arid clichés about the “Munich School” and its peculiarity, described with few exceptions stereotypically, as “ontological-normative.” But the central figure of Eric Voegelin remains remarkably dimly lit. All the more welcome, then, are the efforts of the initiators of this symposium to illuminate the details of Voegelin's effects in the postwar era. And more welcome still is the long neglected presentation of his major work, Order and History, in German.

We are grateful that the editors secured three thoughtful though critical responses to our essay. Such responses perform a service by calling to our attention matters we have insufficiently considered, pushing us to greater clarity, and perhaps revealing to us errors that we have overlooked.

In 1990, with the support of the Bavarian Ministry of Cultural Affairs, the University of Munich, and the Fritz-Thyssen Foundation, Peter Opitz organized the Eric-Voegelin-Archiv at the Geschwister-Scholl Institute for Political Science at the University of Munich. Opitz is currently the director of the institute, which Voegelin founded during the 1950s upon his return to Europe from the United States, to which he fled as a refugee in 1938 following the occupation of Austria by the German army. Voegelin taught in Munich for little more than a decade prior to his retirement in 1969 as a Henry Salvatori Distinguished Scholar at the Hoover Institution, Stanford.

Quentin Skinner's method for studying the history of political thought has been widely and heatedly debated for decades. This article takes a new tack, offering a critique of Skinner's approach on the grounds he has himself established: consideration of his historical work as exemplifying the theory in practice. Three central assumptions of Skinner's method are briefly reviewed; each is then evaluated in the context of his writings on Hobbes. The analysis reveals problems and ambiguities in the specification and implementation of the method and in its underlying philosophy. The essay concludes by examining the broader practical and philosophical implications of adopting this approach to the study of political ideas: the method operationalizes a set of philosophical commitments that transforms ideological choices into questions of proper method.

As Gadamer, the “dean” of European philosophy, turns 100 this year, it behooves philosophers and reflective people in general to ponder the relation between philosophy and “good life,” and more broadly between philosophy and natural health. As it happens, Gadamer himself has extensively reflected on this issue, especially in a book titled The Enigma of Health. The essay first recapitulates some of the main arguments of Gadamer's text, focusing on the difference between the growing scientific arsenal of medical intervention (combatting illness) and the unforced and un-constructed maintenance of human health through attentiveness to “nature's way.” The middle section inserts the text into the context of Gadamer's larger opus, exploring particularly the connection between health and such key Gadamerian concerns as “appropriateness,” “natural rightness,” and “mimesis.” The conclusion traces affinities between Gadamer and the teachings of Heidegger and Adorno, while also probing the political implications of his text for the maintenance of human freedom in the face of expertocracy and the reduction of politics to ideological blueprints.