Best Form Of Government Research Articles

A deeper freedom: liberal democracy as an everyday morality

Today those who believe in liberal democracy must reexamine and reaffirm their commitments. Here, Charles Anderson probes our urgent concerns and questions. Even those who believe that liberal democracy is the best form of government may think that liberal individualism leads to selfishness, permissiveness, and irresponsibility. Many would teach a cultural or religious counterethic to offset the excesses of freedom. Grounding his view in classic philosophic and religious ideals, Anderson argues that a deeper vision of individuality and freedom can lead to both a sound public philosophy and a worthy personal ethic. In the same way that we as humans try to understand our place in nature and the cosmos, Anderson seeks to understand how we, as unique individuals, can understand our place among our fellow humans. Beginning with friendship and love, he extends his inquiry to the relationships of teaching, community, work, and democracy. Anderson shows how the natural desire of free people to find meaning in relationships with one another can lead to depth and fullness both in private and public life.

Book Review: A Living Force: Andrew Inglis Clark and the Ideal of Commonwealth

A Living Force: Andrew Inglis Clark and the Ideal of Commonwealth, edited by Richard Ely, highlight the existing relevance of the many of the words of a man who wrote one hundred years ago and his deep understanding of the machinery of government and how the best form of government can be achieved. Clark's experience of the practical workings of the political system led him to conclude that political power must be tempered by first, establishing an electoral system and also establishing fundamental laws which protect the natural rights of individuals beyond the reach of the majority of the hour. A Living Force: Andrew Inglis Clark and the Ideal of Commonwealth, edited by Richard Ely, 2001.

Instituting the Hobbesian Commonwealth

In Hobbes' political theory, a commonwealth established by force is a commonwealth by acquisition, while a commonwealth established by the mutual agreement of individuals in a Hobbesian State of Nature is a commonwealth by institution. In this essay, I reconstruct Hobbes' account of commonwealth by institution and its role in justifying sovereignty, filling in gaps in the original account when necessary but remaining faithful to Hobbes' own premises. I argue that according to this Hobbesian reconstruction, commonwealth by institution can produce essentially the same result as result of commonwealth by acquisition. This is the conclusion Hobbes wants, but the Hobbesian reconstruction renders commonwealth by institution a weak tool for justification. However, I propose a modified reconstruction of commonwealth by institution that drops Hobbes' dubious premise that absolute monarchy is the best form of government. I suggest that with this modification, one can use commonwealth by institution as a tool for justifying a democratic commonwealth.

John Adams and the Spirit of Liberty.

America's finest eighteenth-century student of political science, John Adams is also the least studied of the Revolution's key figures. By the time he became our second president, no American had written more about our government and not even Jefferson or Madison had read as widely about questions of human nature, natural right, political organization, and constitutional construction. Yet this staunch constitutionalist is perceived by many as having become reactionary in his later years and his ideas have been largely disregarded. In the first major work on Adams's political thought in over thirty years, C. Bradley Thompson takes issue with the notion that Adams's thought is irrelevant to the development of American ideas. Focusing on Adams's major writings, Thompson elucidates and reevaluates his political and constitutional thought by interpreting it within the tradition of political philosophy stretching from Plato to Montesquieu. This major revisionist study shows that the distinction Adams drew between principles of and principles of political architecture is central to his entire political philosophy. Thompson first chronicles Adams's conceptualization of moral and political liberty during his confrontation with American Loyalists and British imperial officers over the true nature of justice and the British Constitution, illuminating Adams's two most important pre-Revolutionary essays, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law and The Letters of Novanglus. He then presents Adams's debate with French philosophers over the best form of government and provides an extended analysis of his Defence of the Constitutions of Government and Discourses on Davila to demonstrate his theory of political architecture. From these pages emerges a new John Adams. In reexamining his political thought, Thompson reconstructs the contours and influences of Adams's mental universe, the ideas he challenged, the problems he considered central to constitution-making, and the methods of his reasoning. Skillfully blending history and political science, Thompson's work shows how the spirit of liberty animated Adams's life and reestablishes this forgotten Revolutionary as an independent and important thinker.

Matar a Sócrates: los pensamientos tardíos de Platón acerca de la democracia

This paper conceives itself as part of a larger effort that sets out to mediate among the opposed visions of Plato as a dogmatic thinker and as a skeptic. In particular, the paper is a challenge to, and a refutation of, a particular interpretation on the late Plato. The interpretation opposed implies that, in his later years, Plato did without much of what he himself considered true and valuable earlier, and that he would have ultimately rejected that particular concern with human happiness and virtue that we associate with his name, and that of his teacher, Socrates. Rowe objects also to undiscriminating recourse to the kind of developmental approach that underlies the interpretation, stressing the importance of sticking to Plato’s arguments and resorting to developmental considerations only if and when all else fails. The object under scrutiny here is the standard version of the Statesman (constructed from the text of 297c up to 302b, and particularly 300a-301a). The basic interpretive aspect challenged is the idea that at some point, Plato’s perspective of politics was drastically altered, this shift (from the ruling of philosopher-kings to an impersonal set of laws) being marked by the Statesman, and seen thus as a revaluation, on Plato’s part, of the merits of democracy. The paradigm of the standard view on that dialogue, as stated by G. H. Sabine, argues that, if the best form of government (the exclusive rule of philosophers) is impossible, and we should be content with the second-best (absolute obedience to any existing laws including democratic ones), then any research that could cause disregard for these laws should be utterly proscribed. But in this case, Plato would be implying that Athenian democracy would have been justified in putting Socrates to death. And this claim is one that Rowe is prepared to firmly reject. Analysis and discussion of the most relevant passage (reproduced first in J. B. Skemp’s translation, then in Rowe’s own) lead to: 1) rejection of the [wrong] reading that ‘existing laws’ are alluded to as “imitations or copies of the truth” by the Eleatic Stranger, and 2) recognition that the reference is to the ideal laws or ideal constitution produced by someone knowledgeable (and so, in fact, exclude not just anyone, but all the recognized forms of constitution, including democracy). Another point discussed involves the distinction between the “second best” in the Statesman and the Laws. Rowe shows how developmentalism can be a dangerous instrument of interpretation (especially if employed with exclusion of other approaches) and so there are no grounds either for legitimately attributing Plato any justification of Athenian democracy for killing Socrates. The last section closes firstly by dealing with a Popperian objection (that even if Plato did not come finally to approve of Socrates’ execution by Athenian democracy, he nevertheless betrayed him in the end), by insisting in Socrates’ (the ‘familiar’, ‘ignorant’ Socrates) comebacks throughout Plato’s last dialogues (up to the Philebus), and by pointing to the characterization of philosophy as search, a partial rather than a perfect knowledge, and to the fact that philosophy, as accomplished knowledge, appears only in utopian contexts.

The Crisis after Forty Years

ALTHOUGH HANS BARON first discussed his conception of in 1925, it was only with the publication of The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance in 1955 that he revealed the full significance of what he believed to have been a fundamental change in the nature of Italian humanism occurring in the years immediately after 1400.1 In this work, Baron endeavored to establish his thesis that a sharp break existed between Italian humanism of the fourteenth and that of the fifteenth century. Fourteenth-century Italian humanists had been literary and largely apolitical. Basically loyal to medieval beliefs that monarchy was the best form of government, they preferred the contemplative to the active life and considered Roman history as culminating in the rule of Julius Caesar and Caesar Augustus. In the opening years of the fifteenth century, however, the young Florentine humanist Leonardo Bruni, originally of Arezzo, revived the ancient Roman republican concept that any form of government short of popular rule was tyrannical, and he insisted that while political freedom stimulates the creative and moral powers of the individual, so the loss of political freedom destroys those powers. Intimately associated with the revival of republicanism was Bruni's insistence that the active life of the citizen was superior to the life of withdrawal and contemplation, and that the decline of the Roman Empire began with the destruction of republican freedom by Caesar and Augustus. Finally, whereas the fourteenth-century humanists looked back on antiquity with melancoly as an age never to be revived, Bruni considered antiquity the source of inspiration for works in contemporary vernacular languages that rivaled ancient Latin literature. For Baron, these conceptions of civic humanism, first created in early fifteenth-

Ideal Government and the Mixed Constitution of the Middle Ages (review)

BOOK RZVXZWS 667 scholarship on Avicenna. Certainly ~man's book is one of the most truly philosophiCal thus far in the Rout.ledge series: the concerns and the tone are philosophical, but not at the expense of historical sensitivity. Unfortunately, truly philosophical studies of the major medieval Islamic philosophers are still all too rare, and it is to Goodman's credit that he has provided both specialist and general readers with such a philosophical appreciation of Avicenna's thought. DEBORAH L. BLACK Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto James M. Blythe. Ideal Government and the Mixed Constitution of the Middle Ages. Princeton : Princeton University Press, 1992. Pp. xvi + 343. Cloth, $45.oo. In a wide-sweeping survey of political writings from Aquinas to Machiavelli, Guicciardini and Gianotti, Robert Blythe convincingly demonstrates the continuing influence of the theory of mixed government as the best political arrangement for human society. Drawing on the research of medievalists such as the Carlyles, McIlwain and Tierney, as well as on that of scholars of early modern political thought such as Pocock and Skinner, Blythe develops an original thesis through the examination of original sources. Although it comes as no surprise that, while favoring monarchy as the best form of government, individual medieval thinkers espoused monarchical exercise of power within the framework of a mixed constitution, Biythe's thorough analysis of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century political thought reveals a strikingly wide consensus on that position. At the same time the author sees in the medieval Aristotelian tradition the primary source of ideas on which Machiavelli and his contemporaries based their own theories of mixed government. Consequently, acknowledging that these sixteenth-century thinkers articulated their theories in Polybian terminology, he rejects the current view that they took it directly from the ancient Greek historian. Blythe is quick to point out that, if basically using Aristotle, medieval proponents of government commingling monarchical, aristocratic and democratic elements varied widely in their understanding of its composition and the functioning of its different parts. Indeed, the response of each writer reflected the results of a reciprocal relationship between Aristotle's text and the individual's approach to previous interpretations and his own needs and experiences. Subtle differences in vocabulary and meaning relate intimately to political and intellectual milieux. If at times Blythe's analysis of an author's position comes perilously close to burying the reader in detail, the basic theme of the medieval adaptation of the classical tradition of mixed government and its effect on early modern thought provides coherence throughout. After a brief discussion of the doctrine of mixed constitutionalism in Plato, Aris.toile , and Polybius, and the disappearance of the terminology in the early Middle Ages, Biythe devotes the second portion of the book to tracing the reformulation of the concept by Scholastic thinkers following the translation of Aristotle's Politics in the 126os. At the very outset, a profound "disjunction" (3o2) in interpreting Aristotle 668 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 32:4 OCTOBER 1994 became embedded in the famous commentary on the Politics partially written by Aquinas and continued by his disciple, Peter of Auvergne. Thomas read Aristotle as favoring a "political" king tempered by the power of the wise few and of the body of citizens. Each cidzen would be loyal to the government because each had a stake in its success in attaining the common good. With its checks and balances this government was best for any people, because it prevented tyranny of the one, few, and/or many. By contrast, Peter saw a mixed constitution as best only for a virtuous people because its essence depended on uniting the virtues of each element in society: the king provided unity, the few, wisdom, and the many, power. The confusion of positions within this one commentary generally ascribed to Aquinas provided a broad range of options for subsequent thinkers, most of whom agreed with Peter in allowing only the virtuous to participate in government. Some of these same men, however, were attracted to Aquinas's concept of a balance of power. Torn between his allegiance to Augustine and the attraction of Aristode, Giles of Rome confusingly endorsed both absolute monarchy and a mixed re#me...

The Judgmental Gaze of European Women

B Y NOW, ALMOST EVERY AUTHOR in the canon of Western political thought has been redescribed, revised, and sometimes reviled from the point of view of contemporary feminist concerns. Exceptionally, little attention has been paid to Montesquieu in this regard, despite the fact that he is the sole modern author to have explicitly linked both gender relations and modes of sensuality to political theory.' Montesquieu identified a typology of political relationships between men and women and additionally invoked modes of heterosexual and homosexual conduct in a debate over the constitutional form appropriate to the European nation-state. In effect, this was a debate over the respective merits of republican and monarchical forms of rule. The kinds of gender relations and types of sexuality condoned or sustained by each form of government (as well as those encouraged under despotic rule) were to decide the issue of the best form of government as well as the issue of the political genealogy of that idea called Europe. In contemplating these linked themes, I also claim we can see how the recognitions they entail suggest the self-transformative properties of a certain kind of political theory. By way of working out the implications of a communications ethic, Montesquieu's apparently naturalistic sociology of regimes transforms itself into an idealist social theory. At the end of the day, Montesquieu tells something like the following story. Communication between men and women, or more generally, between differently constituted or related beings, is a subversive process that brings both sides to new forms of self-recognition. In a mood of approval of such processes, regimes could be then judged by the extent to which they accorded

Realism, Deweyan Pragmatism, and Educational Research

In a recent exchange, Cleo H. Cherryholmes (1992)opposed Rortyan pragmatism to the “scientific realism'” of Ernest R. House (1991, 1992). In my article, I hope to find a middle ground between Cherryholmes and House that might be more attractive to many in the field of education. My article emphasizes some of the most important aspects of Dewey's philosophy, including his social behaviorist theory of meaning, his naturalistic metaphysics, philosophy of nature, social constructivism, and transactional realism. For some reason, most educational theorists, researchers, and practitioners have almost entirely ignored these crucial Deweyan themes, often with disastrous consequences. I will conclude by trying to show how all of these themes converge into Dewey's defense of democracy as not only the best form of government but also the best way for the community of educators to conduct and consume educational research.

Realism, Deweyan Pragmatism, and Educational Research

In a recent exchange, Cleo H. Cherryholmes (1992) opposed Rortyan pragmatism to the “scientific realism'” of Ernest R. House (1991 , 1992) . In my article, I hope to find a middle ground between Cherryholmes and House that might be more attractive to many in the field of education. My article emphasizes some of the most important aspects of Dewey's philosophy, including his social behaviorist theory of meaning, his naturalistic metaphysics, philosophy of nature, social constructivism, and transactional realism. For some reason, most educational theorists, researchers, and practitioners have almost entirely ignored these crucial Deweyan themes, often with disastrous consequences. I will conclude by trying to show how all of these themes converge into Dewey's defense of democracy as not only the best form of government but also the best way for the community of educators to conduct and consume educational research.

Politics and Excellence: The Political Philosophy of Alfarabi

Widely recognized as one of the most original and profound philosophers that the medieval Islamic world produced, Alfarabi (870-950) wrote many works of political philosophy addressing the issues that dominated Greek political thought as well as new questions raised by the advent of revealed religion. Taking into account Alfarabi's major political treatises, Miriam Galston develops a theory explaining how together they form a coherent philosophy of politics. Her inquiry centers on Alfarabi's discussions of the nature of happiness, the attributes of ideal rulers, the best form of government, and the relationship between political science and theoretical inquiry. Based upon a new interpretation of Alfarabi's method of writing, Galston explores his use of dialectic, which she traces, in part, to his belief that personal discovery is a condition of philosophic understanding and to his desire to create for the reader a dialogue between Plato and Aristotle.Originally published in 1990.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Ideal government and the mixed constitution in the Middle Ages

Ancient Greeks and Romans often wrote that the best form of government consists of a mixture of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. Political writers in the early modern period applied this idea to government in England, Venice, and Florence, and Americans used it in designing their constitution. In this history of political thought James Blythe investigates what happened to the concept of mixed constitution during the Middle Ages, when the work of the Greek historian Polybius, the source of many of the formal elements of early modern theory, was unknown in Latin. Although it is generally argued that Renaissance and early modern theories of mixed constitution derived from the revival of classical Polybian models, Blythe demonstrates the pervasiveness of such ideas in high and late medieval thought. The author traces medieval Aristotelian theories concerning the best form of government and concludes that most endorsed a limited monarchy sharing many features with the mixed constitution. He also shows that the major early modern ideas of mixed constitutionalism stemmed from medieval and Aristotelian thought, which partially explains the enthusiastic reception of Polybius in the sixteenth century. Originally published in 1992. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Venezuela's Vulnerable Democracy

Venezuela's Vulnerable Democracy Michael Coppedge (bio) On 4 February 1992, over three decades of Venezuelan democracy very nearly came to an end when a battalion of paratroopers led by Lieutenant Colonel Hugo Chávez Frías laid siege to the presidential palace, using a tank as a battering ram. After 15 hours of fighting that killed 80 people, sent President Carlos Andrés Pérez fleeing for his life, and turned parts of Caracas into something resembling a South American version of Beirut, the insurrection was defeated. A three-month suspension of constitutional guarantees helped to restore order, but the blow of February 4 left the democratic regime staggering. Prominent politicians called for Pérez to resign, and his own party, Democratic Action (AD), pressured him to allow early elections for a successor. Opposition parties refused to participate in a national unity coalition, and none were eager to mobilize demonstrations of support for the regime. Colonel Chávez, however, immediately became a popular figure among a significant minority that began calling publicly for his release from prison and an amnesty for the conspirators. The coup attempt spurred a feverish debate on constitutional reform, but rumors of more coup attempts to come kept flying. The attempted military takeover came as a shock to nearly everyone, for Venezuela had long been considered one of Latin America's most stable democracies. The Pérez government was the latest in a series of seven that had been chosen in fair, competitive elections held every five years since 1958, even during the wave of authoritarianism that swept Latin America from the mid-1960s to the late 1970s. Rumors of planned military coups were common during difficult times, but there had been [End Page 32] no actual attempts for nearly 30 years, and the military high command routinely proclaimed its unswerving allegiance to elected governments. Compared to other Latin American countries, Venezuela in the early 1990s seemed to have a highly stable democratic regime. It had no terrorist insurgents like Peru's Sendero Luminoso and Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement; the economy was improving, with 9.2 percent GDP growth and accelerating foreign investment in 1991; unlike Fernando Collor of Brazil or Alberto Fujimori of Peru, President Pérez was no dark-horse antipolitician lacking an organized base of support; and drug trafficking had only begun to make its appearance. Venezuela's vulnerability challenges the conventional wisdom concerning threats to democratic stability. The central irony of the case is that certain characteristics unique to Venezuela-oil wealth, consensual leadership, and strong catchall parties-which for decades helped democracy to survive there ultimately undermined the legitimacy of the political class that ran the country. As a result, when Venezuela's leaders finally recognized the need for structural adjustment of the economy, they lacked the moral authority necessary to demand sacrifices from the population. Since the fundamental cause of the problem is peculiarly Venezuelan, there is no reason to expect an exact replication of this kind of crisis in other countries. Yet some elements of Venezuela's crisis-especially the need for structural adjustment and the impact of presidentialism-are common to almost all of Latin America, raising the possibility of similar difficulties. Moreover, the sudden outbreak of instability in one of the stronger democracies has great symbolic importance for the entire region, serving to alarm the friends of democracy while emboldening its foes. Some Unique Advantages The coup attempt was a shock because Venezuela possessed many of the advantages associated with stable democracy. Opinion surveys always showed that a large majority of Venezuelans considered democracy the best form of government. Democratic procedures were used to select the leaders of most organizations in society. The party system was not fragmented, as the two leading parties-AD and the Social Christian Party (COPEI)-routinely garnered four-fifths of the congressional vote and 90 percent of the presidential vote after 1968. No single party dominated the system, as AD transferred executive power to COPEI following the elections of 1968 and 1978, and COPEI lost the presidency to AD in 1973 and 1983. Although AD is predominantly a center-left social democratic party with a strong base in organized labor and...

The Two-Hat Debate Technique

What professor in his right mind would argue with himself in front of a class? The lead author of this article has done just that and found the use of the two-hat debating technique an exciting way to teach. The professor plays the role of two or more people presenting different points of view wearing a different hat for each character. The characters portrayed could be Plato and Aristotle discussing the best form of government or could be an environmentalist, rancher, and timber company executive debating the use of Forest Service land. In each case, the instructor needs to research the positions that each speaker would be likely to take, prepare a brief script, select an appropriate hat, and throw him- or herself into the part.

The Best Form of Government: A Perspective on the Continuity of Political Theory

During the past half-century or so, the world has seen the formation of some one hundred new nation-states, while many of the other fifty-odd political entities have radically altered their previous form of constitution by force, revolution, conquest, election, or change of political philosophy. This has given renewed life to the classical issue about what is the best form of rule under which men ought to live. Political modernization has become a crucial aspect of political science. The external form of almost all these new nation-states, to be sure, even of the most absolute, has almost invariably been some legal variety of “constitutional democracy,” the wording commonly given in modern times to the structure of the best state.

Thomas Reid's Inquiry: The Geometry of Visibles and the Case For Realism (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 371 l'homme sauvage knows as little of it or of natural rights as any other beast. Rousseau and Burke are further distinguished from the "political empiricists" (Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Condillac), since neither could accept the Lockean psychology of a sensing and reflecting tabula rasa, the scientific optimism of progress in politics, or the utilitarian view of the state as mere human contrivance for satisfying easily known human needs. For both, the state had the lofty function of providing for moral improvement. On specific concepts, Cameron shows that the independence and natural liberty of Rousseau's l'homme sauvage is not unlike the absolute, abstract liberty Burke relegated to "theory," and Burke's belief that moral liberty requires civil order and control of the passions mirrors Rousseau's that good civil institutions free one from subjection to another's will and our own lower nature. The case is made similarly for comparing Burke's "rational freedom" with the prescription that some may be "forced to be free," except that Rousseau's prescription involves external coercion. Burke's love of tradition, customs, the wisdom of the community, and slow and small changes is matched by Rousseau's endorsement of patriotism and public spirit, his reverence for ancient lawgivers, his counsel of reforms for Corsica and Poland. For Rousseau, of course, political obligation was a major philosophical problem. His selection of le contrat social to explain the origin and to defend the legitimacy of government, as well as his insistence upon non-representable sovereignty, are not followed by Burke. As Cameron demonstrates, Burke rejected the social contract approach as well as prescriptive and divine right of kings theories of legitimacy. It seems fair to say that legitimate government was for him not a philosophical but a practical problem. Cameron suggestively likens Burke's image of government to a language: an ongoing fluid mixture of natural and artificial (conventional) elements. But if one accepts Cameron's analysis of Rousseau as moving away from the social contract approach to an emphasis on the General Will--an institutionalized process of expressing the public interest--Rousseau is once again brought nearer to Burke. Cameron's work does not exhaust the possibilities for comparison. Rousseau and Burke both had reservations about democracy: for Rousseau it was too perfect for human beings; for Burke nothing was more shameless. Similarly, each appears to have favored elective aristocracy as the best form of government. Cameron concludes that while their personal and professional lives, the political climates in which they wrote, and their writing styles themselves certainly differed, Rousseau and Burke shared dissatisfactions, with their age, recognized common problems , and often made similar intellectual efforts to solve those. If Cameron's rewarding study will not suffice to dissuade us from approaching Rousseau and Burke by way of the French Revolution, it may at least prevent us from self-confidently locating these two at opposite ends of the spectrum of political thought. JOHN P. BURKE University of Washington Thomas Reid's Inquiry: The Geometry o[ Visibles and the Case Jor Realism. By Norman Daniels. Forewordby Hilary Putnam. (New York: Burt Franklin, 1974. Pp xix q- 147. $14.95) This is the first recent book to appear on Thomas Reid, the eighteenth-century founder of "common sense" philosophy,. It is a welcome addition tothe modest but encouraging revival of interest in Reid over the last few years which has also included republication of his major works.1 Daniels' study is readable and convincing. In addi1 Thomas Reid, Inquiry into the Human Mind, ed. Timothy Duggan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970); Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, ed. Baruch Brody (Cam- 372 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY tion to putting Reid's philosophy in an interesting historical perspective, the book has a useful account of Reid's attack on Berkeley's theory of concepts and of Reid's own alternative to Berkeley's empirical idealism. Although the book begins by addressing itself to what might seem to be a topic of limited interest (Reid's discovering of a non-Euclidean Geometry) there is much here of interest to anyone who is concerned with eighteenth-century empiricism and metaphysics generally. Daniels begins by...

Ethics and Democracy

The old debate as to whether democracy is the best form of government seems profitless. That individuals, singly or in groups, should desire to govern themselves seems natural and reasonable; and nowadays this desire is so widespread that everyone is in favor of democracy. The live issue is the one that has always, under the surface, been crucial: Can people govern themselves? and How? For many centuries democracy, as a word and as an ideal, was in disrepute because failures had convinced educated men that democracy was a beguiling dream whose pursuit could lead only to disaster. Development of institutions and techniques, largely by trial and error, by which men could govern themselves was slow and sporadic; and only in the last two or three centuries have some fortunate countries had institutions adequate for some measure of self-government. As confusion, uncertainty, and disorder increase in the advanced democracies, questions about how to achieve or maintain government by the people become more insistent. However, on its face, the problem raised is not an ethical one. It may be that the difficulties of the democracies arise, at least in part, from defects in morals, ideals, or religion; but examination of this possibility requires a prior consideration of the relation between democracy and ethics, morals, or religion. There has from time to time been controversy about the correctness of two supposedly opposed democratic traditions. These have been variously characterized as empirical as opposed to rationalistic; realistic as opposed to idealistic; a tradition emphasizing liberty as opposed to one emphasizing equality. Such controversies suffer, however, from the fact that the terms are more polemic than analytic and seem in each case to be defined in such a way that the favored tradition is clearly correct and the opposed one an aberration. One suspects that a choice between the opposed traditions is not really necessary.

II. The Political Role of the Parlement of Paris, 1715–23

The most recent biographer of Montesquieu has written:…the similarity between the ideas of the former president a tnortier and those of the parlements is sometimes striking.…The king, they admit, is the legislator and the fount of justice. The parlements, however, are the repositories of his supreme juris-diction. To remove it from them is to offend the laws of the state and to overthrow the ancient legal structure of the kingdom.…This tradition of the parlements inspired and was inspired by the political doctrine of Montesquieu; and when the President writes of the monarchy of his own day…as being the best form of government that men have been able to imagine, it is monarchy supported by this tradition which he has in mind.

Hippodamus On the Best Form of Government and Law

Hippodamus, the son of Euryphon, a native of Miletus, [the same who invented the art of planning cities, and who also laid out the Piraeus --a strange man, whose fondness for distinction led him into a general eccentricity of life, which made some think him affected (for he would wear flowing hair and expensive ornaments; but these were worn on a cheap but warm garment both in winter and summer); he, besides aspiring to be an adept in the knowledge of nature,] was the first person not a statesman who made inquiries about the best form of government.3

Hippodamus on the Best Form of Government and Law

Hippodamus on the Best Form of Government and Law