Virtue,Interest, and Works in American Foreign Policy

Three questions shape American foreign policy: Is it right? Is it in the national interest? And does it work? “Right” is defined by the American ethos, sometimes called the civil religion. Self-interest and pragmatism characterize the other two elements. The interplay among these factors may be found most clearly in presidential rhetoric. After examining Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, FDR, and Ronald Reagan, the article finds that while effective presidents have invoked a religiously based virtue, U.S. foreign policy itself tended to avoid religious issues. In contrast, President George W. Bush has relied on the American civil religion to combat Islamism. But his rhetoric “stretches too far” on democratic virtue at the expense of national interest and pragmatism. The article concludes that the U.S. civil religion, although based on theological ideas, does not travel well.     

Locke, Hegel, and the Economy

Peter Lawler’s insightful critique of American individualism offers many important lessons, but his diagnosis of our economic situation is overly optimistic. Indeed, “big government” is more of a problem than Lawler suggests. This essay draws on two central figures of Lawler’s analysis—Locke and Hegel—to explore the problems that individualism poses for modern political economy. Although individualism is unlikely to make the regulatory state or welfare state wither away, the psychology of individualism confirms the importance of cultivating forms of recognition beyond economic life.     

Locke, Sincerity and the Rationality of Persecution

According to the most influential contemporary reading of John Locke's Letter Concerning Toleration (1689), his main argument against religious persecution is unsuccessful. That argument holds that coercion is ineffective as a means of instilling religious beliefs in its victims. I propose a different reading of the Letter . Locke's main consideration against persecution is not the unsuccessful belief-based argument just outlined, but what I call the sincerity argument . He believes that religious coercion is irrational because it is ineffective as a means of inculcating the right intentions in people. Once this alternative argument is placed at its centre, the Letter is seen to be a more fertile source of political argument than is suggested by alternative readings. In particular, the sincerity argument gives us a powerful reason for rejecting state moral paternalism, the doctrine that the state may use coercion to make people morally virtuous. If moral virtue depends upon people having the right intentions, and if coercion is ineffective as a means of instilling the right intentions in people, then state moral paternalism is ineffective and hence irrational.     

从法理视角看现代法治与德治

现代法治与德治是实现法治国家不可缺少的两种治国手段 ,但法治和德治有各自的功能优势和局限。发挥法治的功能优势以弥补德治的功能局限 ,发挥德治的功能优势以弥补法治的功能局限 ,实现法治与德治的良性互动。     

Cohen on Locke, Land and Labour

G. A. Cohen has argued that Locke's remarks on the value-creatingcapacity oflabour contain a premise which is both implausible and incoherently defended by Locke. I contest Cohen's attribution oferror to Locke. and offer an alternative interpretation of his remarks, integrating them within his more widely discussed labour-mixture argument. However, I agree with Cohen, although for distinct reasons, that Locke's remarks do not constitute a plausible anti-egalitarian argument.     

Locke and the Politics and Theology of Toleration

Locke's theory of toleration has been understood to rest on the claim that persecution was insufficient to instil either (i) true or (ii) sincere belief in people. Although Locke did indeed make both these claims, neither was fundamental to his theory. Locke was principally concerned to deny that persecution was necessary to instil true or sincere belief; its insufficiency to those ends he, and his contemporaries, took for granted. His denial of the necessity of persecution presupposed that human beings were, in principle, naturally adequate to the discovery of God's wants for them. The same presupposition, which derives from natural theology, underwrote the views in politics and revealed theology that complete his theory and supplied its moral content. Contemporary theories of toleration purposing to proceed on Lockean assumptions are morally and philosophically impoverished by their failure to see the requirements laid on an adequate theory of toleration by genuinely Lockean terms.     

Nordic Social Science Research and the American Nightmare

The purpose of the article is to review four major social science research projects currently under way in the Nordic countries, and to discuss the preconditions for, and the significance of, the manner in which the projects are organised. Four models for organising social science research are outlined, and applied to the projects. The main conclusion of the study, albeit of a tentative nature, is that whether a research project is organised according to one or other model is dependent upon the infrastructure of social science research, and the organisation of the wider society in the country concerned.     

当代科学哲学的理论聚焦

自 195 1年以来半个世纪的时间里 ,西方科学哲学进入了后科学哲学时代。那么 ,2 0世纪的科学哲学究竟回答了什么样的问题 ,值得我们深入思考和探讨。在笔者看来 ,当代科学哲学的核心问题是科学理论的成功解释 ,或可称之为“成功奇迹问题”。正如普特南所说 ,“从成功这个词最严格的意义上讲 ,科学的技术性成功无疑是势不可挡的。我们生活在一系列显然无止境的技术革命———‘工业革命’、‘电子革命’———之中 ,这使我们永远不会忘记科学在塑造我们的生活方面是一种多么重要的力量。”科学的成功可以说是最近5 0年来世界发生的最大变化 ,…     

Opinion Research and the Counter-Revolution in American Political Science

The identity of political science, its tenuous orthodoxies and continuing divisions, is bound up with its history. The historical subject of this essay is the rise of one particular orthodoxy, the socio-psychological model of opinion research and voting behaviour originally associated with the University of Michigan. This rise helps constitute a conservative defence of American liberal democracy in the early cold war, owing much to the peculiar politics of that era. The contemporary payoff of this historical reconstruction is an identification of the vulnerabilities and invulnerabilities of the model as highlighted by its struggles with the understandings it superseded and the contingent political context of these struggles. The substantial legacy for the discipline as a whole merits careful critical scrutiny, especially given changes in the political context since the 1950s, and the end of the cold war.