Winter 2017 Volume 43 Issue 2

199 Hilail Gildin On Rousseau’s Confession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar 215 Daniel P. Maher Simon Stevin’s Vita Politica: Pre-provisional Morality? 233 Rafael Major Poetry and Reason: A Midsummer Night’s Dream 255 Ying Zhang Biblical Exegesis as a Way of Philosophizing: The Beginning and the End of Maimonides’s Guide of the Perplexed An Exchange: 279 Lee Ward The Challenge of Modernizing Seventeenth-Century English Political Texts: A Response to Foster

287 David Foster A Reply to Lee Ward Review Essay: 289 Robert Goldberg Homer on the Gods and Human Virtue: Creating the Foundations of Classical Civilization by Peter J. Ahrensdorf

Book Reviews: 319 Stephen A. Block Principle and Prudence in Western Political Thought, edited by Christopher Lynch and Jonathan Marks

333 Eric Buzzetti The Socratic Turn: Knowledge of Good and Evil in an Age of Science by Dustin Sebell 341 Bernard J. Dobski The Philosopher’s English King: Shakespeare’s Henriad as Political Philosophy by Leon Harold Craig

347 Joshua D. King Humanitarian Ethics: A Guide to the Morality of Aid in War and Disaster by Hugo Slim 353 Peter McNamara The Foundations of Natural Morality: On the Compatibility of Natural Rights and the Natural Law by S. Adam Seagrave 357 Deborah O’Malley Beyond Radical Secularism: How France and the Christian West Should Respond to the Islamic Challenge by Pierre Manent; translated by Ralph C. Hancock

363 Lorraine Pangle Xenophon the Socratic Prince: The Argument of the Anabasis of Cyrus by Eric Buzzetti 369 Nathan Pinkoski Philosophy and the Puzzles of Hamlet by Leon Harold Craig 375 Manu Samnotra Arendt’s Judgment: Freedom, Responsibility, Citizenship by Jonathan Peter Schwartz

©2017 Interpretation, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of the contents may be reproduced in any form without written permission of the publisher. ISSN 0020-9635 Editor-in-Chief Timothy W. Burns, Baylor University General Editors Charles E. Butterworth • Timothy W. Burns General Editors (Late) Howard B. White (d. 1974) • Robert Horwitz (d. 1987) Seth G. Benardete (d. 2001) • Leonard Grey (d. 2009) • Hilail Gildin (d. 2015) Consulting Editors Christopher Bruell • David Lowenthal • Harvey C. Mansfield • Thomas L. Pangle • Ellis Sandoz • Kenneth W. Thompson Consulting Editors (Late) Leo Strauss (d. 1973) • Arnaldo Momigliano (d. 1987) • Michael Oakeshott (d. 1990) • John Hallowell (d. 1992) • Ernest L. Fortin (d. 2002) • Muhsin Mahdi (d. 2007) • Joseph Cropsey (d. 2012) • Harry V. Jaffa (d. 2015) International Editors Terence E. Marshall • Heinrich Meier Editors Peter Ahrensdorf • Wayne Ambler • Marco Andreacchio • Maurice Auerbach • Robert Bartlett • Fred Baumann • Eric Buzzetti • Susan Collins • Patrick Coby • Erik Dempsey • Elizabeth C’de Baca Eastman • Edward J. Erler • Maureen Feder-Marcus • Robert Goldberg • L. Joseph Hebert • Pamela K. Jensen • Hannes Kerber • Mark J. Lutz • Daniel Ian Mark • Ken Masugi • Carol L. McNamara • Will Morrisey • Amy Nendza • Charles T. Rubin • Leslie G. Rubin • Thomas Schneider • Susan Meld Shell • Geoffrey T. Sigalet • Nicholas Starr • Devin Stauffer • Bradford P. Wilson • Cameron Wybrow • Martin D. Yaffe • Catherine H. Zuckert • Michael P. Zuckert Copy Editor Les Harris Designer Sarah Teutschel Inquiries Interpretation, A Journal of Political Philosophy Department of Political Science Baylor University 1 Bear Place, 97276 Waco, TX 76798 email [email protected] A Reply to Lee Ward 287

A Reply to Lee Ward

David Foster Ashland University [email protected]

I thank Professor Lee Ward for his reflections on the question of modernizing seventeenth-century English political texts. He has introduced some new considerations, offered some useful examples, and made a nice joke on my characterization of Locke’s capitalized and italicized words as aristocrats (when he asks me to explain the “grandeur” of such Lockean words as “Nuts,” “Sheep,” “Pebble,” or “Grass”). Professor Ward is right that he and I are not all that far apart on the stylistic issue. I don’t reject modernizing tout court, just as I don’t reject translations into English from other languages. But just as reading in the original language is better than reading a translation, I think that reading Locke’s intended text, even if it presents some difficul- ties, is better than reading a more accessible, but altered, text. Our difference comes down to this: Ward thinks the changes required to increase accessibility do not alter the meaning, and may even make it clearer, whereas I am not confident of that. Changing features over which Locke took a great deal of care may, at least sometimes, obscure or hide meaning, and I think that risk is not worth the possible gains. I also remain unconvinced that Locke’s various stylistic devices present significant obstacles for the serious student. This is not the place to argue over particular passages, but I would add a more general reflection on the effort to modernize. Professor Ward observes of the First Treatise, where the question of accessibility is most acute, that it is “written in an obscure, polemical style riddled with quotations from the Bible and the works of Robert Filmer as well as a host of other authors.” This presentation does indeed present great challenges to the editor “striving to make the Two Treatises accessible to students today.” Perhaps the greatest

© 2017 Interpretation, Inc. 288 I n t e r p r e t a t i o n Volume 43 / Issue 2 such challenge is that Locke seems to have gone to considerable lengths to make the First Treatise appear unreadable and even to deserve being ignored. This means that the attempt to make this work more accessible may work against the author’s intention. Certainly, stylistic alterations of the kind Ward adopts seem to do little to address the other features that may keep students from understanding or reading the work (such as that overabundance of quotations). And is it not possible that some of the features with which the reader must grapple in reading the First Treatise are intended as preparation for understanding the deeper arguments? For example, Locke’s exceedingly careful analysis of some texts of Filmer is for the reader who carefully follows it not just a critique of Filmer but an education in how to read with precision, an education that is useful in reading Locke himself. In this case, too much smoothing out of problems to make the book more accessible could make it more difficult of access in another, more important way.