Vol. XVII, No. 1 Fall 1984 ISSN 0032-3497 THE JOURNAL OF THE NORTHI POLITICAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION _____ __ I Polity The Journalof the Northeastern PoliticalScience Association VolumeXVII, Number1, Fall 1984 Articles GeorgeKlosko Thrasymachos'Eristikos: The Agon Logon in RepublicI 5 MaryP. Nichols Glaucon'sAdaptation of the Storyof Gyges& Its Implicationsfor Plato's Political Teaching 30 WilliamW. Lammers& Joseph L. Nyomarkay SocialistElites in TechnologicalSocieties: Cabinet MemberCareer Patterns in Austria,France, Germany & Great Britain 40 JeffreyLeigh Sedgwick The Prospectsof "Restoringthe FederalBalance" 66 Sue Davis JusticeRehnquist's Judicial Philosophy: Democracy v. Equality 88 Controversy TheodoreS. Arrington& Saul Brenner AnotherLook at ApprovalVoting 118 StevenJ. Brams& Peter C. Fishburn A CarefulLook at "AnotherLook at ApprovalVoting" 135 Arrington& Brennerto Brams& Fishburn 144 HenryS. Kariel Affirminga Politics of Inconsequence 145 Felix Oppenheim Fallacies& Dangersof "Inconsequence" 161 Karielto Oppenheim 164 ResearchNote WalterC. Opello, Jr. &William Claggett The Dynamicsof West EuropeanParty Systems: The PortugueseCase 165 ReviewArticles John P. Burke Squaringthe Circle: MakingBureaucracy Accountable 179 SheldonD. Pollack WhitherLiberalism? 192 COVER:Pen and Ink drawing by Elizabeth Pols. WhitherLiberalism? Michael Walzer,Spheres of Justice:A Defense of Pluralismand Equality(New York:Basic Books, 1983) MichaelJ. Sandel,Liberalism and the Limitsof Justice(New York: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1982) David Spitz,The Real Worldof Liberalism(Chicago: The University of ChicagoPress, 1982) ThomasA. Spragens,Jr. The Irony of LiberalReason (Chicago:The Universityof ChicagoPress, 1981) SheldonD. Pollack, Universityof Pennsylvania In contrast to such theoretical traditions as Marxism or the psycho- analyticmovement, liberalism never had its principlescarved into stone by any single prophet.Indeed, the very questionof who meritsinclusion into the family of "liberal"theorists is open to serious debate. For in- stance, Hobbes is often regardedas the founding theorist of English liberalism,yet, Hobbes comes to some basic conclusionswhich conflict with liberal sensibilitiesas they developedover the next three centuries. Despite the forceful presence Hobbes exerted upon the tradition,Hob- besian theory is not the essential core of mainstreamliberalism. Locke would be a better candidatein a search for the fundamentaltheorist (and hence, principles) of liberalism;however, much of nineteenthcen- tury thought radicallydeparted from Lockean theories, both regarding politics and epistemology.And if America is the Lockean culture par excellence, (notwithstandingthe assaultsof Gary Wills), even here the varieties of liberalismare considerable.Indeed, if the differentexpres- sions of liberal thoughtare as diverse as such theoristsas Hobbes, Mill, Tocqueville,Kant, and Rawls, can there be any set of principleswhich ultimatelydefines liberalismitself? Or is the very pretense of viewing liberalismas a unifiedtradition mistaken? Each of the four books under considerationhere sheds light upon what principles might be included under the rubric of liberalism (al- though Michael Walzermay see his study as more closely relatedto an American formulationof "social democracy"). Ironically,these books Review Articles 193 also underlinethe extremelyamorphous nature of liberalismas a tradi- tion of thought. As an exercise in liberal theorizing each suggests a very differentunderstanding of liberalismas well as the natureof theo- rizingas an intellectualenterprise. Walzer and Spitzboth wish to defend their own particularconceptions of liberal/pluralisttheory. Spitzis con- cerned with defending a liberalismsimilar to that advanced by John Stuart Mill; Walzer is eclectic, drawingupon socialist and democratic traditions.In the end, each seeks to persuadehis readersof the relative merits of his position. On the other hand, Sandel and Spragenswrite for a more limited audience of scholars, rather than for the broader liberal audienceitself. Sandel focuses narrowlyupon a particularstrain of liberalism,that rooted in Kantian theory and most recently given expression by John Rawls. Spragensdirects his attention to a much wider range of theory;indeed, he presentsnothing less than a scholarly intellectualhistory of most theorists even vaguely associated with the liberal tradition.Both Sandel and Spragensalso have intellectualaxes to grind, and distinct interpretationsemerge from their works. One of the chief obstacles to liberal theory has been the attemptto delineate separate realms of the private and the public. As Hannah Arendt has thoughtfullypointed out, the modern notion of the public realm is at odds with and alien to the classical traditionof the Greek polis. The notion of a public and political sphere as the Greeks under- stood it was submergedas liberal theory after Hobbes redefinedthe individualand his labor/propertyas an autonomoussphere of "natural rights"protected by the political sovereign.This newly imagined"pri- vate" realm was conceptualizedin contrastto the artificialconstruct of the political sovereign.The polis ideal was lost as liberal theoristscon- fronted the emergingpolitical realityof the modem state; the polis was relegatedto Rousseauean,communitarian undercurrents of the dominant political mainstream. Yet, in confrontingthe reality of the modern state, liberalismfound itself in an ambiguousposition: political institutionswhich guarantee "naturalrights" are also the most direct and visible threat of political tyranny. Lockean and Madisonianliberalism separates the individual from the state, defines the protectionof (property) rightsas the essen- tial function of the political institutions,and then warns against the potentialtyranny of the uncheckedstate. At its core, liberalismis ambig- uous regardingits stancetoward the fundamentalingredient of politics- political power. Furthermore,the crucialquestion left unresolvedis: when do broader social/public interestsjustly outweighindividual rights. In practice,the neat distinctionbetween the public and the private melts away as the 194 Review Articles two spheresare seen to be often overlapping,and not autonomous.Short of a strict libertarian,nonstatist political community (probably a logical and practicalimpossibility), the state must pursuesome public interests which will conflict with individualinterests. Since political institutions even oriented around a genuine public interest will inevitablyintrude into the sphereof individualrights, liberalism possesses a built-intension and conflictover wherejustly to drawthat line of intrusion. This tension between natural rights (in effect, those rights held in claim againstthe state) and the legitimateinterests of the communityis addressedin variousways by differentliberal theorists. Hobbes seems to sanction an all-powerfulsovereign which (at least, theoretically)dom- inates the individualin the very act of protectinghis rights. Even re- ligion, or as much of it as Hobbes can bring under the category of "things indifferent"to salvation, is directly under the authorityof the sovereign.Even if Leviathancan be defended againstthe facile charge of authoritarianism,it does violate the spiritof liberalismwhich emerged with Locke's more familiarbourgeois reformulation of the relationship between citizen and king. There is a greater emphasis in later liberal thought upon restrictingthe sovereign to a role as protector of con- tracts. In addition,the importanceof the notion of tolerancein liberal thought after Locke led to a secularformulation in which the individual is protected from social and political pressures.John StuartMill's On Libertyis certainlythe fullestexpression of nineteenth-centuryliberalism and its unresolved comprehensionof the public/private dichotomy. Strippedof Mill's earlier intoxicationwith utilitarianism,On Liberty is the pre-eminentstatement of the case for liberty, tolerance, and in- dividual achievement.Mill's liberalism is central to twentieth-century practice; however, Mill's interest in liberty for its effect in cultivating higher values via the few great men of society has been abandonedto a "value free" liberalism (the subject of Spragens'study). What is left is individual"rights" (really little more than demandsupon the state), individualliberty (for no particularpurpose), and toleranceof all "value judgments"(except perhapsthe quest for salvation). This is very much the modem liberalismdefended by David Spitz in The Real World of Liberalism.Spitz traces liberalism'sdebt to Mill, and he spends consid- erable and productiveeffort in defendingMill from his detractors.On Liberty,along with Tocqueville'sDemocracy in America,is perhapsthe first serious defense of the individual from the intrudingsocial and political realms. Spitz's assessment of Mill is particularlyconvincing in conjunctionwith his criticismof the illiberalattacks upon toleranceby Messrs. Wolfe, Moore, and Marcuse. Spitz also has scorn for the au- thoritarianimplications of B. F. Skinner'sthought. In fact, despite the Review Articles 195 inconsistencies of Mill's thought (which are too easily absolved by Spitz) a strong case is made here for his understandingof liberalism. Mill himselfhad rejectedutilitarianism, which relegatedthe individual to a secondaryrole vis-a-vis the greater social good. In utilitarianism, the good of society wins out over individualrights. In the value-free utilitarianismof B. F. Skinner,the goal of the "survival"of society itself