Liberal or democratic virtue theories have successfully spread the idea that liberal democracies cannot flourish unless their citizens have certain qualities of mind and character. Such theories cannot agree, however, on what those qualities are. This article attempts to explain and solve this problem. It proposes distinguishing between core virtues, necessary for the actual survival of liberal democracies, and ideal virtues, which promote "progress" according to a given conception of what liberal democracies ought to be about and which values they (...) should most embody. Beyond this, it portrays the relevant virtues as pluralistic (not everyone need have the same ones) and episodic (different virtues are relevant at different times and under different circumstances). It then applies this framework to some key issues of political action and motivation: acts of loyalty and dissent express different aspects of a common response to moral pluralism, and the virtues of citizens differ fundamentally in origin and nature from those of professional politicians. Finally, it suggests more briefly that questions of civil religion, patriotic mobilization in times of war, civic courage, and selfish versus altruistic motives for public action can profit from being seen in this new way. (shrink)

How far is Thomas Aquinas available for current discussions in political philosophy? While there are certainly things to be learned from him about our political preoccupations, the pedagogy of his moral teaching typically resists our familiar questions. This holds even when the question is put in terms that Thomas should recognize—say, as a question about the virtues appropriate for a democracy. Thomas not only gives different meanings to these terms, he moves political topics away from the center of theological attention (...) and so organizes them very differently. A reader can notice these differences at many points but perhaps especially in the attention that Thomas gives in the Summa to the gifts of the Holy Spirit. His account of these gifts qualifies significantly what he says of virtue and suggests large limits on human agency, whether in ethics or in politics. (shrink)

This book is a major contribution to the current theory of liberalism by an eminent political theorist. It challenges the views of such theorists as Rawls, Dworkin, and Ackerman who believe that the essence of liberalism is that it should remain neutral concerning different ways of life and individual conceptions of what is good or valuable. Professor Galston argues that the modern liberal state is committed to a distinctive conception of the human good, and to that end has developed characteristic (...) institutions and practices - representative governments, diverse societies, market economies, and zones of private action - in the pursuit of specific public purposes that give unity to the liberal state. These purposes guide liberal public policy, shape liberal justice, require the practice of liberal virtues, and rest on a liberal public culture. Consequently the diversity characteristic of liberal societies is limited by their institutional, personal, and cultural preconditions. (shrink)

Democracy is more than a collection of institutions, laws, and freely contested sources of authority. It is also an ideal. If we think of this ideal in republican terms, in terms of resistance to domination through the practices of mutual accountability, and if we recall that democratic life invariably comes with loss, then those of us who inhabit a democratic political society will need to locate, and then cultivate, responses to loss that do not undermine our commitment to this ideal. (...) Tolerance, one such response, is widely recognized and yet poorly theorized. Thomas Aquinas did not recognize it, but he did praise and endorse its act, toleration, and he does offer resources for bringing the virtue into focus and identifying some of the distinguishing features of its democratic variant. (shrink)