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Intense ethnic conflicts bring to the surface important paradoxes about the function of memory in politics. The capacity to remember is vital for political success, but too much memory, or the wrong kind of memory, stokes the fires of revenge. Successful political action demands both the capacity to remember and the capacity to forget. How and when each comes into play is difficult to formulate conceptually. A classic text in which the politics of memory plays a central role elucidates these issues and suggests central political dimensions of remembering and forgetting. This essay uses the story of Joseph in the Hebrew Bible to explore the politics of memory and to suggest factors that produce constructive and destructive results. It examines two principal forms: prudential and mythic, the qualities of which differ importantly. It concludes with an account of a third form: memory as a step toward political reconciliation.The conundrum of memory: Healthier to remember? Surely it is best sometimes to forget–though not to forget Kosovo now. Eventual obliviousness may equally free all sides from the hereditary obligation to hate. ... What's happening there now amounts to a religious war between the future and the past. Beware: in that place, the past is a black hole.“ –Lance Morrow1

Political participation empowers and transforms citizens. To par ticipate in the public affairs of one's community is to call upon and to develop personal capabilities for speaking, taking responsibility, carry ing through projects, and working with others. To participate is to be an autonomous citizen rather than a subject, an actor rather than a specta tor.1 So say advocates of such participation. Moreover, they argue that deliberation responds to the deepening pluralism and the larger scale of complex, post-industrial democratic polities.2 In such societies, every area of life becomes "politicized"; that is, the norms recognized as legit imate (in family, church, workplace, gender roles, for example) must increasingly be negotiated, rather than taken for granted. As society becomes more differentiated, politics also becomes less state-centered. Therefore, citizens must learn the political skills of negotiation, discus sion, argument, persuasion, mediation, and compromise in order to function in most areas of life. It is possible then to think of democracy "as a distribution of empowerments and protections that enable and protect discursive negotiations of conflicts within and between institu

The article explores the issue of economic life within the theoretical tradition of the common good. To clarify the implications of the theory of the common good for economics, the economic philosophy of Yves R. Simon is presented. After clarifying the meaning of Simon's conception of the common good, the implications of the common good for Simon's economic thought are explored. It is argued that, for Simon, the economic system is a common good that undergirds the traditional Thomistic imperative that the use of goods be common. Some of the difficulties which Simon's thought has for market economics are then analyzed, and Simon's thought is used to suggest solutions. In this context, the roles of authority and virtue (particularly prudence) are treated.

This article identifies a "discretion school" or position within current public administration theory and the proximate historical causes for its articulation. The extent to which administrative discretion is thought to be permissible, and the justifications for it, are explored by way of comparing current views to Plato `s explication of the functions of the guardian class in the ideal Republic. Contemporary analogues to "knowledge of the good " (public interest and regime values) and the role of education are arrayed. The article concludes by posing problematics heretofore insufficiently resolved by discretionist points of view.

Religion and politics is a burgeoning subfield. Liberalism–communitarian literature now includes attention to religious communities. Theorists of civil society recognize that religious organizations implement a considerable range of policies. Since pluralism entails the presence of multiple voices in public conversation, theorists debate how a liberal society should treat religious voices. Theorists within religious traditions debate the bearing of faith on political action and the extent to which churches should cooperate with state institutions.

The problem of authority has a practical and a theoretical side. Practically, the decline of authority contributes to the crisis of legitimacy in contemporary governments and to difficulties in the practice of morality. Theoretically, authority is often confused with power, force, or coercion. Thus, it is viewed with suspicion. The thesis of this paper is that authority is not a form of power; rather, it transforms power. Like power, force, and coercion, authority is directive, but it is so in quite a different way. An examination of the concept of authority in three very different theorists – Carl Friedrich, Yves R. Simon, and Michael Polanyi – reveals that a sound concept of authority must be rooted in community as a system of shared beliefs, experiences, and traditions and in transcendent standards referred to by such beliefs, experiences, and traditions. Authority is that which directs a community to its proper end.

The term "common good" is not much in use of late. "Public interest" has largely replaced it. Yet some of the problems of modern political thought are evident in the current widespread disagreement about the meaning of "the public interest." " Many reject the idea of public interest or common good altogether;2 others identify it with an aggregation of particular interests.3 Most commonly, the public interest is conceived as the policy which emerges from the conflict of interests within the democratic process, or, occasionally, as the process of interest conflict and compromise itself. I have criticized these conceptions elsewhere.4 Their most fundamental flaw is the failure to see anything to politics beyond the encounter of interests: that is, wants, desires, or preferences. In the "politics of interest" there is no public to possess an interest, let alone any criteria according to which an interest's moral or political worth might be assessed. I do not intend to re-cover that ground in this essay. I intend, rather, to suggest how a "unitary conception" of the common good, such as Yves R. Simon's, avoids the theoretical pitfalls to which other theories are subject. The term is taken from Virginia Held's classification of public interest theories. Held's criticism of other conceptions-"preponderance theories" and "common interest theories"-parallels and complements that given above of the dominant conceptions and need not be

Where communitarian theorists were once voices crying in the wilderness of political philosophy, now they camp near the centre of the discipline. This paper appraises the success of the new communal stirrings, particularly the work of Alasdair MacIntyre, Michael Sandel, Michael Walzer and Benjamin Barber. It also evaluates and finds wanting the liberal critics of the new communitarian turn, who defend the ‘thin’ theory of the self against the ‘thicker’, embedded theories of self advanced by the communitarians. The critics' contention that liberal tolerance and human rights depend on a ‘thin’ theory of the self is not persuasive. Yet the theories of community submitted as remedies for ‘thin’ theories of the self are themselves too thin. First, consideration of individual elements of community is too narrow. Character, for example, is mentioned by many of the communitarians but not explored in depth. Secondly, even those theorists who examine some essentials in depth neglect the range of requirements, particularly authority, loyalty and commitment. The communitarian line of argument, however, may very well help to move theoretical and political debate beyond the sterile confines of regnant ideologies.