Some Thoughts Concerning Education offers the theory of governance the Two Treatises lack. Education is the key to Lockean politics: self-government and public order require virtuous citizens, and these citizens, as Locke suggested in the Essay and explains in the Education, are made rather than found, constructed from the ground up by discipline. Through early and careful practices of education, they are enmeshed in a net of habit and custom that naturalizes the moral commitments they are taught, rendering the process, and the artifice, invisible. Locke entangles his subjects in an architecture of power of which they become the bearers, thereby providing the foundation for public order and limited government. Locke's disciplinary liberalism allows us to better appreciate late modern subjectivity as an achievement, rather than a given of political life, albeit an achievement that involves some uncomfortable compromises and a willingness to accept, if not laud, our disciplinary commitments.

In his response to the fictitious “sensible knave” in the Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, Hume argues that the practice of justice is always in our own interest. This article provides the first comprehensive interpretation of Hume's response, incorporating his discussion of virtue and happiness in his essay “The Sceptic.” It will be seen that this argument is a hedonistic one, resting on the superior pleasure and security of a life of modest wealth and intellectual cultivation. Hume's argument ultimately fails, and he knows it. He offers it nonetheless because it is generally true and socially beneficial.

The most striking feature of Rousseau's self-presentation in the Confessions is his pathos-filled anticipation of future adversity. Never quite arriving at the depths of despair he foresees, however, Rousseau instead offers the reader glimpses of a surprisingly robust happiness. In this article I present a new political reading of the Confessions that is attentive both to the rhetorical surface of the work and to its charming subplot. Guided by Rousseau's humorous understanding of truth telling, I argue that the Confessions is shaped by a complex literary ruse that colors much of what Rousseau has to say about frankness, happiness, and his own idiosyncrasy. Far from being undone by his shadow-dappled imaginings, Rousseau's conscious dissimulations reflect his concerns about the public value of enlightenment and his commitment to authorial responsibility.

Jean-Paul Sartre and Jon Elster have taken great interest in the famous “children's” fable, “The Fox and the Grapes.” Elster believes the fable pinpoints problems in utilitarian doctrine while Sartre contends it demonstrates how consciousness copes with frustrated desire. As impressive as these insights are, neither philosopher can fully explain the cognitive and cultural processes involved in sour grapes. To improve upon their theories, I will argue that amour-propre is an important psychological motive inspiring sour grapes as well as show that sour grapes is built into the value commitments and institutional structures of democratic life through Tocqueville's analysis of American democracy.