Review of: The Case for Greatness: Honorable Ambition and its Critics. By Robert Faulkner. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007. 288p. $30.00.

  themselves are vulnerable to these same large-scale socialand economic forces” (p. 103). He then reminds us thatsuch critics—for example, Ivan Illich and MichelFoucault—are often themselves professionals: “Thissuggests that there are internal resources available fora new, more democratic mode of professionalism”(p. 103).Dzur knows that elites can fail us. He thus considers aset of civic reforms of the professions, ranging from theprovision of character training centered on the emulationof exemplary civic professionals, to the clarification of theprinciples that ought to guide professional decisions, tothe establishment of better incentives and regulations, if necessary backed up by the threat of legal sanction. Dzurarguesthatsuchmeasuresmakeadifference,andareindeedconsistentwithtraditionalpublicservicestricturesregardedas “social trusteeship.” But he also sees that they are none-theless insufficient, which leads him to pose a questioninspired by the writings of Dewey: “What,” after all, “is itto serve the public good without an adequate understand-ing of the public?” (p. 274). Dzur’s answer is that publicservice makes sense only if there exists a real public that wants to be heard concerning consequential decisions thatimpact their lives. Lacey, the pessimist, would likely fear aslippery slope from this notion of public voice to “delu-sions” of participatory democracy. But Dzur is no “partic-ipationist.”Hisoptimismandrespectforhumancapacities(in contrast to Lacey’s anxieties about our proclivities) aresupremely  realistic, based on the idea that humans areindeed flawed, and that for this very reason, properly con-ceivedidealsarenecessarytomotivateustoworkformod-erate, not final, goals. In advocating for a vision of deliberative, democratic, professional practice, Dzursituates himself between “liberal and pluralist demo-cratic” theorists (such as Robert Dahl, John Rawls, and WilliamRiker)and“communitarian,republican,andpar-ticipatory democratic theorists” (such as Ben Barber, Car-ole Pateman, Frank Michelman, and Michael Sandel)(pp. 24–25).On a less theoretical level, to keep his argument forpublic–professional deliberation from seeming just plain wrongheaded (would you want your  doctor to consultyour neighbors before diagnosing your illness?), Dzurpresents informal case studies in bioethics, public jour-nalism, and restorative justice. Here, we see professionalssuch as Cole Campbell, editor of the Virginia-Pilot  in1993, clustering reporters “into teams oriented aroundreaders’ issue interests such as public life, education, crim-inal justice, public safety,” and holding “community con-versations” in which “public listening” as well as speakingallow reporters and the public to seek meaning beyondinformation (pp. 146–47). These examples demonstratethat professionals need not always treat us as clients,patients, wards, and dependents, and that given properprofessional training and acculturation, more equalizeddiscussions and engagements are possible. Dzur quotesHarry Boyte, whose “public work” also informs this book:“‘Professionals must,’ as Boyte says, ‘put themselves back into the mix of interests and views that comprise a diversegroup of people,’ ‘attend to the larger public meaningsand purposes of the discipline or profession,’ and create‘settings for interactive civic learning’” (p. 256). In thesame vein, Bruce Jennings advises bioethicists to share“the responsibility of building reflective moral spaces forpublic debate,” and to “‘participate in it [such debate] as well’” (p. 242).Dzur’sbeliefindeliberativedemocracysuitsprofessional/public collaborations, and one can imagine that it mightmoderate Lacey’s fear of participatory inclusiveness. Atthe same time, Dzur is no more credulous than Lacey regardingthepossibilitiesofmasspublicdeliberation.But,drawing on the writings of Jürgen Habermas, Dzur rec-ognizes that bureaucratization and professionalization arealways in danger of shrinking the sphere of democraticpolitics, privileging elites, suppressing the forms of con-testation essential to combat injustice, and—by separat-ing deliberation from action and its responsibilities—transformingcitizensintoclients(pp.35–36).Democracy is not just instrumental, not just a (particularly messy,contentious, inefficient) way of getting things done, or of discussing together what ought to be done by someoneelse. Activists and thinkers from John Dewey and Jane Addams through Students for a Democratic Society andmembersoftheStudentNon-ViolentCoordinatingCom-mittee are needed reminders that democracy in action isalso an end in itself, a way of living, and not only problemsolving, together. The Case for Greatness: Honorable Ambition and itsCritics. By Robert Faulkner. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.288p. $30.00. doi:10.1017/S1537592709990776 — Andrew Sabl, University of California at Los Angeles  Robert Faulkner’s subject is a certain kind of politician:the one with what ancient Greeks called megalopsuchia, greatness of soul (or the Latinate “magnanimity”). In pol-itics,thisgreatnesstakestheformof“honorable”or“nobleambition.” Faulkner analyzes the treatment of this great-ness and ambition by classical philosophers and historians(Thucidides, Plato, Xenophon, Aristotle) while attackingits neglect by contemporary theorists who ignore or bury theconcept(JohnRawls,instigatedbyKant);getitwrong(Douglass Adair, whose focus on the fame motive shiftsattention from noble duties to fickle reputations); or rel-ativizeit,whetherbenignly(HannahArendt)ornot(Nietz-sche). Faulkner believes that free, republican regimes muststudy the great souled, not just to know our likely enemiesbutalsotodiscernourlikelysaviorsandfriendsandensurethat they stay such. September 2009 | Vol. 7/No. 3 645  Faulkner’s accounts of the ancient authors defy sum-mary, like most properly close readings, but still meritpraise. His treatment of  megalopsuchia in Aristotle’s Ethics   will instruct even those who think they have read thefamous passages with care; his care is greater. The reasons why the great are reluctant to acknowledge debts to others(p. 42) are particularly striking: Briefly put, the desire forindependence may seem closer to ingratitude than it is.The chapter on the Education of Cyrus, Xenophon’s mas-terpiece, vindicates Faulkner’s thesis that this is a morerealistic work on political success than Machiavelli’s Prince  —precisely because Xenophon treats apprehensionsof justice, evil, and tragedy as insights into reality, ratherthan distractions from it (p. 130). Faulkner’s treatmentsof the two Platonic Alcibiades  dialogues (possibly, some would say probably, not written by Plato himself—asFaulkner acknowledges but rightly puts to one side asbeside the substantive point) are perhaps a bit less search-ing,buttheystillwillplaytheirintendedroleasaptremind-ers to those whose ambition for power is not matched by knowledge of how to use it well.The critical chapters are somewhat less successful. Crit-icizing Rawls for not respecting the qualities of extraor-dinary politicians is certainly justified, but a bit too easy.Rawls’s defenders would by and large cheerfully grantthat his “ideal theory” abstracts from the preconditionsof real politics, including its reliance on unpredictablequalities of character: So much the worse, in their view,for “nonideal” politics. A respectful critique of Adair forslighting the difference between fame and duty wouldhave profited from a closer treatment of the literaturesince antiquity—at once deep and ironic—on how thesearch for fame can distract from virtue. In particular, abook that argues, in effect, that the love of praise shouldtake second place to that of duty or praiseworthiness would have done well to consider Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments. Faulkner’s reading of Arendt, againrespectful, is on the mark in questioning her attempt toseparate greatness from all character qualities, but errs inportraying her as favoring “political beginning as such”(p. 213); for, as readers of Arendt will know, the need toinstitutionalize and constitutionalize revolutionary inno-vations is the central theme of her On Revolution. The book displays, to an unusual degree, the cardinalStraussian virtue: a determination to learn, through closereading, from thinkers who tell us unaccustomed things. Absent this virtue, political theorists can resort only tocongratulating one another for asserting shared prejudices with ever-greater zeal. On the other hand, the commonflaws and idiosyncratic assumptions of that school are alsoevident. This book simply disregards the non-Straussiansecondary literature, which on the subject of  megalopsu-chia is hardly lacking. Its attitude towards democracy isonly moderately favorable; while Faulkner certainly pre-fers“ratherdemocratic”republicsoverdictatorships(p.199;cf. 178), what counts as a laudably moderate democracy apparentlyincludestheAthenianregimeoftheFiveThou-sand, a broad-based oligarchy with a middle-class prop-erty qualification for political rights (p. 76). His attack on“the doctrine of equal dignity”—not just equal politicaldignity but equal moral  dignity (p. 23; cf. 15, 21, 66, 202,205)—seems excessive and unnecessary, partly because heskatesover(pp.203–4)theubiquitousdistinctionbetweentheequal respect  thatmoderndemocracyassumesandequal esteem, a doctrine preached by few and practiced by none.The author’s praise for the “gentleman-statesman” andhis apparent lack of disapproval toward some famous orinfamous glosses on what that figure looks like (for Aris-totle, the magnanimous man, being serious, must have a“deep voice” [p. 39]), while de rigeur  in some circles, willraise legitimate doubts in others. In general, whether women might be great is left unclear; the only ones men-tioned are Margaret Thatcher (as an aside, p. 5) andPanthea,aXenophoncharacterwhodisplaysgreatnessonly by choosing a great man to love (pp. 153–57).That grandpolitics has in most times and places been a man’s game isobvious, but Faulkner might have paused a bit longer tonote the questions of justice that this raises, as well as whether the presence of women might affect the analysisof magnanimity. (If the answer is “not at all,” that too would be an interesting claim, and certainly a shock to Xenophon and Aristotle.) In short, while Faulkner’s aris-tocratic and traditionalist assumptions are mild by thestandard of his Straussian compatriots—he allots genuineif “lesser” respect to nongreat figures like union leaders,businessmen, and civil servants (p. 207), and seeks to mixthe“goodandtrue”withthe“strongandgreat”(p.242)—they will unfortunately lead many outside that school toneglect a larger argument that would in many respectsinstruct them.This book not merely advocates greatness but seeks totame it—through a rehabilitation of the “mirrors toprinces,” in which philosophers aimed at flattering thegreatwhileredirectingthemodesandobjectsoftheirambi-tions. Faulkner suggests that it takes a great philosopherto both counsel and correct a great politician, and that thephilosopher, in turn, shows his or her own insight by taking as raw material not common opinion but the opin-ion of the great (pp. 26, 31, 36, 38, 40, and especially 55:“greatness of soul is to defer somewhat to greatness of mind”). The mirror aims at turning the great away frommere ambition toward something better: toward respectfor justice, toward legislation and founding rather thanconquest (pp. 52, 91), or, not surprisingly, toward philos-ophy and away from politics altogether: “the true crown is within” (p. 35; cf. 52, 173–74).Faulkner’s goal of diverting tyrants is admirable, histreatment, subtle. (That moralizing at the ambitious may only drive them in the direction of crusades [pp. 108 ff] isa fine and srcinal point.) But the whole enterprise of  Book Reviews | Political Theory 646 Perspectives on Politics  talking cures for tyrants is oddly unmodern. Recent polit-ical theory has by no means neglected greatness. It hasmerelyswappedmethodsofaddressingit,tradingthephil-osophical mirrors that aspire to “limitations within thesoul”(p. 186)for morereliable, that is, external, remedies:constitutions, institutional checks on arbitrary powerbacked up by popular accountability, and an educatedpublic opinion. Faulkner claims that the “dangers to freepolitics that grand ambition often poses” were “providedagainst by a Plato or Aristotle” (p. 199). But Plato and Aristotle provided nothing of the sort; they merely  argued  against the dangers. To provide  against them would haverequired institutionalizing mechanisms to bind the greatfrom outside their own souls. But that is precisely whatthisbookrefusestocountenance.Thegreataretobegiven wise trainers but no reins.In treating Machiavelli, Bacon, and occasionally Hobbesas the exemplars of “enlightenment” (or, less problemat-ically, “modern”) philosophy (pp. 9, 10, 18, 130, 178,182, 221), Faulkner comes to judge mostly negatively the modern aspiration to tame politics through scientificknowledge, rather than qualities of soul. But this early modern trio lacked knowledge of modern constitutionaland representative regimes, let alone mass-democratic ones.To take them as the paradigm moderns is to attack theaspiration to political knowledge without examiningthe actual knowledge to which it led. Generations of political theorists who have reflected on both soulsand carefully gathered political experience—Hume, Adams, Publius, Tocqueville, Mill, and Weber, and theircontemporary heirs—have discovered and propagated insti-tutions unknowable to the Greeks. These include inde-pendent legislatures and judiciaries, the free press, uniformsystems of private property and public provision, profes-sional armies and police forces, and not least, the publicprison, with impartial administration and limited terms.By ignoring how such institutions check and channelgreatness, Faulkner ends up treating modern greatnesslike an absurdist play: all character, no scenery.Faulkner approvingly cites Plutarch: “[T]he Atheniandemocracycouldnot livewith Alicibiades. . .andit couldnot live without him” (p. 59). True. But that was Athens. A modern constitutional democracy, by design, can doboth. Politics and the Order of Love: An Augustinian Ethicof Democratic Citizenship. By Eric Gregory. Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press, 2008. 384p. $45.00. doi:10.1017/S153759270999123X — Peter Augustine Lawler, Berry College  The purpose of this self-consciously ambitious, wonder-fully comprehensive, and often judicious scholarly book isnot to recover the thought of the “historical” St. August-ine for our time. Eric Gregory is not particularly attunedto what Augustine really said, and he sometimes, in fact,lets the reader in on what Augustine should have said,typically from a contemporary liberal point of view. Noris he in pursuit of theological truth or even the fundamen-tal truth about who we are as human persons. He limitshimself, for the most part, to the impact that certain partsofAugustine’swritingshavehadontwentieth-centurypolit-ical theorists. He takes for granted that liberal democracy is superior to pre-modern, paternalistic, or theocratic ornon-rights-based forms of political life, and he presentshimself as certain—without presenting supporting publicpolicy analysis—that existing liberal democracies couldbe improved by “a kind of Augustinian civic virtue  ” that“might in turn encourage a more ambitious political prac-tice” (p. 8). His basic thesis is that liberal concern for justice, understood as the protection of equal rights, iscompatiblewiththelovingandvirtuousorcharitablepolit-ical pursuit of an “actual society” that is more just, egali-tarian,andcaring(p.14).Heclaimsthatliberaldemocracy as it now exists, particularly in the U.S., is depressingly inegalitarian and depersonalizing or far too dominated by the apathetic indifference or materialistic self-absorptioncharacteristic of capitalism. So, the new direction or“distinctive interest” of Gregory’s reconstruction of the Augustinian tradition is “in relating love of God and lovefor neighbor in politics” in order to develop “a political  ethic of care” (p. 176–77).Gregory proclaims that his ambition is to reconcilethose who write in the Augustinian tradition today withmodern—meaning contemporary—liberals. He writes tobuild a coalition on behalf of a combination of liberal justice and Augustinian love by purporting to show the Augustinians and liberals that, on the level of politics,there’s nothing over which they fundamentally disagree.Now that history has pulverized the utopian illusionsof socialism or communism, it is, in fact, fairly hard tofind scholars who do not want to perpetuate or acceler-ate the liberal devotion to personal autonomy and havegovernment exhibit a more aggressive concern for the weak and the vulnerable. An exception here, Gregory presents, is the small group of radically orthodox or fairly  Augustinian thinkers who believe that modern auton-omy and Christian love are incompatible. To them hesensibly argues that there is no current alternative toliberal democracy, and he adds, much more question-ably, that under the flag of his liberal/Augustianiancoalition, the liberal quest for justice can be animatedby the virtue of charity—or personal action based onlove of particular persons—much more than it has beenso far. The radically orthodox share Gregory’s criticismof the faux  realists who depend on “a demythologizednotion of srcinal sin” (p. 9), but they will, I believe,remain more than skeptical about the plausibility of Gregory’s own demythologized notion of the virtue of charity. September 2009 | Vol. 7/No. 3 647