Explaining old worlds

Abstract

This Comment treats each of Spinosa, Flores, and Dreyfus's three subjects ‐entrepreneurship, democratic activity, and cultivation of solidarity ‐ in turn. Though marred by inattention to moral consequences and an accordingly unjustified meliorism, the authors’ insights reaffirm and strengthen a number of convictions obscured in current political‐theory debates. In particular, their account of the virtuous citizen, and of a variant of solidarity which grows out of such citizens’ activity, deserves recognition. The basic contention that humans are ‘at their best’ when self‐consciously engaged in transformative activities is accepted, with the essential caveat that such activity can only be sustained for relatively short periods of time by individuals and polities alike.