Book Review

In this deeply reasoned but somewhat abstract work, Gary Rosen argues that the "fundamental idea of Madison's political thought" lies in his distinctive understanding of the relation between "the social compact" and what Rosen calls the "political right of nature." Where arguments for the social compact stressed the role of necessity and self-interest in human affairs, the "political right of nature" required a people to act with deliberation as they established government. Though skeptical of the people's capacity to overcome necessity in the name of deliberation, James Madison found a solution to the problem of founding in the device of the constitutional convention, where a select few could exercise a modern form of Aristotelian prudence and then secure popular support for a republican regime. Once that support was secured, the people would presumably acquire a stake in protecting the forms of the constitution against the danger that the later possessors of a different kind of prudence might seek to pervert their authority in antirepublican ways.

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