I spend most of my time in and around groups and institutions that have explicitly ?civic? goals: CIRCLE, the Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools, the National Commission for Civic Renewal, the Kettering Foundation, and the National Alliance for Civic Education?to name just five. Civic rhetoric seems to be spreading and deepening. But what does it mean to be ?civic? today?

Good citizens care about issues and debates?often passionately. They want to save unborn children or to defend women?s reproductive freedom, to rescue the environment or to promote growth, to achieve world peace or to punish America?s enemies. These are matters of life and death, so naturally we want our positions to win, and we are entitled to fight for public support.

But a civic attitude begins when we notice that a great democracy is always engaged in such debates. It matters not only which side wins each round, but also what happens to the nation?s public life over the long term. Are most people inclined to participate in discussions and decisions (at least within their neighborhoods and schools), or are many citizens completely alienated or excluded? Do young people grow up with the necessary skills and knowledge to allow them to participate, if they so choose?

Do we seriously consider a broad range of positions? Do good arguments and reasons count, or has politics become just a clash of money and power? Can we achieve progress on the goals that we happen to share, or have our disagreements become so sharp and personal that we cannot ever cooperate?

Being civic means asking these questions. It is compatible with fighting hard for a position?even a radical one?but it requires avoiding collateral damage to the civic infrastructure. It asks us to worry about long-term civic health, not just immediate tactical victory. And it obliges us to care about our public institutions, not just particular policies.

More specifically, being civic means keeping the following principles in mind:

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Straussians are back in the news–and all over blogs–because of the controversy surrounding the President’s Council on Bioethics. The Council’s chair, Leon Kass, was influenced by the late Leo Strauss. Two of its members have just been replaced–possibly for dubious ideological reasons. I’m not going to comment on that controversy, since I don’t know the facts. I do enjoy the renewed attention to Straussianism, because it allows me to follow the postings of various young folks who are under Strauss’s influence. See, for example, the collection of links after Jacob Levy’s post, or this guide to “How to Spot a Straussian..”

Strauss is generally seen as a cultural conservative. However, his form of writing is indirect. He doesn’t say what his personal views are; instead, he “reads” classic authors of the past. He explains that great philosophers are always in peril because of the unpopularity of their views, so they write “esoterically”–with coded or hidden messages. Strauss rarely (if ever) says what the messages of these past authors are. If, however, you apply Strauss’ interpretative methods to his own writing, you find some evidence that he is actually endorsing a profound moral skepticism, akin to Nietzsche’s philosophical position. It so happens that Nietzsche used the same methods of encoding secret messages in his own writing, and explicitly described himself as an esoteric author. Thus I have argued that Strauss was the opposite of a cultural conservative. He was a God-is-dead Nietzschean.

Then the sociological question becomes: Which Straussians (proteges of Leo Strauss) are in on this game? My guess is, not many. One can actually do very interesting work as a Straussian minus the esoteric nihilism. Strauss drew our attention to the perilous position of critical thinkers in most, if not all, societies, and thus invited us to read the classics for hidden messages. This can be a productive approach. He also took some hard and effective shots at modern liberalism. I doubt that he favored straightforward conservatism as the alternative. But I do think he identified some of the deepest problems with liberalism, especially its tendency to support moral relativism as a moral absolute (a position that comes very close to self-refutation). Since Strauss, there has been a sophisticated and wide-ranging discussion of that issue, so he hardly had the last word. But he introduced an important topic.

Finally, Straussians make useful colleagues because they are relentlessly opposed to political correctness and are willing to be “elitists.” When we carelessly repeat nostrums like “the people’s right to know,” it’s great to have a Straussian around to say, “That’s complete nonsense.” They are excellent prods to actual thinking–which may have been Leo Strauss’ only goal in the first place.

Robert Putnam is mainly famous for reviving the concept of “social capital.” As he measures it, social capital is the aggregate of certain habits and attitudes that individuals possess–especially trust for other people and membership in groups.

There are two main interpretations of social capital theory. The political interpretation says that people deliberately develop organizations and networks in order to solve public problems. Trust is a by-product of this work; it is also something that people deliberately enhance by developing personal relationships and by raising children as members of communities. It is good to develop social capital because it enhances a community’s capacity to solve problems in the future.

The apolitical interpretation assumes that social capital goes up or down because of large social forces and trends, such as suburbanization, the work environment, and exposure to television. (TV makes people less trusting and less sociable.) The reason we should care–according to this interpretation–is that social capital correlates with mental health, longevity, and good educational outcomes. Therefore, if we can, we should tinker with big institutions to increase social capital.

Although these two theories reflect different values, there are also empirical differences. It is either true or false that people can create social capital through deliberate action at the local level. I’m optimistic that they can, but I’m not sure how strong the evidence is.

For several years, I’ve been developing a moderate version of moral particularism, which says that the appropriate things to judge are situations, choices, or events, not concepts or categories (such as lying, happiness, or justice). I am therefore skeptical about the more ambitious forms of moral philosophy, which do focus on concepts. Lately, I’ve become interested in literary themes as an alternative.

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I love Gareth B. Mathews’ Philosophy & the Young Child (1980). It’s full of dialogues in which kids between the ages of 4 and 10 explore profound issues of metaphysics, epistemology, logic, and ethics with an adult who’s genuinely interested in their perspective. They supply fresh vision and curiosity; the adult provides some useful vocabulary and provocative questions.

Mathews believes that it’s hard to think straight about fundamental philosophical questions once you’ve been encumbered by a bunch of conventional theories–and once you’ve been told that most deep questions are really simple and obvious. For example, we’re inclined to think that a kid is silly if she asks why she doesn’t see double, since she has two eyes. Actually, this is not such an easy question to answer, but most of us are soon socialized to dismiss such matters as childish.

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