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If Men Were Angels: James Madison and the Heartless Empire of Reason. By Richard K. Matthews. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. 1995. 320p. $25.00.

This is an interesting and well-written book worthy of careful consideration by students of political theory and American history. The author sets as his objectives: (1) "to construct the complete political theory of James Madison," (2) to provide "a critical analysis of Madisonian politics," and (3) to understand "Madison's politics" in light of "what America has failed to become" (pp. xvii-xviii). Eight chapters beyond the introduction are concerned with Madison as a person, his world view, his conceptions of humanity, civil society/ property rights, government, Jefferson on Madison, and brief concluding reflections built around Robert Frost's metaphor of reflection as "knitting." As a student primarily concerned with Madison's theory of a "compound republic," I especially value Matthew's examination of the extended body of Madison's work in a sequence of topics of fundamental importance to the constitution of order in human societies. The chapters on civil society, property rights, and Madison's system of governance are especially helpful. The best of works deserve critical reflection in the interest of continuing dialogue and inquiry. I am not convinced that Matthews has gained a sufficiently sympathetic understanding of Madisonian thought to appreciate how the system that Madison helped to conceptualize might be made to work. No formulas, conceptions, words on paper, tools, or gifts work by themselves. Knowledge, skill, and intelligence are necessary to make any human creation work. Conceptualizing how a system might be made to work is a necessary prerequisite both for specifying a theory and rendering a critical analysis. Among the commentators on the American political system who have achieved a high level of sympathetic understanding about how such a system could be made to work and the potential sources of its failures, I would list Alexis de Tocqueville first. Francis Lieber and Moisei Ostrogorski are worthy of serious attention. Tocqueville, in referring to the distinctive institutional arrangements contributing most to the viability of the American system, gave first place to the federal system at the core of Madison's efforts, to the institutions of local governance, and to the judiciary. A primary preoccupation with the federal constitution is clearly insufficient for conceptualizing essential features of the American political system. Matthews uses the concept state as though a political theory were a theory of the state. Tocqueville, by contrast, viewed the American system of governance as being grounded in the conception of a self-governing society rather than a state-governed society. The art and science of association were, for Tocqueville, the foundations for citizenship and for the politics of a democratic society and include reference to a general theory of limited constitutions that was of critical concern to Madison. I accept Matthews's commentary that Madison neglected several essential topics, including citizenship and suffrage, in his life's work. I also recognize the great anomaly of a person deeply committed to freedom living in a society that practiced slavery. We do not choose the time and place of our birth and many of the circumstances in which we live our lives. These issues are important because Matthews repeatedly refers to the demos as provoking anxieties or fears for Madison without indicating what it might mean for the demos to exercise kratia (power), as implied by the term democracy. Perhaps Madison was correct in his reluctance to assert a "right to revolution" and to "call for revolution, revolt, or even legitimate violence" (pp. 153, 175). The French Jacobins had no such reluctance; and the First and Second Republics were very short lived amid frequent changes in types of political regimes. The average tenure of governments in the Third and Fourth Republics was less than one year. Recourse to "legitimate violence" by "populists" in nineteenth-century Russia and communists in twentieth-century Russia has not served the demos very well. The problem of conceptualizing the nature of property rights poses such a difficult problem that neither is Matthews nor am I likely to achieve resolution. Madison, according to Matthews, insisted that concepts of property and authority cannot be disassociated. Matthews relies on the concept of market to attempt to indicate a narrower concept of property. Unfortunately, what might be conceptualized as private property does not include other forms of property which do not necessarily coincide with the boundaries of nation-states (i.e., common-pool resources and public goods involving potential forms of common wealth, or commons). How wealth is to be redistributed without monetized media of exchange is difficult to imagine. And monetary transfers can only give access—without sympathy, compassion, or helping hands—to the type of goods available in a market economy. Further, any society needs to distinguish between consumption goods and capital (goods or property used to produce other goods). Every society has a great stake in assigning authority for the proper use and care of its productive capabilities, including the skills of its population. The "poor," as such, are not the best repository of productive assets. The complex configurations of property right relationships are not satisfactorily addressed in market theory nor by Marxist allusions to the good of each being related to the good of all, as though the world were a simple porridge equally accessible to all. The genius of Madison's formulations was to use and extend Montesquieu's concept of using power to check power as a means of constituting order in human societies. Any such arrangement is potentially subject to stalemate, and any ex ante effort to avoid potential stalemates requires some form of autocracy. The key question is whether human beings can take time out to pursue problem-solving strategies in the presence of conflicts as means of achieving conflict resolution, rather than allowing conflict to escalate to violent confrontations. The demos has no godlike capabilities, and is required, like everyone else, to use knowledge, skill, and intelligence to cope with problems. The organon for achieving problem-solving capabilities is the mind. Reason is an essential complement sentiments like sympathy in Madison's "heartless empire of reason." What is