all fairness to these past luminaries, their shortcomings often have to do with the fact that, besides being bound by their then-present contexts, these thinkers were also caught up in “the big questions”—what the highest nature of man ought to be, or what the “right” state of government really is, or what “justice” truly means in political terms. This shortsightedness extends not only to history’s legends in political thought, but also to contemporary thinkers like Jürgen Habermas, Michel Foucault, and John Rawls—thinkers who someday may be viewed in the same light.
