The departmentalism of American universities has doubtless much to recommend it. It indicates that exuberance is not a sufficient sub stitute for scholarship, that, for better or for worse, every scholar today must be something of a specialist. But when any great writer and great thinker reaches out and grasps the whole of human life, the study of his work transcends specialization. And while exuberance may not replace scholarship, it may accompany it. Most of my work has been done in the history of political philosophy. I have dared to overstep departmental boundaries, because I believe that...

It was probably Rousseau who first thought of dreams as ennobling experiences. Anyone who has ever read Reveries du Promeneur Solitaire must be struck by the dreamlike quality of Rousseau's meditations. This dreamlike quality is still with us, and those who experience it find themselves ennobled by it. Witness Martin Luther King's famous "1 have a dream. " Dreaming and inspiration raise the artist to the top rung in the ladder ofhuman relations. That is probably the prevailing view among educated people of our time. Rousseau made that view respectable and predominant. Yet in another sense,...

It was probably Rousseau who first thought of dreams as ennobling experiences. Anyone who has ever read Reveries du Promeneur Solitaire must be struck by the dreamlike quality of Rousseau's meditations. This dreamlike quality is still with us, and those who experience it find themselves ennobled by it. Witness Martin Luther King's famous "1 have a dream. " Dreaming and inspiration raise the artist to the top rung in the ladder ofhuman relations. That is probably the prevailing view among educated people of our time. Rousseau made that view respectable and predominant. Yet in another sense,...

The departmentalism of American universities has doubtless much to recommend it. It indicates that exuberance is not a sufficient sub stitute for scholarship, that, for better or for worse, every scholar today must be something of a specialist. But when any great writer and great thinker reaches out and grasps the whole of human life, the study of his work transcends specialization. And while exuberance may not replace scholarship, it may accompany it. Most of my work has been done in the history of political philosophy. I have dared to overstep departmental boundaries, because I believe that...