Abstract
Daniel Attas's subject is the libertarianism which has, thus far, found its fullest philosophical expression in Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Claiming to derive inspiration from Locke, such libertarianism takes freedom as its sole fundamental value. It construes the latter in terms of ‘self-ownership’ and the possession of fundamental rights, construed in their turn as property rights. Consequently, it also holds that, with the exception of the (supposedly inalienable) right to one's ‘own’ self, such rights – or ‘entitlements’ – can be transferred from one individual to another, but only in ways which meet with the consent of those directly involved; that is, normally by sale, gift or bequest. Libertarianism is, thus, a powerful representation of the moral case for the free market.
Attas's technique is to subject the libertarian edifice to sustained critical pressure at certain structurally key points. These are: (1) libertarian-ism's analysis of the concept of freedom and the supposition that any sort of property right can be grounded in it; (2) the notion of ‘self-ownership’ (supposedly parallel to Locke's claim that we each have a property in our own ‘persons'); (3) the idea that an individual can acquire a property right in a natural resource by removing it from the common stock, or from an unowned state, in certain specific ways (Locke's claim that such a right can be acquired by ‘mixing one's labour with nature’ being an example); (4) the claim that one necessarily acquires a property right in that which one produces. Attas deploys an array of arguments in order to demonstrate that none of the foregoing can withstand close analysis. He is particularly – and persuasively – dismissive of the last, insisting that ‘the modern developed market economy is a mechanism of joint production’ (p. 165). From this it follows that the libertarian representation of such an economy as a set of ongoing bilateral exchanges – individual entitlements being transferred from one person to another at each stage – is fundamentally unrealistic.
The great virtue of this book lies in its detailed approach, something to which it is impossible to do justice in a short review. Contrasting interpretations of libertarian claims are outlined, tested and found wanting. The cumulative effect is a devastating critique from which libertarianism will not easily recover. If this book is anything to go by, Ashgate are to be congratulated on their endeavour to bring ‘high quality research monograph publishing back into focus'.
Alan Haworth
(London Metropolitan University)
This is a selection of eleven invited papers presented at the Montreal conference on ‘Michel Foucault and Social Control’ in 2005. The remit of the conference was rather large, and this selection of papers touches on the importance of Foucault's work for Politics, Law, Psychiatry, Health Care and The French Context. One or two of the papers look a little thin but several repay a close reading.
Alain Beaulieu has some interesting things to say about the multiple senses in which Foucault uses ‘control’ and Warren Montag's piece on ‘The Immanence of Law in Power’ stands out as a particular high point. Foucault's later work focused attention on the informal and non-juridical dimension of control as something diffused, spread out, upon ‘governmentality’ rather than the state and the rule of law. Drawing upon the work of Giorgio Agamben, Montag explores the alternative of recasting and extending the concept of the juridical but he balances this out by looking at passages where Foucault argues that power is not its codified legal fiction but neither does it break free into absolute independence of the law.
Among the best of the other papers are those by Christian Lavagno and Frank Pearce. Both draw attention to Foucault's contrast between two kinds of intellectual. On the one hand, there is the intellectual represented by Sartre and praised by Pierre Bordieu as ‘the advocates of the universal’ (p. 107). The problem with assuming such a role is both the claimed universality and the danger of amateur dabbling. On the other hand, there is Foucault's attractive concept of the ‘specific’ intellectual who holds back from providing answers that apply across every field, someone who is not a prophet but who claims expertise only in this or that area.
What may be slightly troubling here (what troubles me) is a tension between the standard form of this collection of papers and this concept of the specific intellectual. What is expected of a collection of this sort, and more or less successfully delivered, is a demonstration of the relevance of Foucault's ideas to what the cover blurb calls ‘a diverse range of studies'. What makes the satisfaction of this expectation mildly problematic is that it risks casting Foucault as an intellectual of the wrong (universal) sort. Be that as it may, there are some good individual pieces here.
Tony Milligan
(University of Glasgow)
‘Without property rights, no other rights are possible’ (p. 34), the author boldly claims, thus laying out both his main proposition and already hinting at the persistent confusion between capitalism as an economic system and liberal democracy as a political system, which mars this book. The volume endeavours to demonstrate the virtues of capitalism in promoting economic growth, technological advances and thus, albeit indirectly, rising standards of living for wide segments of the population. It also provides a very selective and synthetic historical account of technological advances in the late nineteenth century, a somewhat confused defence of capitalism as the sole system fostering intellectual freedom and a polemical list of the humanitarian shortcomings real existing socialism engendered. In doing so, the author attempts to convince the reader of the superiority of capitalism and point to the shortcomings of what he calls ‘statism', a category wide enough to encompass Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union and current Sweden. His motivation stems from the conviction that there is a ‘disconnect’ (p. 13ff.) between capitalism's alleged accomplishments and the persistence of left-wing critics. Written in an aggressive yet rambling style reminiscent of US talk show radio hosts, the book is clearly not aimed at a scholarly audience, but seems to expect a wider audience.
Nuance, subtlety and accuracy are unfortunately not the author's forte. In characteristic disregard for historical facts, he states that ‘Adolf Hitler […] was the German dictator. Joseph Stalin was his counterpart in the Soviet Union, and Benito Mussolini in Italy. It is important to recognize that the dictatorships were all on the same side, and were the aggressors (p. 229, emphasis in the original). Similarly, the author confuses the political ramifications of the Enlightenment with the economic results of the Industrial Revolution. But a grasp of basic historical facts is not the only thing out of reach for this author who, despite setting out viciously to attack Marxism, is incapable of distinguishing between Marxism as a theoretical approach and real existing socialism. His virulent polemics are further undermined by surprising knowledge gaps of even basic tenets of Marxist ideology. Thus, the historical materialist understanding of capitalism as a historic epoch necessary to overcome feudalism is completely ignored. No serious scholar of politics would conflate Nazism with Stalinism as being two feathers of the same ‘statist’ bird. Regrettably, the economic arguments are merely pedestrian, relying on a mediocre first-year student's grasp of neoclassical assumptions about supply and demand. From a trained philosopher, one might have expected an original philosophical argument. But again, Bernstein disappoints, by merely rehashing some of the tenets of the obscure libertarian right-wing philosopher Ayn Rand.
In sum, this book needs to be approached, not as a scholarly treatise of political economy, offering original insight, compelling arguments and innovative methodology, for it offers none of these things, but rather as an angry overtly right-wing polemic. Yet the numerous analytical deficiencies render its message far from compelling: it reads like an angry and often confused diatribe, but without the bite and the wit good polemicists are capable of.
Georg Menz
(University of London)
Besson's book aims to explain how the existence of reasonable disagreement should influence the way we think about justice, democracy and the law. The book is divided into three main parts. In Part I, Besson argues that reasonable disagreement about morality, justice and the law is inevitable, at least in part, because normative concepts such as equality and fairness are essentially contestable. This means it is possible to have equally plausible rival interpretations of those concepts and different criteria for their application. The disagreement about morality, justice and the law is reasonable, according to Besson, primarily because people reasoning in good faith will always disagree. This ‘person-based’ account of reasonable disagreement is contrasted with the ‘content-based’ approach of theorists such as Rawls, who define reasonable disagreement according to pre-established epistemic and normative criteria.
Part II assesses the significance of reasonable disagreement. Besson argues that most political and legal philosophers have failed to realise how deep reasonable disagreement is, and how severely the depth of our moral disagreements must affect our conceptions of democracy and the law. In this part of the book Besson advances one of her central theses: that the main function of the law is to serve as a framework for solving the pressing coordination problems that societies face as a result of widespread disagreement about morality and justice.
Part III considers how our legal and political institutions should respond to the fact of reasonable disagreement. There are chapters on deliberative voting ethics; the possibility of compromise between different principles or conceptions of justice; the constitution as a precommitment device; representation in democratic theory; integrity in the law; conflicts of rights; political obligation; and civil disobedience. Besson stresses that our political and legal institutions are not simply means of solving the problems posed by reasonable disagreement – the institutions themselves will also be subject to such disagreement. This means our institutions must be flexible enough to accommodate reasonable disagreement about both their procedures and outcomes in order to remain legitimate.
Besson has written a massive and hugely ambitious book. There are fourteen chapters in all, and they range over a diverse set of topics, although they are connected by the overarching theme of reasonable disagreement. The book's scope is something of a problem: in trying to cover so much territory, the author is forced to move quickly over complex ideas and thinkers, sometimes too quickly. Besson also seems to assume that almost all moral/political topics are subject to reasonable disagreement, and so I think overestimates the significance of reasonable disagreement in certain areas. Besson is also surprisingly silent on the problem of unreasonable disagreement and how we should respond to it.
Jonathan Quong
(University of Manchester)
If recent efforts in the comparative political economy literature have overemphasised the ‘variety’ of capitalism across countries and have neglected the commonality of radically reconfigured capitalism in the West, this ambitious product of French political sociology at its finest helps set the record straight. Without resorting to the questionable generalisations that impede much of the Anglophone globalisation literature, this volume carefully charts the gradual demise of the post-war consensus and the rise of much more short-term, conditional and project-oriented ‘connectionist’ forms of production. In the course of this mutation, capitalism has co-opted and incorporated much of the ‘artistic’ critique of the late 1960s, spawning more autonomous, ostensibly self-reliant modes of work relationships, while not only doing nothing to modify its basic exploitative nature, but actually increasing control mechanisms, anxiety and insecurity and undermining solidarity. Some of the contributing factors are well known, such as the decline of the trade unions, the weakening of the political left and new forms of outsourcing and subcontracting. Interestingly, the authors draw on an in-depth analysis of French and American management literature of the 1960s and 1990s, describing how the earlier emphasis on clear hierarchies, rigid structures, but also reliable and steady employment relations has been superseded by a new spirit of capitalism that emphasises mobility, flexibility, motion and connections and demands constant adaptation.
The human costs of this new model are considerable; exploitation actually increases and individual egoism flourishes. The authors thus propose numerous tools to re-regulate some of the excesses, including upgrading the labour rights of ‘subcontractors', introducing a basic income or at least rewarding currently non-remunerated forms of employment and reining in financial speculation through taxation. Thus, they advocate a revival of both aesthetic and social critiques of capitalism and seek to formulate political demands on which an agenda for a new political left could be based.
A fascinating and fairly far-reaching effort, this volume's impact is affected at times by a prose that remains too closely wedded to the original, making for an unnecessarily awkward syntax. Further, the somewhat encyclopedic approach, though informative, does at times lead to excessively lengthy and even sprawling sub-sections. Some of the description of the decline of the union movement may appear repetitive and, given the book's exclusive focus on France, less than representative of trends elsewhere. But these are minor quibbles: on the whole, this is a very well-executed analysis of the current phenotype of capitalism that draws on fresh and innovatively analysed empirical material. It transcends the focus on mere ideology – neoliberalism – that limits other efforts in this vein and provides a detailed analysis of the new modalities of production and the attached rules of the game. Moreover, it manages to convey an incisive analysis of the adaptability and hence ability for survival of capitalism that is genuinely path-breaking. This book will no doubt come to be regarded as a contemporary classic of political economy and political sociology on this side of the Channel, as it already is in France.
Georg Menz
(University of London)
This is a collection of sixteen essays devoted to Le Guin's The Dispossessed. First published in 1974, The Dispossessed depicts an anarcho-communist utopia that has, over time, become ossified to such an extent that individual initiative is being stifled. Many of the essays collected here argue that the novel, together with others such as Samuel Delany's Triton, marked the birth of a new breed of ‘open-ended’ utopias. These, we are told, offer dynamic, flawed and ambiguous visions which operate more as critical thought experiments than prescriptive goals. For the most part, the contributors read The Dispossessed as a work of critical theory, the overarching aim of the volume being to explore ‘the radical political ramifications of the novel’ (p. ix).
Most of the essays explore, in one way or another, two of Le Guin's central concerns, these being to subvert the static rationalism of the traditional utopia while offering a serious meditation on the attractions and problems of anarcho-communism as a political idea. As such, those interested in the history of both utopian and anarchist thought will gain a great deal from the sophisticated analyses on offer. This is particularly so given the diversity of the perspectives brought to bear on the novel. To give something of a flavour of this, one finds The Dispossessed being interpreted in terms of (among others) Plato, Hegel, Arendt, Lefebvre, Marcuse, Oakeshott, Rawls and Zizek.
What the volume offers, then, is an exceptional range of essays exploring the radical political theory of The Dispossessed. Interestingly, however, in her own response which appears at the end of the volume, Le Guin warns against over-theorising the novel. This raises an important point. For the impression one gets from the essays (probably quite rightly) is that in order to understand the utopian functionality of The Dispossessed one has to be well versed in the history of the utopian tradition, the techniques of literary criticism, Kropotkin's anarchism, Lacanian psychoanalysis and so on. Few people are well versed in these things, however, and I imagine that many readers respond to The Dispossessed, not as a work of critical theory, but rather as a good sci-fi yarn. What would have added to the volume is some consideration of what, if any, ‘radical political ramifications’ the novel has had outside the academy.
Darren Webb
(University of Sheffield)
Andrew Dobson and Angel Valencia Sáiz contribute to the development of green political thought by editing this book, which compiles different perceptions, understandings, descriptions and prescriptions of a sustainable society.
The common theme of the nine articles that compose this work is the engagement of the analytical notions ‘citizenship', ‘environment’ and ‘political economy’ within the term environmental or ecological citizenship. The discussion of this emerging concept constitutes the cornerstone of the present work, whose twofold aim is inquiring into the nature and procedural elements of this new idea of global citizenship and its opportunities and difficulties within the current dynamics of the economic sphere of politics.
These twin aims divide the book into two parts. In the first section Ángel Valencia, Derek E. Bell, Simon Hailwood, Emilio Luque and Mojca Drevensek propose different theoretical and methodological approaches for the analytical treatment of the discussed concept within eclectic political, social and philosophical frames. For their part, Joaquin Valdevieso, Neil Carter and Meg Huby, Graham Smith and Gill Seyfang offer several answers to the question of what kind of transformations (if any) of the political economy are necessary to make it compatible with the processes and objectives of environmental citizenship.
Given the innovative conceptions this book introduces and also the continuous references to the classic dilemmas of the green theory it makes and debates, this work could be considered both as an advanced lecture for experienced readers of green theory attentive to its new vanguard, and also as a starting point for those interested in knowing the several evolutions of traditional green thought.
Although the group of articles included in this work does not drive to any conclusive thesis, it provides such a range of arguments and elements of discussion that the sum of those contributions as a whole represents one of the most significant manifestations of the key role that green thought, the green movement and green policy may actually play, not only within the conflictive and competitive dimension of ideological and electoral domestic economical politics, but within the arena of dialogue, negotiation and cooperation within the global society and economy.
Guadalupe Martínez Fuentes
(Universidad de Granada, Spain)
This book addresses the disconcertingly general question: what is the moral worth of nations? After investigating some contemporary answers, favourable and unfavourable, Frost discusses the history of two nationalisms, Irish and Quebecois, to suggest that each pursues a course from emphasising the need for independent government to focusing on the creation of a national character. Frost rejects the view that this involves a shift from civic to ethnic nationalism. Rather, a national character was needed to give a group the cohesiveness required for self-government and the distinctiveness necessary for setting the boundaries of its polity. We should, she suggests, see ‘nations as frames of reference’ (p. 97) which their members share, facilitating the communication and mutual trust needed for representation. Therein lies their moral worth, so long as this framework is flexible and inclusive. Frost looks again at Ireland and Quebec to see how her theory can be applied, especially in the light of social change, to which, she implies, their nationalisms have adapted quite well.
Besides mounting this argument, Frost discusses most of the current philosophical defences of nationalism, presenting her own account as capturing their insights while avoiding their mistakes, in particular the bifurcation of the political from the cultural. Thus, though perhaps aimed principally at fellow workers in this increasingly crowded field, the book could serve as a useful introduction to readers new to it, but not, I would judge, at undergraduate level. It is, however, well organised and clearly written, its Irish and Quebecois case studies leavening its potentially stodgy political theory.
Emphasis on just these two cases is, though, a danger that political scientists may exploit. While it is not clear that Frost is offering an empirical account susceptible to counter-example rather than an illuminating model of the way the political and cultural aspects of nationalism fit together, it is still unconvincingly general in view of the huge diversity of nationalisms. It is also worryingly vague, for what exactly a ‘frame of reference’ is and how it relates to ‘national character’ are not, it seems to me, made sufficiently clear to judge Frost's claim that these are needed for well-functioning political communities and, hence, that nations are morally worthy. Despite these doubts, this is a valuable addition to the philosophical literature on nationalism.
Paul Gilbert
(University of Hull)
What is biting modernity? Or for that matter postmodernity? It is this fact that nothing beyond private/public could be found. Hannah Arendt previously had rejected intimacy as a ‘deep private’ and for Habermas it again reappeared as a beyond of private and public. Placed against the backdrop of this failure, in these two books, Derrida could be seen to have been grappling with the same problem and also emerging with a failed solution (‘the secret').
In Derrida and Disinterest Sean Gaston takes ‘disinterest’ as the key philosophical lexeme against which he charts this problematic. He begins by rescuing disinterest from the aesthetic (Shaftesbury to Kant) tradition of autonomy and disinterest achieved in terms of reason or rationality. The central contention in Gaston's search for the third front begins with this observation, ‘In the eighteenth century disinterest was not seen as a search for an absence of all interest, but as an opposite of self interest and was at the center of thinking about ethics’ (p. vii). Beyond aesthetic or philosophical thinking of disinterest, Gaston then recuperates the ethical version of disinterest; but through a particular genealogy: with Descartes, and particularly Hobbes’ reaction to Descartes it ‘can be seen in the ongoing struggle in Locke, Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume and Smith to find a framework to mediate between the public and private’ (p. vii). And ‘the legacy of this tradition', Gaston believes, ‘is apparent in Levinas’ belief that a certain mediation between the public and private is possible and in Derrida's insistence that a discourse predicated on a clear and absolute distinction between the public and the private can only fall into ruins’ (pp. vii–viii). In this context Derrida à la Levinas arrives with his ‘secret’ as that lies in the difference between or beyond the private and the public.
Now there are three model-metaphors of this secret in Derrida: first, death. ‘Death is always the name of a secret, since it signs the irreplaceable singularity … so that language about death is nothing but the long history of a secret society, neither public nor private, semi-private, semi-public, on the border between the two’ (p. 7) or ‘the secret without measure: it does not exclude publication. It measures publication against itself'. Further, it needs to be ‘attested to by a witness’ (p. 8). The postcard (half-private, half-public, neither the one nor the other) and the telephone are Derrida's other two examples of the secret.
And, death being the Derridean metaphor of the secret also quite unconsciously inaugurates James Smith's book which begins as a tribute to Jacques Derrida, ‘who took up with vigour the Socratic vocation of philosophy as a kind of dying': dying – which is ‘to sink slowly’ (p. xv). Although Smith's explicit and overall intentions in the book are to introduce a ‘demythologised’ Derrida to the ‘fabled “general reader”’ or an ‘engaged undergraduate', besides the obvious documentation of what is not deconstruction (pp. 1–15), and to establish a linkage between the early and late Derrida in order to demythologise (chs 2, 3, 4), if we are to make the two books meet at a common productive site then it would again be the search for a beyond of private and public which pervades the second book against its stated intentions. And this search assumes furious prominence in chapter 1 where Derrida's take on Husserlian phenomenology is pursued. Smith rightly concludes that the pervasive result of Derrida's attack is the destruction of Husserl's attempt to immunise certain signs from public contamination by saying, ‘only when communication is suspended can pure expression appear’ (p. 36). Derrida shows there is no ‘pure’ expression; not only is it always already contaminated by its other, but this contamination, and this is most tragic, is the constitutive foreground of such an expression. The later Derrida's (now famous) engagement with the absolute other, alterity etc. with which Smith engages through the rest of the book becomes henceforth an obvious corollary. Smith is thus able to establish the linkage he had promised at the beginning of the book.
But while the books are able to catalogue neatly the Derridean quest for a beyond of private and public, the reader might wonder at the successful reality of such a solution. And this is what is frustrating. Neither the secret nor the intimate – which are but versions of the private – are anywhere beyond the private/public–liberal binary. It is the personal which is both private and public and also beyond both of them. It is through the religious and natural law tradition (later deployed with energy in liberal theory) that personal and private came to be historically collapsed and used to oppose the public. This can be demonstrated both historically and theoretically. It can be shown that Marx had fallen furiously on this hyphenation and his true realm of freedom delineated an extrication of the personal from the private. Simply put, private/privacy is opposed to public/ publicity and resists public scrutiny – the stuff by which the public is made. Personal – the way we do not know what a person is, what their real/ final intentions are or whether somebody is genuinely aggrieved or not – makes the personal – largely unpredictable and indeterminate in the final instance – unlike the private. Private/public being legal juridical categories have specific indicators. The absence of these indicators makes personal relationships like love or friendship remain outside legislation.
The two books, as they excite and engage now, will help sharpen this debate for times to come.
Arnab Chatterjee
(Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta)
In this critical interpretation, Peter Hallward argues that Deleuze's philosophy is one-directional and monotone. Deleuze's work is directed towards pure creativity and only about creativity. Here is a disabused admirer of Deleuze setting out the reasons for what he perceives as Deleuze's political impotence: ‘In a perverse twist of fate, it may be that today, in places like Palestine, Haiti and Iraq, the agents of imperialism have more to learn from Deleuzian rhizomatics than do their opponents’ (p. 163). For Hallward, there are two traits to Deleuze's failure: first, Deleuze's creativity is directed towards a contradiction, an absolute purity that cannot escape its roots in identity and representation; second, his philosophy therefore devalues the political significance of actual entities in favour of what they can become: ‘Deleuze writes a philosophy of (virtual) difference without (actual) others’ (p. 162). Yet Deleuze insists upon the dialectical relation between relations of becoming and their necessary places and supports (the virtual and the actual). So although Hallward's reading is carefully referenced, it is also selective. For example, in his analysis of Deleuze's philosophy of time, Hallward misses that the three syntheses of time set out by Deleuze are interrelated and interdependent. Instead of Deleuze's circular view of time, where present, past and future depend upon one another, Hallward sees everything as rushing towards a future of pure creativity: ‘The future is thus the finality of time as a whole – it is the synthesis, precisely, of time as everything and as time as pure and empty form’ (p. 148). The future then loses its role as a process at work on the past and on the present hence resting on them and their actual components. The strongest feature of Hallward's approach is his sense of the closeness of philosophical problems to political struggles, but he reduces Deleuze to a simple formula: ‘From a Deleuzian perspective, the one real philosophical problem is simply this: although there are only creatings, these can give rise to creatures which then get in the way of creation’ (p. 55). Deleuze frequently insists that problems are multiple and internally complex. They determine individuals within a universal reach because they express the reciprocal determination of located actual things and the wider shared virtual powers that can creatively alter them. This plural and varied nature of Deleuze's philosophy is lost in Hallward's description. Nonetheless, he does important work in knocking down an extreme version of Deleuzian philosophy.
James Williams
(University of Dundee)
Introductory textbooks are notoriously difficult to write. Where scholarly monographs can take liberties with their specialist readership, a good textbook cannot, as it has to create its own audience among a student body who are required to read it. I know of many ‘big hitters’ in political science and political philosophy who will confirm that writing a textbook has been the most intellectually demanding piece of work they have ever done. If one gets it right, one has the opportunity to influence a generation of students in a way that ‘real’ research in the social sciences rarely does. Hoffman and Graham have attempted to provide the near impossible – an introduction to political theory in all its guises in 560 pages. Political theory is perhaps the most nebulous and contested aspect of political studies as it covers conceptual, analytical, hermeneutic, normative, positive and historical approaches – some of which engage with, criticise or ignore the rest of political science. Not all these dimensions can reasonably be synthesised into a single manageable text. That Hoffman and Graham manage to cover as much as they do is a major achievement by any standards.
The book begins with a discussion of key concepts such as the state, freedom, equality and democracy. It then reviews the standard classical ideologies such as liberalism, conservatism and socialism. Contemporary ideologies such as feminism, multiculturalism and fundamentalism are also covered and the book concludes with new ideas such as terrorism, civil disobedience etc. Merely listing the concepts and approaches does not do justice to the way these ideas are discussed. Many will no doubt object to the ordering of categories but that goes with the territory. I have problems with treating multiculturalism, fundamentalism and ecologism as ideologies as this stresses contingency at the expense of realism, urgency and intellectual autonomy. Similarly the grand synthetic approach embodied in teaching political thought as ideology can distort an understanding of the role of political theory in politics by tending to focus on the superficial and contingent. The authors are aware of these problems and within the constraints of the genre they attempt to address them – fellow teachers will disagree about the relative success here. That said, most of my concerns are with the genre. As an example of the genre this is an impressive piece of work showing good judgement, breadth of learning and an ability to communicate interesting and urgent ideas in accessible language. The layout is good and the additional material provides a mine of useful information. I did not have time to review the accompanying website but am pleased to see that Political Theory warrants the most up-to-date publishing support. The level of coverage is more appropriate to first-year undergraduates than A-level students and therefore I think this is a superior product to other popular introductions on the market. I have no doubt that many students will benefit greatly from this book and the authors could hardly expect more.
Paul Kelly
(London School of Economics and Political Science)
This is the first single-authored book-length study of Nancy's work. Hutchens constructs a clear framework for the expression of Nancy's often complicated ideas by taking the reader from a useful chapter on Nancy's influences, through chapters on ‘immanentism', ‘libertarian-ism', ‘post-secular theology', ‘communitarianism', ‘social contractarianism’ and ‘ecotechnics'. In addition, there is a helpful interview with Nancy at the end that, together with the ‘Introduction', connects these chapter themes to the overall interpretive motif of ‘the future of philosophy'. While the motif may sound rather distant from political themes, the chapter titles make it clear that this book has much to offer a wide readership in political theory. Nancy's preoccupation with political themes is central to understanding his work as a whole. Three elements stand out: the poetic but deeply philosophical discussion of freedom, the reconstruction of the idea of community and the immanent analysis of globalisation. Hutchens expertly situates each of these central political themes in relation to the overarching theme of an open-ended future which conditions our sense of the present as a singular moment beyond universalisation. Freedom is not derived from a universal conception of the rights of the individual; according to Nancy, it is an experience of surprise: ‘the “surprise” of freedom means that freedom is never “my” freedom but comes to me from elsewhere … to be free is first of all to be free of the self’ (p. 164). Similarly, the idea of community is to be distanced from communitarian nostalgia and rethought as a form of ‘insubstantial sharing', a sharing based not on what people have in common but on the event of this sharing itself (ch. 6). This gives Nancy some hope that globalisation can actually provide a means whereby the insubstantial community of singularities can be envisioned, despite or rather because of the tendency of global capitalism towards the erasure of the singular. As Hutchens explains: ‘globalisation calls for deconstruction, and provides the very terms by which it can be deconstructed’ (p. 159). Although Hutchens writes with clarity on the whole, there will be those even more experienced readers of Nancy's texts who will find the occasional obscure turn of phrase or lapse into sentences that simply run together a series of Nancy's terms without much explanation. There is a glossary included but it is really only for the reader with an eye on the technical dimensions of Nancy's philosophy. These quibbles to one side, I expect this text to be very well used by students and academics alike trying to orient themselves in the complex conceptual world of Jean-Luc Nancy.
Iain Mackenzie
(University of Kent)
The Roman Predicament is a stimulating and bold book. Harold James sweeps through history from the problems of the Roman Empire, Smith and Gibbon's dissection of the problems of the eighteenth century via a Roman lens, to the predicaments generated by international politics and the international economy today. James tries to escape the paradigms of globalisation and empire while seeing in the interaction of the phenomena that generated these intellectual obsessions a means for understanding today's world.
For James the central political problem is that we need rules but that rules require enforcing and enforcing them depends on power with all its demons. Rome's predicament still matters for James because it was a great commercial and imperial power and because of the part that Christianity, as a non-Roman set of values, played in its decline. Today, the international order is in similar trouble because the attempt since the end of the Cold War to apply supposedly international rules has come to be seen by the poor and the periphery as the arbitrary exercise of power, first and foremost by the United States. The scene is set for disintegration either by the proliferation of values of the kind that Christianity brought to Rome and Julian failed to stop, or by a violent backlash akin to that provoked when Julian's imperial heirs sought to impose a single set of values on recalcitrant, far-flung subjects.
In setting up the problem James is persuasive. Some of his particular judgements are not always convincing. Can it be right, for example, that while in the 1960s Europe could challenge the position of the dollar, today it cannot, when the euro now provides a serious alternative reserve currency? But his intuition that history and its old interlocutors can help make sense of our political problems is frequently vindicated by his specific insights.
Yet the end of the book comes as something of a surprise. His historical understanding tells him that power will persist but cannot be expected to ease our predicament. But, James believes, there is hope, in talking explicitly about values to find our commonalities. He makes much of the value-diverse attendance at Pope John Paul II's funeral and the recent dialogue between Habermas and Cardinal Ratzinger, but it is hard to imagine his eighteenth-century guides believing that overblown symbolism requiring no material sacrifice is a demonstration that the world can be made less politically dangerous.
Helen Thompson
(University of Cambridge)
Scottish political philosopher John Macmurray (1891–1976) has largely been forgotten by the ‘mainstream’ of the field, though he enjoyed a renewal of interest when the then aspiring prime minister of Great Britain, Tony Blair, acknowledged Macmurray's influence on his thought. In the 1930s, however, Macmurray was a very popular figure – a fairly prolific writer, in both academic and popular media, and a broadcaster, as well as quite the ‘engaged philosopher', involved in a number of causes and discussions, including an attempted rapprochement between Christians and Marxism in opposition to the rise of fascism.
Kirkpatrick's focus, however, is on Macmurray's thought rather than his life – though he rightly understands that one talks political philosophy without looking at the philosopher at one's peril. Macmurray came from Calvinist roots, was challenged by his readings in philosophy and the liberal Christianity of Oxford, embraced Christian socialism but – in the wake of experience as an ambulance man in the First World War – found his faith in socialism wavering (as well as his religious faith). His thought grew towards a broad religious humanism, fairly un-dogmatic, and a concern for the person in community. During the 1920s and 30s he engaged in dialogue with Marxism, broadly supporting socialism while sceptical of its organisational effect on persons. This concern for persons – not as Thatcherite atoms but as persons in community – became the focus for much of his later work, most notably being the Gifford Lectures of 1953–4 at his alma mater, the University of Glasgow. Two important books, The Self as Agent and Persons in Relation came out of this. Here Macmurray distils what have been ongoing developments in his engagement with Christianity, Marxism and democratic liberalism into a philosophy that stresses the relationality of the person living in a community, with all the implications of rights and obligations that follow. (What is striking about this thought for one working in Africa is its resemblance to ubuntu philosophy – the notion that ‘a person is a person through other people').
Frank Kirkpatrick has written a deceptively short and simple work. It contains an excellent brief biography as well as a clear, concise and precise account of John Macmurray's thought. In many ways Macmurray's thinking seems more appropriate than ever in a postmodern, globalised world – where grand ruling ideologies are discredited, where community and identity are both emphasised and threatened, where an individual is either overemphasised or turned into an anonymous economic entity and where opposition to dehumanisation is taking on an increasingly religious (hopefully ecumenical) dimension. This work of retrieval is welcome.
Anthony Egan Sj
(St Augustine College of South Africa, Johannesburg)
When Leszek Kolakowski's three-volume idealist history Main Currents of Marxism was first published in English in 1978, it was hailed by many critics as a masterpiece. The text is now republished in one weighty volume, with a new (but brief) preface and epilogue.
Kolakowski's text (published originally in Polish and beautifully translated by P. S. Falla) aims to provide not just ‘a historical account of Marxism but an attempt to analyse the strange fate of an idea which began in Promethean humanism and culminated in the monstrous tyranny of Stalin’ (p. 8). Book I covers ‘The Founders', Marx and Engels, and traces the prehistory of Marxism back to ancient Greece. The second book, ‘The Golden Age', discusses some of the outstanding representatives of the Second International of 1889–1914 and includes fascinating accounts of lesser-known figures, such as Krzywicki and Brzozowski. Book III describes what Kolakowski classifies as ‘The Breakdown’ – the history of Marxism since the Russian Revolution. The book's structure means that it can rewardingly be both dipped into and read as a history of a doctrine.
In 1981, David Joravsky depicted Kolakowski's three volumes as his ‘long goodbye’ to Marxism (Theory and Society, 10 [2]). Indeed, Main Currents marked the author's final departure from his socialist revisionism of the 1950s, via expulsion from the Polish Communist party, to his arrival at what Ralph Miliband described as ‘extreme hostility towards Marxism’ (Political Studies, 29 [1], p. 115). Kolakowski's interpretation in Part III seems coloured by these events and, as the author admits (p. 787), he struggles to maintain the academic detachment which characterises earlier discussions. The New Left, for example, is grumpily dismissed as the ‘nonsensical expression of the whims of spoilt middle class children’ (p. 1179). At times, discussing recent Marxist thinkers, Kolakowski displayed the acrimony of the apostate, and this book can be seen as part of the wider ‘god that failed’ reaction that many former Marxists felt in the mid-to-late twentieth century. In 1981, Philip Abrams noted that Kolakowski's trilogy would likely turn out to be ‘the definitive liberal history of Marxism’ (Sociology, 15 [2], p. 302). Twenty-five years on Abrams’ assessment remains accurate, and it is unlikely that anything of the scope and erudition of Kolakowski's book will be written on the intellectual history of Marxism again. In the 1970s, while Marxism could be seen as ‘the god that failed', it was still a god; after 1989, the belief in that god had all but disappeared. This leaves Kolakowski facing the tricky question of why one should still bother to read his book. His main answer is that the histories of dead religions still make interesting study, even after their followers have gone (p. v), and on this point, Kolakowski is convincing.
Simon Griffiths
(London School of Economics and Political Science)
Rethinking Democracy offers us once again what should be termed a Kotharian framework of political theory that combines empirical observations, critical analysis and far-reaching vision. While this work applies to the specific case of India, a number of highly relevant concerns regarding the conceptualisation of democracy in the twenty-first century are raised. Kothari develops some interesting perspectives that seek to transform the current pessimistic questioning of the democratic way of life into ‘an agenda of transformative politics, and social and cultural emancipation’ (p. 176).
Crucially, for Kothari, rethinking democracy does not mean rethinking politics or the role of politics (p. 4). Rather, in response to the challenges posed by socio-economic inequalities, the workings of late capitalism, the ambiguous implications of globalisation and fundamentalist communalism, democracy ought to be more than politics. He believes that it could be a tool of social and economic transformation by extending its concerns from functional institutional arrangements to a multiplicity of emancipatory drives that encompass a range of human behaviour and activities from productive capacities to moral development. Quite accurately, such a transformation is not presented to us as a smooth path to human eudaimonia. Democracy is effectively seen as a function of contradictory processes. On the one hand one may witness the centralisation of power, resources and opportunities, while on the other hand there appears to be ‘a resurgence in democratic faith among the poor and the hitherto victimised', as projected by grass-roots movements of ecologists, feminists and tribal groups (pp. 148–9). The persuasive arguments that challenge the myth of representative democracy in the post-Cold War era notwithstanding, some important points do call for closer scrutiny. Kothari's model of a transformative democracy depends on notions of ‘pluralism’ and of the ‘masses’ that are non-conflictual and non-confrontational. While the argument for democracy as being able to accommodate difference is plausible, uncertainty remains as to how irreducible difference allows for the emergence of such a democratic system in the first place. Yet it is the strength of the book's brevity that ensures that such questions do not merely contest his ideas but mainly serve as triggers for further thought. Rethinking Democracy is a statement of mission, which is not only inspired and inspirational but is at the same time informed and informative. This book will be of great interest to area specialists, democratic theorists and comparative political theorists.
Eva-Maria Nag
(London School of Economics and Political Science)
This anthology on Aristotle's Politics includes ten essays (plus an introduction from the editors):
Stephen Homes on the gulf between the relatively undifferentiated Greek city and the modern liberal state; Stephen Salkever on the merits of Aristotle's social science which combines both empiricism and independent evaluation; John Cooper on the theory of political friendship; Malcolm Schofield on the rational basis for Aristotle's theory of slavery; Fred Miller on Aristotle's theory of property rights: Jeremy Waldron on the wisdom of the multitude; Dorothea Frede on citizenship; Jonathan Barnes on Aristotle's view of the role of government; David Keyt on Aristotle's anarchistic opposition to state coercion; Josiah Ober on Aristotle's support for the naturalness of democracy. With the exception of Holmes’ 1979 article, all contributions are from 1990 or later. All, apart from Ober's concluding chapter, have been previously published elsewhere (Miller's contribution is a chapter from his Nature, Justice and Rights in Aristotle's Politics, the most important book published on the Politics in the period). The selection is a fair representation of the best recent English-language work on Aristotle's political theory, which, in turn, reflects the preoccupations of current normative political philosophy on matters such as democracy, freedom and citizenship. Because empirical political science is less interested in its own history, no contributions focus on arguably the most impressive aspects of the Politics, the analysis of political disorder and the factors conducive to political stability.
The collection displays a wide range of methodological approaches to historical texts. European writers tend to show more fidelity to Aristotle's intended meaning, being prepared to recognise (and also reject) unpalatable aspects of his theories (for instance support for slavery and authoritarianism). Barnes’ splendidly spiky argument for Aristotle as a totalitarian is an extreme example. North Americans, however, face more pressure from their World-Historical role and from the greater centrality of classical writers in their liberal arts curriculum. With notable exceptions, such as Holmes, they are keener to co-opt Aristotle to the side of liberalism and/or social democracy. The extent of historical distortion tolerated in pursuit of this aim varies. Some, such as Miller, remain textually scrupulous. Others, however, are more adventurous. Indeed, Waldron approvingly quotes Foucault's comment on interpreting Nietzsche that faithfulness to an author is of ‘absolutely no interest'. Aristotle himself would have agreed, though the history of political thought can hardly survive such a principle. Aristotelianism remains a very broad church.
Richard Mulgan
(Australian National University)
This is an inquiry into the construction and dissolution of social order. It begins with a consideration of civil society. Rejecting conceptualisations that associate civil society with private property and a commercial economy, the author argues for a Lockean conception in which people, in all types of society, create social order because they recognise that cooperation and reciprocity are in their long-term self-interest. From this starting point, Layton argues that when people can rely on mutual trust and increased well-being through joint action, they will pursue strategies of cooperation and reciprocity. But people adopt different strategies in different contexts: thus, social order may break down when ‘changes in the socio-economic environment undermine the effectiveness of previously dominant social organisation and empower other strategies’ (p. 7).
Layton conceives of social order as emerging spontaneously from social interaction; he adopts a Darwinian conception of the evolution of social strategies, and the environments in which they are put into action, as a form of adaptation; and he argues for a game-theoretical perspective to explain why people cooperate in certain contexts but repudiate it in others.
The book will interest those in all disciplines who study social change, social order and conflict. It is strongest in its discussion of civil society, in particular, its discussion of how struggles over enclosures produced ideological conceptualisations that persist today. But much else remains programmatic as, for instance, the author's ambition to develop an ‘ecology of social behaviour that can account for the development of stable strategies over time’ (p. 79), and to explain the role of violence in human social evolution. One reason is that the author offers brief discussions of civil wars in Africa and the former Yugoslavia in place of fully developed case studies. These discussions show, generally, that wars ensued when social change undermined mutual trust and well-being; but they do not address all aspects of the argument, all relevant phases of the conflicts or how the overall perspective answers gaps or weaknesses in existing accounts.
The author traces the inductive process through which he arrived at his arguments, citing anecdotally a large number of studies along the way. This creates a roughly woven narrative, with numerous sections resembling a literature review. The book nonetheless offers many insights and, overall, provides a salutary corrective to ethnocentric, racist and ahistoric assumptions that interlard too many studies of conflict and development.
Sandra Halperin
(University of London)
Twenty-four years after its French publication, English language readers at last have the final volume of Lefebvre's unplanned trilogy on everyday life. Begun shortly after the Second World War, the first volume outlined a way to interrogate the everyday, the mundane or the quotidian, through a critical humanist Marxist approach. Lefebvre returned to the topic in an extensive preface to the second edition of the first volume in 1958, a second volume in 1961 and this final volume twenty years later. The posthumously published Elements of Rhythmanalysis can be considered as an informal fourth volume, and the 1968 Everyday Life in the Modern World, based on lecture materials, a companion piece. Along with some shorter pieces in the Key Writings collection and elsewhere we now have almost all of Lefebvre's writings on this subject available in English.
In this volume Lefebvre attempts to bring his work up to date, considering what has changed and what remained the same. What is readily apparent is how much conceptual relevance remains in Lefebvre's analysis, even as his examples seem dated and often irrelevant. And yet the reader has to work hard to pull these out. Lefebvre is an infuriating writer – digressive, undisciplined and often distracted by theoretical debates or contemporary events that may not interest a contemporary reader. But there is rich material here on space and time, rhythm, politics and the role of the state in contemporary capitalism.
The translation is well done, capturing Lefebvre's style nicely, though the choice of ‘daily life’ rather than ‘the everyday’ for quotidien could have used some explanation, given that ‘everyday life’ is so well established as a translation of la vie quotidienne, not least in the title of this very book. Generally some minimal critical apparatus would have been helpful – both for difficult translations and for biographical notes on some of Lefebvre's more obscure references. For the first I would particularly highlight autogestion and mondialisation, which are somewhat reductive when translated as ‘self-management’ or ‘globalisation'. The former neglects the link this has to radical or popular democracy, particularly at the grass-roots level; the latter neglects the link to the notion of the world and the process of ‘becoming worldly'.
One final word is in order to honour the memory of Michel Trebitsch, known to English audiences for his prefaces to all three volumes of the Critique of Everyday Life series, but more generally as an exemplary commentator on Lefebvre's work. Trebitsch was able to situate Lefebvre's work in a wide intellectual, political and cultural context, and his untimely death from cancer in 2004 was a substantial loss, both personal and professional, for Lefebvre scholars.
Stuart Elden
(Durham University)
In Performing Marx, Bradley J. Macdonald makes a resourceful contribution to debates in Marxism and post-Marxism. Used innovatively, he argues, Marx's work still has considerable significance today. For their contemporary resonance to become clear, Marx's ideas must be performed in ways that take into account changing theoretical, social and political circumstances. Among the writers who have influenced his stance in this book Macdonald places special emphasis on Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, whose post-Marxist thesis deconstructs Marxism and re-employs the crucial concept of hegemony. Laclau and Mouffe insist that the struggle of the working class is but one struggle, and indeed one with no special status, now that new social movements have highlighted equivalent cases of oppression. Cautious, however, that ‘post-Marxist’ may in some quarters be interpreted as ‘non-Marxist', Macdonald is wary of adopting the ‘post-Marxism’ label to describe his own project. He prefers to portray Marxism in terms of ‘a living tradition', within which discourses display not only continuities but also, necessarily, discontinuities. Among other thinkers whose influence he acknowledges are Hans-Georg Gadamer and Walter Benjamin.
Having clarified his approach, Macdonald goes on to discuss how Marx's ideas can provide the basis for contemporary radical arguments regarding: desire and its obstacles; the importance of socialism for the realisation of ecologist goals and vice versa; cultural intervention as a means to confronting dominant representations in society (representations described by situationist thinkers such as Guy Debord as the spectacle); the analysis of power; the future struggles of the working class; and neoliberalism in the globalisation process. As the various chapters demonstrate, an appreciation of this living tradition requires one to grasp the ways in which later writers have been influenced by their interpretations of Marx and on this basis offered innovative arguments. Such writers discussed by Macdonald include William Morris, Debord, Antonio Negri and, perhaps surprisingly, Michel Foucault. In an interesting conclusion Macdonald attempts a new performance of Marx, in the context of globalisation and the response of the contemporary anti-capitalist movement.
Macdonald acknowledges that this is not the best book with which to begin the study of Marx, but his suggestion that, nevertheless, there is no real need to have prior knowledge of Marx's work is probably expecting too much of many newcomers. Readers who do have a grasp of Marx and his critics will find this book useful in helping to assess the fashionable idea that Marxism is dead.
Peter Lamb
(Keele University)
This is the latest in a growing line of books by American academics which seek to resolve the problem of political engagement among US citizens. No-one in America cares about politics anymore, it seems. Participation in presidential elections remains very low, and fewer people are attending demonstrations, writing to newspapers, volunteering in campaigns or going to political meetings than ever before. On the whole, it seems, American citizens are not exercising their hard-won democratic rights and freedoms in anything like the way that the Founding Fathers envisaged: the civic-republican ideal of a free, active and reflective citizen body taking charge of their own lives and determining for themselves the laws that bind them has been eroded by disaffection, disillusionment and the sense that politics is annoying, frustrating and rather pointless.
The cry is a familiar one. Robert Putnam's work on social capital explored this topic several years ago, and an increasing number of academics and practitioners in the UK have turned to the supposed ‘crisis’ in engagement which is afflicting their own society. This book is based on a major report by the American Political Science Association, and seeks to identify some of the key causes of political disengagement in the US, as well as provide some solutions. The amount of ground covered is impressive: the authors discuss levels of engagement in national and local politics as well as in wider civic fora and associations in the philanthropic and non-profit sectors. The general conclusion is that wherever you look, the situation does not look good.
The authors are keen to point out that it is not simply the fault of the citizens themselves. Rather, it is the political system more widely that is to blame. ‘People are inactive, bored, or turned off by politics', they say, ‘because we have designed politics to bore, annoy, and frustrate even conscientious citizens’ (p. 160). Citizens feel more and more excluded from a system that forces them to take sides in an unpleasant and protracted ideological battle and, as a result, the institutions which dramatise this conflict become increasingly out of step with real people, and incapable of representing their interests. And, on top if this, the authors show well the various ways in which the current US political system increases inequality and blocks greater involvement in the issues that really matter to people.
The book is at its best when it is presenting these findings and pressing home the fact that something needs to be done. Resolving these issues, however, is no easy task. The authors provide around 50 recommendations for change, from making sure that election details are mailed to voters prior to polling day to tying student aid and other public benefits to public service and community activities. The latter suggestion shows just how important the authors believe this issue to be: important enough, that is, for the state to be able to deny much-needed benefits to citizens on the grounds that they have not volunteered enough. Egalitarians would no doubt counsel caution here. The idea that we should apply economic pressure to citizens in order to force them to participate more actively in democratic politics raises an interesting paradox: how coercive can a state be in the pursuit of strengthening democracy? Should liberal democratic states require their citizens to take part in collective political activities? And to what extent should these states protect people's rights not to take part in politics at all?
Given that these questions are complex and enduring, it is unfair to expect any group of authors (no matter how large and formidable) to resolve them. However, this book presents an excellent sketch not only of contemporary American political life, but of the debates about engagement, civic vitality and individual freedom which cut across a range of disciplines, and as such it is an important read for anyone interested in strengthening democracy and increasing citizen engagement.
Phil Parvin
(Hansard Society)
In The Limits of Political Theory, Kenneth McIntyre addresses the debate over whether Oakeshott should be viewed as a conservative, a liberal, a sceptic, an idealist or something else. McIntyre argues that all of these interpretations reflect what he sees as a misunderstanding of Oakeshott's notion of the purpose of political philosophy. McIntyre suggests that Oakeshott saw the philosophical mode as distinct from other modes of experience, including that of political practice. According to McIntyre's interpretation of Oakeshott, it is not the role of the political philosopher as philosopher to advance prescriptions – conservative, liberal, sceptical or idealist – for how politics should be practised. McIntyre suggests that Oakeshott saw the role of political philosophy as being one of understanding and explanation, rather than prescription. The notion of a non-prescriptive political philosophy may seem odd but it follows from Oakeshott's distinction between practical, philosophical and historical modes, and the reservations Oakeshott expressed about rationalism in politics. Recommending one course or another politically becomes for Oakeshott, according to McIntyre, a practical, rather than a philosophical, activity.
The Limits of Political Theory represents another work in the impressive ‘British Idealists’ series published by Imprint Academic. Ably written and cogently argued, the book challenges a number of the conventional interpretations of Oakeshott's work. McIntyre's thoughtful, intelligent study will not resolve the debate but will certainly contribute to it, and is highly recommended. The Limits of Political Theory presumes some degree of familiarity with Oakeshott's work, and may be of more interest to specialists than to general readers.
James G. Mellon
(Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre, Halifax, Nova Scotia)
Toleration connects complex logic with onerous self-restraint. My book of that title (1976) was largely concerned to explore the logic; McKinnon's primary concern is to justify the restraint. Why, morally, should we not act against practices to which we strongly object where we have power to stop them? The first part of McKinnon sets up definitions and commits to theorizing tolerance as a virtue. (This is not properly an ‘introduction’ to the subject and would be called, more aptly, ‘Tolerance as Virtue'.) The second part explores applications of this virtue. McKinnon's key cases are as follows:
Rushdie: possibly ban/censor.
Pornography: possibly ban generally (depending on further work/reflection).
Holocaust: certainly expel from universities those denying its historical truth.
Conspicuous religious garb: certainly permit in secular schools.
Female Genital Mutilation: allow some types.
The coherence of tolerance qua virtue is hard to spot in all this.
McKinnon accords six constitutive features to tolerance (not distinguishing tolerance from toleration). Three are not normally disputed, certainly not since 1976, viz. (1) disapproval of, (2) power over and (3) acceptance of (non-rejection) what is tolerated. McKinnon adds two more features: (4) ‘difference’ and (5) ‘importance'. The former is trivial. The second is probably redundant. (But hard to say: McKinnon does not properly cross-map the literature.) McKinnon's sixth feature (borrowing from mentors Horton and Mendus) is not uncommon by way of incorporating into the meaning of toleration the notion of a virtuous act. But must every act normally called tolerant (combining 1, 2 and 3) really be virtuous? If one tolerates torturing captives, does this cease to be tolerance (of torturers), once the specific tolerance is adjudged immoral? What the book hints at is intolerance of logic. … On to virtue.
The author explores three answers to the question why one should refrain from acting against a practice to which one certainly objects, and has the power to stop. (1) Scepticism: If my objection is uncertain, I have no grounds to act for or against. Fine, but standard. (2) Pluralism: If my outlook is incommensurable with that of some Other, then my conviction never decisively trumps theirs – with the same outcome. (3) Rawls and Rights: Rawls’ ‘reasonableness’ criterion is assorted with a defence of rights to yield an uncertain justification of tolerance qua virtue. So in the end, we are told why tolerance might be a virtue, but are not shown that it is.
Preston King
(Morehouse College)
The Task of Criticism is the sixth posthumous collection of essays, letters and lecture notes from John William Miller, who was a professor of philosophy at Williams College from 1924 to 1960. Most of the chapters comprise materials that his devotees have already made available in previous collections. Each chapter of Miller's simple yet puzzling prose is framed by helpful explanatory introductions. The first ten essays focus on the nature of philosophy in general, the next nine on a form of humanism that Miller calls ‘historical idealism’ and the final ten on various topics in moral, social and political theory. Miller consistently emphasizes the role that the ‘midworld’ of utterances, artefacts and instruments of measurement play in constituting a synthesis of the universal and the particular. If the task of ‘criticism’ as opposed to scepticism or dogmatism is central to these essays, it is in terms that are more Hegelian than Kantian (pp. 93–4). The general aim of this critical project is to defend a modest, naturalized and historicist form of idealism from, on one hand, the scientism and cruder instrumentalisms of the British empiricists and American pragmatists and, on the other hand, the absurdist tendencies and nihilism of the continental existentialists (pp. 156–7, pp. 169–70). History is a realm of unique and unrepeatable acts that are not subject to the logic of an experimental method (pp. 125– 31). The aim of philosophical criticism is the ‘control’ exhibited in utterances that discover the limits and alter the future shape of thought and action (p. 44, p. 130). A viable ‘metaphysics of democracy’ begins with reciprocal vulnerability to such criticism in open relationships between autonomous, self-controlled citizens (p. 262, pp. 266–7). This critical sharing of power and authority is the realizable ‘utopian element’ in liberal democracy (pp. 306–8). The central problem of modern democratic practice is psychological: worries about security tend to erode the motives of tolerance that protect privacy (p. 287). Although he emphasizes the historical importance of criticism, Miller offers rather unsubtle, unsophisticated and inconsistent critical assessments of his contemporaries. For instance, he gushes over Bertrand Russell's ‘magnificent’ essay on ‘The Free Man's Worship', yet later dismisses him peremptorily as among the ‘pseudo-philosophers’ of logical empiricism (p. 131, p. 294). The greatest shortcoming of this volume is the rambling and exceedingly vague nature of Miller's reflections. It will appeal primarily to scholars with an abiding interest in the varieties of twentieth-century academic philosophy.
Mark Rigstad
(Oakland University)
Michael Oakeshott's Lectures on the History of Political Thought comprises the lectures which he delivered at the London School of Economics throughout the 1950s and most of the 1960s. The particular version published is said to be those lectures delivered in the late 1960s, shortly before his retirement in 1968. Oakeshott revised his lectures many times and editors have skilfully produced a publication that shows little evidence of the lecture form, except for the retention of the odd phrase here and there that betrays its delivery to a listening audience.
Oakeshott inherited the course from Harold Laski, but he did not much like the title because it did not for him specify a tangible enough subject matter. In the introduction to the lectures themselves Oakeshott is dubious that anything can be found that corresponds to the term ‘a history of political thought'. There are only different peoples, in different intellectual and physical circumstances, living in different times and discovering different things to say about them (p. 33). This is not, then, a history of political philosophy, but of the political experiences, and thoughts about them, in relatively self-contained historical epochs: the Greeks, the Romans, medieval and modern Europeans. It is principally an exploration of the vocabulary of politics and law that each inherited, developed and made their own. There is an important distinction assumed throughout the lectures: that between the practical sentiments, beliefs, ideas and aspirations and explanatory thinking about politics. It is this distinction that enables him to distinguish between the likes of Machiavelli and Locke on the one hand, and Hobbes and Hegel on the other (p. 43). Both practical and explanatory thinking about politics takes place in the context of a particular political culture, and in Europe this is exemplified in the experiences of the Greeks, Romans, medieval and modern peoples. Politics, that is, questioning the desirability of particular rules and attempting to change them through persuasion, as opposed to ruling, is something almost distinctively European, and is Europe's dubious gift to the world.
Reflection about politics is explored at three different levels and different expectations are appropriate of them. At the first level we have reflection upon contemporary circumstances designed to formulate a policy, or respond to an immediate political condition. To know, for example, what the ancient Greeks were thinking about political situations and how they were responding to them we are much better advised to turn to Thucydides than to either Plato or Aristotle. At the second level of reflection we find people discerning and considering general principles that appear to be evident in a political practice over a long period of time. This level encompasses a wide range of reflection, stretching from the articulation of concepts such as democracy, constitutionalism, liberalism, socialism and conservatism, to the muddled attempts to conflate theory and practice in the reflections of such theoreticians as Bentham, Comte or Marx, to the abridgement of traditions into principles, an activity of which Locke is the perfect exemplar, and that Oakeshott elsewhere calls political theory. When compared with political philosophers of the seventeenth century, however, Locke is barely in the competition and bears little scrutiny (Oakeshott, 2006, p. 465). Locke belongs, then, firmly in the second level of reflection.
At this level of reflection it is appropriate to inquire about the office of government, that is, what one may or may not expect it to do. So, for example, the difference between the teleocratic and nomocratic answers to the latter question is ‘not between two different amounts of activity, but between two different kinds of activity’ (p. 488). Teleocratic or enterprise association is about identifying substantive purposes, and formulating laws to assist in their attainment, whereas nomocratic association is ‘government by law’ (p. 484). It entails formulating non-instrumental rules in terms of which individuals make their own choices about substantive ends. It has nothing to do with the belief that the business of governments is to do as little as possible, often associated with laissez-faire (p. 488). This discussion should hopefully lay to rest the mistaken belief that Oakeshott in On Human Conduct has a minimalist conception of the state along the lines of Nozick and laissez-faire liberals.
Philosophical reflection is characteristic of the third level. It is distinguished by its attempt to relate political experience to the map of human experience in general. The context of political philosophy is nothing other than the history of political philosophy itself. Very little of Oakeshott's lectures is devoted to political thinking at this level of abstraction, and this is the reason why, in my view, he does not adopt the triadic conception of political philosophy he recommends in his introduction to Hobbes’ Leviathan.
It is Oakeshott's changing sentiments or disposition towards political activity that provides the focus for Suvi Soininen's From a ‘Necessary Evil’ to the Art of Contingency. Oakeshott was almost disdainful of both politics and politicians in his early youth, but came to moderate his views but not his disdain for philosophes who fraudulently commit the categorical error of deriving practical conclusions from theoretical engagements.
It is a wide-ranging and interesting book, well researched and intellectually engaging, that contends that Oakeshott's thought went through significant changes in the course of his life. The fact that Oakeshott does not offer us a system of philosophy allows him the flexibility of continuity in change. On the significant issue of interpretation, however, and his commitment to philosophical idealism, I would contest that there is little change. Oakeshott's hermeneutics remain consistently idealist in character. There is no ‘it’ independent of interpretation, and no interpretation that is unconditional, save for the ideal philosophy, that is, understanding without reservation, presupposition or arrest. It is a mistake to ally Oakeshott to Pocock's and Skinner's methodologies, as Soininen does, because neither would subscribe to Oakeshott's view that the past is dead, nor could they subscribe to the triadic conception of the history of political thought. The whole purpose of Skinner's methodological precepts, for example, is to retrieve authorial intentions, and in this respect he is avowedly Collingwoodian, whereas Oakeshott explicitly denies that history has anything to do with intentions. In addition, both Skinner and Pocock think that there are lessons to be learned from the past, and exhibit a partially practical attitude towards it, whereas for Oakeshott this is simply a categorical error.
Ian Tregenza's book is erudite and scholarly, and explores an extremely interesting question, that is, the extent to which Oakeshott's changing interpretations of Hobbes enable us to understand Oakeshott's own philosophy, and how Oakeshott modified his theories in response to his understanding of Hobbes. The author's criticisms of Oakeshott are rather less generous than they need be. For example, he lets go Himmelfarb's criticism of Oakeshott's conception of history as so restrictive that it is almost unattainable (p. 46). In addition, Tregenza criticises Oakeshott for not sufficiently recognising that Hobbes’ own intent was that Leviathan should have practical consequences. First, Oakeshott is clear that not everything you find in a history book is history, not everything in a philosophy book philosophy and that it would be naïve to expect anything different. In identifying the postulates of an activity, it is the ideal character that is being sought as a composition of characteristics that uniquely distinguishes it from other activities. Second, theoretical understanding, especially in the higher echelons of unconditional theorising, is extremely difficult to sustain, and one may forgive the theorist, the historian or philosopher for occasionally taking a holiday and lapsing into some other, usually practical, idiom of discourse. In other words, in history books and in philosophy books, but not exclusively in either, you will find utterances that are respectively uniquely historical or philosophical, along with a lot of other statements that exhibit entirely different characters, and which are not logically related to history or philosophy. For example, in giving a historical account of de Maistre's description of the executioner as a person with feeling and moral considerations like anyone else, one may be tempted to say that de Maistre is a despicable, cruel, detached and calculating man, but such statements belong not to historical inquiry, but to the practical considerations of morality. It is not unusual to find them in history books; they are just not part of the idiom that is uniquely historical.
In addition Tregenza suggests that Oakeshott's ambitious view of political philosophy, relating political activity to the map of human experience as a whole, is abandoned by Oakeshott in On Human Conduct in favour of the more modest endeavour of understanding the civil condition in terms of its postulates (p. 44). It is true that Oakeshott suggests that theorising human conduct is something less than unconditional understanding, the determination not to be satisfied with any unquestioned postulates. I think that what Oakeshott does in On Human Conduct, however, is entirely consistent with his claim that political philosophy aims to place politics on the map of human experience, or to provide the connections between it and the whole world of ideas that comprises a civilisation. In the first essay in On Human Conduct, that is, ‘On the Theoretical Understanding of Human Conduct', Oakeshott engages in a piece of intellectual topography, drawing the map on which his later discussion of civil association has to be located. This map comprises two orders of inquiry in terms of which any going-on is initially identified, that is as a practice that entails exhibitions of human intelligence to which individuals subscribe, or as a process that something undergoes. The orders of inquiry generate radically different idioms of discourse in terms of which to refine the initial identifications. History is one such idiom, a practice, Oakeshott tells us, best suited to understanding substantive human actions or utterances. After discussing what theorising is, that is, what it has come to mean in our civilisation, he goes on to exemplify the type of inquiry he identified as appropriate to theorising the human condition, and specifically what he calls the civil condition, or civil association, the identification of ideal characters in terms of a composition of characteristics which uniquely differentiate it from other types of association. He then confirms his conclusions by identifying how the types of understanding whose ideal characters he portrays emerged in the civilisation that is modern Europe.
David Boucher
(Cardiff University)
In Civic Republicanism and the Properties of Democracy: A Case-Study of Post-socialist Political Theory Erik J. Olsen directs a critical perspective on the project of civic republicanism, which has recently gained a prominent place within the area of normative political theory (or, as Olsen sees it, in the ‘post-socialist’ political theory). Olsen's critique centres upon the ‘displacement of property’ in both the neoclassical and community-oriented versions of civic republicanism. The ‘displacement of property’ means both little attention paid to the concept of property by the contemporary civic republicanism (and normative political theory in general) and the dissociation of this concept from its ‘institutional contexts’ (p. 71). Olsen problematizes property through the understanding that it is not just synonymous with ‘collective possessions’ and ‘ownership’ (to which he refers as the ‘modern thingness’ [p. 29]), but that it also indicates the positioning of property in terms of its ‘placeness’ (p. 31).
The argumentative line of this book is complex and rather dense. This book is well contextualized within a variety of civic-republican readings. It discusses property at the background of some of the pertinent theoretical problems of politics, such as the rationale of the formative and virtue-centred civic project; the cultivation of public liberty vis-à-vis the corruptive impact of commerce; or the conceptualization of citizenship that would guarantee both inclusiveness and equality. From a methodological perspective, this book offers an (‘internal') critical hermeneutical approach to civic republicanism. Taking its point of departure in Gadamer's theory of meaning, Olsen practices an interpretative engagement that aims to elucidate the conceptual and discursive ‘horizons’ of civic republicanism – ‘horizons’ defined by the civic republican accommodation of the notion of property. Subsequently, each of this book's chapters (admittedly not very clearly delineated) deals with different aspects of the republican conceptualizations of property, which, as Olsen argues, have been inadequate in regard to both theoretical depth and practical acknowledgement. In particular, Olsen focuses on the problematique of the republican ‘situated self', as well as on the (possibly unintentional, and nevertheless problematic) endorsement by civic republican theorists of the progressive modernist vocabulary. This book concludes with a very interesting discussion of Hannah Arendt's ideas on property and its displacement in contemporary politics.
This book will provide inspiring reading for those scholars and graduate students who are attracted to the civic-republican project, as well as for those who are troubled by its problems. It is an important contribution to the contemporary literature on democratic citizenship, and a noble attempt to validate property as an important and undeservingly neglected political concept.
Magdalena Zolkos
(University of Alberta)
In the face of a number of populist resurgences from the left side of the political spectrum in Latin America to the right side in Europe, populism presents itself as a phenomenon that continues to reappear in distinct political scenarios. In this context, this edited text provides an important contribution to the present reappearance of populism, as well as to its very nature. One finds discussions on populist case studies from Canada, the UK, Greece, Argentina and South Africa, among others. The diversity of these cases enriches the overall discussion on populism, and gives comparative lenses to them.
A second contribution provided by the text, and one that demonstrates a theoretical uniqueness, aims to set conceptual boundaries to this ancient phenomenon that challenges democratic politics. The basic line of argument, one that runs through all the contributions, is that populism is mainly to be conceived as a matter of logic, and not grounded in some sort of empirical or contextual base. Populism is basically a strategy for the construction of a collective identity based on those demands left by the dominant discourse in power. Since it is played out within democratic imaginary, the project claims to represent the popular sovereign, and ‘appeal to the people’ as its most genuine representative.
Among the contributions of well-established scholars, the editor's introduction certainly draws attention to its contribution to the overall quality of the text. The introductory essay does not simply introduce the topic, the context of the topic and the contributions, but it also sheds light on the various important dimensions of the debate, such as the conditions of emergence of populism. Also, the additional effort by the editor to place the contribution notes at the end of the book makes it easier for the reader to concentrate on the subject matter treated in the text.
It is a difficult task to find limitations within the text. One worth mentioning, however, is the minimal reference to the topic of globalization. There is some agreement that the recent populist resurgence has a close relationship with the effect of globalization, or better yet, to the negation of its economic, political and, most importantly, cultural form. Although the editor refers to globalization as a condition of emergence, a contribution that would closely examine globalization as setting the structural conditions for the present appearance of populism would certainly add to the overall text. In all, any researcher engaged with the task of conceptually grasping the phenomenon of populism will find this text indispensable.
Carlos Pessoa
(Saint Mary's University)
This collection of thoughtful and original essays takes up the ideas of reconciliation, forgiveness and justice as they relate to the problem of how nascent democratic regimes should deal with their unsavoury pasts. Authored by theologians, philosophers, historians and social scientists, these essays share the belief that a Christian perspective can illuminate and help address both the theoretical and practical problems of transitioning to democracy. All of the essays see reconciliation as a good thing and view political transformation as coming about through a change in the hearts and minds of individuals. The philosophical issues discussed include the relationship between reconciliation and liberalism, the meaning and value of forgiveness and the role of justice in dealing with the past. The empirical cases considered include South Africa, Northern Ireland, Argentina and Germany. The theologically-oriented essays deal both with the meaning of the ‘Christian epistemic base’ and the openness of that approach to other religious perspectives. The essays are united by a common perspective and a common theme, and speak to one another despite coming from diverse disciplines.
Should non-Christian theorists and practitioners concerned with transitional justice be interested in this particular conversation? Does it provide a compelling political ideal of reconciliation and justice? Many of the philosophical issues raised in the collection are separable from deeper theological commitments and there is no doubt that the role of religious belief in transitional justice is itself worthy of both historical and social scientific study. Yet, these authors believe that an adequate account of justice may require the right theological commitments and motivations. It is a position that expects much from politics. But the city of man is one tough, complicated place. The motivations of the inhabitants are usually mixed, frequently dissembled and their ultimate beliefs diverge and clash in numerous ways. The vision of reconciliation offered by these Christian thinkers aspires to generate the right motivations but may bring with it a politics in which the corrosive charge of hypocrisy and the relentless pursuit of the pure heart are always waiting in the wings. In this neighbourhood the theological ‘ideal’ may be no ideal at all. Was Albert Camus wrong to claim that ‘Absolute virtue is impossible, and [that] the republic of forgiveness leads, with implacable logic, to the republic of the guillotine'?
P. E. Digeser
(University of California at Santa Barbara)
This useful collection of new papers pits the detractors of identity politics against its – qualified – supporters. Thus, in the first section, directly on this topic, Daniel Weinstock argues that identity politics militates against necessary political compromises, while Margaret Moore defends identity claims as pleas for toleration, which is an antidote to discord. Geoffrey Brahm Levey, however, espouses an autonomy-based liberalism against the supposedly stronger claims of identity. In a second section on nationalism, Tony Coady views the idea that nationality is constitutive of identity as overblown (p. 66), and Simon Keller argues that patriotism is a form of bad faith. Tending to the other side, Igor Primoratz distinguishes worldly (i.e. interest-based) patriotism from ethical patriotism, which we ought to practise as conducive to justice. Janna Thompson also defends national obligations, specifically ones generated by our predecessors’ acts and commitments. In the final section on self-determination, Aleksandar Pavkovic rejects a right of national self-determination which overrides the rights of the host state. In this he goes further than Allen Buchanan, who argues for internationally recognised rights of intra-state autonomy, albeit only as what he famously terms remedial rights. Peter Radan suggests that unilateral secession is characteristically illegal precisely because it affects the host state too. No strong supporters of identity as grounding a right of self-determination take the stand in opposition to these contributors.
All the papers, while of different degrees of interest, are clear, accessible and topical. Although directed primarily at professionals, they do not presuppose much background knowledge, and any necessary contextualisation is provided in a helpful overview by the editors. But where does the book leave the debates in applied political philosophy which it enters? It provides evidence, I think, that the intellectual tide is turning against the academic defences of identity politics which have held sway for over a decade. And that may be because the liberal rehabilitation of nationalism has met its practical nemesis in the former Yugoslavia and elsewhere. The question remains: how can the fact of identity politics be accommodated in a coherent normative theory? It will take more books like this to provide some answers.
Paul Gilbert
(University of Hull)
Illustrating dry formulas with practical and interesting applications of quantitative methods can help students recognise the value of statistics in political science. In this collection of articles from PS: Political Science & Politics, David A. Rochefort has given all teachers of research methods an excellent resource that combines fascinating, easily accessible research and helpful student aids. Rochefort's selections give research design and quantitative methods equal weight. The twenty articles also cover various types of research, from interviews to statistical modelling, and give a good representation of the range of possible statistical techniques, from simple cross-tabulations to multiple and logistic regression. Each contribution is followed by around fifteen questions, meant to stimulate closer examination of the motivation, methods and findings of the research. Most chapters also include a short and mostly highly illuminating afterword, in which the relevant author comments on the research. The twenty selections were all published within the last decade and cover many areas of political science, with political behaviour and participation especially well represented. There is a geographical concentration on the United States, with more than half of the chapters focusing on US politics, but other contributions consider aspects of politics in Canada, China, Germany, Northern Ireland and Russia.
As PS aims at a more general reader than most journals, the chapters are relatively short, very readable and do not require extensive background knowledge. Indeed, the articles, mainly written by prominent political scientists such as Robert Putnam and John Zaller, are often inventive and thought provoking. Moreover, Rochefort has selected articles that give a good impression of the breadth of topics addressed by political scientists today and has taken care to include several more qualitative contributions. One particularly useful chapter, purporting (in jest) to demonstrate that monarchy leads to successful democratisation, gives a good illustration of the danger of spurious statistical relationships. Some chapters are perhaps methodologically weaker than others, but in these cases, the well-chosen and challenging questions provided by Rochefort invite the reader to think carefully about the validity of the findings. In general, the articles chosen are models of transparent and accessible research.
This book is aimed primarily at US undergraduates but will also be a useful tool in British universities, as it covers both political science research design and advanced quantitative methods excellently.
Markus Wagner
(London School of Economics and Political Science)
Rössler is primarily concerned with mapping out the optimal conditions under which individuals can make life choices that are truly reflective of their authentic preferences. As one might expect, freedom and autonomy are viewed as essential prerequisites, but above these Rössler considers privacy to be the most fundamental enabling factor, for ‘the true realization of freedom, that is a life led autonomously, is only possible in conditions where privacy is protected’ (p. 73). By situating her discussions within an egalitarian liberal democratic framework, Rössler contends that the value of privacy in this context is already recognised to a large extent. But not completely. This is because, she argues, many formulations of privacy within liberal thought implicitly draw a distinction between the ‘legal-conventional’ sphere which promises autonomy and freedom for all, and the ‘quasi-natural’ sphere which resigns women to the traditional domestic realm and therefore constrains their ability to make authentic life choices. Building upon various feminist arguments, Rössler seeks to develop a critique of this ‘quasi-natural’ sphere in order to construct an explicitly gender-neutral conceptualisation of privacy. Once this critical framework has been introduced in the opening chapters, Rössler proceeds to delineate in a slightly more conservative manner the three aspects of privacy – decisional, informational and local – which she deems to be most valuable to individuals living within liberal democratic societies.
This gender-neutral, three-pronged approach is clearly conceived and innovative, and successfully integrates the ideas of standard liberal thinkers such as Locke, Mill and Rawls together with more radical social theorists such as Foucault, Häbermas and a wide range of feminists, to provide an excellent conceptual discussion of ‘the value of privacy'. However, it is when Rössler moves from abstract theory towards more concrete examples that this book appears less impressive. With the degree of surveillance in (late) modern urban space expanding rapidly and given the ease with which personal information can now be collected, stored and shared on the internet, privacy is more than ever a pressing practical concern. Yet too often Rössler draws upon classic literary texts – from the writings of George Orwell to Henry James – to illustrate her arguments, only occasionally bringing practical matters such as the growth of mobile phone usage and reality television into her line of reasoning. So while this book represents a significant theoretical contribution to the study of privacy, freedom and autonomy, its impact is arguably limited by its failure adequately to engage with contemporary issues.
Adam White
(University of Sheffield)
In Putting Morality Back into Politics, Ryder argues that morality should be returned to its rightful place at the heart of politics. To this end, he believes, public policy should be founded upon ‘a scientific concern for the facts and an intelligent and open moral argument’ (p. 1). The book is divided into two parts. In the first, Ryder examines the principles of equality, justice, liberty and democracy, which he claims are ‘subordinate to one overall moral objective which is the attainment of happiness, through gaining pleasures and reducing pains (i.e. suffering), and particularly the pains of the greatest sufferers’ (p. 18). He also considers the relevance of such contemporary issues as environmentalism, and terrorism and good governance, to an overarching political morality.
Part II explores the possibility of a universal moral foundation upon which politics can be based. Having found existing moral theories to be unsatisfactory, Ryder offers his own theory of ‘painism', which states that pain (suffering) and empathy, as fundamental features of the human condition, provide the basis for morality and politics (p. 73ff.). The goal of painism is to increase happiness through the alleviation of suffering. It is a non-aggregative theory, which uses the total pain of the maximum sufferer as the means for assessing whether an action is moral. This individual is ‘both the measure of the badness of the situation and is the first person we should try to help if we can’ (p. 78).
While the relevance of painism to the medical profession (p. 77ff.) appears uncontroversial, the same cannot be said of its application to politics. Ryder examines the Iraq war of 2003 from a range of moral perspectives, including painism, and concludes that none could justify it. This conclusion, however, is grounded in a superficial assessment of the evidence, and is not helped by his suggestion that the main protagonists of the war were ‘insane or paranoid’ (p. 84). His arguments for painism as a basis for public policy are similarly problematic, most notably his proposal for a new government department that ‘should be charged with the job of constantly searching for and helping, on an individual basis, the greatest sufferers’ (p. 92). This strategy seems excessively interventionist and likely to cause as much misery as it is intended to alleviate. Overall, Ryder's reliance on polemic over reasoned argument means this book is of limited use to students and academics alike.
Judi Atkins
(University of Birmingham)
This book is a stimulating collection of academic papers, short journalistic articles and book reviews written by Michael Sandel over the past decade. In the words of their author, the writings ‘represent an attempt to do philosophy in public – to bring moral and political philosophy to bear on contemporary public discourse’ (p. 5). The writings also echo and clarify themes in political theory that Sandel explored in two previous books, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge University Press, 1982) and Democracy's Discontent (Harvard University Press, 1996).
I shall discuss these themes in a moment. But first, I want to say a word or two about the title of the book. Doing philosophy in public is not only applying philosophical analysis to issues of public concern, but also speaking to audiences outside of the academy. When Sandel discusses a concrete political issue, such as affirmative action, state lotteries or stem cell research, he is writing mainly in non-academic fora, most commonly The New Republic. These essays, he allows, ‘blur the line between political commentary and political philosophy’ (p. 5). I suspect most academic readers, and in particular philosophers who work on these issues, will view them more as political commentary than political philosophy. They often raise an interesting idea and then move on without subjecting the idea to careful analysis. I mention this not by way of criticism. There is nothing wrong with political commentary, and Sandel's interventions are generally quite good as political commentary. In the main, they are sensible, moderate and insightful. But readers who seek a more rigorous and searching treatment of the issues will be disappointed.
Sandel's discussion of concrete issues, however, does provide indirect support for one of the key themes in political theory that he explores. This concerns the proper functions of the liberal state, and in particular the plausibility of the liberal ideal of state neutrality – roughly, the idea that citizens in a democratic society should bracket their controversial moral and religious commitments for the purposes of political justification. In an essay on Rawls’ political liberalism, Sandel convincingly exposes the weaknesses in Rawls’ theoretical defense of this ideal and its concomitant requirement of public reason. This is an excellent essay, one that mounts a strong case against the whole idea of political liberalism. Sandel's general claim that political debate in a democratic society would be impoverished by Rawlsian restrictions is given added credence by his own discussion of concrete policy issues. For quite often, as his discussion brings out, honest and open public debate on controversial political issues requires citizens to express commitments that run afoul of the limits of public reason.
The rejection of state neutrality leads Sandel to embrace the perfectionist thesis that governments have a duty to promote the good. Rather than bracketing controversial claims about the good life, state officials and citizens should seek to understand the relationship between justice and rights, on the one hand, and the human goods and purposes that they serve on the other. In the concluding essay, Sandel even claims that the perfectionist thesis is really the fundamental issue that divides him from Rawls. This might be correct, but it also true that Sandel embraces two additional theses – a republican thesis and a communitarian thesis. And it is these latter two theses that mark a sharper break with contemporary liberalism than the perfectionist thesis. Many liberal writers, after all, do not follow Rawls in em-bracing the ideal of state neutrality. There is no fundamental opposition between liberalism and perfectionism.
At least on some interpretations, however, both the republican and communitarian theses represent a genuine departure from liberalism. The republican thesis holds that participation in self-government is essential to individual liberty. The thesis has a strong and weak interpretation. On the weak interpretation, participation in self-government by a sufficiently large number of citizens is instrumentally crucial to securing the conditions that make possible liberal freedoms. By contrast, on the strong interpretation, participation in self-government is itself a constituent element of individual freedom. Readers will find it difficult to assess Sandel's case for the republican thesis, since he does not make it clear which interpretation he wishes to defend. The weak interpretation, if true, does not contradict the liberal view of freedom. Even neutralist liberals like Rawls can countenance ‘a formative politics’ if that politics is oriented toward promoting the civic virtues necessary to sustain the liberal democratic state. The strong interpretation of the republican thesis, however, does contradict the liberal view of freedom. But aside from a few scattered remarks about ‘the growing fear that, individually and collectively, we are less in control of the forces that govern our life’ (p. 37), it receives no real defense in this book.
The same, I think, can be said of the communitarian thesis that Sandel ultimately embraces. In an essay entitled ‘The Limits of Communitarian-ism', Sandel helpfully distinguishes two versions of communitarianism. The first one holds that the principles of political morality derive their moral force from the shared practices and traditions of the community from which they are derived. This version of communitarianism is really just another name for cultural relativism. Sandel rightly rejects it. The second version of communitarianism holds that principles of political morality derive their moral force from the ‘moral worth or intrinsic good of the ends they serve’ (p. 254). This is just a restatement of the perfectionist thesis. There is nothing specifically communitarian about it.
The real communitarian thesis that Sandel seeks to defend is the claim that liberalism's celebration of individual choice leaves it with an inadequate account of community and membership (p. 145). This thesis expresses the traditionalist conservative worry that liberal individualism erodes the intermediate associations – townships, schools, churches, families – that stand between the individual and the national state. Sandel's communitarianism calls for a decentralization of power. In his eyes, the threats to community are the national state and the large corporation.
But Sandel's discussion of this decentralized communitarianism is sketchy and it raises its own puzzles. Sandel claims, rightly in my view, that ‘the yearning for community can no longer be satisfied by depicting the nation as a family or neighborhood … The nation is too vast to sustain more than a minimal commonality’ (pp. 40–1). This is one reason why he opts for the decentralized communitarianism of Tocqueville rather than the national communitarianism of Rousseau. But Sandel is also keen to argue that Rawlsian liberals lack an adequate account of national community. The difference principle, he contends, must rest on an underlying communal bond. Citizens of the liberal democratic state must view themselves as fellow participants in a way of life that is constitutive of their identity. The difference principle asks them to ‘share one another's fate', to invoke Rawls’ memorable phrase; but they will be motivated to do so only if they share a deeper sense of communal identity than Rawls allows.
This is an intriguing line of argument. It may even be correct. But how well does it sit with Sandel's own rejection of Rousseauian communitarianism? If national communal identification is necessary to sustain redistributive economic policies, then is Sandel's own repudiation of such communitarianism itself a rejection of these policies? I suspect not; but Sandel does not explain how the local forms of community that he believes are possible and desirable can sustain the sense of national identity that he believes is necessary for social democratic politics.
The unclarities that infect Sandel's presentation of both the republican and communitarian theses make it difficult to assess their force. Unlike the perfectionist thesis, which is stated clearly and defended at length, these two theses are much less developed in this book. At best, they gesture toward possible maladies of current liberal democratic politics, pointing to problems rather than articulating a substantive alternative to contemporary liberalism.
This brings me to a final point. Sandel discusses current political practice to a much greater extent than one normally finds in a work of political theory. He moves back and forth between a critique of Rawlsian liberalism and a critique of the practices and institutions of contemporary American political life. The connecting thread is the claim that the Rawlsian liberal vision is the theory most fully embodied in American public life (p. 158). This juxtaposition of theory and practice produces some genuine insights. Sandel's discussion of the judicial treatment of the right to privacy in chapter 21, for example, illuminatingly brings out how conservative as well as liberal jurists have bent over backwards to avoid grounding their legal judgments in substantive claims about the moral values at stake. But this juxtaposition also brings its dangers. Some of the problems of American political life that Sandel calls attention to, the Rawlsian liberal will surely say, result from the failure to realize fully the liberal vision. Sandel's concern with the power of large corporations, for instance, might just reflect the failure of liberal states to achieve the Rawlsian ideal of a property-owning democracy, an ideal that calls for economic power to be dispersed rather than concentrated.
I have mentioned some of the unclarities and deficiencies in Sandel's critique of liberal politics. But there is much to admire in this book. Public Philosophy offers an excellent summary of several important ideas that Sandel has explored over the past 25 years. It intelligently discusses a wide range of topics, including issues relevant to politics, morality, religion and even sports. All of the essays are well written and to the point. Taken together, they express a distinctive and interesting public philosophy, one that provocatively challenges many currently fashionable ideas.
Steven Wall
(Bowling Green State University)
The title of this book recalls Illich's Limits to Medicine, yet it could not be more different. Stark argues for limits not to the medical research complex producing cures nor to the medical profession administering them, but to the individuals and groups demanding them. His aim is to construct a normative philosophical model for determining whether a person or group can ‘legitimately’ call their condition a medical one, and thus lay claim to some kind of treatment.
Stark imagines a ‘medical utopia of unlimited resources and boundless technology’ (p. 187), in which we ‘are able to cure any and all conditions, any and all phenotypes, that can legitimately be deemed medical ones’ (p. 187). His method of argumentation is Rawls’ ‘reflective equilibrium', moving between abstract arguments and particular cases in order to reach an equilibrium between his moral intuitions and the principles he advances. He develops his model using eight examples: physical slowness for competitive runners, mild depression, black facial features, plain facial features, deafness, blindness, obesity and anorexia, all of which, he writes, lie at the boundary between medical and cultural conditions. This is well written and clear, and his definitions are explicit.
He addresses two general sets of actors and arguments for limiting medicine in the sense of limiting claims to medical treatment. He begins with bioethicists who aim to draw a line between cure and enhancement, and he addresses the definition of normality according to which such distinctions can be made. He then considers the arguments of group rights activists who want to draw a line between cure and cultural genocide. He again proposes a definitional change, suggesting that their claims should be measured not at the group level, but at the level of society as a whole. He examines his chosen examples in each section, declaring whether for those with a particular ‘phenotype’ a cure would constitute enhancement and thus be illegitimate (in all cases except ‘black racial features’ his answer is that a ‘cure’ can legitimately be sought).
In an ideal world, Stark suggests, medicine's proper focus should narrow to the elimination of phenotypes that are properly medical. He aims to insulate medicine from society, ordering their relationship by a set of ethical principles. One weakness is that in this ‘ethical’ frame, political and economic questions of power and authority are wholly avoided. Thus, the implications of the ‘legitimacy’ of claims on medicine – whether they refer to state provision of treatment or to legal bans, for instance – are frustratingly vague.
Alfred Moore
(University of Hannover)
As its title suggests, this volume celebrates the work of the Canadian philosopher Gerry Cohen. Reflecting the work of a theorist who has played a part in a wide range of contemporary debates, the various chapters are unusually broad in their ambit. These include pieces on topics as (apparently) disparate as begging, hypocrisy in revolutionary America and the ethics of military conscription, though many of them share a focus on Cohen's explicitly egalitarian work. This is understandable, since readers are likely to find the chapters on Cohen's critiques of Rawls and Dworkin, and his work on the egalitarian ethos, among the most interesting.
Two of the chapters on Cohen's critique of Rawls are particularly significant inasmuch as they conspire, albeit in a friendly fashion, to reduce the force of that critique. Thomas Scanlon deals with the vexed issue of responsibility for preferences, claiming that the distance between Rawls and Cohen on substantive issues of responsibility is smaller than we might think. Much of the apparent distance is explained by a difference of focus: Rawls is interested in what just institutions might look like; by contrast Cohen is interested in what, ceteris paribus, egalitarian justice might require in principle. The two are distinct questions, and Cohen's view of what just institutions should look like, according to Scanlon, makes several well-advised steps back towards a more Rawlsian position (and on a related issue, Samuel Scheffler also tackles Cohen on the role of the basic structure in a theory of justice). Will Kymlicka addresses Cohen's work on an ‘egalitarian ethos', seeking to defend it from a charge which has regularly been levelled at luck egalitarianism. Specifically, he assesses the claim that such an ethos would be undermined if it demanded that citizens made punitive judgements about each other's good and bad choices. Kymlicka says this is not so, because the egalitarian ethos is best seen as resulting in purely self-regarding, and not at all other-regarding moral imperatives. This is a defence of luck equality that may come with a serious cost, though, for it seems to re-describe it as a matter for individual reflection rather than institutional design. It would have been interesting to see what Cohen makes of these various arguments, and it is a shame that his typically charming conclusion to the volume is extremely brief.
Chris Armstrong
(University of Southampton)
How should we understand the relationships that obtain between friends, citizens and strangers, between individuals and the state, and how best do we characterise the obligations (if any) that arise between agents in such capacities? The first eight essays in this collection broadly address these and related questions in moral and political philosophy by means of close, critical engagement with a diverse selection of thinkers. Some of these essays serve as novel contributions to familiar debates, seen through the particular prism of associative obligations (chapters on John Locke, Jean-Jaques Rousseau, Mary Wollstonecraft and John Stuart Mill). Others provide instructive insights and welcome introductions to the relevant thoughts of some writers perhaps less familiar to many contemporary political theorists (Auguste Comte, George Eliot, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Henri Bergson). The remaining four chapters represent timely contributions to current debates in contemporary political theory, on the themes of the nature of a ‘crime against humanity'; partial and impartial moral theories; the idea of restitutive justice; and the concluding chapter on the concept of associative obligations. Four of the chapters draw upon previously published material.
Two especially interesting, interrelated arguments – according to Vernon's own ‘quasi-contractual’ view (p. 268) – that emerge during the course of the book are that membership in states, as with other memberships and relationships but to a far greater degree, is constituted by the members’ ‘waiving of rights’ (in the form of limitations to negative liberties) on the reasonable expectation and trust that such action will better rather than worsen their lives together. The waiving of rights results in the ‘the reduction of one kind of vulnerability at the expense of creating another’ (p. 258). A ‘crime against humanity’ then represents a ‘moral inversion’ of the state (p. 183), for it occurs when the unique administrative, military and political powers of the state are turned against some of those whose protection is the very justification of its existence and strength (p. 267).
The book is always engaging and often illuminating, and is noteworthy also for drawing attention to the issue of the distinctive nature, means and role of the state. Focusing as it does on questions so central to recent debates regarding, for example, global justice, national responsibility and pluralism, this collection of essays will be of interest to a wide variety of students and scholars of political theory.
Sarah Fine
(University of Oxford)
Plato, the discursive feminist, is an unlikely figure. This book, however, makes an ingenious attempt to persuade us that Plato's use of the metaphor of weaving has the resources to reconcile essentialist and post-structural approaches in feminist theory. In the ancient world, weaving is an indispensable female labour loaded with political, as well as social, significance. Weaving is a skill – a techne – associated with knowledge (p. 4), and invested with political meaning through the image of the weaving back and forth of disparate elements, resulting in a unity which either subsumes or maintains their distinctiveness. Vetter illustrates how the metaphor of weaving is employed in the dramatic narratives of Homer's Penelope and Aristophanes’ Lysistrata. Penelope and Lysistrata ultimately fail to make the metaphor of weaving yield its full potential as a vehicle of political renewal through deliberation. Penelope's emphasis on like-mindedness fails to unite a diverse group of citizens, while Lysistrata's techne approach imposes peace at the price of an unsustainable homogeneity. Plato, however, confronts us with the surprising possibility of setting in place ‘a permanent dialectic between subjectivity and objectivity that is open to continual reinterpretation’ (p. 23). Vetter shows us that Plato's characterisation of Socrates establishes a critical and self-reflective dialogue which can accommodate many viewpoints and modes of expression.
What is intriguing in Vetter's interpretation is the suggestion that Plato, the foundationalist, steers a course between modified essentialist theories, such as Nussbaum's ‘Aristotelian capacities’ approach, and theories of plurality and diversity. According to Vetter, Plato demonstrates that foundationalism does not necessarily exclude discursive flexibility and the recognition of difference – an insight which deserves further elaboration in a contemporary context. Weaving exemplifies the subordinated domestic labour of women in the ancient world: today the work of women – particularly in the international division of labour – has hardly advanced. Women and girls are clustered in low-paid, poor-quality work and unpaid domestic labour, which forces them to weave back and forth between the private and the public spheres in ever more complex and diverse patterns. A discursive approach which admits the global economy to political scrutiny is urgently needed, and the contemporary work of women, woven together across borders, spaces, cultures and generations, is a good platform upon which to engender a dialectical commonness which does not eliminate difference – an approach which is very much in the spirit of Vetter's Plato.
Ruth Chenoweth
(Royal Holloway College)
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