Abstract
Since 9/11 there has been a heightened awareness that problems stemming from moral, cultural and religious differences have to be addressed, lest they continue to entail violence. Universalism vs. Relativism: Making Moral Judgments in a Changing, Pluralistic, and Threatening World is an edited volume explicitly devoted to such concerns, specifically as regards diversity understood in terms of relativism, subjectivism and historicism. The authors of the collected essays span several disciplines – notably philosophy, political theory and religion – and consequently bring to bear a mix of perspectives. As editor, Don Browning has done a remarkable job in ensuring the volume's thematic unity, as the contributors were required to respond to a specific question concerning the possibility of universal judgements, as well as engage the particular responses of Richard Bernstein and Amitai Etzioni, both of whom provided opening essays. The result is a tightly organized and interesting work.
The most notable strength of this collection is the integrated nature of what is an interdisciplinary work. The essays here exhibit little of the intellectual parochialism that would otherwise undermine such a volume. Consequently, it is refreshing and illuminating to read the responses of religious scholars in tandem with political theorists, and see how much potentially common ground there is between them (despite serious differences concerning subject and methodology). Where William Galston, for instance, specifies a theoretical rejoinder to relativism, theologians such as John Kelsay and Timothy Jackson provide discussions concerning the similarities between Christian and Islamic ‘just war’ traditions, as well as the ethical teachings of Ghandi. The effect is to render Galston's observations more ‘concrete’. One particular highlight is Jean Elshtain's contribution, which draws upon the work of Augustine to balance the pessimism of Arendt about the possibility of universal values. Another is that of James Turner Johnson, who relates considerations about international law to views of international community as found in the Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions. Finally, Jean Porter and Franklin Gamwell both provide suggestive essays concerning the possibility of shared values in the light of universal moral norms grounded upon a common human nature. If there is one drawback to the collection, it is simply that there is not enough space to pursue every avenue of thought which is opened. No matter, the volume is a solid contribution concerning a dilemma which is as timely as it is profound. Anyone interested in moral and cultural pluralism will find this rewarding reading.
Jason Ferrell
(McGill University)
Michael Burgess has been writing about federalism since the 1980s, and this carefully written book reflects a long period of consideration. An overview of the role of federal systems in the modern world, it explores both the application of the ‘federal idea’ as well as an empirical understanding of what federalism (and federation) is. Burgess starts from the position that federal systems have something in common beyond the adoption of similar formal institutional arrangements, and the book is essentially a quest to identify what that is and how it works in systems in the developed world (such as the US, Canada and Germany) and less familiar ones in the developing world (notably India and Malaysia). On the way, individual chapters address the ‘quest for meaning’ of federalism, the American experience, the origins of federal states, nationalism and federalism, comparative studies of federal systems, the Anglo-American and continental European federal traditions, representation, asymmetry, the EU and globalisation. Burgess surveys a huge literature, some of it unfamiliar, other parts looked at from a fresh perspective, with commendable skill. In this some figures such as Wheare, Elazar, Watts and King come out well, while others (notably Riker) do not. Unsurprisingly, the book's conclusions about the essence of federalism end up being somewhat tentative and general, but are also thoughtful.
The book's particular strength is its successful search for conceptual clarity in thinking about federal systems and the federal idea. This reviewer particularly enjoyed the discussion of the continental European federal tradition. Burgess finds the origin of this in sixteenth-century political philosophy and more recently in Catholic social thought, and he interestingly relates this to the position of Quebec in Canada. However, in many ways this is both a very British book and a rather old-fashioned one, with the strengths (but also weaknesses) of that approach. Its concern is overwhelmingly with constitutional matters, and the relationship of political theory to governmental structures. Consequently, it rejects ‘rational choice’ approaches to studying federal systems and avoids dealing with issues of the performance of federal systems, whether in democratic terms or in policy-making and implementation – areas which have yielded much interesting work recently (Barry Weingast and Jonathon Rodden are not even mentioned in the bibliography, and Alfred Stepan's work only figures in passing). For Burgess this appears to be irrelevant to the quest for the ‘moral value of federalism’ (p. 289), but it is an omission that weakens what is otherwise a very interesting and useful piece of serious scholarship.
Alan Trench
(University College London)
Why did Hobbes, apparent arch-royalist and absolutist theorist, proffer a favourable assessment of Cromwell and the Independents? This is the central question that drives Geoffrey Collins’ book, and his conclusions suggest the need to rethink radically the structure, form and scope of Hobbes’ best-known work of political theory, Leviathan. In order to press his claim that Hobbes undertook this favourable assessment, Collins presents it not as a matter of tactical necessity in order to return to England, but argues that it instead represented the logical culmination of his positively Erastian political theory. More importantly, Collins suggests that he was happy to present it publicly as such (p. 136, p. 143).
Put another way, if we read Leviathan properly and engage with the oft-noted fact that over half of the book is dedicated to religion and the nature of ecclesiastical power, we cannot fail to notice that Hobbes’ thinking on the nature of civil religion structures the entire nature of his political enterprise. In itself, this builds on some of Collins’ other work concerning Hobbes’ relationship to the Blackloist conspirators and Catholic intellectual refugees in Paris. By acknowledging the importance of this context for understanding the import of Leviathan, Collins is led to the more general claim, counter-intuitive to those who ascribe to Hobbes the position of absolutist par excellence, that the Royalist response to Leviathan was one of shock and awe.
Equally, Collins shows that the importance of Hobbes’ claims for the civil tolerance of Catholicism was linked not only to the intellectual circles he moved in, but also to the construction of his defence of the Independents more generally. This was in turn shocking to the ecclesiastics. In presenting his case, Collins challenges the context of many recent anglophone interpreters of Hobbes. He aligns himself with those who would see Hobbes as a particularly interesting actor involved in a wider social context, using his work so as to be able to say something about the nature of the English Revolution more broadly. But equally his inspiration is Straussian. In focusing on the apparent esotericism inherent in Hobbes’ compositional strategy, the argument challenges the best contemporary scholarship on Hobbes’ religious thought (esp. p. 45). His claims are bold, the scholarship extensive and the thesis controversial. It goes without saying that anyone interested in Hobbes’ politics and political thought will want to read it.
Duncan Kelly
(University of Sheffield)
In this welcome addition to the ‘Oxford Handbooks of Philosophy’ series (which provides unparalleled overviews and comprehensive analyses of sub-disciplines within philosophy) the editor enlists 25 renowned moral philosophers to survey and develop key contemporary debates in normative ethics and metaethics. Contributors to the collection include Julia Annas, Simon Blackburn, Jonathan Dancy, Stephen Darwall, Gerald Dworkin, John Martin Fischer, Virginia Held, Thomas E. Hill Jr, Thomas Hurka, Philip L. Quinn, Peter Railton, Michael Slote and Hillel Steiner.
The collection is divided appropriately under the headings ‘Metaethics’ (Part I) and ‘Normative Ethical Theory’ (Part II). Part I includes chapters on key metaethical positions such as naturalism, non-naturalism, moral realism, quasi-realism and anti-realism, as well as chapters on less well-trodden topics in metaethics such as moral psychology and biology and ethics. Part II similarly combines to-be-expected chapters on deontology, consequentialism, virtue ethics, value theory and rights, with a few novelties such as a chapter on intuitions and one on antitheory.
In his accessible introduction to the handbook Copp highlights points of contact and contrast among the chapters, but does not spare his contributors from criticism. Rather, he raises objections to several of the theses advanced by his contributors, particularly on topics in metaethics. Although contributors have no opportunity to respond to Copp's challenges, his introduction is valuable in that it gives the reader some critical reflections to bring to his or her assessment of the chapters. This adds to the accessibility of a collection that is otherwise intended primarily for a professional audience.
The chapters themselves are well written and thought provoking. While most contributors take pains to further some of the debates on their chosen topic, a few take more seriously the task of surveying the terrain than that of advancing debates. Some particularly rewarding chapters are Michael R. DePaul's ‘Intuitions in Moral Inquiry’ and Thomas E. Hill Jr's ‘Kantian Normative Ethics’.
Like many volumes in the ‘Oxford Handbooks of Philosophy’ series, this collection is a rich resource for both graduate philosophy students and professional philosophers.
Kimberley Brownlee
(University of Manchester)
The purpose of D'Andrea's study is initially somewhat blurred by the two descriptions given to it at the start. Here he claims that his work is not only (a) a more or less comprehensive overview, but also (b) nothing more than an introduction (p. xiii). Such confusion is unnecessary and also quite untypical of the work as a whole. A much more accurate description may be found soon after: it is, he explains, a developmental study of the thought of Alasdair MacIntyre (p. 3), its purpose to take the reader step by step through that philosopher's literary corpus in a way which allows one to see not only the progression, but also the unity of his work as a whole. This sort of treatment, not quite intellectual biography, yet not quite critical dissection, is as rare as it is valuable. And it is all the more valuable for the effort and erudition which D'Andrea brings to it. The exposition is always undertaken in a most painstaking fashion, with each development in his thought not only clearly articulated but also supplemented by constant reference to its various forerunners and future descendants.
Of particular merit is the attention given to that which many a reader of MacIntyre will not have time for – his early work, and also that work which goes beyond and lies between the published books of his ‘mature’ post-After Virtue phase. Less useful though is the final chapter's discussion of the popular criticisms levelled against MacIntyre. Here, each line of argument against him is given but a few pages of treatment in terms of how he might, and how successfully, respond to them. But then, such criticisms can already be found in other works for the reader interested in such matters. What this book uniquely provides is a sort of detailed travel guide for the MacIntyre scholar, for one can turn to MacIntyre's chapters and subsections at any point or upon any encountering of things that one finds either confusing or worthy of critique. MacIntyre's case for each of his claims is always carefully spelled out, and the works in which such defence may be found listed throughout. For both the undergraduate and senior scholar D'Andrea's book will function as an invaluable aid, not just in understanding but also critically interrogating the work of one of the most influential philosophers alive today.
Jonathan Floyd
(University of Oxford)
The impact that technology has on civil society is an ever-present discussion for historians and political scientists. This debate has had particular prominence since the mid-1990s, however, with much discussion as to the potential influence of internet technology on political institutions. Some optimists have even gone so far as to argue that we are entering a new age of ‘e-democracy’. These hopes do not exist in isolation, but are grounded in wider concerns about the continued viability of the institutions of Western representative democracy, evidenced in decreasing election turnouts and political activism, as well as widespread distrust of political institutions among the general public. For some, the internet is seen as the cure to what might otherwise be a terminal disease – but a cure that can offer a better and deeper democracy.
In Politics Online, Richard Davis tries to offer a more circumspect view of the potential democratising impact of online discussion. Based on survey work carried out in autumn 1999, Davis utilises data examining the participants and topics under discussion in a variety of online fora. Davis seeks to prove that online discussion, at least as currently constituted, fails to fulfil the prophecies of the e-democracy optimists. His indictment contains two distinct charges. Firstly, the low quality of debate, which tends to be aggressive and lacking in focus, prevents a useful contribution to civil society (p. 49, pp. 132–3). Secondly, those partaking in online conversations are not representative of the wider population – being younger, better educated, more affluent, less likely to be married and more likely currently to be in college – than the average American (p. 117).
Davis argues tightly, with close reference to evidence. However, his study is a good illustration of Pippa Norris's statement that studying the internet is akin to monitoring the path of a speeding bullet. Although Davis notes that the information in his study is necessarily of an ephemeral nature (p. 139), this does not negate the fact that the main data set is nearly a decade old. This leads to what now seem like some puzzling statements. For example, it is argued that UseNet groups are likely to be rightward-leaning in ideological tendency (p. 41). This is largely at odds with current wisdom on American online politics, which argues that the political left is dominant. Furthermore, although weblogs (blogs) are mentioned in the title of the book, the impact of this new form of online communication is not discussed in as much depth as other discussion environments, despite blogs being the single most influential new political communication technique in recent election cycles. This does not negate the value of the study, although change in the online environment has been so rapid that it is now largely of historic value.
Gary Rawnsley argues in Political Communication and Democracy that the institutions of democracy might not universally be in the dire state that some claim. He offers a number of arguments for this: the oft-cited decline in turnout is not occurring in every democracy; abstention in itself might be evidence of engagement with civil society, rather than a complete rejection of it; and there are many successful new democracies (pp. 10–3).
However, Rawnsley is seeking to make a wider and more profound point than that, at odds with much conventional wisdom. The purported malaise of democracy and growth of public dissatisfaction with political leaders is often blamed on the development of political communication techniques or strategies, and in particular the rise of the professional ‘spin doctor’. Rawnsley traces such arguments back as far as the Trilateral Commission of 1975 in the United States, but also highlights the Hutton Inquiry of 2003–4, and the light it shed on the workings of government in the run-up to the Iraq War, as frequently cited evidence for the corrosive influence of news management on the British body politic and a cause of public cynicism (pp. 6–8).
However, Rawnsley seeks to subvert this logic by arguing that political communications, defined in the broadest sense, can in fact be a powerful democratising agent rather than something to be feared. Communications are an essential ingredient in all forms of democracy – a fact Rawnsley draws out in an effective historical survey, ranging from ancient Greek philosophers to Marxist and postmodern thinkers (pp. 22–64). Furthermore, communication channels function in all directions and through a variety of institutions, both formal and informal. As a result, Rawnsley offers a study of great breadth, ranging widely over Western and non-Western democracies, and offering discussion of public opinion, polling (although the lack of comment on focus groups is a significant omission), party and group politics, and referenda.
Perhaps the strongest chapter in the book argues that communications, especially since the advent of the internet, can be a powerful liberalising tool in newly democratic societies (pp. 140– 76). However, this also leads to inherent dangers, in particular that repressive governments, fearful of communication technology, will seek to control it (p. 186). This argument neatly summarises Rawnsley's thesis: concern about communication is misdirected; however, we should be deeply concerned about attempts to control and monopolise information.
The Internet and Politics is an edited collection of case study essays. It is impressive in both its aim and scope. In particular, as Oates and Gibson argue in the introductory chapter, it seeks to embed discussion of the internet ‘within the tradition of empirical and philosophical research into politics’ (p. 1). The studies are wide-ranging, although they can be broadly divided into three subgroups: essays that focus on Anglo-American examples; essays that examine the role of the internet in the former Soviet Union, in particular, Russia and Ukraine; and essays that assess the impact of new technology on outsider groups, in this case Hezbollah and Northern Irish terrorist organisations.
As promised by the editors, the essays draw on a range of literature and theoretical frameworks to develop arguments about the internet and civil processes. The essays on Russia and Ukraine, for example, effectively link the use of internet technology to the problems faced by democratising societies with embryonic civil practices and histories of political repression. For example, Natalya Krasnoboka and Holli Semetko document the clash between free speech, state-sponsored violence and internet technology in Ukraine by examining reactions to the murder of internet journalist Georgiy Gongadze in 2000 (pp. 183– 206). Similarly, a particularly impressive essay by Heinz Brandenburg discusses the virtual public sphere in the context of Habermasian notions of deliberative democracy, and contrasts American belief in the organic development of civil spaces with European tendencies to engineer public spaces. These differences in attitude across the Atlantic are, of course, deeply rooted in political cultures and far predate discussion of the internet (pp. 207–22).
I was not wholly convinced by the editors’ claim that the text would serve as an introduction to the internet, as the essays perhaps had too narrow a focus for this purpose. More importantly though, these essays could well provide an effective model for future study, where the internet is not only examined as an agent of change, but also in the context of existing political systems and through the prism of established political theory.
Nick Anstead
(Royal Holloway College)
One of the most satisfying trends in studies of past figures has been what we might call a renaissance of interest in the work of the great British Idealist Thomas Hill Green (1836–82), a figure nearly lost into obscurity until fairly recently. Over the past decade, a number of new monographs (including a new book series), special journal issues and essays have been devoted to a re-examination of Green's work and its contemporary significance, as well as the work of other British Idealists, many of whom were his students. In my view, the growing interest in Green is perhaps the most exciting new development in many areas of philosophy, not least political thought.
This collection of essays represents new studies of Green's work by his best contemporary interpreters, including Leslie Armour, David Brink, Jerry Gaus, Terence Irwin, Peter Nicholson, Avital Simhony, John Skorupski, Colin Tyler and Andrew Vincent, in addition to the editors themselves. It is the finest collection on Green's work to date and those interested in his work will be delighted to find a vast array of areas covered, including ethics, political philosophy and metaphysics. Essays focus on Green's arguments in favour of the common good, ‘eternal consciousness’ (a particular treat), recognition, self-realisation and value pluralism.
If I have any criticism of the volume, it is the relatively poor quality of the ink: several lines throughout were a bit faded or even slightly smudged. Surely, any reader expects higher standards of care from a reputable publisher like Oxford University Press (nor is this the first time that I have discovered this in their recent books). However, this should not detract from the quality of the collection's contents.
T. H. Green represents a wonderful advance in our knowledge of Green's work and its contemporary significance. One can only hope that at long last Green is once again a figure of not insignificant standing, and it is a true joy to see his work enjoying ever more interest not only from historians of philosophy, but others as well. I congratulate the editors and their authors for producing such a terrific collection that will help clearly establish the very high standard of scholarship on Green's work. I recommend this enthusiastically to anyone with an interest in metaphysics and ethics broadly conceived.
Thom Brooks
(University of Newcastle)
The concept of environmental or ecological citizenship goes back at least to Aldo Leopold's call for humanity to regard itself as ‘plain member and citizen’ of the ‘land community’. However, environmental citizenship as a developed political concept, with associated rights, duties, virtues and practices, has not caught scholars’ attention until recently. Such a concept has emerged from the relatively new field of environmental political theory and from efforts by public agencies, like Environment Canada, to promote ecological civic responsibility.
A key contribution to this emerging topic comes from Environmental Citizenship, an outstanding collection edited by leading environmental political theorists Andrew Dobson and Derek Bell. Arguing that sustainability requires not just incentive-driven changes in individuals’ external behaviour, but also changes in internal attitudes, the editors and contributors explore the nature of civic characters and practices oriented to the ecological common good, the opportunities and challenges facing the cultivation of environmental citizenship, and various critiques of environmental citizenship. This is a sophisticated, varied and accessible introduction to environmental citizenship, delivered not only by environmental political theorists, but also scholars in education studies, feminist theory, information sciences, land-use planning, psychology, public administration and sociology. Essays address ecological virtues, environmental education, internet-based citizenship, the public/private distinction, green activist culture, implications for environmental justice, the importance of a sense of place and relationships between green and liberal, civic republican and feminist notions of citizenship. The varied subject matter benefits from both theoretical analysis and empirical data. Despite the diversity of authors and topics, the volume stands as a coherent work.
Interesting tensions emerge. The emphasis in essays by Bronislaw Szerszynski, Dave Horton, and Nicholas Nash and Alan Lewis on localised crucibles for environmental citizenship – including a sense of place, activist social networks and land-use politics – conflicts with the more geographically dispersed, internet-based citizenship explored by David Schlosberg, Stuart Shulman and Steven Zavestoski. Sherilyn MacGregor's feminist critique of green lifestyles implicitly challenges Horton's favourable reading of green activist culture. These conflicts merit further attention – a more direct debate among these authors would have been fascinating. Furthermore, I would have liked to see more on the global dimensions of environmental citizenship. However, as the essays acknowledge, this collection is but a beginning to further inquiry and practice in environmental citizenship. It is as promising a start as one could have hoped for. Scholars of politics, the environment, education and sociology, as well as green activists, should take note.
Peter Cannavò
(Hamilton College, New York)
It seems anarchism resurfaces whenever disenfranchisement seems at its most extreme. Sometimes a response to military foreign policy, or the machinations of supranational institutions, or the populations they typically harangue, anarchism is always a necessary but utterly ignored corrective to the statist paradigm that dominates politics and philosophy. With anti-capitalist protests as its backdrop, Franks’ book allows us to see how the movement for social change has itself changed and engaged in self-criticism in response to wider social and political change and how British anarchist movements have conceived and legitimised their goals. Writing from within the tradition of analytical philosophy, and as an activist academic, Franks is ideally situated to provide a robust political and philosophical analysis of these British movements and their potentialities.
Franks constructs three ‘ideal-type’ anarchisms. The first is a consequentialist, or freedom-centric movement that either holds fast to ‘propaganda by the deed’, or more broadly believes all means are justified by the ethical strength of the ends. The second is an absolutist or deontological approach that has historically seen ‘autonomy’ as the key ethical yardstick for evaluating and formulating plans for action. Franks rejects both in favour of the prefigurative politics that he sees as central to British class-struggle anarchism. Commonly associated with Ghandi, but traceable via Tolstoy to Proudhon, this is the position that ‘means are ends in the making’. Franks shows this to be analytically and ethically the most appropriate paradigm given the fluidity of the anarchist movement's aims, and its demand that the agents of social change – the people themselves – are best placed to decide how we ought to (be) organise(d).
Prefiguration nevertheless highlights a key contradiction in modern philosophy and politics that is implicit but largely unexplored by Franks. What Franks’ work shows is that all politics is prefigurative. Deontologists must act, and deontological positions cannot actually be absolute (take lying for example). Nor, despite materialist claims to the contrary, are all consequentialists ‘principle free’. All ends imply ideals and these ideals are not self-evident but demand articulation and active defence if they are not to be pie in the sky. This immanent process of interpretation, articulation and action is historically and politically contingent, in spite of the grand narratives of history's end from both left and right. This work ought to appeal to academics and activists precisely because of this perennial politico-philosophical conundrum, and the historical novelty of the case study. What becomes clear from a reinvestigation of anarchism is that deontological defences of state or property, or consequentialist justifications for Structural Adjustment Programmes and the patronage of authoritarian regimes, amount to much the same thing – an immanent defence of disenfranchisement. As Franks shows, the debate about anarchism and political philosophy is always only just beginning.
Alex Prichard
(University of Loughborough)
The extent of contemporary political disaffection and disenchantment in advanced liberal democracies is historically unprecedented. In opinion polls, politicians are declared to be self-serving, inefficient and generally untrustworthy keepers of the public interest. Fewer individuals than ever are engaging in political activism, fewer joining political parties and fewer turning out to vote in elections.
Hay's account of this trend turns upon two distinct developments in contemporary political culture. The first is the growth of political cynicism, understood as an increasing tendency on the part of both voters and politicians towards ascribing narrow self-serving motivations to all those engaged in the political process. The second is the rise of the opinion that economic globalisation has robbed the nation state of an ability to control its own economic destiny. Both assumptions, Hay argues, are incorrect: the first for having its roots in certain flawed tenets of public choice theory; the second for being an empirically inaccurate account of contemporary trends in the international economy. Both, however, have been highly consequential in practice. As a result of the perception that government is (a) untrustworthy and (b) economically impotent, we have witnessed a great depoliticisation of various economic issues. A cross-party consensus has developed which now unnecessarily accepts the impossibility of, for instance, full employment, significant economic redistribution and strong labour and environmental regulation. Such consensus means that there is less and less to distinguish rival candidates at elections and, as a result, that there is less at stake for voters. Cue much political disengagement.
Hay's argument is both intriguing and cogent. Within it, however, there exists no consideration of the extent to which contemporary disengagement might number among its causes the growing plurality and incompatibility of political values actually held by existing populations. It is noted that part of the attraction of depoliticisation is that it removes contentious issues from the political agenda (p. 83). Why, though, are certain issues so contentious? Has there been, perhaps, a decline in shared values, and a rise in what Alasdair MacIntyre has dubbed ‘moral disorder’? If a growing number of people now find that their own values are not the values of the single biggest majority then that would surely be a rather strong reason for them not to participate in political life. A fuller account of the changing intentions of actors may well, in other words, require a much more nuanced understanding of their own changing moral persuasions. This, though not an alternative to Hay's own highly valuable and innovative account, is perhaps its next logical step.
Jonathan Floyd
(University of Oxford)
Tim Hayward's book is an important and timely work of normative political theory. Its central thesis is that every democratic state ought to constitutionalise a ‘right to an environment adequate for (human) health and well-being’ (p. 29).
After a comprehensive introduction that presents a clear overview of the whole, Hayward makes his supporting arguments in six exceedingly well-organised chapters. Chapter 1 defends, against Thomas Pogge, a natural law conception of human rights as a special class of moral rights that ‘require their own juridification’ (p. 40). Although the moral right to an adequate environment is at best an ‘emergent’ right of international law, it passes the same conceptual tests of ‘moral paramountcy, universality, and practicability’ that are often invoked to confer human rights status on classical civil and political rights (p. 47). Chapter 2 argues that if a state's constitution is committed to protecting human rights, then it ought to include a substantive individual right to an adequate environment. ‘Policy statements’ and ‘procedural rights’ make poor substitutes (p. 74, p. 84). Chapter 3 examines the institutional conditions under which constitutional environmental rights can effectively overcome existing ‘limitations of tort law’ (p. 109). The greatest obstacle to the fulfilment of these conditions is not a deficit of technical juridical competence but a deficit of ‘political will’ (p. 126).
Contrary to Jeremy Waldron's concerns about the undemocratic character of constitutional rights, chapter 4 argues that the same fundamental ‘right of self-governance’ that gives moral purpose to democracy also requires both procedural and substantive environmental protections (p. 157). Finally, chapters 5 and 6 offer empirically detailed reasons for thinking that constitutional environmental rights would not only help to improve upon the existing environmental protections of ‘European Community law’ but would also serve the broader aims of ‘global justice’ (p. 165, p. 192).
For a book of such ambitious scope it is unavoidable that some related issues must be given short treatment. For example, the notion of an adequate environment is left deliberately unspecific, and the dimension of intergenerational politics is barely broached. Yet the careful way that Hayward delimits his claims makes it evident that these missing pieces are not damaging lacunae but rich avenues for further examination. Overall, Constitutional Environmental Rights is cogently argued. Every chapter is analytically rigorous, and the last four are also empirically informed and informative. Written in a prose style that is clear and jargon free, it will be accessible to legal and political professionals as well as academics.
Mark Rigstad
(Oakland University)
Carl von Clausewitz, arguably still the most significant strategic theorist, has long been an enigma. On the one hand, he is the advocate of destruction – the ‘Mahdi of mass and mutual massacre’ according to Liddell Hart. According to this Clausewitz, war in its purest form tends towards absolute annihilation and victory comes only from the physical destruction of the enemy's army. On the other hand, however, Clausewitz is also the proponent of limited war. According to this vision, war is nothing but the continuation of policy by other means. The question of which of these two accounts of war best represents Clausewitz's views has long dogged commentators. Most tend to conclude that ‘total war’ Clausewitz was the younger Clausewitz and ‘limited war’ the older. Andreas Herberg-Rothe's book, a new translation of a book published in German in 2001, offers a compelling and fresh new perspective on these questions.
Herberg-Rothe argues that these ‘two Clausewitzes’ are not contradictory but part of a systematic political theory of war that had their genesis in the Prussian strategist's reflections on three key battles of the Napoleonic War: Jena, Moscow and Waterloo. The battle of Jena, where Napoleon inflicted a crushing defeat on the Prussians, taught Clausewitz the importance of destruction. Through a combination of skilful command, the supremacy of the offensive and numbers, Napoleon exerted his will on Prussia by destroying its army in battle. Napoleon's subsequent failure at Moscow, however, taught Clausewitz that this approach to war had serious limits. Offensives reached natural ‘culminating points’ where problems of logistics and geography made it harder to fight. Moreover, the destruction model only worked if the enemy was prepared to conduct its campaign in the same way. If the enemy refused to fight pitched battles, the strategy would not work. The underlying problem, however, was political. Napoleon assumed that if he occupied Moscow, the Russian monarchy would be forced to surrender and submit to his terms. The Tsar instead retreated and refused to surrender. Finally, what turned Waterloo from a military defeat to a political cataclysm was not the nature of the battle itself – the French could have retreated and lived to fight another day – but Napoleon's political strategy that left him nowhere to go.
Viewed this way, Clausewitz's position on the relationship between politics and war is not only explicable, it is also coherent and insightful. This book succeeds in illuminating the Clausewitz enigma and shedding important new light on a well-trodden field.
Alex Bellamy
(University of Queensland)
Although putatively debating the merits of legalising drugs, Douglas Husak and Peter de Marneffe are often in agreement. Husak argues vehemently (even passionately) against punishing drug users, but insists that this does not commit him to any particular position on the punishment of producers or sellers (pp. 96–7). Meanwhile, de Marneffe opposes imprisonment for users (p. 129), while supporting lesser penalties (p. 110, p. 119) and insisting that producers and sellers should be punished.
Even if the authors reach conclusions more similar to one another than the status quo of the countries from which the book will draw its primary audience, they arrive at these conclusions in quite different ways. While Husak asks whether users deserve punishment, de Marneffe asks how the worst burden imposed on individuals by prohibition would compare to the worst burden anyone would bear in the absence of such a policy (p. 159).
Thus, Husak insists that ‘no one should be punished unless there are compelling reasons to do so that are grounded in the desert of the offender’ (p. 38). Justifying punishment, on this view, requires demonstrating that punished individuals (morally) deserve such treatment (it remains opaque why those who produce or sell drugs may be morally culpable if users are not). Alternatively, de Marneffe argues for drug prohibition on the grounds that ‘with drug legalization there will be more drug abuse, and drug abuse is bad for people’ (p. 109). His argument is that ‘the worst risk to some individual under … legalization is worse than the worst risk to some individual under prohibition’ (p. 125). (It would be helpful if de Marneffe clarified the role that the relative probabilities of competing risks should play in such calculations.) Clearly, the authors invoke different standards for assessing policy.
This disagreement regarding the appropriate conception of justice has two positive ramifications. First, it makes the text a useful pedagogical tool. The debate demonstrates, in a context interesting to many students, how abstract debates about competing conceptions of justice have important implications in terms of the policies that one supports. Although the similarity of the conclusions reached dampens this advantage, it suggests – secondly – potential for a limited overlapping consensus in regard to drug policy: proponents of disparate conceptions of justice can jointly oppose the severe punishment of those engaged in the personal use of illicit substances.
Ryan Pevnick
(University of Virginia)
This book is a great boon to both international theorists and historians of international thought. Beate Jahn's collection brings together twelve essays by established and young scholars, each addressing canonical thinkers from Thucydides to Clausewitz. Two-thirds explore the political and intellectual contexts in which these thinkers worked; the remainder examine ‘lineages’ of thought – traditions and interpretations of classical writing.
Classical theory, Jahn argues in her introduction, has three functions in the study of international politics: as precursors of contemporary thought, as guiding authorities for the justification of action, and as points of reference that ‘define and structure’ our own theory (p. 2). The chapters, as a consequence, move backwards and forwards between these poles, avoiding as they go the sterility of pure history or pure theory.
The general quality of the essays is high, but some deserve particular note. Monoson and Loriaux do much to further the cause – which has latterly found much support – of a more nuanced and less unsubtly ‘realist’ interpretation of Thucydides. Aiko's re-reading of Rousseau's critique of Saint-Pierre's project for perpetual peace is particularly incisive, making good use of Cambridge School contextualism to demonstrate the ways in which the citizen of Geneva has been badly misrepresented in International Relations. Jahn's sensitive treatment of Mill and Kant does something similar, bringing to the fore the problems inherent in the discipline's appropriations of both thinkers’ work.
The final section raises more questions than it answers. None of the four authors, as they might have done, say much about what ‘traditions’ or ‘lineages’ are. Shilliam's case for locating the origins of the cosmopolitan–communitarian debate in Kant and Hegel's reactions to the French Revolution and the Prussian response, rather than in early modern colonial encounters, is persuasive, if a little opaque. Keene and Williams, in their authoritative, cogent chapters, set themselves the more straightforward tasks of tracing the various readings of Grotius and Hobbes over four centuries. In the concluding piece, Reid outlines the ways in which Foucault, as well as Deleuze and Guattari, appropriate elements of Clausewitz's theory of war. The difficulty here is whether this constitutes a ‘tradition’ or merely a manifesto; for whereas Clausewitz tried to curb the tendency to absolute war by insisting on its subordination to politics, Reid seems to want to emancipate it to attack the ‘state’. This is, he admits, a break with the tradition, but whether it is a desirable one is contentious.
Ian Hall
(University of Adelaide)
This interesting book is part of Edward Elgar's series on ‘New Horizons in Public Policy’. Written by someone whose initial discipline was economics, this (relatively short) book examines ideas of the development of policy-making across time. Most models of policy-making include time as a factor, but rarely do they articulate this facet as clearly as they ought. Hence a text which explicitly seeks to examine this topic is to be welcomed.
As Kay recognises, the concepts of dynamics, policy and change are elusive. If we focus on the concept of dynamics, Kay argues that dynamic analysis is the use of concepts and theories to understand and explain longitudinal data of policy development. For Kay, ‘time’ is an abstract, imaginary notion, while ‘temporality’ refers to how we can make events or experiences intelligible in terms of time. His ambition is to develop a mode of analysis which explains the path between different moments in time. Hence a set of policy choices at any particular point is limited by what has gone before.
Temporality and dynamics raise issues of the role of history in policy-making and Kay recognises the tensions that a (re)turn to history brings to social sciences. The opening of chapter 2 explores some of these matters. In essence, Kay seeks to find a balance between the ideographic and nomothetic approaches in the analysis of policy dynamics, drawing some comfort from the writings of the historical institutionalists. He comes down in favour of what he terms policy narratives, which, as he sees it, do more than simply recount events: they do so in a way that renders them intelligible, conveying understanding and contributing to explanation. In what is in many ways the key chapter in the book, Kay examines in chapter 5 the nature and value of policy narratives. Towards the end of this chapter he sets out the key foundational assumptions of policy narratives, recognising that policy is a heuristic, essentially contested concept and that policy narratives highlight the conjunctional contingency of different processes at different speeds as the key driver of policy.
Chapters 3 and 4 explore two widely discussed models of dynamics, namely path-dependency and evolutionary approaches. Both models are good at offering explanations of stability, but less good at examining change, especially radical change. Kay seeks a way around this with respect to path-dependency by arguing that writers who use this approach frequently tend to operate at a high level of generality; hence for him a key issue is what he calls the granularity of the perspective. Equally, evolutionary approaches tend to assume limited, incremental change. For him, the key issue of these approaches is the problem of explaining in a social science context the processes that lie behind the evolution. Kay draws on a range of political science-based literature – the debates between John and Dowding on using evolutionary theories in political science, for example, as well as Kingdon's policy streams approach – to explore some of the challenges of evolutionary perspectives. He concludes that it offers a structuralist contribution that, in his terms, decentres the agent.
The last four chapters are taken up with four British case studies which are developed using his policy narrative approach. These are the development of the EU budget system, CAP 1977–2003, GP fundholding and the UK pharmaceutical policy; subjects on which Kay has already published. All four are in themselves interesting, and add to an understanding of his narrative approach.
In my view this is a first-rate book. It draws on a wide range of reading – philosophy, economics and politics (though political scientists might have expected to see the work of Sabatier explored as well) – and teases out a number of important ideas. It is not, I confess, an easy book and I would not recommend it to many undergraduates, but for academics and postgraduates it surely will be essential reading and I think has pushed the study of public policy forward.
Michael Connolly
(University of Glamorgan)
János Kornai is a distinguished Hungarian economist whose work had momentous political implications. He is best known for demolishing the economic credentials and claims of ‘actually existing’ (state) socialist systems well before they collapsed under their own weight and their wrongheaded economic policies. He demonstrated that the profound economic flaws of these systems and the deprivations they inflicted on the people who lived under them were systemic; it was not just a matter of fallible and corruptible human beings trying to implement a splendid theory (as some still believe) that caused the difficulties.
The volume here reviewed, while summarising his major economic contributions, reveals the evolution of his political attitudes and beliefs. He was initially drawn to the Soviet Union and the ideals it appeared to embody because the Red Army saved his and his family's life. His disillusionment, as is often the case, had two major stages. First came rejection of the brutal methods used for attaining the distant and unrealisable goals, then disillusionment with the ideology which provided the theoretical foundation for the brutal methods supposedly serving the glorious goals. An important part in his estrangement was played by his instinctive aversion to the mendaciousness which the regime institutionalised and required from its supporters. Particularly instructive is his recognition of the emotional aspects of political attitude formation. Emotional predispositions helped to elevate the official ideology to the plane of infallibility.
Belonging to the political community was another major attraction, more psychological and quasi-religious than intellectual: ‘The main impetus … came from faith and belief. I had complete trust in Marxist-Leninist ideology … convinced that every word of it was true’ (p. 44). Subsequently he came to recognise both the gulf between theory and practice as well as the contributions the theory made to the unsavoury practices. Unlike many former Western admirers of these ideologies he made no attempt to salvage old political-emotional investments and did not continue to insist that Marxism was a key to human liberation and an infallible, scientific guide to building a better society. He rejected Marxism not so much because it was responsible for ‘the whole beastly business … but because [it] does not explain what is going on around me’ (p. 82).
This memoir chronicles a life rich in accomplishments while acquainting the reader with momentous historical events. It also helps create an understanding of why idealists like its author were attracted to, and subsequently rejected, the political system imposed on Eastern Europe after the Second World War.
Paul Hollander
(University of Massachusetts, Amherst)
Even though Walter Benjamin's work in cultural theory is widely recognised, the depth of Benjamin's thought, which has a much wider scope – encompassing art, history, culture, politics, literature and theology – has been under-appreciated. Michael Loewy contends in this book that in order to grasp the unique character of Benjamin's work, its two different sources – Jewish messianism and Marxism – need to be taken equally into account. Loewy argues that there are two errors in the literature on Benjamin: either to interpret the trajectory of Benjamin's work as a continuous progression without sufficient attention to ‘the various breaks and turning points’ (p. 5) brought on by Benjamin's turn to Marxism, or to separate completely the earlier theological writings from his later Marxist revolutionary work. Loewy's aim is to interpret Benjamin's writings without falling into either of these reductionisms. He maintains that ‘Walter Benjamin is a Marxist and a theologian’ (p. 20) and only this peculiar articulation of Marxism and theology together enabled Benjamin to conceptualise a social theory of both redemption and revolution. To that effect, Loewy undertakes an interpretative reading of Benjamin's Theses on the Philosophy of History. After a brief but illuminating introduction which summarises the background against which the Theses were written and how they came to be published, the book engages in a detailed – or ‘talmudic’ (p. 17) – analysis of each thesis.
Although the secondary literature on Benjamin's Theses, as Loewy himself observes (p. 23), is extensive, this book convincingly demonstrates that there is still room for other interpretations. With comprehensive references to Benjamin's other works, historical instances and even contemporary events, Loewy presents the reader with a not entirely new but insightful commentary. Yet Loewy's central claim that Benjamin's messianism is compatible with his revolutionary materialism is not sufficiently substantiated. The most interesting example in the book is at the same time the most telling: the success of liberation theology in Latin America (p. 28). Given that, as the author himself points out, this comparison is faulty at so many levels – Benjamin was unknown to Latin American theologians and it was Christian theology in question, not Jewish – it is hard to conclude that Benjamin's vision of a materialism that went hand-in-hand with theology to bring about a revolutionary change was fruitful. Perhaps Benjamin's methodology remains more suited for social theory than for revolutionary praxis.
Gaye Ilhan Demiryol
(Yale University)
This book sets out to provide an overview of the central aspects of game theory used in political science. It is likely to be used extensively in the teaching of formal theory courses for graduate students.
The early chapters review the basis of classical choice theory and methods of analysing preference structures and decisions under uncertainty. There is a brief overview of social choice theory and the strategic basis of political decision-making. The core of the book deals with non-cooperative game theory, with basic models such as the prisoner's dilemma used to develop an understanding of strategy, pay-offs, dominance and equilibrium. The basic models are extended to reflect conditions of incomplete information, repeated games, signalling and influence over agenda setting. At each stage, the authors relate their models to applications in the political science literature, and each of the ten substantive chapters has a set of exercises which review and extend some of the applications of the area covered.
The reader is expected to have a basic understanding of the purpose and methods of mathematical modelling, although a mathematical appendix is included which reviews some of the essential material required.
Many of the applications are drawn from articles printed in the American Political Science Review and the American Journal of Political Science, and the book serves as a clear introduction to the approaches prevalent in journals such as these. There is no attempt to justify a rational choice approach, or examine empirical evidence. Rather, the purpose is to show how mathematical models can be used to reflect political intuitions and challenge conventional expectations.
Alistair McMillan
(University of Sheffield)
The Liberty Reader is an edited collection of the quintessential essays concerning the concept of liberty. Each essay considers the nature of liberty, asking such fundamental questions as: what is liberty? And, how can one achieve liberty? David Miller provides an introduction to these essays that is both compelling and enlightening as to the avenues one might make use of in approaching this formidable concept. Miller's collection focuses not on the traditional ways of representing the discussion of liberty, which many claim is through the vocabulary of ‘negative’ and ‘positive’. Instead, he establishes what he calls the three ‘families’ of a conception of liberty. His groupings of the different traditions of thought concerning liberty take on the titles of ‘Republican’, ‘Liberal’ and ‘Idealist’.
Often when categories are created like this, arguments relevant to the concept do not quite suit the label; but what Miller gives us in this collection is not simply a set of loose-fitting arguments taken under an umbrella with a meaningless label. Instead, Miller's groupings avoid this problem and do help us to understand what is at stake in the debate concerning liberty. Furthermore, the collection contains solid samples from each of these ‘families’, giving the reader a good grasp on the relevant debate surrounding each approach to thinking about liberty. Miller contends that to get a true understanding of liberty one needs to draw on the resources of all three ‘families’. Only by doing this can you avoid the difficulties that befall many approaches (such as those only employing one ‘family’) to theorising about liberty.
While this is no simple task, the collection provided here will allow anyone who adopts Miller's method to get a good start; particularly due to the exceptional selected reference list towards the back of the book. In that list Miller has generously presented all those who are interested in the concept of liberty with a wonderful road-map for further investigation. The collection of essays contained within The Liberty Reader are excellent for students with an interest in political theory or political philosophy and for all who wish to understand better the complex debates that surround what Miller contends is ‘the most potent of political ideas’ (p. 1).
B. Brady
(University of York)
This erudite and often engaging book sets out to provide advanced students with a means ‘to recognize and distinguish between the different methodological traditions used to understand social phenomena’ (p. 288), an objective in which it is largely successful. The book is structured around the systematic comparison of two central methodological perspectives: ‘naturalism’ (or ‘positivism’) and ‘constructivism’. After a clear and authoritative introduction to the essential features of these two approaches, and a historically structured introduction to the philosophy of naturalist social science in chapter 2, the next four chapters review a hierarchy of methods, starting with the experimental, followed by statistical and comparative and ending with a consideration of case studies. Chapter 7 ‘functions as the book's fulcrum, upon which the naturalist and constructivist approaches teeter’ (p. 142). Consistent with their belief in methodological pluralism, the chapter sows ‘seeds of doubt’ (p. 143) in relation to the naturalist approach, while being careful not to reject it and suggesting that it could be reinvigorated by modification and specification of where it works best. Chapter 8 provides an overview of a constructivist philosophy of science. Chapter 9 deals with narrative, chapter 10 with comparing interpretations, chapter 11 with contextualising statistics and chapter 12 with interpretive experiments.
It is evident that the authors favour ‘scientific realism’ which they see as offering ‘a new universal approach’ and ‘a great synthesis of the two main methodological traditions’ (p. 15). It is to be regretted that they do not develop this line of thought further on the not entirely convincing grounds that it ‘would undermine the symmetry of the argument’ (p. 13). In attempting to engage students, the book relies quite a lot on stories and jokes, often with a Norwegian flavour. The jokes do not always come off and slick remarks such as ‘In the beginning there was Hume’ (p. 169) are best avoided. There may be too much history of ideas for some tastes. Nevertheless, this is a book which will be of value to both students and established researchers.
Wyn Grant
(University of Warwick)
Samuel P. Nelson laments the fact that American debates about free speech are often framed exclusively in terms of the First Amendment. This has two detrimental effects: it places what ought to be a political issue in the hands of legal experts, and it leaves many free speech issues utterly adrift. The clauses of the First Amendment primarily serve as a bulwark against state assaults on free speech. But where, Nelson asks, does that leave the many instances of contested free speech between private individuals or family members, those involving people who work for private employers, or the whole realm of international relations? Nelson rejects any universalist defence of free speech and argues for a more expansive analysis, grounded in what he terms value pluralism. He carefully analyses various traditional defences of free speech – libertarian, egalitarian and expressivist – and declares all of them to be inadequate. By Nelson's account, the expressivists, in their defence of the right to individual self-realisation, tend to push for creative and artistic speech freedoms at the expense of political concerns. Libertarians do the exact opposite, assuming that artistic speech is, when it needs to be defended, political in nature. Egalitarians place all their emphasis on the behaviour of the state, neglecting the broad and complex arena of private speech. All are primarily interested in defending the values they most privilege and, as a result, none of them can provide a comprehensive justification of free speech.
Nelson is rather vague about how his alternative would operate in practice, but it seems to involve blithely drawing all of these competing traditions together. We should acknowledge the existence of ‘multiple justifications of freedom’ (p. 9). Rather than having them battle it out for primacy, we should accept that ‘no single principle can serve as an ultimate criterion or common metric for all free speech questions’ (p. 143). Nelson believes that such an inclusive approach – especially when combined with a painstaking analysis of the specific social and political context of speech acts – will allow currently neglected kinds of free speech claims to gain the recognition they deserve. Individuals and social movements will have access to a broad justification of free speech that neither the First Amendment nor traditional schools of thought provide, and such a justification would be operative not just in the United States but in any mature democracy.
Jonathan Wright
(Hartlepool College)
‘Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous, those in philosophy only ridiculous’ (p. 177). Since one of the main effects of the Enlightenment has been for philosophers to be taken more seriously, this genial piece of deprecation has turned out to be less amusing than Hume may have hoped. Whatever he hoped, he can scarcely have expected that the rise of philosophy as a profession and the development of textual editing into a very serious business could have converged to produce this excellent edition of his earliest works. The present volumes, the fruits of many years’ cultivation of a rich and extensive textual vineyard, include not only A Treatise itself but also Hume's Abstract and A Letter from a Gentleman to his Friend in Edinburgh, which were calculated, respectively, to promote the main work and to protect its author.
Besides this, readers benefit from very extensive editorial activity. In the first place, this is a critical edition, not a straight reprint of any early (or late) impression. The editorial ambition has been to approach Hume's projected (but never published) second edition, and to that end the texts here draw on Humean annotations and other manuscript sources (p. 627). The project has also required a very laborious collation of the early editions. As no-one who has not done this kind of work can appreciate the tax it levies on the editors, it is pleasant to report that the Nortons’ text of A Treatise is by far the best that this reader has studied. Hitherto we have been obliged to use Selby-Bigge's text of 1888, which, even after Nidditch's revisions and additions of 1978, comes nowhere near the comprehensiveness, enterprise and precision of the present version. Neither is this all. Volume 2 includes (pp. 433–588) an extended ‘Historical Account of a Treatise from its Beginning to the Time of Hume's Death’, a most interesting piece of work which is illuminating for all readers. Its attention to standards of compositing in the eighteenth century is likely to be of interest mainly to textual scholars, but has its own fascination.
Readers interested chiefly in intellectual content will appreciate the very detailed editorial annotations with which the Nortons round off their work. It should be observed that these are much fuller and cast at a much higher level than those in their edition of A Treatise in the ‘Oxford Philosophical Texts’ series. The present volumes are a major accession to the Clarendon Hume Edition, and the editors are to be congratulated on an important job done well. If ‘errors in philosophy’ are not exposed here, we can be confident that every other kind of error has been expunged from Hume's pages and that we have here a valuable critical edition.
Ian Harris
(University of Leicester)
The publication of this important volume in the new ‘Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham’ brings the project nearer to completion. Bentham died in 1832 after a long, prolific and eventful life. Volume 12 covers the period from 1824 until mid-1828, during which Bentham's reputation as the ‘Legislator of the World’ had been established and he was busily engaged in the theory and politics of legal and political reform in Britain, Europe and beyond. The title ‘Legislator of the World’ was coined by one of Bentham's new correspondents, José del Valle, the Guatemalan economist and politician, and nicely captures Bentham's status and self-understanding at this stage of his career.
During the period covered by this volume Bentham continued to work on his Pannomion or complete code of laws which he had begun in the early 1820s with the Constitutional Code. The Pannomion was both a practical project of reform that could be applied to the English legal system and also a philosophical project that brought together many of his ideas about the nature of law and its relationship to utilitarianism. The practical implications of the project brought Bentham into contact with many of the leading figures of the day such as Henry Brougham and Robert Peel, with Bentham trying to persuade the latter to follow his ideas on such matters as real property and the provision of bodies for dissection. Bentham continued to pursue his campaign to establish a panopticon prison despite the continued obstruction of the political establishment. Bentham also saw the publication of his Rationale of Judicial Evidence, edited by the young John Stuart Mill, whom Bentham insisted should be acknowledged on the title page.
Other important projects preoccupying Bentham during this period included the London Greek Committee and the campaign by Greek nationalists against the Ottomans, and the new University of London. Both projects came together in the attempt to promote the candidature of John Bowring, Bentham's associate on the London Greek Committee, to a chair at the university.
Bentham continued to correspond with major figures on the international scene such as Simón Bolivár, John Quincey Adams and Jean-Baptiste Say. Despite his image as a reclusive sage he continued to maintain an international reputation and correspondence that few other English political thinkers could have managed.
The series of Bentham's ‘Correspondence’ has now seen a number of able editors, including Timothy Sprigge, John Dinwiddy and Stephen Conway. Catherine Fuller has previously edited Volume 11 and for this volume is joined by Luke O'Sullivan – perhaps better known for his editorial work on Michael Oakeshott. The editors continue the exemplary standard established by their predecessors and along with the publishers have produced a beautiful and impressive volume that is both a model of scholarship and a fine example of British humanities scholarship. One hopes that this will encourage the relatively modest research funding needed to enable the completion of Bentham's correspondence in the near future. It remains both a mystery and a disappointment that British funding of such major projects in the humanities lags behind that of Europe and North America.
Paul Kelly
(London School of Economics and Political Science)
This book is an intellectually refreshing read. It carries its scholarship lightly, but the central themes are nonetheless of considerable import; the most interesting concern the irreducibility of politics to morality and (in large part) the irrelevance of abstract philosophical arguments to political conduct. Of course many have seen politics as distinct from morality. Most realists will tell you that politics is focused on self-interest, egoism, vanity and power for its own sake. Politicians never live up to the high moral standards of political philosophers. These realist judgements have frequently been linked with hackneyed conceptions of Machiavelli. The present argument is different – although it should not be seen as simply redeeming the republican Machiavelli. The dalliance with republicanism is highly qualified in this book. Politics, for the author, is to be gauged in its own terms; it is still about power, even glory, with a definite fragility (and occasional dramatic instability), which can collapse into vanity, corruption, brutality or unredeemed self-interest. However, politics nonetheless embodies its own intrinsic normative components which are necessary to deal with the inevitability of human conflict and the authoritative allocation of resources. Politics arises with the diverse tensions between humans. The normative components of politics will be variable and conditional upon circumstances; there is no ‘once and for all’ formula for politics. It is important though to take note of the qualities of political actors and specifically a range of qualities needed in political conduct – the capacity for leadership, the ability to summon loyalty and trust, commitment, shrewdness, balanced judgement, imagination, a sense of civil responsibility and continuous guile. Politics works with human failings, vices and fears. It regularly encounters the ‘dirty hands’ issue. Yet it is not a means to something else, some higher moral value, although certain types of institutional arrangement, facilitated by politics in liberal democracies, can and do merge contingently with aspects of such value. Politics is a self-sufficient autonomous human practice. In considering this practice – which so many have and still try to subsume under morality, philosophy, law or religion – one has to recognise that it is still often a ‘grubby’ and ‘limited’, even if immensely important, domain. It has both its ordinary and extraordinary manifestations; however, it is unquestionably indispensable. One may not agree with some of the minutiae of this book's arguments and structure, but the overall text is to be welcomed fulsomely as a provocative and timely contribution to political theory.
Andrew Vincent
(University of Sheffield)
In the Republic, Plato identifies courage as one of his four cardinal virtues. The courage that he has in mind is the moral or philosophical courage that is required for steadfastness in intellectual inquiry. This is, from a liberal point of view, less threatening than courage of the noble or martial sort that is lauded in pre-modern societies but attacked by (among others) John Locke.
Rabieh advances two continuity theses. Firstly, that Plato's Laches and the Republic show a strong degree of continuity on the question of courage. Secondly, that in both dialogues philosophical courage is connected to the noble courage that we now find problematic and morally ambiguous.
In the Laches, Socrates’ interlocutors are two generals, Laches himself and Nicias. Both were subsequently killed on the battlefield as the result of contrasting errors of judgement. The crux of the dialogue is that courage is not mere spiritedness (Laches) or over-caution (Nicias) but rather it is knowledge of what is most to be feared. Folly is more to be feared than ill-informed criticism; shame and cowardice are more to be feared than physical danger. Courage thus concerns the rule of the best part of the self (wisdom) rather than the assertive, honour-loving part.
However, the inclusion of the overly cautious Nicias in the dialogue is taken by Rabieh to operate as a counterbalance to the criticism of noble, spirited courage. It is a nod in the direction of the comparative value of spiritedness on at least some occasions. Rabieh builds upon this by stressing the continuity between spiritedness and wisdom when they reappear again in the Republic. The philosopher kings of the latter are drawn from the ranks of the warrior guardians of the city. Their ‘courage’ is a preparation for true wisdom.
No doubt a great deal could be said against Rabieh. Discontinuities between the Republic, the Laches and other dialogues where courage figures could be highlighted. And no doubt, by narrowing her focus, Rabieh does make her continuity theses slightly easier to sustain. Be that as it may, her reading is engaging and her point that we do not start at the end of the process but may have to progress through a less truthful form of courage, is well made and familiarly Platonic. The result is a text that Plato scholars and those with an interest in liberal accounts of courage should find useful and informative.
Tony Milligan
(University of Aberdeen)
I learned of Richard Rorty's death the day before I began to read this book for review. With his passing, philosophy has lost one of its most distinctive voices. Whether Rorty's readers found his work inspiring or infuriating, constructive or irresponsible, funny or exasperating, right or wrong, they always found plenty of vividly expressed ideas with which they could passionately engage. The volume under review is the fourth collection of Rorty's philosophical papers, bringing together essays written between 1996 and 2006. He candidly admits that ‘Readers of my previous books will find little new in this volume. It contains no novel ideas or arguments’ (p. x). His hope, however, is that reading this book may persuade a few more readers of the usefulness of seeing things his way. This may be true. The book's title accurately summarises Rorty's principal purpose. For him, philosophy should not regard itself as a distinct and technical discipline which seeks to deal with perennial philosophical problems. It would do better to see itself as a type of cultural politics: a series of arguments about what sorts of ideas and social practices would best suit our purposes. By saying this, Rorty does not claim that he has understood the real nature of philosophy. This is because whether or not ‘cultural politics should replace ontology … is itself a matter of cultural politics’ (p. 5).
The majority of the essays collected here seek to defend Rorty's view of philosophy against its many philosophical critics. This means that most of this book will be of limited interest to those who study politics unless they are also interested in matters such as the relationship of Rorty's pragmatism to Robert Brandom's ‘inferentialism’. Therefore to conclude I will focus on just one idea which has provoked the most controversy among political theorists. This is Rorty's apparent denial of the possibility that we can plausibly claim that our political values and principles are objectively true. In response to the ‘frequent complaint that a philosopher who holds the pragmatic theory of truth cannot give you a reason not to be a fascist’, he tartly replies: ‘neither can that person give you reason to be a fascist’ (pp. 31–2). Of course, everything depends on what is meant by ‘reason’ here. Rorty means something like: an extra back-up argument, beyond describing the vileness of fascism, that will show it to be objectively wrong. However, if a description of fascism's vileness is itself regarded as providing a reason against it, then nothing stops him or other pragmatists from offering such a reason. To many of Rorty's critics, this will not seem reason enough; and there is no doubt that the debate will go on.
Simon Thompson
(University of the West of England, Bristol)
Although they never met, and corresponded only once, William Whewell and John Stuart Mill were protagonists in one of the most significant intellectual debates of the nineteenth century: how best to extend the inductive method to all areas of thought, thereby reforming philosophy into a truly rational discourse. Their views concerning a priori truth were a source of immutable conflict – Mill the ultra-empiricist, Whewell the intuitionist. While Mill was canonised as the ‘Saint of Rationalism’ (by Gladstone), Whewell's contributions to induction have been largely forgotten.
This volume is a thorough reassessment of Whewell's lasting contribution to the project of reform that dominated intellectual life in his period. The book is divided into three sections: exegeses of Mill's and Whewell's epistemologies; an analysis of their contrasting reactions to Darwin's Origin of Species; and an exploration of their attempts to transform moral and political thought into inductive sciences.
Snyder argues that Mill was ignorant of the physical sciences, that he misunderstood Whewell's (and Darwin's) epistemology and that his inductivism was motivated by a political agenda. She attempts to rescue Whewell from the damning criticism that ‘blind theological prejudice’ forced his rejection of evolutionism and interfered with his understanding of inductivism (p. 157).
These arguments are punctuated with an abundance of enlightening information about the intellectual climate in which these thinkers wrote. Indeed, it is required by Snyder's imperative that Whewell and Mill must be studied in relation to their own milieu. The remarkable amount of contextual detail presented will render this volume indispensable to scholars of the history of the philosophy of science, and especially to scholars of the period. Due to the attention it affords Mill's political programme (which, with special consideration given to Mill's conception of liberty, is given an extensive revaluation), and to the challenges made against the received opinion on Millian inductivism, it will also be of considerable importance to Mill scholars.
While Snyder subjects the underlying presuppositions in Mill's thought to intense scrutiny, she allows a crucial theological assumption concerning the origin of a priori conceptions – upon which Whewell's epistemology relies, but which he nowhere justifies – to escape similar critical attention. Although she acknowledges (in a footnote) that modern readers may find Whewell's assumption unacceptable, and suggests that there may be a naturalistic alternative, there is little development of this argument.
In this sophisticated and elegant intellectual history, Snyder effectively communicates complex ideas and rejuvenates Whewell's philosophical legacy – which undoubtedly warrants renewed scholarship.
Alan Goldstone
(University of Adelaide)
In the five chapters of this book Uwe Steinhoff makes the following claims: (1) The right to war is, or is based on, an individual right; it is not, in the first instance, a right held by representatives of individuals. (2) There are two main criteria for a justified war: just cause, with its decisive sub-criterion of proportionality, and (a lenient version of) right intention. (3) The doctrine of double effect, which justifies the killing of innocents as long as they are killed merely predictably, rather than intentionally, is untenable; modern war therefore cannot be just, but only justified as a lesser evil in dilemmatic situations. (4) There are various approaches to distinguishing between legitimate and illegitimate human targets in war, none of which is absolutely valid, but all of which are valid up to a point: one may only attack the morally guilty, combatants, aggressors or those who cannot be spared when averting ‘a grave present danger for life, body or freedom’ (p. 100). (5) Terrorism, the direct attack on innocents for political purposes, can potentially be justified. However, it is extremely difficult for states to legitimise their ‘routinely employed instrument’ of terrorism (p. 137), as they tend to have alternative means available.
Steinhoff has written a remarkably different, painfully dense and hugely intelligent book. Readers may not appreciate Steinhoff's cantankerous tone, his attempt to take on a rather large number of delicate issues in an account of such modest length or his tendency to present arguments in a somewhat erratic style. Nevertheless, he deserves unqualified credit for having produced an original and liberal-minded piece of work, which contains a number of devastating attacks on traditional just war theory. Steinhoff's emphasis on the rights of individuals is refreshing; and his critique of the doctrine of double effect seems entirely appropriate. Moreover, he effectively uses his critical account to reveal the ‘breathtaking double standards and hypocrisy in the assessment of war and terrorism’ (p. 2). No doubt Steinhoff anticipates fundamental objections to his main contention that states may only legitimately fight sub-national terrorism by abandoning double standards, prosecuting criminals and including those who have thus far been deprived of justice and liberty. It is this persistence of Western hypocrisy that makes Steinhoff's book so angry. Despite its brusqueness, however, it cannot be ignored by serious students of the ethics of war.
Michael Neu
(University of Sheffield)
This edited collection by C. L. Ten comprises 22 previously published articles. Written by well-established authors, most of the inclusions are influential pieces and will be familiar to researchers in the field. The volume covers the period from 1955 (Hart) onwards; with a solid distribution from 1969 (Lyons) through to 2004 (Joshua Cohen). Nearly all are journal articles, but two (Hart, 1982 and Scanlon, 1977 [in Hampshire]) originated in edited volumes. In addition, Ten provides a descriptive introduction, a selected bibliography of 31 books for further reading and appends a name index.
The volume focuses on contributions that discuss, as the editor puts it, the ‘nature, provenance and justification’ (p. xi) of rights within analytic theory. All of the articles are written as contributions to largely ‘liberal’ discourses, including those explicitly concerned with cultural difference, such as Lee (1996), Dallmayr (2002) and Taylor (1996). There is no discussion of rights from methodologically distinct perspectives; no inclusion of self-consciously feminist, Marxist or postmodernist writing. The volume's initial articles concern conceptual analysis; subsequently, authors look at the role of rights in normative theory. In this latter realm, the editor includes articles discussing the possibility of rights conflict, interventions into the consequentialist/deontic justificatory debate, questions around collective rights and the problems of global justification in a pluralistic world.
Largely concerned with ‘natural’ or ‘moral’ rights, the volume's context of discussion is general. Apart from Dworkin (1981) and Kymlicka (1996), the articles tend to approach rights theory outside any particular jurisprudential context. There is little applied normative argument deploying rights within practical questions of abortion, bioethics, security concerns or specific indigenous rights (although Kymlicka's contribution discusses the last more generally). Consequently, the volume may not appeal to those who think that our understanding of rights is often best advanced by observing their natural behaviour.
These observations should not be read as charges of paucity. I would emphasise that Ten's selections are all meritorious and form a coherent selection, and there is little call for addition. Interested purchasers should simply be aware that the volume's contents are all contributions to a related series of somewhat abstract philosophical debates. One might characterise it as a ‘greatest hits’ in liberal rights theory over the past half-century. Academics new to the field or readers who experience obstacles in accessing journals may appreciate this easy-to-manage selection. Further, some lecturers might consider employing the text in upper-level courses.
Stephen Winter
(University of Auckland)
In the Preface to Collective Decisions and Voting, Nicolaus Tideman recounts that as a school student he had very much wanted to win election to the position of class treasurer. Realising that his one opponent was almost certain to win more votes and thus deny him the position, Tideman encouraged a third, similarly popular classmate to stand for the position. This successfully split the anti-Tideman vote and ensured his election – even though both opponents would have defeated him in a two-way contest.
Herein lies the problem at the centre of the social choice and public choice traditions within which this book is firmly located: can we be sure that voting is a mechanism for collective decision-making that reliably produces outcomes congruent with the preferences of the voting population? Or, more precisely, can we be sure that a particular method of voting that has been adopted will produce outcomes congruent with popular preferences?
Tideman engages with these issues from very first principles, beginning with a full discussion of the most appropriate definitions of ‘collectivity’, ‘decision’ and ‘collective decision’ and an assessment of the possible criteria against which collective decisions might be evaluated. He then goes on in (mostly) short and well-organised chapters to set out, engage with and sometimes attempt to improve upon the most important contributions to the social choice and public choice literature on voting.
As one would expect from a scholar who has spent more than three decades working in the field, Tideman's knowledge is encyclopedic and his treatment is at all times lucid. If a colleague or graduate student wanted an accessible, comprehensive and reliable guide to the linked disciplines of social choice and public choice, this book would serve that purpose eminently.
However, those sceptical of the highly formal, theoretical approach characteristic of much contemporary political economy are unlikely to be satisfied by this book: it is packed with algebra and almost entirely without empirical, real-world examples. Nevertheless, those prepared to engage with the cogent analysis that runs throughout will find many reasons to agree with the author's conclusion that there are many available voting systems that might well prove superior to those presently widely adopted. Hence, rather like Tideman's own schoolmates all those years ago, this book suggests that we may not be getting the outcomes that we really prefer from our collective decision-making mechanisms.
John Meadowcroft
(King's College, London)
Japan is said to have the largest concentration of ‘traditional’ Marxists in the world, who, as Daisuke Arie writes, continue to read ‘Capital like the bible’ (p. 66). The fact that these collected works concentrate, largely, on historical/economic analysis seems to reflect adherence to this tradition. This volume, edited by Hiroshi Uchida, offers not only a unique insight into Japanese Marxism, both in a historical and contemporary sense, but also into how traditional Marxism analyses and relates to the contemporary world. The contributors belong to the Japan Society for the History of Economic Thought, some of whom were personally involved in political agitation in a deeply conservative, pre-war Japan.
The book is divided into four main sections, with fourteen articles in total. The diverse topics in the volume range through Japan's economic development analysed within the framework of historical materialism; Chinese ‘socialism’ evaluated as ‘developmental dictatorship’ (p. 43); market socialism in the context of the failed Soviet economy; and the development of and influences on Marx's thought, including the influence of his pragmatic, political associations. Marx's thought is also contrasted against and synthesised with that of Adam Smith, J. S. Mill and Max Weber.
Kunihiko Uemura and Masanori Sasaki present particularly compelling arguments. Uemura engages with Marx's supposed ‘Orientalism’. He attempts to re-contextualise Marx's often quoted and criticised remarks on India, illustrating the complex political context within which the comments were made. He suggests that Marx's ‘paradigm is not “Occident versus Orient”, nor “progressive Europe versus stagnant Asia” … but “capital” versus “modes of production preceding capital”’ (p. 13). Sasaki argues, using Marx's own views on ‘time-sovereignty’ in a post-capitalist society, that workers can ‘conquer’ the ‘labour oriented society’ through the ‘Recovery of free time’ (p. 56). Both articles are interesting for their value regarding contemporary arguments outside Marxism in general.
The volume offers an interesting cross-section of traditional theoretical engagement and relevant contemporary analysis. Possibly the main concern with the volume would be that several of the articles read as though they were constrained by space. As a result, some arguments appear a little underdeveloped, with the conclusions arriving too soon. Nevertheless, Uchida's volume will be of obvious interest to individuals researching any of the various topics covered in the book, but perhaps more specifically, to anyone who may be interested in what ‘traditional’ Marxism has to say about society in the twenty-first century.
David Cannon
(University of Adelaide)
In the beginning, as Faust discovered, was the deed. Despite Goethe's defence of praxis, this is not a view favoured by political theorists: the primacy of the deed has few adherents within contemporary liberal theory. Liberalism requires foundations, not a confession of contingency. Opposing this assumption forms the substance of Bernard Williams’ posthumously published essays in political theory, ably edited by Geoffrey Hawthorn.
Contemporary liberalism, Williams maintains, is undermined by foundationalism. Faced with increasing challenges to its hegemony, liberal thought has retreated behind the high walls of theory. Aware of its historically contingent origins, but afraid of relying on them, the defenders of liberalism attempt the impossible: to ground liberal practice in liberal theory. By trying to provide a philosophical justification for historical fact, liberal thought obscures the cross-currents of history that are the foundation of liberal political culture. Liberals elide the basic political problem: how to conduct ourselves ‘now and around here’ (p. xiv).
In its attempt to achieve universalism, Williams argues, contemporary liberal theory falls into its gravest error: moralism, or the search for unassailable foundations. Uniting the disparate essays in this collection, which range over equality to human rights, is Williams’ claim that moralism undervalues the political in political theory. Every political theory must begin from the fact of politics, which is always mediated by history: we live, ‘now and around here’, in the afterglow of modernity. Although liberalism satisfies the demand for legitimation in Western societies, this is a fact of history: no philosophical theory can,ex post facto, justify the historical circumstances that have fused liberalism with modernity. Liberal theory cannot overcome its historical situation: modernity provides its condition of possibility. This is basic to Williams’ outlook. Despite the efforts of liberal thinkers, political theory cannot determine its own application: this is determined by politics, which is a consequence of history.
Although not the major work of political theory that he was planning at the time of his death, in July 2003, these essays give us a glimpse – none the worse for their fragmentary quality – of Williams’ reflections on the relationship between liberalism and modernity. While some might wish for a greater engagement with the opponents of liberalism, this collection goes beyond an internecine conflict among liberals: despite its posthumous and unfinished character, it is a nuanced reflection on the complex relationship between philosophy and politics. It is also a tribute to a subtle and humane thinker.
Mark Bode
(University of Adelaide)
The central argument of this book is that liberalism and the natural law tradition should be regarded as a natural pair. For the author, natural law liberalism is a liberalism that ‘rests on a confidence that human beings can and do know the truth about the human good … rather than scepticism about such knowledge or a despair that human beings can ever agree on it’ (p. 3). The goal of the book, in which the author succeeds, is to make a start with the development of natural law liberalism. In the first part of the book the author takes issue with the prominent contemporary liberals Rawls, Macedo, Gutmann, Thompson, Dworkin and Raz. He argues against the Rawlsian notion of political neutrality, for example, and makes a case for restricted forms of (state) paternalism, contrary to Dworkin and Raz. In the second part he sets out to develop his natural law liberalism, after providing short overviews of the liberal and natural law traditions. In his synthesis of these two political ideas he explicitly combines politics and morality – in natural law liberalism the dignity of the human person is of ultimate value, combined with a need for limited government, the protection of property and personal rights and a state that actively supports the family, or the ‘cell of society’ (p. 251).
While of course a perfectly valid choice for the author to make, the major weakness of the book is its repeated focus on the place of religion in politics and society. No doubt many of the liberals Wolfe set out to argue with will simply regard his book as just another attempt to argue for a stronger place of religion in political philosophy. This is also due to his firm embrace of American Christian ethics as underlying all discussion on his topic and his outright turn to advocacy when providing an erroneous portrayal of the Dutch euthanasia practice (p. 87). Wolfe unnecessarily limits the scope of his natural law liberalism by not paying much attention to the classical liberal Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, who are clearly part of the natural law tradition. He also completely ignores the work on non-religious natural law by many libertarian thinkers. Consequently he appears to overlook that his natural law liberalism is at best a part of a much broader tradition. This said, the book is well written and especially valuable for its argument with modern liberal theory. It will also be a stimulating read for scholars unfamiliar with liberalism or natural law.
Edwin van de Haar
(University of Maastricht)
Contrary to what readers might expect from a cursory glance at the title alone, this slim volume does not undertake a concerted attempt to wrestle with the legacy of Maximilien Robespierre's thinking on the relationship between virtue and terror. Rather it draws together various of his speeches. Slavoj Žižek's more modest contribution is to offer a lengthy introduction to these selections (pp. vii–xxxix). As such, the book will have two main readerships. It will be a useful resource for those interested in debates enacted in the radical phase of the French Revolution, and it will be of curiosity to those concerned with the development of Žižek's own thought. In terms of the latter, the argument elucidated follows upon Žižek's engagement with the problem of communism and terror in Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism?. There, an explicit Marxism entered his work, as well as an admiration for Lenin in particular. Here, this political trajectory is continued, while a similar spirit of provocation is intensified. Žižek's overarching concern is ‘the critical analysis and the acceptance of the historical legacy of the Jacobins’ (p. xii). Today, the radical left defence of the proto-Leninist ‘statist-revolutionary model’ that emerged there must not, so his argument runs, shy away from accepting the terror that was an integral part of it. Violence must not be deprived of its ‘divine’ dimension (the response to the moderates which Žižek attributes to Robespierre), it must not be reduced to the status of the strategic – a move which allows it to be more easily justified in retrospect. However, while Robespierre's justification of political violence was linked to humanism, the radical left at the present historical juncture must embrace an anti-humanist terror. This claim proceeds from the observation that, ‘in “post-deconstructionist” thought, the term “inhuman” has gained new weight’, rendered by Žižek as denoting the ‘subject subtracted from all form of human “individuality” or “personality” (p. xiii, p. xv). Ultimately, this leads him to the idea of the sovereign acceptance of death, personified in Robespierre's refusal to place himself above the suspicion unleashed by the Jacobin terror.
Thus, the reader is invited to take up the suggestion that Robespierre endures as a noble and heroic figure. Quite aside from the patience demanded of the reader in following some of these convoluted moves in the argument, the fear is that, even for those with strong stomachs, all of this may prove too much to bear.
Richard Shorten
(University of Birmingham)
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