Postlibertarianism means abandoning defenses of the intrinsic justice of laissez?faire capitalism, the better to investigate whether the systemic consequences of interfering with capitalism are severe enough to justify laissez?faire. Any sound case for laissez?faire is likely to build on postlibertarian research, for the conviction that laissez?faire is intrinsically just rests upon unsound philosophical assumptions. Conversely, these assumptions, if sound, would make empirical studies of capitalism by libertarian scholars superfluous. Moreover, postmodern approaches to ?libertarianism? perpetuate the same assumptions, in the guise (...) of a critique of the rationalist hubris that has supposedly led to the tragedies of the twentieth century. The ?libertarian? and postmodernist critics of postlibertarianism either ignore the assumptions undergirding their views, or they contend that these assumptions are not necessary when ?freedom? and ?morality? are properly defined. The latter contention amounts to an attempt to define the challenge to ?libertarianism? out of existence. (shrink)

Winner of the 1975 National Book Award, this brilliant and widely acclaimed book is a powerful philosophical challenge to the most widely held political and social positions of our age--liberal, socialist, and conservative.

This classic and controversial book examines the roots of the idea of virtue, diagnoses the reasons for its absence in modern life, and proposes a path for its recovery.

A liberal society seeks not to impose a single way of life, but to leave its citizens as free as possible to choose their own values and ends. It therefore must govern by principles of justice that do not presuppose any particular vision of the good life. But can any such principles be found? And if not, what are the consequences for justice as a moral and political ideal? These are the questions Michael Sandel takes up in this penetrating critique (...) of contemporary liberalism. Sandel locates modern liberalism in the tradition of Kant, and focuses on its most influential recent expression in the work of John Rawls. In the most important challenge yet to Rawls' theory of justice, Sandel traces the limits of liberalism to the conception of the person that underlies it, and argues for a deeper understanding of community than liberalism allows. (shrink)

Charles Taylor has been one of the most original and influential figures in contemporary philosophy: his 'philosophical anthropology' spans an unusually wide range of theoretical interests and draws creatively on both Anglo-American and Continental traditions in philosophy. A selection of his published papers is presented here in two volumes, structured to indicate the direction and essential unity of the work. He starts from a polemical concern with behaviourism and other reductionist theories (particularly in psychology and the philosophy of language) which (...) aim to model the study of man on the natural sciences. This leads to a general critique of naturalism, its historical development and its importance for modern culture and consciousness; and that in turn points, forward to a positive account of human agency and the self, the constitutive role of language and value, and the scope of practical reason. The volumes jointly present some two decades of work on these fundamental themes, and convey strongly the tenacity, verve and versatility of the author in grappling with them. They will interest a very wide range of philosophers and students of the human sciences. (shrink)

The idea of distributive justice presupposes a bounded world within which distributions takes place: a group of people committed to dividing, exchanging, and sharing social goods, first of all among themselves. That world, as I have already argued, is the political community, whose members distribute power to one another and avoid, if they possibly can, sharing it with anyone else. When we think about distributive justice, we think about independent cities or countries capable of arranging their own patterns of division (...) and exchange, justly or unjustly. We assume an established group and a fixed population, and so we miss the first and most important distributive question: How is that group constituted? (shrink)

Contemporary Austrian‐school economists reject neoclassical welfare theory for being founded on the benchmark of a perfectly competitive general equilibrium, and instead favor a formal theory deemed consistent with the notions of radical subjectivism and disequilibrium analysis. Roy Cordato advances a bold free‐market benchmark by which to formally assess social welfare, economic efficiency, and externalities issues. Like all formalist, a priori theory, however, Cordato's reformulation cannot meet its own standards, being theoretically and empirically flawed, and perhaps ideologically suspect.

My critics assume that the objectivity of moral truth is contingent on the discovery of some transcendent, nonhuman sanction for human values, but I contend that objective morality is a necessary feature of the situation faced by beings with freedom of choice, just as objective truth is a necessary feature of the situation faced by beings with the freedom to differ in their perceptions of the world around them. Both liberals and postmodernists ignore these necessary aspects of the human condition: (...) liberals, by conferring intrinsic value on the freedom to choose the bad; postmodernists, by conferring intrinsic value on the opinions generated by discourse without regard for their veracity. (shrink)

Although Roberto Unger is sometimes described as a communitarian critic of liberalism, his recent three‐volume work on Politics disavows the major tenets of contemporary communitarianism—for example, the “embedded self,” the critique of rights, the rejection of universalizing theory. Instead, Unger's aim is to criticize liberalism from the perspective of a “superliberalism"—a perspective which takes the original liberal desire to emancipate individuals from the chains of social custom and hierarchy and rids it of the stultifying economic and political institutions within which (...) liberals have sought to contain it. Three main components of Unger's theory are analyzed: the idea of “negative capability,” or the power of individuals to revise and transcend their social contexts; the idea of an “empowered democracy,” which seeks to open up all aspects of society to the collective exercise of negative capability; and the idea of “immunity rights,” which seek to protect individuals from the potential risks of radical democracy. I argue that all three underestimate the risks to individual liberty of the over‐politicization of social life. (shrink)

In Liberalism, Community and Culture, Will Kymlicka suggests that the cultural resources with which communitarians have been concerned, inasmuch as they are prerequisites for the individual choice of the good, are appropriate objects of liberal protection. But Kymlicka's liberalism fails to fully meet the concerns of those who see their communities as intrinsically valuable—not merely as necessary means for the clarification of their options. Ultimately Kymlicka's approach shares in the tendency of liberalism to reduce manifold values to the single standard (...) of equal concern for individuals—which results in a paternalistic disregard for those individuals’ actual motivations. (shrink)

Since the 1960s a resurgence of interest in the moral foundations of politics has fueled debates about the appropriate sources of our political judgments. Ian Shapiro analyzes and advances these debates, discussing them in an accessibly style. He defends a view of politics called _critical naturalism_ as a third way between the neo-Kantian theory of John Rawl's and the contextual arguments of Richard Rorty, Michael Walzer, Alasdair MacIntyre and others. He formulates a new justification for democratic politics and an innovative (...) account of the nature of political argument. (shrink)

The goal of the left has been predominantly libertarian: the realization of equal individual freedom. But now, with the demise of leftist hope for radical change that has followed the collapse of ?really existing?; socialism, the world is converging on a compromise between capitalism and the leftist impulse. This compromise is the democratic, interventionist welfare state, which has gained new legitimacy by virtue of combining a ?realistic?; acceptance of the unfortunate need for the market with an attempt to libertarianize capitalism (...) as much as possible, by intervening in its operation and redistributing the wealth it produces. Since the neoliberal economic critique of socialism seems to have been borne out by the events of 1989, neoliberal economists might now be expected to provide a similar critique of the new interventionist consensus. Yet there are few signs of their interest in doing so. This might be due to their acceptance of an erroneous interpretation of liberty which equates it with capitalist property relations, and which, they believe, provides an overarching moral justification for their opposition to state intervention in the market. Acceptance of this moralistic, ?libertarian?; version of neoliberalism may obscure the need for a synthetic critique of the new consensus which would integrate the many extant consequentialist arguments against it. Before reviewing the libertarian motives behind both socialism and intervention?ism, criticisms of moralistic neoliberal ?libertarianism?; are offered. These are intended to clear the way for a consequentialist critique of the interventionist welfare state. Finally, it is suggested that the problems with such a critique point toward a different project: a critique of the culture that gives rise to interventionism. (shrink)

Arguments for and against liberalism are vitiated by failing to distinguish between states (which have millions of citizens) and communities (which have only a few thousand citizens). The state should be liberal or minimal, but the community should not. The state is an alliance of communities for mutual defense and is concerned with matters of defense alone. Two reasons are given for this conclusion, one from Aristotle and one from Hobbes (though Hobbes's argument has to be corrected in two important (...) respects). The community, by contrast, is a moral community and should not be liberal. Two arguments are also given for this conclusion, one from the naturalness of the family and one from the need for moral education. Once state and community have been thus distinguished and described, standard arguments both for and against the liberal state are seen to be correct but misdirected. (shrink)

Charles Murray 's political philosophy is utilitarian, individualist, and communitarian. The basis for his success in making these components cohere is his account of happiness, inspired by the motivation theory of Abraham Maslow. Murray claims that belonging to a community and self?respect are constituents of happiness. Hence utilitarians should attribute special value to community. He also argues that active national governments are inimical to the formation and functioning of communities, and that communities are fostered by governments that observe the constraints (...) of liberal individualism. (shrink)

The first part of the paper expands and strengthens the criticism of appeals to human or natural rights in After Virtue. It is argued that Gewirth’s responses to various objections are inadequate and that Flathman’s historical analysis is incompatible with the evidence. Baier’s charge that the treatment of Hume in After Virtue is inadequate is acknowledged to be true. A comparison of an Aristotelian account of rational cooperation with a Humean account is made the basis for a rejection both of (...) Baier’s assimilation of the two standpoints and of the treatment of the concept of a practice by both Miller and Doppelt. Doppelt’s rival account of the moral structures of modernity is held to be undermined both by facts which he himself recognizes and by the Marxist critique of liberal individualism. Marxism’s positive moral stance, as defended by Nielsen, is too impoverished to achieve what Nielsen claims for it. (shrink)