Liberalism at the Crossroads: An Introduction to Contemporary Liberal Political Theory and Its Critics PDF
Preview Liberalism at the Crossroads: An Introduction to Contemporary Liberal Political Theory and Its Critics
Liberalism at the Crossroads This Page Intentionally Left Blank Liberalism at the Crossroads An Introduction to Contemporary Liberal Political Theory and Its Critics Second Edition Edited by Christopher Wolfe ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC. Lunham Boulder New York Oxford ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC. Published in the United States of America by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. A Member of the Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowmanlittlefield.com PO Box 317 Oxford OX2 9RU, UK Copyright 0 2003 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-PublicationD ata Liberalism at the crossroads : an introduction to contemporary liberal political theory and its critics / edited by Christopher Wolfe.-2nd ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7425-3270-4 (cloth : alk. paper)-ISBN 0-7425-3271-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Liberalism. I. Wolfe, Christopher. JC574L53753 2003 320.5 1'3- dc2 1 200300 1507 Printed in the United States of America The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO 239.48-1992. Contents Acknowledgments vii Preface to the Second Edition ix ... Introduction to the First Edition Xlll Christopher Wolfe and John Hittinger 1 The Liberalism of John Rawls: A Brief Exposition 1 Michael Pakaluk 2 The Egalitarian Liberalism of Ronald Dworkin 21 Christopher Wolfe 3 The Hegemonic Liberalism of Susan Moller Okin 41 Celia Wolf-Devine 4 Robert Nozick and the Foundations of Political Individualism 61 R. George Wright 5 Richard Posner: Pragmatist, Classical Liberal, and Legal Anti-Positivist 77 Jack Wade Nowlin 6 Beyond the Procedural Republic: The Communitarian Liberalism of Michael Sandel 97 Terry Hall V vi Contents Alasdair MacIntyre: Recovering the Rationality of Traditions 121 7 David M. Wagner 8 Inescapably a Liberalist: Richard Rorty as Social Theorist 141 Gerard K Bradley 9 The Unorthodox Liberalism of Joseph Raz 161 Robert I? George 10 William Galston’s Defense of Liberalism: Forging Unity amid Diversity 177 J. Brian Benestad 11 The New Natural Law Theory of John Finnis 197 Joseph R. Reisert Index 217 Contributors 229 Acknowledgments The papers on which this book is based were presented at a conference of the American Public Philosophy Institute on “The Crisis of Contemporary Liber- alism,” which was made possible by a generous grant from the Homeland Foundation and by the support and encouragement of Lewis Lehrman. Much of the editorial work to transform the conference papers into a book was undertaken by Christopher Wolfe with the help of a summer grant from the Marquette University Bradley Institute for Democracy and Public Values. John McAdams and Stephen Hollingshead were generous in sharing their computer expertise. Gratefully acknowledged are the following publishers for their hnd permis- sion to reprint excerpts from their works: Cambridge University Press, for quo- tations from Michael Sandel’s Liberalism and the Limits of Justice and from Richard Rorty’s Contingency,I rony, and Solidarity; Oxford University Press, for quotations from Joseph Raz’s The Morality of Freedom; and the University of Notre Dame Press, for quotations from Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue. The diagram on page 36 is reprinted by permission of the publisher from A Theory of Justice by John Rawls (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard Univer- sity Press, 0 1971 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College). Chapter 9, “The Unorthodox Liberalism of Joseph Raz,” by Robert George, appeared earlier in The Review of Politics 53,n o. 4 (fall 1991). Reprinted by kind permission of the Review of Politics. vii This Page Intentionally Left Blank Preface to the Second Edition The essays in the first edition of Liberalism at the Crossroads were written a decade ago, and, unsurprisingly, the vigorous debates among liberal theo- rists, and between liberal theorists and their critics, have not diminished in the intervening years. So it seems worthwhile to revisit the debate in two ways: adding several new chapters that expand the scope of the volume, and updat- ing the original chapters.’ Three new chapters grace this volume, extending its reach to include rep- resentatives of liberal feminism, law and economics, and natural law. As with the original chapters, the most important goal of these additions is to provide a summary exposition of the major tenets of these authors, while secondarily offering brief critical comments. Celia Wolf-Devine contributes a chapter on Susan Moller Okin, a feminist lib- eral. She describes Okin’s attack on the distinction between what is private and what is public and her attempt to extend the liberal political principles of justice developed by Rawls into the family itself. She has a special interest in family structures because she believes the family to be the “linchpin” of the whole gen- der structure, so that genderless families would ultimately result in a genderless society. Wolf-Devine then discusses Okin’s own positive position, aiming at establishing a “gender-free society,” and she describes how Okin’s position- which is characterized as “hegemonic liberalism”- would justify almost limit- less governmental interference in the internal workings of families and religious communities in order to safeguard the autonomy of the children being educated in them. That would be a rather paradoxical conclusion for a genuinely liberal theorist. Jack Wade Nowlin gives an account of the pragmatic theory of Richard Pos- ner, one of the founders of the law and economics movement. (Because this ix
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