Liberalism Books - Page 8

The Cambridge Companion to Rawls (Cambridge Companions to Philosophy)

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Excellent resource 5 out of 5 stars.
16 of 16 people found this review helpful.

This book is an excellent resource both for the student first coming to Rawls and the experience philosopher who wants to know more about his theory. All of the essays are of the highest quality. It should take the place of Norman Daniels' excellent, but out-dated, "Reading Rawls" as the standard companion set of essays for any class dealing with Rawls, and will provide fruitful ground for scholars for years to come.

Excellent 5 out of 5 stars.
7 of 7 people found this review helpful.

The series of "Cambridge Companions" is recognized for doing a impressive job of collecting articles on leading thinkers and this tome on Rawls justifies that reputation. This a remarkable series of essays written by a wide range of leading Rawls commentators.

When assembling a collection on any great philosopher, due to their sheer number, some perspectives and some influential interpretations have to be left out. The present case is no exception: one certainly gets the impression that many points of view were left out of this collection. The authors are, for the most part, quite sympathetic to Rawls and interested in defending him from many of his critics. This is perhaps not surprising, considering that the great majority of them were either his students or colleagues (but then again, many of his most famous critics were as well) The article on Rawls and Communitarianism, for instance, is more of a rebuttal of communitarian interpretations and criticisms of Rawls than it is a communitarian commentary on Rawls. But this, I think, can be forgiven as it is a rebuttal that still leaves you with an impression of what such a communitarian approach generally is. So though you won't find contributions from Nozick, Sandel, Walzer, Taylor, Harsanyi, Cavell or Rorty in here, all in all, this remains an excellent volume, for both the unfamiliar with Rawls and the advanced student.

Editorial Review:

John Rawls is the most significant and influential moral philosopher of the twentieth century. His work has profoundly affected contemporary discussions of social, political and economic justice in philosophy, law, political science, economics and other social disciplines. In this collection of new essays, many of the world's leading political and moral theorists discuss the full range of Rawls's contribution to the concepts of political and economic justice, democracy, liberalism, constitutionalism and international justice.

If Men Were Angels: James Madison and the Heartless Empire of Reason

Richard K. Matthews

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Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

An exceedingly poor, revisionist work of pseudohistory 1 out of 5 stars.
14 of 26 people found this review helpful.

Only a professor writing for a university press could get a book this poor published. Matthews views are on the most extreme fringes of revisionist interpretations of American history, and may be summarized as follows: Thomas Jefferson was idealistic and good, James Madison was materialistic and bad. If you are inclined to think that this is an exaggeration, I will quote 4 sentences from the very last page of this book (consistent with Amazon.com's guidelines, I am limited to only 4 sentences of quotations): "It was Madison, not Jefferson, who designed the system. Madison's...dream has, as he knew it would, turned into a nightmare for increasing numbers of marginalized Americans. Instead of the chance to pursue happiness, they have neither the opportunity, the hope, nor even the illusion of either. America....has metamorphosed into an intriguing Orwellian-Kafkaesque labyrinth, where a few Ks still search for the reality behind the ideological myth, while the rich find meaning in each of their possessions." If you think that this makes sense, if you believe that this even remotely resembles the vision of James Madison, one of the fathers of our nation and its greatest expert on the American Constitution he did so much to create, then this is your kind of book. If not, I recommend that you save your money and order other books of real value on the life and works of Madison.

Editorial Review:

"A devastating critique of Madison's political thought". -- Gordon S. Wood in The New York Review of Books. "If Matthews is right -- that Madison and Jefferson 'were, from an ideological perspective, worlds apart' -- then we must reassess just about everything we think we know about ideology and politics in the early republic". -- Journal of American History. "The most provocative recent book on Madison". -- New York Times Book Review.

Citizenship in Diverse Societies

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Editorial Review:

Citizenship and diversity have been two major topics of debate over the last decade. But these two topics have been largely discussed in mutual isolation. This book examines the specific points of conflict and convergence between concerns for citizenship and diversity in democratic societies and reasseses and refines existing theories of "diverse citizenship" in light of actual practices and policies of pluralistic democracies.

Hobhouse: Liberalism and Other Writings (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought)

L. T. Hobhouse

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A message as powerful today as when it was written 5 out of 5 stars.
9 of 9 people found this review helpful.

Hobhouse loses out on two fronts. To the academic political philosopher he is not to be taken seriously because 'Liberalism' is an insignificant book written for a mass audience. For others he was writing in a different age with different problems, so how can he be relevant. To deal firstly with the readibility of 'Liberalism', it is a distillation of his thoughts in an accessible format - GREAT! If you want more; read some more of his books, simple as that. This a wonderful book that gets under your skin planting ideas that itch away forever more. To style Hobhouse a father of modern liberalism is to diminish his worth and miss the point. Reading Hobhouse is not a second best to reading Rawls. He is more coherent, better argued, and simply smarter and more on the ball than all the so called liberals ever since (maybe that's a bit strong, but you see what I'm getting at). It's very simple really; what we want is maximum individual freedom, yet we all live in a society. The only way we can maximize our freedom as individuals is within that society, and in order for it to survive we must tolerate limits on those individual freedoms. Hmm; sounds a lot better the way he puts it! If you want your perceptions challenged, this is an excellent place to start.

Editorial Review:

L.T. Hobhouse was the most sophisticated intellectual exponent of liberal social reform in the early years of the twentieth century. This edition of his classic Liberalism, which includes a number of his other contemporaneous writings, will be of interest to a broad range of students and scholars in politics and the history of political thought.

The Virtues of Liberalism

James T. Kloppenberg

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Editorial Review:

This spirited analysis--and defense--of American liberalism demonstrates the complex and rich traditions of political, economic, and social discourse that have informed American democratic culture from the seventeenth century to the present. The Virtues of Liberalism provides a convincing response to critics both right and left. Against conservatives outside the academy who oppose liberalism because they equate it with license, James T. Kloppenberg uncovers ample evidence of American republicans' and liberal democrats' commitments to ethical and religious ideals and their awareness of the difficult choices involved in promoting virtue in a culturally diverse nation. Against radical academic critics who reject liberalism because they equate it with Enlightenment reason and individual property holding, Kloppenberg shows the historical roots of American liberals' dual commitments to diversity, manifested in institutions designed to facilitate deliberative democracy, and to government regulations of property and market exchange in accordance with the public good.

In contrast to prevailing tendencies to simplify and distort American liberalism, Kloppenberg shows how the multifaceted virtues of liberalism have inspired theorists and reformers from Thomas Jefferson and James Madison through Jane Addams and John Dewey to Martin Luther King, Jr., and then explains how these virtues persist in the work of some liberal democrats today. Endorsing the efforts of such neo-progressive and communitarian theorists and journalists as Michael Walzer, Jane Mansbridge, Michael Sandel, and E. J. Dionne, Kloppenberg also offers a more acute analysis of the historical development of American liberalism and of the complex reasons why it has been transformed and made more vulnerable in recent decades.

An intelligent, coherent, and persuasive canvas that stretches from the Enlightenment to the American Revolution, from Tocqueville's observations to the New Deal's social programs, and from the right to worship freely to the idea of ethical responsibility, this book is a valuable contribution to historical scholarship and to contemporary political and cultural debates.

From Opportunity to Entitlement: The Transformation and Decline of Great Society Liberalism

Gareth Davies

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Editorial Review:

This account charts the changing nature of Great Society liberalism from the early 1960s to the early 1970s. Based on research, it analyzes the downward path of the welfare state in the USA, and demonstrates the march of the liberals away from the centre and into the political wilderness.

Thomas Paine: Apostle of Freedom

Jack Fruchtman

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Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Definitive book on Paine 5 out of 5 stars.
22 of 24 people found this review helpful.

The American Revolution's roots in the British which many people thought was 'betrayed' by parliament when it restored the monarchy, the roots of common British and American democratic ideals emerging from the dissenting religions and their notions of justice and equality (it's said that British socialism has more Methodism than Marx in it), the frustrations and ideals of British republicans who invested so much of their hope in the American colonies (not then 'United') shows that even in the l8th century (and presumably before and since) there is a community of men and women who, irrespective of nationality, place justice and liberty above all other human aspirations. What we learn from this book was that Tom Paine wasn't just a great British radical, a great founding father of the American Revolution, an active member of the revolutionary French Tribunal -- he was a critic of all unearned or abused authority wherever he saw it -- from George III to George Washington -- and that he foresaw a world in which every soul enjoyed the same rights and liberties. It was his internationalism, his understanding of the drawbacks as well as the virtues of populist democracy, that made him so relevant to modern readers. You can be sure that Tom Paine would have been at the Seattle demonstrations and would have no doubt been considerably more eloquent in his criticisms of international big business than anyone alive today! He speaks to us as clearly and as authoritatively as he spoke to his first readers -- who made his work best-sellers in America, Britain and France -- and this is the first book I have read which does its great subject the justice he deserves. He shouldn't just have a statue in Washington -- he should have one in London and Paris. It is his ideas of common liberty and justice which unite people around the world, perhaps even more now than in his own day. Read this book and you will understand how valuable democracy is and how hard it was to win, how hard it remains to keep it vital and uncorrupted. Everyone interested in modern politics should read this book.

Editorial Review:

The leading Thomas Paine expert in the U.S. presents both a biography of the controversial Founding Father and an analysis of his works. Known as "the Voice of the Revolution, " Paine was a truly original thinker, a man whose magnificient, freedom-loving spirit is richly captured in this major biography.

Liberal Beginnings: Making a Republic for the Moderns

Andreas Kalyvas, Ira Katznelson

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Editorial Review:

The book examines the origins and development of the modern liberal tradition and explores the relationship between republicanism and liberalism between 1750 and 1830. The authors consider the diverse settings of Scotland, the American colonies, the new United States, and France and examine the writings of six leading thinkers of this period: Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, James Madison, Thomas Paine, Germaine de Staël, and Benjamin Constant. The book traces the process by which these thinkers transformed and advanced the republican project, both from within and by introducing new elements from without. Without compromising civic principles or abandoning republican language, they came to see that unrevised, the republican tradition could not grapple successfully with the political problems of their time. By investing new meanings, arguments, and justifications into existing republican ideas and political forms, these innovators fashioned a doctrine for a modern republic, the core of which was surprisingly liberal.

Outside the Magic Circle: The Autobiography of Virginia Foster Durr

Virginia Foster Durr

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Editorial Review:

'This extraordinary memoir by Virginia Foster Durr originated in interviews between 1974 and 1977. Hollinger F. Barnard pieced together the interviews in a way that eliminated repetition, produced a coherent and eminently readable narrative, and in the process, demonstrated her superb editorial skills. The result is a book that both chronicles the emancipation of a southern lady and probes the mind and mores of her region with rare insight, disarming candor and engaging wit.

The Pro-Growth Progressive: An Economic Strategy for Shared Prosperity

Gene Sperling

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Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

After two consecutive elections in which Democratic candidates failed to turn clear economic advantages into electoral victory, a debate is raging over what the Democrats should donow. The narrow, red state-blue state argument between chest-beating populists and soulless centrists offers the answer to neither the country's economic future nor the political future of the Democrats. In The Pro-Growth Progressive, President Clinton's longest-serving national economic advisor, Gene Sperling, argues that the best economic strategy for our nation -- and the best strategy for progressives whether they be Democrat, Republican, or Independent -- is to pursue policies that are both progressive and pro-growth, that promote progressive values of upward mobility, fair starts, and economic dignity as well as embrace markets and innovation.

Sperling describes how both parties offer the American public impoverished choices: Democrats in the-sky-is-falling party too often pretend that the way to promote progressive values and expand the American middle class is to slow the pace of the global economy, stop all outsourcing, and intervene in the market. Republicans of the don't-worry-be-happy party hold fast to the bankrupt vision that the best thing for economic growth is the smallest government possible, and have made the conservative deficit hawks of the 1990s an endangered species. But The Pro-Growth Progressive is neither an all-out assault on the Bush agenda nor a partisan call for Democrats to move further left. Both conservatives and progressives have to accept hard truths about the limitations of their approaches. Drawing on his years of policy experience, Sperling lays out a third way on the issues that are dominating the news and Bush's second term: social security, ownership, globalization, and deficit reduction. He explains the policy alternatives that respect the power of free markets while giving government a role in ensuring that the markets benefit all working families. Focused and timely, The Pro-Growth Progressive offers a realistic vision of free enterprise and economic growth in which government can improve education, reduce poverty, and restore the country to fiscal sanity.