|
The Radical Critique of Liberalism: In Memory of a Vision |
 | Toula Nicolacopoulos Price:
$35.00 AUD (cloth $70)
$25.00 USD (cloth $40)
£16.00 GBP (cloth £30.00) ISBN-13: 978-0-9803052-5-8 (paper)
978-0-9803052-8-9 (cloth)
Publication date: 1 July 2008
Pages: 292
Format: 234x156 mm (6x9 in) Paperback and Cloth
Series: Anamnesis | 
|
Download book as PDF (Open Access)
| |
|
|
Description Despite political theorists' repeated attempts to demonstrate their
incoherence liberal values appear to have withstood the test of time.
Indeed, engagement with them has become the meeting point of the
different political philosophical traditions. But should radical
critique justifiably become a thing of the past? Should political
philosophy now be conducted in the light of the triumph of liberalism?
These are the wider questions that the book takes up in an attempt to
demonstrate the intellectual power of systemic
critique in the tradition of Hegel. The author argues that the most
ambitious of the communitarian critiques of liberal thought failed due
to a fundamental weakness of their philosophical methodology. Moreover,
the re-workings of these critiques by feminists, discourse ethicists,
postmodern and postcolonial theorists have been equally unsuccessful
because they have not traced the individualist commitment of liberal
theory back to its source in liberal inquiring practices. Working
through the theories of prominent liberal theorists, including John
Rawls, Jeremy Waldron, Charles Larmore and Will Kymlicka, the book
demonstrates that an adequate appreciation of the deep structural flaws
of liberal theory presupposes the application of a critical
philosophical methodology that has the power to reveal the systemic
interconnections within and between the varieties of liberal inquiring
practices. Contents Acknowledgements ix
Abbreviations xi
Introduction 3
PART I: POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY AND RADICAL CRITIQUE IN THE LIBERAL AGE 13
1. Political Philosophy as Critical Understanding 17
2. What is it to Critique Liberalism? 39
3. Critical Reconstructionism as a Philosophical Methodology 63
4. The Critical Reconstruction of Liberalism 81
PART II: LIBERALISM AS A MINIMAL POLITICAL MORALITY 101
5. Will Kymlicka: Liberalism and Foundational Ideas 105
6. Jeremy Waldron: Liberalism and Consensual Legitimation 121
7. Charles Larmore: Liberalism and Neutral Procedural Discourse 143
PART III: JOHN RAWLS’ POLITICAL LIBERALISM 175
8. Political Liberalism as a Minimal Political Morality 179
9. Publicness and Privateness in the Deep Structure of Political Liberalism 195
10. The Relative Superiority of Political Liberalism 219
11. The Radical Critique of the Minimal Political Morality Approach 231
Conclusion: Liberal Theory in Epistemological Crisis 255
Bibliography 260
About the Author 277
Authors, editors and contributors
Toula Nicolacopoulos
|
|
|
