Review by Choice Review
Most critiques of liberalism in the past 200 years--from Marxism, feminism, and poststructuralism--come from the political left. In The Politics of Virtue, Milbank (Nottingham) and Pabst (Kent) challenge liberalism from the right, advocating for a "conservative socialism." Influenced by postmodernism, the authors argue that liberalism destroys itself by abstracting from the human good and treating each individual impersonally, thereby allowing ever more authoritarian tendencies into liberal politics in order to maintain control over a populace whose desires are unfettered by traditional social order. In place of liberalism's primacy of individual rights, the authors defend the primacy of associations of all kinds--religions, regions, localities, unions, voluntary organizations--that arouse citizens' sense of civic duty and responsibility, and check the centralizing tendency of liberal governments. The book has five synoptic parts--politics, economy, polity, culture, and world--and matches its ambitious scope with the difficult project to bring abstract theoretical discussion down to policy specifics. What emerges is an exciting, enthralling alternative, though the authors remain unclear about which liberalism they take aim at--there are now many liberalisms in theory and practice. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. --Jeffrey Church, University of Houston
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
