Politics and passion : toward a more egalitarian liberalism /

Walzer (Princeton Univ.) weaves into a coherent whole several conference papers and lectures, most notably the 1999 Max Horkheimer Lectures. In six short, tightly argued essays, Walzer considers how egalitarian liberals should approach political contexts where illiberal attachments, conditions, or strategies make the standard liberal focus on individual emancipation insufficient. Modern individuals often find themselves members of involuntary associations, feel loyalty to stigmatized and powerless groups, recognize the educational claims of fundamentalist religions, urge nonneutral state action within civil society, pursue nondeliberative politics, or feel justly motivated by passion. How can they maintain these positions and retain individual autonomy and equality as values? Walzer resists the usual liberal moves of rejecting out of hand the need for group empowerment or ignoring the reality of communal embeddedness. He follows the middle way first negotiated in his seminal article "The Communitarian Critique of Liberalism" (reprinted at the end of the volume.) In cases of stigmatized groups, for example, he argues for limited group empowerment supported by state subsidy but rejects "recognition" claims spurred by identity politics as self-defeating. He proposes a compromise multiculturalism whereby Yeats's center can hold both in the world of ideas and the world of political action. ^BSumming Up: Highly Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above. J. Simeone Illinois Wesleyan University