Review by Choice Review
Although feminist, Marxist, and postmodern critics have leveled different attacks against the liberal vision of political life, their critiques have shared a concern with how the defense of individuality is premised upon the exclusion and oppression of particular groups and identities. In a wonderfully written and superbly argued work that takes into consideration the force of these various critiques, Moon (Wesleyan Univ.) proposes a notion of liberalism that avoids the pitfalls of essentialist conceptions of the liberal political community while incorporating the emphasis on individual liberties, agency rights, and the discursive potentiality for agreement that have defined this intellectual tradition in the past. Unlike those forms of liberalism which stress a particular vision of the appropriate ends of human life based upon a substantive notion of human nature, Moon's "political liberalism" assumes a very limited notion of the human self that would ensure that the principles upon which a political community are founded can protect, and not exclude, the diverse moral visions and socio-cultural identities of its members. Graduate students; faculty. B. J. Macdonald; Colorado State University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
