Search

This article appraises the books "The Tanner Lectures on Human Values III," edited by S. McMurrin; and "Liberalism and the Limits of Justice," by M.J. Sandel. The first book will be of interest to political theorists mainly for the long paper by John Rawls on "The Basic Liberties and Their Priority" which opens the book. This belongs to an overlapping series of papers in which Rawls has been attempting to revise certain aspects of "A Theory of Justice" to meet critical objections. These revisions make it easier to justify the precedence Rawls gives to the familiar list of liberal freedoms in his theory of justice.

This article appraises the book "Of Liberty: Royal Institute of Philosophy Lecture Series," edited by A.P. Griffiths. The fourteen papers, which this volume contains, each given originally as a lecture at the Royal Institute of Philosophy in 1980-81, are all devoted to a reconsideration of themes and arguments suggested by J.S. Mill's On Liberty. Whereas the collection is a useful one taken as a whole, the papers it comprises vary greatly in quality. The author Hillel Steiner explores imaginatively some of the conceptual difficulties laced by any conception of liberty when it comes to make assessments of liberty on balance.

This article appraises the book "Studies on the Political Thought of Gaetano Mosca," edited by E.A. Albertoni. This book is composed of a collection of papers given at an international Mosca gathering held in Palermo some two years ago. Most of the contributors are in fact Italian, but there are one or two papers by Mosca scholars from elsewhere, and one contribution is specifically concerned with the influence of Mosca's ideas abroad. The most interesting essays are by Albertoni, and other authors.

The article presents information about the book "Fin de Siècle Socialism and Other Essays," by Martin Jay. The book shows parallel relations between the crises of confidence of late nineteenth-century bourgeois thought and the contemporary crisis of socialism. The book offers a series of essays on subjects as disparate as the social movements needed for the new politics of socialist pluralism and papers on arguments in contemporary intellectual history. The language used in the book is too high-level for the students to understand.

The article presents information about the book "The Comparative History of Public Policy," by Francis G. Castles. The book examines the evolution of public policy in eight different countries. There are interpretations of national welfare systems by national experts. There is also an argument about comparative public policy. Castles claims that the way ahead is to examine what is distinctive about particular countries' policy developments and contributors of papers were invited to stress distinctiveness.

The article focuses on the book "Race in Britain: Continuity and Change," by edited by C. Husbands. Produced as a set reader for the Open University course, "Ethnic Minorities and Community Relations" this volume consists of extracts from a number of well-known titles like James Walvin's "Black and White" and papers especially commissioned for the purpose. Most of the contributions, indeed all of those in part IV, are directed to the central theme of the volume; namely the extent to which racial identity has social and political effect. Impressionistic accounts of what it's like to be black and living in Britain are set side by side with more conventional academic treatments of race.