Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Introduction [Paperback]

Will Kymlicka (whose homepage seems to be http://post.queensu.ca/~kymlicka/biog.html) is a professor at Queens University in Canada, and has been called the most distinguished political philosopher of his generation.

This book is used as a college-level undergraduate text, and there is no other book that sets out the major positions and lines of argument as efficiently and as comprehensively. It's intelligently written, erudite, up-to-date, and includes copious guides to further reading.

The revised second edition (2002) discusses utilitarianism, liberal equality, libertarianism, Marxism, communitarianism, citizenship theory, multiculturalism, and feminism. All positions get a balanced, sympathetic hearing, but the broad leaning of the book is towards liberal egalitarianism -- or, at any rate, Kymlicka has the least to say in critique of it. The broad approach follows a suggestion of Ronald Dworkin's: instead of treating each philosophy as based on a fundamentally different value (libertarianism on freedom, multiculturalism on identity, and so forth), Kymlicka explores the idea that they're ALL interpretations of equality, and therefore comparable.

You might of course think this approach is wrong-headed, but it at least contributes to readability and makes for convenient structure. And readability is no small achievement, given the complexity of the subject area and the depth of detail that Kymlicka is prepared to venture into. You're delivered a huge amount of information -- for instance, around eight varieties of communitarianism are dealt with -- and you never get the feeling that things are watered down.

It's indicative of the clarity of the style that you can easily follow involved and subtly different arguments. The writing is even at times (gasp) entertaining.

And I thought it a mark of the care and sensitivity of the philosophy that though objections and questions arose to me, I continually found these already anticipated and soon addressed.

This is a first rate survey of modern political philosophy. Kymlicka devotes individual chapters to Utilitarianism, Liberal Equality views (eg, Rawls and Dworkin), Libertarianism, Marxism, Communitarianism, Citizenship Theory, Multiculturalism, and Feminism. Kymlicka's approach is the same in each chapter. He attempts to describe each position as fairly and charitably as possible, followed by criticism of the position. Kymlicka is an excellent critic and clear writer, logical and fair minded. In general, most positions, including Utilitarianism, Libertarianism, Marxism, and the different strains of Communitarianism receive vigorous criticism. Liberal Equality views, such as those of Rawls and Dworkin, fare better, though Kymlicka points out a number of problems with these positions as well. In Kymlicka's analysis, the Liberal Equality theories often capture the better features of alternative theories but without many of the inconsistencies and problems exhibited by these theories. Kymlicka does sometimes use a problematic argument. In some disucssions of non-Liberal theories, he will resort to appeals to intuition to attack those theories. For example, the strict application of some forms of Utilitarianism seems to violate our sense of the sanctity of human rights. This is a fair argument but it may have limitations not acknowledged by Kymlicka. Given that most readers of this book have been raised in essentially Liberal societies, its likely their intuitions will be Liberal in nature. What would happen if appealing to intuitions of people raised in a caste based or highly egalitarian society? Kymlicka has a thoughtful chapter on Multiculturalism, which is an area of considerable interest to him. He concludes with a weaker chapter on Feminism, which I think is a bit short sighted and underestimates the impact of present approaches to improving the state of women.
All chapters have fine footnotes and excellent bibliographies.

This book contains the best overview of all the important themes, subjects and schools of contemporary normative political philosophy. The language is simple yet elegant and it might indeed be fun to read at some points.

The chapters it contains are as follows:

2. Utilitarianism - the best discussion of utilitarianism I have found. Beats all introductory ethics books by far (see my other reviews).

3. Liberal egalitarianism - Very good overview of Rawls's earlier theory (TJ). He doesn't commit the regular mistakes that introductory books make, but sees Rawls's arguments as they should be seen. Contains also a great overview of a much less-known theory of Dworkin (which was only available in articles before "Sovereign Virtue" 2000).

4. Libertarianism - Indepth overview of Nozick's theory + very good counterarguments. Sees Nozick as he should be seen with the concept of self-ownership at the center of the entitlement theory. Great discussion of the rebuttals to Chamberlain experiment. Nozick can be interpreted differently, but Kymlickas is also an adequate one. This chapter also includes an overview of contractarian mutual advantage theory put forward by David Gauthier. It concludes with a good discussion of libertarianism and freedom and how they do not really fit together.

5. Marxism - Indepth overview of contemporary analytical marxism in the context of politics. Discussion of the marxist rejection of justice, marxist arguments for abolishing private property, about exploitation and about alienation. Guys mentioned are Cohen, Elster, Roemer and others. You wont find this material elsewhere.

6. Communitarianism - The movement of the 80s. Great discussion of philosophical communitarianism's main ideas like: politics of the common good, social self, social thesis and etc. Sandel and Taylor are mostly mentioned, Walzer and MacIntyre less so.

7. Citizenship theory/ 8. Multiculturalism - an addition in the new, 2001 edition. Haven't read those parts yet, but since these are the areas that Kymlicka is the most known scholar in, you should know what to expect.

9. Feminism - A very interesting overview of the wide field of feminism in politics. Touches upon sexual equality and discrimination, the public and the private and the ethic of care (Gilligan and others).

You will also get a great bibliography and a lot of ideas for further reading. It is a must have for any aspiring student in political philosophy or ethics. Kymlicka himself seems to support a somewhat liberal position most, although he doesn't explicitly state it.

BUT

It is not only for students. If you read a lot of primary sources you can see that many quote this book. It isnt just a neutral introductory volume (there are no such things in phil anyway), but a book with many good arguments by Kymlicka not found elsewhere. Of course it also contains good overviews of arguments found in articles that are not usually available for or read by most people. So even a working scholar can benefit a lot from this book - but they probably know that already :)

P.S to the reviewer who had doubts about treating Nozick on the basis of equality. Nozicks theory is not about equality in the real world, but the justification of the theory is in some sense the equality of everyones self-ownership rights. This is the reason Kymlicka deals with Nozick in the way he does.