Debates in Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Anthology

Front Cover
Derek Matravers, Jonathan E. Pike
Psychology Press, 2003 - Philosophy - 454 pages

This textbook reflects the buoyant state of contemporary political philosophy, and the development of the subject in the past two decades. It includes seminal papers on fundamental philosophical issues such as:
the nature of social explanation
distributive justice
liberalism and communitarianism
citizenship and multiculturalism
nationalism
democracy
criminal justice.
A range of views is represented, demonstrating the richness of the philosophical contribution to some of the most contested areas of public policy and political decision making. Each section has an introduction by the editors that situates the papers in the ongoing debate. Further Reading sections feature at the end of each chapter.
Readings from the following thinkers are included:
Steven Lukes, Robert Nozick, John Rawls, Bhikhu Parekh, Antony Duff, G.A. Cohen, Derek Parfit, Roger Scruton, Michael Sandel, Alasdair MacIntrye.
Debates in Contemporary Political Philosophy will be a valuable resource for upper-level students interested in current thinking in this area.

 

Contents

Acknowledgements
11
Part 1
11
Methodological individualism
23
Reply to Elster on Marxism functionalism and game theory
41
Marxism and methodological individualism
54
on the site of distributive justice
100
Part 2
102
Equality and priority
115
Introduction
215
Contemporary liberal responses to diversity
239
Introduction
267
Is patriotism a virtue?
286
In defence of nationality
301
Introduction
321
Deliberation and democratic legitimacy
342
Philosophy and democracy
361

Equality as a moral ideal
131
Introduction
135
The domain of the political and overlapping consensus
160
Communitarian critics of liberalism
182
69
192
the liberalcommunitarian debate
195
Introduction
383
a reply to Duff
408
response to von Hirsch
423
Index
448
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