Contemporary Political Philosophy: a Reader

Political philisophy is a normative discipline which asks three questions. First, what is the right institutional order for society, secondly, what are the appropriate standards against which the social institutions are to be assessed, and thirdly, how do the standards of evaluation select and endorse the favoured institutional order? This reader, includes many essays to address these questions and give a broad view of contemporary political philosophy. Focusing on the debates in the Anglo-Saxon community of philosophers, the materials included concern, directly or indirectly, the liberal tradition, its internal divisions and external criticisms. The contents of the volume are arranged in three parts: part 1 presents the liberal theory as it stood before the publication of John Rawls's classic work, "A Theory of Justice". Part 2 contains the main texts in egalitarian and libertarian liberalism, from Rawls to Dworkin and Ackerman. Part 3 includes texts of perfectionist, feminist and communitarian critics of liberalism.