Against perfectionism : defending liberal neutrality / Steven Lecce.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Against Perfectionism defends neutralist liberalism as the most appropriate political morality for democratic societies.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

How do we best justify a liberal state? Lecce (Univ. of Manitoba, Canada) holds that a neutral liberal state is the best liberal state. But he maintains that existing justifications of the liberal state in general and the liberal neutral state in particular have important weaknesses. We need better arguments to defend the latter and to investigate whether such a state is defensible. Lecce usefully distinguishes among types of justifications (e.g., contract justifications and perfectionist justifications) and types of critiques (e.g., the disintegration thesis and the reflexivity thesis) in the course of assessing the strengths and weaknesses of particular justifications. Along the way he usefully discusses the work of John Locke, Jonas Proast, J. S. Mill, H. L. A. Hart, Patrick Devlin, Joseph Raz, John Rawls, and Ronald Dworkin, among others. In sum, Lecce holds that his version of contract theory provides a better justification than does any form of liberal perfectionism. Yet, while Lecce's position is persuasive and he does move into the area of practical application of his views to policies, he says little about how his theory of justification can be applied in ordinary arguments, as he engages highly sophisticated academic arguments with equally complex philosophical and political arguments. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate and research collections. D. J. Lorenzo Virginia Wesleyan College