Liberalism at the Crossroads.

• Author: Zuckert, Michael

By Christopher Wolfe(1) and John Hittinger.(2) Rowman and Littlefield: Lanham, MD. 1994. Pp. ix-183. Paper, $19.95.

Michael Zuckert(3)

At about the same time that Simon and Garfunkel posed the question "Is the theater really dead?" in their classic song "The Dangling Conversation," the American Political Science Association and other authorities were pronouncing that, whatever might be true of the theater, political philosophy really was dead. In retrospect it is not clear that judgment was ever quite correct, but however weak the vital signs of the field appeared at that time, it now appears more than healthy--ruddy-cheeked, active and fecund.

Among the most lively parts of political philosophy is liberal theory. Where there was hardly a theorist of liberalism in the '60s worth noticing--one had to go back to Mill to find a clearly major figure--now there are so many liberal theorists and varieties of liberal theory that even an interested observer with a lavish book allowance and lots of free time has difficulty keeping up. This revivification of political philosophy has had an important impact, of course, on those in political science and philosophy departments who make the study of political philosophy their chief business, but also on those who make law their chief study and who perhaps have less time to keep track of the ever multiplying collection of liberal theorists than their colleagues more focused on political philosophy itself.

Christopher Wolfe and John Hittinger's collection, Liberalism at the Crossroads, is especially welcome in this context. Me book consists of a brief introduction and ten chapters, each by a different author and each addressed to a different liberal philosopher. Several of the theorists discussed in the volume are particularly of interest to a legally oriented audience: John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin, David Richards, Roberto Unger, Richard Rorty, and Joseph Raz. Others are perhaps less central at the moment to legal discussion, but might be, or are of interest to legal readers for some other reason: Robert Nozick, Michael Sandel, and William Galston. The coverage is thus extensive, although a price has been exacted--the essays are all relatively short. The coverage is also intelligent, if not perfect: one can always think of authors who might have been included, and perhaps even of some who might have been excluded, Roberto Unger, for example. This book is, after all, about the "liberal tradition," and it is...