23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Raises some interesting issues about liberalism, June 9, 2005
Nobody ought to expect political ethics to be easy. And maybe that's a good way to start thinking about the topics in this book. Walzer asks us some tough questions right away.
Try this one first. Should liberals be tolerant of totalitarian groups within their society? There is no easy answer. If we rule that some religious parents have no right to raise their children in religious schools we would be saying, in effect, "We're tolerant! We're liberals! We tolerate all liberals! And we don't tolerate others, but so what ... they're different than us!"
Obviously, that won't do at all.
If we go to the other extreme, and tolerate everyone, no matter how much of a threat they are to our society, that won't work either. If we smugly decide to do something in between these two extremes, that means being arbitrary rather than following easily applied principles.
Walzer concludes that when "political power is at stake, we should tilt decisively against the totalizing groups," just for the sake of decency. But he reminds us that this is merely a guideline. "It doesn't solve the problem of day-to-day coexistence." Such problems require "a long and unstable series of compromises."
The author also talks about involuntary associations, such as family or cultural group. Are we morally obliged to defend our families or cultural groups if they are attacked? Walzer thinks we generally are.
Walzer also asks about the concept of deliberation. That's different than debate, which is simply a contest in which one tries to win, even with an unsound argument. Deliberation involves trying to make as good a decision as possible about what policy to pursue. Here, the author points out that liberal societies debate thinkable policies with great freedom. But they also define what policies are thinkable, and those which are not simply don't get brought up.
A final topic is passion in politics. Do we want our villains to be cold and calculating? Or wild and frenzied? Do we need more passion or less?
I guess I disagree with the author here. Any human is likely to be passionate enough about any interesting issue, the more so if there is widespread debate about it. As a liberal, I'm not afraid of fickleness on social issues. I'm not afraid of having kids disagree politically with their parents. But I am afraid of people going overboard and taking dubious and illogical political positions, unsupported by facts, which they then passionately refuse to reconsider.
In any case, the author has some good ideas, and I recommend the book.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
Politics and Passion, September 20, 2011
This review is from: Politics and Passion: Toward a More Egalitarian Liberalism (Paperback)
Walzer begins Politics and Passion with an observation what is empirically evident in all our lives but needs to be reiterated again and again in political philosophy; namely, that we all have pluriform identities. Where Walzer differs from others such as Amartya Sen who have dissented from the tendency towards monocultural identities is his summary of how the plurality of affiliations are often involuntary in nature, the clearest example being that which we involuntarily receive from our parents and guardians in our early youth.
In the course of a discussion of international politics that aims to spread an emancipatory ideal (often coterminous with the spread of liberal democracy) Walzer makes the following comment: "a politics committed to transcending group life, breaking the categories of difference, is likely to be ineffective (there are many examples); and it is pretty sure to be nasty and repressive in its own way. Individuals with rights are also individuals with emotions: they have the affiliative passions that go with their practical attachments, and if we want to strengthen their hand, some of the help they need has to come via their own political associations (p. 138)."
Liberalism is, argues Walzer, a philosophy that does - in a fashion - aim to transcend group life. With the noble (in theory at least) goal of promoting a universal egalititarianism for all inhabitants qua citizens. Walzer is certainly not alone in noting that the problem is that a nation's citizenship (those who seek and are involved in the political process) and its inhabitants are not synonymous. And Liberalism, in acting as though this is not the case, does great damage to its own stated agenda of toleration and respect when it ignores this fact (notwithstanding the very real harm it can do those minorities who are inhabitants but not citizens of a nation). If one could condense Walzer's dissection of Liberalism's ailments it would be this: Liberalism is a vampiric entity that sucks all passion from the political process leaving nothing but an empty shell of a person.
To expand his point Walzer draws attention to the sociologist Lewis Coser's study of Greedy Institutions; that is, groups and organisations that demand everything of their members. Within this category of the greedy institution are many groups disfranchised groups (sometimes by intent of others, sometimes by their own passivity) - a prime example of the latter being many Amish.
It is here that Walzer differs from the Liberal strategy of asserting individual autonomy at all costs. If the aim of liberalism is to promote egalitarianism then such an approach is heavy-handed and, more importantly from its own perspective, it is counter-productive. We all know the response of a cornered animal when it is threatened, it lashes out. Similarly, a group under constant critique is more likely to close ranks, withdraw, and have its own bonds of solidarity strengthened (incidentally, this is precisely the response Rowan Williams is warning against in his infamous tentative suggestion that Sharia law enter as a subservient and voluntary reconcilatory avenue in family law disputes between Muslims).
However, in recognising the hard case of bringing often involuntary members of these greedy institutions into the autonomy granted to those of more avowedly plural identities Walzer is not suggesting an ideological free for all (as some unwise Governmental critics of Williams's speech read him as saying) ; it remains the case that Liberalism will always have recourse to coercion, particularly in the case of the greedy institution as Walzer himself hesitantly admits: "Coercion itself cannot be avoided; civic education does have to be legally mandated and compulsory. And since it challenges the totalizing claims of the religious or ethnic community, it is sure to encounter opposition. Its aim is to allow or encourage the community's children, as many of them as possible, to accept another identity, that is, to think of themselves as responsible and respected participants in democratic decision-making. Citizens of the state can honestly say that they want these children to add citizenship to their existing religious or ethnic self-understanding, not replace the latter with the former (p. 60)."
However, as Walzer continues in the passage there is a replacement here: a monocultural traditionalism is replaced by one that incorporates a fuller spectrum of contemporary human existence. The question can legitimately be asked as to whether this necessarily coercive pluralisation of identities betrays the ideal of toleration which in the potted history of liberalism - replete with references to the Peace of Westphalia - is one of its cornerstones? Here is Walzer's response: " Maybe, but I am not advocating the total replacement of traditional ways. I don't want to insist that members of the parochial or tribal group be taught to draw up their own life plans without copying from their parents. I mean to be more tolerant than contemporary activist versions of liberalism would allow - without, however, endorsing the illiberal way of life of greedy communities (p. 60-61)."
By and large Walzer succeeds in this aim and in the process has produced a compelling analysis not only of the dead-end that is the usual liberal policy of excluding passion from the political terrain but also the delicate and imprecise balancing act that the inclusion of passions creates, particularly as it relates to minorities.
Walzer does present a interesting, succinct and well written primer into the practice of Liberalism but, having read much of his other work I do tend to agree with other reviewers that this is not his best work. Nontheless, recommended.
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