The Moral Foundations of Politics analyzes the base assumptions that go into many of the modern political theories that we often refer to. The book decomposes various political philosophies through time, what they say and what they assume. The author often introduces competing theories chronologically and articulates the views of its critics to give the reader an understanding of how some of the underlying assumptions founding one theory are disputed elsewhere. It is very informative for those wanting to understand the "axioms" of various political philosophies and how they compare and contrast.
The author starts with the enlightenment and discusses what was one of the first eras of trying to understand politics as a science. The author discusses how the understanding of the world via scientific understanding in natural philosophy led to the desire to codify political philosophy and the natural forces that were driving the evolution of man and philosophy. The author focuses on Hobbes and Locke and some of the core ideas of the English enlightenment. The author moves on to Bentham and utilitarianism. He discusses the framework for trying to maximize utility and how the goal of policy is to derive a functional relationship between policy and utility with the state as being focused on maximizing utility as a numerical quantity. The difficulty in the cardinal/ordinal relationship for utility in the space of a multi-actor setting is articulated and the author is skeptical and cites numerous authors who are skeptics that utility can be a cardinal variable across the population. The author moves on to Mill and On Liberty in which utilitarianism is counterbalanced by putting individual liberty as a higher order right to maximizing utility. This solves issues in more adversarial situations such that aggressive action cant be rationalized through utilitarian arguments. The author makes it clear that thought this is a step in the right direction in solving the cardinal utility problem it creates a whole new grey area of rights in a connected society as almost all actions have spillovers. The author also discusses Pareto ideas about how one cant translate between people and their utilities and as such efficiency should be measured by how much one can move from improving welfare for some without harm to others. The author moves on to Marx and despite highlighting the failure in prediction and questionable assumptions focuses on the moral foundations of the theory and the problems in attributing income to labor. The author describes the views of Marx on the forces of history and the natural laws outlined by him. The author then discusses the social contract. An idea spawned in the enlightenment, it has remained an important idea for civic participation and rights since then. The ambiguity around what constitutes agreeing to the social contract is focused on and the author discusses Rawls's Theory of Justice. Theory of Justice provides a new concept for thinking about the social contract and how to think about the rules we want to live by. The measuring system for fair and unfair moves from the maximizing something (ie utility) to minimizing grief by conceiving that people without knowledge of their position will construct laws that favor the least fortunate. The articulation about how basic differences in framing the way rules should be laid out, from prizing individual work ethic and fruits of labour, to maximizing the popular utility (sometimes with constraints) to putting oneself in a state of ignorance, is well done and the reader gets a strong appreciation of how different kinds of political philosophy can germinate. The author also discusses anti-enlightenment ideas. The main ones studied come from the idea that we are all part of a community and so trying to figure out the right rules from aggregating the best at the bottom up level misses a crucial part of our nature which is as an interactive population. Imagining oneself independent of society is meaningless and so a social construct based on such a method of deduction is unlikely to be fruitful. The author focuses on Burke and how the French Revolution was a horrific experiment doomed to failure. Imagining that one can create a new society without the cultural history that allows for it is unrealistic and naïve about human nature. The author gives good perspective of the arguments but also argues that sometimes one needs to fix failures in society giving examples like universal suffrage. He also argues that though cultural history is important to be cognizant of it is not a guide to reform. The author finally moves to democracy and discusses its qualities as a means of government. He is clear to argue some of its potential failings like tyranny of the majority and some failures to single out a general will from a mathematical perspective when voting is not the same transitive relationship in differing voting cohorts. But the author argues how democracy is adaptable and tyranny of the majority has been avoided in wealthy countries. He also discusses how honesty is generally an enforced quality in politicians due to multi party systems and the investigative capacities of the opposition parties. The author notes the skepticism of Plato to democracy and how Mill wanted educated people to have more votes but sides with the governance structure as the best of a bad batch of options.
The Moral Foundations of Politics is really good reading that articulates well the properties of many forms of political philosophy. It is clear and balanced in its assessment. My only criticism is that it refers to specific critics to each kind of philosophy without the reader having a background in those critics nor with a recommended reading list to better appreciate the arguments made in soundbites throughout the book. Hence it is interesting but incomplete at the same time. This is a minor criticism as its not like I was looking for a 1000 page book but I just feel that if the opinions about 100 different critics are in the book, either that list needs to be shortened or a quick reading list should be given to make the experience more complete rather than taken at face value. I enjoyed this though and glad to have read it.
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Top reviews from other countries
BeMo
Good book but lay readers may prefer Michael Sandel
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 14, 2015David Cooke
Excellent introduction to political philosophy
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 3, 2016
