After Politics : The Rejection of Politics in Contemporary Liberal Philosophy

Annotation Why do political philosophers shy away from politics? Glen Newey offers a challenging and original critique of liberalism, the dominant political philosophy of our time, tackling such key issues as state legitimacy, value-pluralism, neutrality, the nature of politics, public reason, and morality in politics. Analyzing major liberal theorists, Newey argues that liberalism bypasses politics because it ignores or misunderstands human motivation, and elevates academic systembuilding over political realities of conflict and power Cover......Page 1 Contents......Page 8 Dedication......Page 6 Acknowledgements......Page 10 Introduction......Page 12 Post-Politics and Political Philosophy......Page 26 The Rejection of Politics......Page 33 Post-Politics and Beyond......Page 42 Introduction......Page 47 The Project of Political Design......Page 48 Problems with the Thesis......Page 51 The Elusiveness of the Political......Page 61 Conclusion......Page 65 Introduction......Page 68 The 'Problem' Problem......Page 69 Transparency and Distributivity......Page 73 Obligations, Reasons, Motivations......Page 75 Justifying Obligations......Page 80 Conclusion......Page 86 Introduction......Page 90 Incommensurability and Pluralism......Page 92 Pluralism in Political Design......Page 105 Conclusion......Page 113 Introduction......Page 117 Ethical Inquiry......Page 119 Internalism and Smith's Antinomy......Page 121 Morality and Reasons......Page 130 Moral Theory and Political Philosophy......Page 140 Introduction......Page 148 Forms and Functions of Neutrality......Page 150 Insufficient Reason......Page 155 Politics......Page 164 Conclusion......Page 167 Introduction......Page 170 The Nature of the Political Conception......Page 172 Habermas......Page 177 Rawls......Page 182 Theory, Motivation and Reason......Page 189 Appendix: Gaus and Public Justification......Page 194 Introduction......Page 198 Rorty and Post-Philosophical Politics......Page 199 Gray and Post-Liberalism......Page 211 Conclusion......Page 219 Notes......Page 222 Bibliography......Page 248 D......Page 258 G......Page 259 K......Page 260 N......Page 261 P......Page 262 R......Page 263 W......Page 264 Why do political philosophers why away from politics? After Politics: The Rejection of Politics in Contemporary Liberal Philosophy offers a challenging and original critique of liberalism, the dominant political philosophy of our time, tackling key issues like state legitimacy, value-pluralism, neutrality, the nature of politics, public reasons, and morality in politics. Analyzing major liberal theorists like Rawls, Habermas, Rorty, Barry, Gray, Raz, Larmore, Ackerman and others, Glen Newey argues that liberalism by-passes politics because it ignores or misunderstands human motivation, and elevates academic system-building over political realities of conflict and power. Dedication Acknowledgements Preface Political Philosophy and Politics Philosophy, Politics and Contestability Political Obligation Politics and the Limits of Pluralism Moral Theory and Political Philosophy Neutralising Politics Rawls and Habermas: Liberalism versus Politics Political Philosophy Without Foundations? Bibliography Index. Modern political philosophy has little to say about politics as an activity.