Meanwhile, the authors' antidote to the American sicknessa quest for democratic community that draws on our diverse civic and religious traditionshas contributed to a vigorous scholarly and popular debate. Attention has been focused on forms of social organization, be it civil society, democratic communitarianism, or associative democracy, that can humanize the market and the administrative state. In their new Introduction the authors relate the argument of their book both to the current realities of American society and to the growing debate about the country's future. With this new edition one of the most influential books of recent times takes on a new immediacy.\

Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life

1.. HARD CASES 5. Legal Rights A. Legislation . . . We might therefore do well to consider how a philosophical judge might develop, in appropriate cases, theories of what legislative purpose and legal principles require. We shall find that he would construct these theories in the same manner as a philosophical referee would construct the character of a game. I have invented, for this purpose, a lawyer of superhuman skill, learning, patience and acumen, whom I shall call Hercules. I suppose that Hercules is a judge in some representative American jurisdiction. I assume that he accepts the main uncontroversial constitutive and regulative rules of the law in his jurisdiction. He accepts, that is, that statutes have the general power to create and extinguish legal rights, and that judges have the general duty to follow earlier decisions of their court or higher courts whose rationale, as l

Taking Rights Seriously

政治自由主义 = Political liberalism

LIBERALISM: UNMASKING REASONABLE RACISM22 Because of the curious way in which liberalism’s principles are used in the post–civil rights era, other analysts label modern racial ideology “laissez-fare racism” or “competitive racism” or argue that modern racism is essentially a combination of the “American Creed” with antiblack resentment.23 The importance of this frame is evident in that whites use it on issues ranging from affirmative action and interracial friendship and marriage to neighborhood and residential segregation. Because of the pivotal role played by this frame in organizing whites’ racial views, I provide numerous examples below. 13_151_Bonilla_Silva.indb 78 6/27/13 4:46 AM The Central Frames of Color-Blind Racism 79 Rationalizing Racial Unfairness in the Name of Equal Opportunity An archetype of how white students use the notion of equal opportunity in an abstract manner to oppose racial fairness is Sue, a student at SU. When asked if minority students should be provided unique opportunities to be admitted into universities, Sue stated: I don’t think that they should be provided with unique opportunities. I think that they should have the same opportunities as everyone else. You know, it’s up to them to meet the standards and whatever that’s required for entrance into universities or whatever. I don’t think that just because they’re a minority that they should, you know, not meet the requirements, you know. Sue, like most whites, ignored the effects of past and contemporary discrimination on the social, economic, and educational status of minorities. Therefore, by supporting equal opportunity for everyone without a concern for the savage inequalities between whites and blacks, Sue’s stance safeguards white privilege. Sue even used the notion of equal opportunity to avoid explaining why blacks tend to perform worse than whites academically: “I don’t know . . . um, like I said, I don’t see it as a group thing. I see it more as an individual [thing] and I don’t know why as a whole they don’t do better. I mean, as I see it, they have the same opportunity and everything. They should be doing equal.” College students are not the only ones who use this abstract notion of equal opportunity to justify their racial views. For example, Eric, a corporate auditor in his forties, and a very affable man who seemed more tolerant than most members of his generation (e.g., he had dated a black woman for three years, recognized that discrimination happens “a lot” and identified multiple examples, and even said that “the system is . . . is white”), erupted in anger when asked if reparations were due to blacks for the injuries caused by slavery and Jim Crow: “Oh tell them to shut up, OK! I had nothing to do with the whole situation. The opportunity is there, there is no reparation involved and let’s not dwell on it. I’m very opinionated about that!” After suggesting that Jews and Japanese are the ones who really deserve reparation, Eric added, “But something that happened three God-damned generations ago, what do you want us to do about it now? Give them opportunity, give them scholarships, but reparations?” Was Eric just a white with a “principled opposition” to government intervention (see chapter 1 for analysts who make this claim)? This does not seem to be the case since Eric, like most whites, made a distinction between government spending on behalf of victims of child abuse, the homeless, and battered women (whom whites deem as legitimate candidates for assistance) and government spending on blacks (whom whites deem as unworthy candidates for assistance). This finding was consistent 13_151_Bonilla_Silva.indb 79 6/27/13 4:46 AM

Racism without Racists

Gevestigde liberaaldemocratische instituties en beleid staan door nieuwe religieuze minderheden, met name moslims, onder toenemende druk. Het lijkt alsof praktische politiek en politieke theorie moeten kiezen tussen een volledig geseculariseerde staat - een strikte scheiding tussen staat/politiek en volledig geprivatiseerde godsdiensten, gebaseerd op een geidealiseerd model van de VS of van Frans-republikeinse laicite - enerzijds, of verzuilde systemen van selectieve samenwerking tussen staat en kerken anderzijds. Secularism or Democracy presenteert een nieuwe conceptuele, theoretische en praktische benadering van oude en recente problemen in de omgang met religieuze diversiteit. Het verbindt ethische en politiek-filosofische perspectieven met constitutioneel recht, geschiedenis, godsdienst-sociologie en -antropologie, en vergelijkend institutionalisme. Voorstellen uit de traditie van associatieve democratie - een vrijzinnige, flexibele versie van een democratisch, institutioneel pluralisme - bieden een 'derde weg' die belooft de tekortkomingen van de dominante modellen in theorie en praktijk te vermijden.

Secularism or Democracy?: Associational Governance of Religious Diversity

Acknowledgements - PART 1: NEUTRALITY AND THE GOOD IN LIBERAL THEORY - Introduction - Liberalism and Neutrality - A Liberal Theory of the Good? - PART 2: RAWLS AND POLITICAL LIBERALISM - In the Shadow of the General Will: Rawls, Kant and Rousseau on the Problem of Political Right - Justice as Fairness: Political or Metaphysical? - Does He Mean What He Says? (Mis)Understanding Rawls' Practical Turn - PART 3: ALTERNATIVE LIBERALISMS - Perfectionism With A Liberal Face? Nervous Liberals and Raz's Political Theory - Dworkin on the Foundations of Liberal Equality - Vulgar Liberalism - Index

Liberalism and Its Discontents

During the last decade a good deal of discussion of the “communitarian critique” of liberalism has occurred. The debate is perplexing for a number of reasons. The competing positions are often difficult to characterize (or, sometimes, even to distinguish) and it is often unclear what would be the theoretical or practical significance of affirming one position over the other. In this “guide for the perplexed” the authors discuss two ambiguities and two problems which they believe are central to the debate. Examining these problems and ambiguities suggests some distinctions and confusions, strengths and weaknesses, characteristic of both communitarian and liberal arguments.

Liberalism and the Communitarian Critique: A Guide for the Perplexed

HT HE depiction of the natural condition of mankind by Thomas Hobbes (Hobbes 1968) has long been a source of fascination to students of political theory. In the past two decades, the concepts and categories of rational choice theory have been increasingly employed as one means of interpreting, illuminating, and understanding Hobbes' teaching (Hampton 1986; Brams 1985: 139-46; Kavka 1983; Laver 1981: 17-18, 43-47; McLean 1981: 339-51; Taylor 1976; Gauthier 1969). The issue I propose to explore herein is that of determining the extent to which this approach does indeed succeed in bringing clearly into focus the essence of that teaching. I shall suggest that though not without value, the appropriation of Hobbes' teaching to the terms of rational choice theory reaps a good deal less than Hobbes attempted to sow. There are a number of mundane senses in which this conclusion is at once obvious and trivial, all rooted in the fact that Hobbes, seminal thinker that he was, planted widely. To take the extreme, no one employing the conceptual framework of rational choice or game theory attempts to use this framework to say anything about Parts III ("Of a Christian Commonwealth") or IV ("Of the Kingdome of Darknesse") of Leviathan. If the conclusion that rational choice theory fails to illuminate fully Hobbes' lessons amounted to no more than this, we would be wasting our time. But the conclusion would be significant if it turned out that aspects of Hobbes' theory which rational choice theorists themselves choose to discuss purport to illuminate resisted assimilation. I shall argue that this is just the case, especially in regard to attempts to treat Hobbes' state of nature as an exemplar of a prisoners' dilemma situation. More importantly, the conclusion would take on even greater significance if it turned out that insofar as one specified and reflected upon the differences (underlying the, admitted, similarities) between Hobbes' understanding of the sociopolitical world and that offered by rational choice theory, one were led to question the coherence, cogency, and ultimately the adequacy, of rational choice theory itself as an attempt to make sense of that world.

Hobbes and Rational Choice Theory

In the two decades after the publication of A Theory of Justice, Rawls reframed certain aspects of his understanding of the nature of that theory, and also devoted greater attention to the question of the role of political philosophy itself in a democratic society. He now argued that his theory of justice could best be understood as a view that was “political, not metaphysical,” and that once this difference was understood, many criticisms of the theory would be shown to be misguided. In this chapter I argue that Rawls’ theory is not “political” in the senses he claims it to be, and indeed that it cannot be. Rawls’ idea of a “political” conception of justice which is neatly situated between and above the twin pitfalls of “metaphysical” and “modus vivendi” conceptions of justice is in some ways similar to the idea of neutrality about the good. Each notion functions to create the sense that liberalism stands as an ordering principle detached from and superior to the conflicting moral ideas at the heart of alternative political moralities. The temptation to think this way about the views they affirm is one that I counsel liberals to resist. That counsel, of course, is unsolicited.

Justice as Fairness: Political or Metaphysical?

Rawls’s controversial idea of public reason is often criticized for being exclusionary and unfair. Yet it is possible to read the idea of public reason as being largely innocuous, especially if one attends to all the qualifications and specifications of the idea that Rawls articulated. This essay pursues such a reading, by systematically considering each element of qualification that Rawls built into the idea of public reason. Considered together and in terms of their cumulative effect, they make the innocuous reading possible. My aim is not, however, to try to defend Rawls’s idea of public reason by claiming that it is innocuous, but to help clarify the ambiguous nature of the idea through this reading.

Patrick Neal

Papers

Liberalism and Its Discontents

Liberalism and the Communitarian Critique: A Guide for the Perplexed

Hobbes and Rational Choice Theory

Justice as Fairness: Political or Metaphysical?

Is public reason innocuous