The Radical Critique Of Liberalism: In Memory Of A Vision (anamnesis)
by Toula Nicolacopoulos /
2008 / English / PDF
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Despite political theorists' repeated attempts to demonstrate their
incoherence, liberal values appear to have withstood the test of
time. Indeed, engagement with them has become the meeting point of
the different political philosophical traditions. But should
radical critique justifiably become a thing of the past? Should
political philosophy now be conducted in the light of the triumph
of liberalism? These are the wider questions that the book takes up
in an attempt to demonstrate the intellectual power of systemic
critique in the tradition of Hegel. Working through the theories of
prominent liberal theorists, John Rawls, Jeremy Waldron, Charles
Larmore and Will Kymlicka, the author demonstrates that an adequate
appreciation of the deep structural flaws of liberal theory
presupposes the application of critical reconstructionism, a
philosophical methodology that has the power to reveal the systemic
interconnections within and between the varieties of liberal
inquiring practices. In the absence of such a methodology
liberalism's radically aspiring critics, whether communitarian,
feminist, discourse ethicist, post-Marxist or postcolonial, have
yet to trace the individualist commitment of liberal theory back to
its source in liberal inquiring practices.
Despite political theorists' repeated attempts to demonstrate their
incoherence, liberal values appear to have withstood the test of
time. Indeed, engagement with them has become the meeting point of
the different political philosophical traditions. But should
radical critique justifiably become a thing of the past? Should
political philosophy now be conducted in the light of the triumph
of liberalism? These are the wider questions that the book takes up
in an attempt to demonstrate the intellectual power of systemic
critique in the tradition of Hegel. Working through the theories of
prominent liberal theorists, John Rawls, Jeremy Waldron, Charles
Larmore and Will Kymlicka, the author demonstrates that an adequate
appreciation of the deep structural flaws of liberal theory
presupposes the application of critical reconstructionism, a
philosophical methodology that has the power to reveal the systemic
interconnections within and between the varieties of liberal
inquiring practices. In the absence of such a methodology
liberalism's radically aspiring critics, whether communitarian,
feminist, discourse ethicist, post-Marxist or postcolonial, have
yet to trace the individualist commitment of liberal theory back to
its source in liberal inquiring practices.