Research Catalog

Title

On political means and social ends / Ted Honderich.

Author

Honderich, Ted.

Publication

Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, ©2003.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

vii, 182 pages; 25 cm

Summary

"What society ought we to have, and what can we do to try to get it? This book sets out to answer these questions beginning with a new essay on the foundation of a liberalism of means and ends. John Stuart Mill's On Liberty. It goes on to consider the culmination of liberal thinking in John Rawls' A Theory of Justice. It argues that liberalism is good intentions not carried forward into rational commitment. Conservatism, in its past and its present guises, is also made clear in its reality. So too is the leftism of the past, including G.A. Cohen's attempt to save Karl Marx's theory of history. Both are discarded." "The book argues for another political and social morality - the generosity and fellow-feeling of the Principle of Humanity. It is a consequentialist rather than a mysterious morality, and its essential idea is that we should take rational steps to rescue the badly off from lives of wretchedness and other distress. This is the commitment that led to Ted Honderich's human and passionate response to 9/11. After the Terror - the most controversial book of serious philosophy published in Britain since A.J. Ayer's Language, Truth and Logic in 1936." "A further chapter considers hierarchic democracy - the democracy we have as distinct from the democracy we think we have - and the necessity of mass civil disobedience. The book ends with a paper that adds to the thinking of After the Terror particularly on the moral right of the Palestinians to their resistance."--Jacket.

Subject

• Political sociology
• Political science > Philosophy
• Political ethics
• Politieke filosofie

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

John Stuart Mill's On liberty, and a question about liberalism -- Conservatism, its distinctions, and its rationale -- Trying to save Marx's theory of history, by teleology, and failing -- The contract argument in a theory of justice -- The principle of humanity -- Consequentialism, moralities of concern, and selfishness -- Hierarchic democracy and the necessity of mass civil disobedience and non-co-operation -- After the terror : a book and further thoughts.

ISBN

• 0748618406
• 9780748618408

LCCN

2004478530

OCLC

• ocm52738107
• 52738107
• SCSB-1323387

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library