Liberal Rights : Collected Papers 1981-1991 (Cambridge Studies in Philosophy and Public Policy)

Rating:
Summary: A modern classic
Review: "Homelessness and the issue of freedom," chapter 13 in the collection, is among the finest essays concerning the distinction between "positive" and "negative" approaches to freedom, a distinction often misusedby partisans of the New Right; in a similar vein, "Welfare and the images of charity," chapter 10, situates the provision of social welfare in the liberal tradition by looking upon it as essential to the noninitiation of force and the preservation of public order. Other chapters interrogate the Rawls's Difference Principle and the conflict between liberal rights and democratic majoritarianism. Though my own politics are quite different, I suspect, from Waldron's, I found this collection compelling and often convincing.

Rating:
Summary: A modern classic
Review: "Homelessness and the issue of freedom," chapter 13 in the collection, is among the finest essays concerning the distinction between "positive" and "negative" approaches to freedom, a distinction often misusedby partisans of the New Right; in a similar vein, "Welfare and the images of charity," chapter 10, situates the provision of social welfare in the liberal tradition by looking upon it as essential to the noninitiation of force and the preservation of public order. Other chapters interrogate the Rawls's Difference Principle and the conflict between liberal rights and democratic majoritarianism. Though my own politics are quite different, I suspect, from Waldron's, I found this collection compelling and often convincing.