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Moral Membership in a Postliberal State

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MichaelWalzer, Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality. New York: Basic Books, 1983, 345 pp.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Nancy L. Rosenblum
Nancy L. Rosenblum
Affiliation:
Brown University
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Abstract

This review article interprets Michael Walzer's Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality as a radical argument for community. It demonstrates the continuity between this volume, in which the particular community and its own moral understanding is the foundation of justice, and Walzer's study of international relations in terms of universal human rights m Just and Unjust Wars. It questions the appropriateness of Walzer's conception of community, of membership, and of shared moral understanding for heterogeneous and differentiated modern societies, and in particular for the United States. It defends liberalism, with its indirect market relations and legal formalism, against Walzer's communitarian challenge, with its substantive agreement among members about the meaning, value, and distribution of goods.

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Type
Review Articles
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World Politics , Volume 36 , Issue 4 , July 1984, pp. 581 - 596
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1984

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References

1 Dworkin, Ronald emphasizes the fundamental question in his review, “To Each His Own,” The New York. Review of Books, April 14, 1983, 4–6.Google Scholar See, too, the exchange with Walzer, in The New York Review of Books, July 21, 1983, 43–46.Google Scholar

2 Walzer, Michael, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations (New York: Basic Books, 1977)Google Scholar; Bull, Hedley, “Recapturing the Just War for Political Theory,” World Politics 31 (July 1979), 588–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 For social science views see “Community,” in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, Vol. III (New York: Macmillan, 1968), 157ff.

4 Huntington, , American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981).Google Scholar

5 For example, Dahl, Robert A., a political scientist of pluralism, writes about “dispersed inequalities.” Polyarchy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971), 87.Google Scholar

6 Hirschman, , Shifting Involvements (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982).Google Scholar

7 Eliot, George, Middlemarch (New York: Penguin, 1982), 196.Google Scholar

8 Walzer, Michael, Obligations: Essays on Disobedience, War, and Citizenship (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970), 188.Google Scholar

9 See, for instance, Sandel, Michael, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982)Google Scholar, and Sandel's, review of Spheres of Justice, in The New York Times Book Review, April 24, 1983, 1.Google Scholar