This volume is a collection of selected works by Alan Ryan, many of which have appeared in edited volumes, and covering the span of his career. The essays examine contributions—both supportive and critical—to the development of modern liberalism from the seventeenth through twentieth centuries, featuring Hobbes, Locke, Mill, and Dewey yet including several others such as Rousseau, Hegel, Marx, and Popper. One of the strengths of the volume is Ryan's examination of liberalism as an intellectual and moral outlook, a set of core and contested concepts as well as a political culture with important psychological and sociological requirements. Another is his ability to dissect distinct lines of thought within liberalism and utilitarianism, providing analytical clarity and extending our grasp of the resources within these schools of thought. Because the selections were written over forty years, the volume scans some scholarly and political concerns during that period. Participatory democracy, communitarianism, identity politics, and republican thought appear in passing, while C. B. Macpherson's The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism and Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia are directly engaged, as is the subject of state violence (death penalty, nuclear strike capability, state terrorism).

Organized thematically, the book investigates essential liberal concepts: freedom, individualism (epistemologically, politically, and psychologically), rights, representation, rationality (in social science and civil service), work and property. It often does so through comparative analyses with utilitarianism, such that the volume evaluates both traditions while exposing their commensurabilities and differences. Those seeking a focus on religion, toleration, or the idea of state neutrality will be disappointed, and some parts of the volume are more cohesive than others (e.g., “Liberalism in America” cobbles pieces on Tocqueville and Rawls with several on Dewey). Neither of these points, however, detracts from the breadth, depth, and insight of the research in this book. The essays are varied in terms of methodology. Textual exegesis, conceptual analysis, and contextual and biographical studies are interspersed among chapters. Within chapters, Ryan often refers to authors other than those under scrutiny to illuminate his interpretations. For instance, Mill, Russell, and Wittgenstein clarify aspects of Hobbes (chapter 10); Locke, Rousseau, Kant, and Hume frame Hegel's conceptions of work and ownership (chapter 28).

Such a collection of one author's writings conveys his scholarly temperament and style. A sense of inquiry pervades Ryan's work. The reader perceives his probing spirit through the astute analyses. Although his aims, approaches, and arguments are always clearly articulated, he proceeds by concisely proffering more than one interpretation of the subject at hand. For instance, may we meaningfully speak of individual judgment in civil society in Hobbes? On the spectrum from the adequacy of outward obedience to the importance of inner unity, where does Hobbes stand? The sovereign defines just and unjust, but does he thus alter our views of good and bad, and if so, how? Ryan fans out possible views en route to defending his position. The law propounded by the sovereign may modify my conception of the good to (1) include instrumental goods; (2) produce emergent intrinsic goods, such as keeping faith with friends, owing not to the sovereign's decree directly but to the consequences of civil society; (3) accord entirely with his mind and power, effectively extinguishing any space for individual thought. Given Hobbes's emphasis on definitions rather than associations of ideas, he does not, Ryan argues, expect the sovereign to colonize us fully. Hobbes grants individuals intellectual space, although for epistemological rather than moral reasons. In this case and throughout the book, Ryan in a way welcomes readers to the discussion rather than trying, dogmatically, to compel them to comply. He shares commitments to inquiry and debate with Mill and Dewey, on whom he has written extensively.

As noted above, Ryan compares liberalism and utilitarianism on a variety of subjects. As always, he deftly disentangles strands of thought, revealing complexity that might otherwise remain obscured. His appreciation for complexity and precision seems especially important because he pairs liberal inclinations with utilitarian arguments. While he identifies elements of compatibility between liberal and utilitarian views, his goal is not make them congruent. In his voice, they engage one another fruitfully but must be given their intellectual due. For instance, Ryan compares defenses of democracy based on rights versus utility through an analysis of Rousseau and Mill. The standard account that liberals care about legitimacy while utilitarians favor whatever type of government promotes the general welfare, regardless of concerns about rights, is seen to be simplistic, as this chapter explicates the ways in which the two authors’ theories defy easy categorization. Rousseau endorses democracy given his emphasis on consent as the basis of legitimate authority, yet he grants that republican governments may more securely pursue the general will, suggesting a utilitarian cast of mind. Mill cannot be a principled democrat given his utilitarian beliefs and enthusiasm for elite/aristocratic public administration, yet, Ryan argues, he nonetheless finds democracy to be distinctively legitimate because it satisfies and promotes the needs of fully developed, free, and self-respecting people, including open debate.

In this case and others, the force of Ryan's utilitarian sympathies depends upon a liberal culture, which, I think, he would admit. He is, as noted above, psychologically as well as conceptually attuned. Conceptual tensions are not just scholarly curiosities, they make us flinch (a word that Ryan uses repeatedly to good purpose). One could argue that utilitarianism that presupposes a sense of justice has ceded much of its potential critical power. The last part of the volume, however, casts that judgment in doubt. “Work, Ownership, Freedom, and Self-Realization” includes analyses that detach liberty from capitalism, questioning liberalism's connection between self-ownership and private property, and explain how security, motivation, innovation, and competition can be achieved in socialist terms. I focus here on an essay in this section that prods liberal conceptions of self-ownership and contract via a challenge to utilitarianism. Would utilitarianism permit slavery? Can it argue against it? Ryan's argument is interesting. Because utilitarians do not consider persons to own themselves, neither can they fully alienate themselves, although they can commit their labor. Unlike liberals, for whom contracts are sacred, a utilitarian government, at least in Mill's lights, would see contracts, like rights, as social conventions intended to enhance freedom. Consequently, the utility of enforcing promises would be laid against the possibility of the slave's fully curtailed future choices. One can, in utilitarianism, enslave oneself, but the government would not enforce an owner's claim, and a slave who is always in effect free to go is not actually a slave. Slavery is thus squelched by utilitarianism.

While my brief renditions of these chapters do not do justice to Ryan's more sophisticated arguments, they provide a sample of the scope and substance of this volume. With these and other works, Ryan himself has certainly contributed to the making of modern liberal and utilitarian thought. Scholars who study these subjects in either historical or contemporary variants will welcome this collection of his stimulating interpretations.