On Political Means and Social Ends

The moral and political arguments, judgements and commitments of Britain's outstanding radical philosopher.

The moral and political arguments, judgements and commitments of Britain''s outstanding radical philosopher.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 wret