On Political Means and Social Ends

What society should we have, and what can we do 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. Honderich goes on to consider the culmination of liberal thinking in John Rawls's A Theory of Justice. He 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. Honderich argues for another political and social morality -- the generosity and fellow-feeling of the Principle of Humanity.

Another chapter considers hierarchic democracy and the necessity of mass civil disobedience. The book ends with an essay that adds to Honderich's earlier work, After the Terror, particularly in its discussion of the Palestinians'moral right of their resistance.