Volume 36, Number 1 · February 2, 1989
Flight from Philosophy
By Michael Walzer
The Conquest of Politics: Liberal Philosophy in Democratic Times
by Benjamin Barber
Princeton University Press, 220 pp., $25.00
In 1962, Bernard Crick, more recently the biographer of Orwell, published a short book called In Defense of Politics.[1] Crick's book was a high-spirited celebration of politics in the form of a polemic against a host of enemies, some of them now long forgotten: social engineers and technocrats, political scientists such as Harold Lasswell who actually believed in a science of politics, Marxists who aimed to replace the 'government of men' with the 'administration of things,' Rousseauian democrats and nationalists aspiring to rule in accordance with a 'general will.' All these people, Crick argued, were the enemies of the political virtues he respected. His was a liberal (Madisonian, Tocquevillian) list of virtues—prudence, conciliation, compromise, variety, adaptability, liveliness. What Crick meant to celebrate was the everyday business of politics, peaceful negotiation among conflicting interests. When this worked, he argued, it was a very good thing indeed, and anyone who disparaged it, who promised a holiday from negotiation and interests (or, worse, a millennium) was to be counted as an enemy.
Review, 4091 words
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