Descripciones mejoradas de Syndetics:

Contemporary liberal thinkers commonly suppose that there is something in principle unjust about the legal prohibition of putatively victimless immoralities. Against the prevailing liberal view, Robert P. George defends the proposition that `moral laws' can play a legitimate, if subsidiary, role in preserving the `moral ecology' of the cultural environment in which people make the morally significant choices by which they form their characters and influence, for good or ill, the moral lives of others. George shows that a defence of morals legislation is fully compatible with a `pluralistic perfectionist' political theory of civil liberties and public morality.

Reseñas proporcionadas por Syndetics

CHOICE Review

George defends the principle that laws can be used to help make people virtuous dialectically, by criticizing the arguments of prominent liberal theorists who have opposed this view. These include Ronald Dworkin, John Rawls, and Joseph Raz, though George pays little attention to Rawls's important recent argument, based on the irreducible pluralism of liberal societies. George's task is two sided: first, to show that morals laws are permissible as long as the morality they promote is true; and then, to develop the true moral principles that should ground the relevant laws. The second stage is unavoidable, because "the truth of a putative moral obligation is a necessary ... condition of the legitimacy of its legal enforcement." But aside from the final chapter which sketches a "pluralist perfectionist" moral view, George confines attention to the former and far less controversial task, postponing full consideration of the latter for a future work. George is an accomplished controversialist; his arguments are always clear, sophisticated, and highly interesting. Making Men Moral deserves the attention of moral, political, and legal theorists. But a final assessment of George's project must wait upon more sustained discussion of its second part. Recommended for advanced undergraduates and above. G. Klosko; University of Virginia

Notas de autor provistas por Syndetics

Robert P. George, Associate Professor of Politics, Princeton University