Summer Reading for Political Philosophy Students?

Do you want the obvious ones? Or do you mean papers people think are important but which don’t usually get listed?

Right, I was thinking that nothing is necessarily obvious (I imagine that CB and I would come up with very close to identical obvious lists, but others might diverge quite a bit).

I guess it just sneaks in at 28 years old, but “Home Style: House Members in Their Districts” is an amazing account of how house members really think and act.

Offhand, some suggestions:

Elizabeth Anderson, “What is the Point of Equality?” Ethics 109 (2) 1999.

G.A. Cohen, “On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice” Ethics 99 (4), 1989.
——, “Where the Action Is: On the Site of Distributive Justice” Phil & Pub Affairs 26 (1), 1997

Joshua Cohen, “Deliberation and Democratic Legitimacy” in Bohman & Rehg, Deliberative Democracy, MIT Press, 1997.
——, “Procedure and Substance in Deliberative Democracy,” in Bohman & Rehg (reading these two papers as twins).

Ronald Dworkin, “Equality of Resources” Phil & Pub Affairs 10 (2) 1981.

John Rawls, “Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical” Phil & Pub Affairs 14 (3) 1985.
——, “The Law of Peoples” Critical Inquiry 20 (1) 1993 (in lieu of the book).

T.M. Scanlon, “Preference and Urgency” J. Phil 72 (19) 1975 (more than 30 years ago, sure, but still worthwhile).
——, “Contractualism and Utilitarianism” in Sen & Williams, Utilitarianism and Beyond, Cambridge, 1982.

Amartya Sen, “Equality of What?” in McMurrin, Tanner Lectures on Human Values, Cambridge, 1980.
——, assorted other pieces on capabilities.

Charles Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition” in Gutmann, Multiculturalism and the Politics of Recognition, Princeton, 1992.

Jeremy Waldron, “Theoretical Foundations of Liberalism” in his Liberal Rights, Cambridge, 1992
——, “Judicial Review and the Conditions of Democracy” J. Pol Phil 6 (4), 1998.

To limit myself to just 2 readings (and assuming that someone doing a dissertation already has some basic knowledge of the field) I think the following two articles are must reads:

Allen Buchanan, ‘Justice as Reciprocity versus Subject-Centered Justice’, Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 19(3), 1990: 227-52.

Elizabeth Anderson, ‘What is the Point of Equality?’, Ethics, Vol. 109(2), 1999: 287-337.

Both are excellent articles and they cover two of the most important debates in the past 20 years of political philosophy– Hobbesian contractarianism vs neo-Kantianism; and luck egalitarianism.

Cheers,
Colin

What amazes me is that everything of significance in political philosophy over the past 30 years was written in English.

Makes me feel good.

As a companion to the previously mentioned Young piece, “The Five Faces of Oppression” The Philosophical Forum 19 270-290 (1988).

(in addition to several others mentioned)

“Why Sufers Bhould Be Fed” by Phillipe Van Parijis

Actually, I would have suggested Van Parijis’ book, Real Libertarianism: What (If anything) Justifies Capitalism? as well as the forthcoming disertation by Oxford grad student Karl Widerquist, but you asked for articles, and used the word “past”, which would exclude the articles that will come out from chapters of Widerquist’s disertation.

As a lowly graduate student, I wouldn’t presume to suggest anything specific, but almost none of the ‘must-reads’ mentioned so far involve a) political legitimacy or b) global justice, topics which seem to me (again, from rather limited evidence) to have generated a great deal of recent literature. Any suggestions on the ‘must-reads’ in these areas?

tis strange. I study political philosophy in France, and aside from Parfit, Rawls and Anderson, I haven’t read a single thing on this list.
So a question out of curiousity. What counts as political philosophy in the states? I’m doing a dissertation on Schmitt and Benjamin – does that get included in the discipline, or do I end up in cultural studies? :)
Nary will the two lanes meet…
(though the Van Parijis BIG stuff looks interesting, thanks for that).

On global justice:
1. Thomas Pogge, “Cosmopolitanism and Sovereignty”, in Ethics (1992), reprinted in World Hunger and Human Rights.

On the theory of justice:
2. Iris Marion Young, “Displacing the Distributive Paradigm,” (in her book, Justice and the Politics of Difference)

An extraordinarily deep and challenging paper:
3. Thomas Christiano, “The Incoherence of Hobbesian Justifications of the State,” American Philosophical Quarterly (1994?)

On the moral & theoretic significance of race/gender stratification in society and in the profession:
4. Charles W. Mills, “Do Black Men have a Moral Duty to Marry Black Women?” in Journal of Social Philosophy (1993?) (For a nice overview of the social ontology of race more generally, Mills’s “But What are you Really?”, in his book Blackness Visible, is very good.)

1. These should be read serially, as one piece. Agree or not, they are the touchstone for all following debates about feminist political theory:

“Feminism, Marxism, Method and the State: An Agenda for Theory.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 515(1983): 7.

“Feminism, Marxism, Method and the State: Toward Feminist Jurisprudence.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 635 (1983): 8.

2. Charles Lindblom, “The Market as Prison,” Journal of Politics, 1982. This is a great statement of hte potential tensions between market systems and self-governance, taking both markets and democratic institutions at their best. For grad student summer reading, you can’t beat it.

Your student might want to try these for size:

Quentin Skinner, “The Idea of Negative Liberty: Philosophical and Historical Perspectives” in Richard Rorty et al (ed.), Philosophy in History (1984)

Skinner, “The Republican Ideal of Political Liberty” in Bock, Skinner and Viroli (eds.), Machiavelli and Republicanism (1990)

Raymond Geuss, “Nietzsche and Genealogy” in his Morality, Culture, and History: Essays on German Philosophy (1999)

Michel Foucault, “What is Enlightenment” in Paul Rabinow (ed.), The Foucault Reader (1984)

Since I read in this area, would you post a beginners list also? It is difficult to find out the respected, as opposed to the popularized, works. I’m not in the scholastic world.
Thanks Cath

Many potential articles. To cover the Foucault side of things, What is Enlightenment would be a good beginning. Also: Thomas McCarthy, “The Critique of Impure Reason: Foucault and the Frankfurt School,” (Political Theory 18, no. 3 (August 1990): 437-469).

“Liberalism of Fear” by Judith Shklar is very interesting; I believe it can be found in multiple sources, including Political thought and political thinkers / Judith N. Shklar ; edited by Stanley Hoffmann. William Galston’s “Expressive Liberty, Moral Pluralism, Political Pluralism: Three sources of Liberal Theory” provides a good overview of his thought, at least as expressed in his later book Liberal Pluralism; that is in the William and Mary Law Review, number 41, I think.

Moral Conflict and Political Consensus (Ethics 1990) by Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson gives a nice overview of some of the features of their form of deliberative democracy. I second the recommendation of Nagel’s similarly titled “Moral Conflict and POlitical Legitimacy” Jeremy Waldron’s “Theoretical Fondations of Liberalism” is a nice overview of just what the hell a liberal might be. And, to round out a list that could conceivably grow, “Should Political Philosophy be Done Without Metaphysics?” by Jean Hampton.

Top Ten Queer Theory Papers (if QT is politics)

Morrison, Margaret “Pedagogical Help in Queer Theory” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies – Volume 11, Number 2, 2005, pp. 316-318

R. Wiegman. “”Object Lessons: Men, Masculinity, and the Sign of ‘Women'”.” SIGNS 26:2 (Winter, 2001): 355-388.

Jon Adams (U. Montana), “Critiquing the Cartoon Caricature: Disney, Drag and the Proliferation and Commdification of Queer Negativity” (1995) (Queer Frontiers Conference, U. Southern California)

Jonathan Alexander (U. Southern Colorado), “Hypertext and Queer Theory” (1997) (Texas Tech U.)

Dana HellerAnxieties of Affluence: Movements, Market Sectors, and Lesbian Feminist Generation(s) Surfaces Vol. VII.111 (v.1.0A – 27/06/1997

Getting the Warhol We Deserve Douglas Crimp (here:http://www.rochester.edu/in_visible_culture/issue1/crimp/crimp.html)

http://www2.kenyon.edu/Depts/WMNS/Projects/Porteousd/sedgwick.htm
Eve Sedgewick “Gosh, Boy George, you must be awfully secure in your masculinity!”

Judith Butler The Uses of Equality. In Diacritics 27/1. Spring 1997, pp. 3-12.

Glenda M. Russell, Subtle Stereotyping: The Media, Homosexuality, and the Priest Sexual Abuse Scandal Ph.D. IGLSS

MV Bladgett Income Inflation: The Myth of Affluence among Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Americans Ibid

Why only articles, not chapters of books, or collections? Or ‘selections’ from books, [especially Habermas]?

For SamChevre, perhaps (the book) Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory Donald Green and Ian Shapiro It comes in fairly self-contained chapters, and there are not too many books with footnotes that are laugh-out-loud dry wit.

I second anything by A. John Simmons and much by Alan Buchanan especially for foundations of the recent global justice work. Add in something by Martha Nussbaum, but I’m not sure which would be best.

Finally, too old by about 13 years but a slim book containing three essays, long out of print but brilliant A Critique of Pure Tolerance by Robert Paul Wolff, Barrington Moore, Herbert Marcuse. Should be required reading for early grad students because the first two essays raise so many of the questions of the citizenship/legitimacy and communitarian debates of the 1990-2000’s, and then give much better answers than many more current works.

I wouldn’t be so presumptuous as to claim these are ‘must reads’, but some articles I’ve enjoyed (more or less off the top of my head, but copied from my thesis bibliography/undergrad reading list:

D. Parfit (1991) ‘Equality of Priority?’ in (1997) Ratio (new series) 10:3 or A. Williams and M. Clayton (eds.) (2000) The Ideal of Equality

R. Dworkin (1981) ‘What is Equality?’ Parts 1 (welfare) and 2 (resources) Philosophy and Public Affairs 10 (reprinted as chs. 1-2 of his (2000) Sovereign Virtue)

D. Estlund (1997) ‘Beyond Fairness and Deliberation: The Epistemic Dimension of Democratic Authority’ in J. Bohman and W. Rehg (eds.) (1997) Deliberative Democracy: Essays on reason and politics

J. Waldron (1990) ‘Rights and Majorities: Rousseau Revisited’ in J. Waldron (1993) Liberal Rights: Collected Papers 1981–1991 and in J. Chapman and A. Wertheimer (eds.) (1990) NOMOS XXXII: Majorities and minorities

R. Dworkin ‘Do we have a Right to Pornography?’ in his (1977) A Matter of Principle. Mostly reprinted in J. Waldron (ed) (1984) Theories of Rights as ‘Rights as Trumps’

G. Klosko (1987) ‘Presumptive Benefit, Fairness, and Political Obligation’ Philosophy & Public Affairs 16:3

N. Fraser (1995) ‘From Redistribution to Recognition?’ in New Left Review 212 (http://www.newleftreview.net/IssueI208.asp?Article=04) or her (1997) Justice Interruptus or A. Phillips (1998) Feminism and Politics

F. M. Kamm (1985) ‘Equal Treatment and Equal Chances’ Philosophy & Public Affairs 14:2 177-194

B. Chapman (1998) ‘More Easily Done than Said: Rules, Reason and Rational Social Choice’ Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 18 293-330

S. Freeman (1994) ‘Utilitarianism, Deontology, and the Priority of Right’ Philosophy and Public Affairs 23:4 313-349

Bernard Williams also has a paper called “The Liberalism of Fear,” partly in honour of Shklar, in his posthumously-published collection In the Beginning Was the Deed — along with many other outstanding papers in (loosely speaking) political philosophy.

G A Cohen’s “Robert Nozick and Wilt Chamberlain” (Erkenntnis 11) was an object-lesson in how to shift the argumentative centre of gravity for me as a graduate student.

While I agree about the importance re: Rawls, Scanlon, etc (who I would vote for as well), I’ve noticed a couple curious absences:

H.L.A. Hart, The Concept of Law, 2d Edition (with postscript). 1994

Joseph Raz, The Authority of Law: Essays on Law & Morality. 1979

Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom. 1986

R.A. Duff, Trials & Punishments. 1986

Dudley Knowles, Hegel and the Philosophy of Right. 2002.

Martha C. Nussbaum, Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach

Leif Wenar, “Human Rights” Phil & Pub Aff 2005

Leif Wenar, “The Unity of Rawls’s Work” Journal of Moral Philosophy 2004

Douglas Husak, “Why Punish the Deserving?” Nous 1992

Thanks Harry for letting me propose a couple of papers. Note that these are somewhat economics-heavy, due to my background—there may be papers on related subjects that are in more political-philosophy language. Also, they are slightly older than requested—but everything newer assumes you are fairly familiar with these papers. These are book chapters, but each stands quite well on its own. As a non-academic, I don’t have easy access to most papers and journal articles.

James Buchanan, The Publicness of Political Decisions.
Available here
From The Demand and Supply of Public Goods, 1968

James Buchanan, Pressure Groups, Special Interests, and the Constitution
Available here
From The Calculus of Consent, 1962

And Vivian, I agree with you—if you want a thorough grounding in Public Choice Theory, you need to read at least three books, of which Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory is one. The other two would be the reply to Pathologies…, The Rational Choice Controversy, and the path-breaking The Calculus of Consent.

I think we’ve covered nearly everything in Waldron’s Liberal Rights, but two more from him:

1. ‘Locke, Toleration, and the Rationality of Persecution,’ reprinted in Liberal Rights (1993), is probably the best article on the subject in the last 30 years (Waldron’s recents efforts notwithstanding).

2. ‘What Plato Would Allow,’ in NOMOS XXXVII: Theory and Practice (1995)

I studied political theory at two Straussian departments and never ran into any of these articles. Not a single one. Life is short, too short to read Derek Parfit, whoever that is.

Jacob Levy (and others) raise an important & interesting point, I think. Here’s a request to Harry (or other CT’ers) – let’s have thread for a list of political theory readings, and see what the differences are between this list and that.

As a political theorist within poli sci, I lean strongly towards what has been described as “political philosophy.” This is largely because my research and reading deals mostly with Rawls and related issues. While I teach full-time, I am also an early doctoral student. This may not relate to the original question (which has been helpful), but should a Rawlsian flee poli-sci for philosophy?

let’s have thread for a list of political theory readings, and see what the differences are between this list and that.

The relevant differences between political theorists and political philosophers are summarized here, with sociologists and economists thrown in as a bonus.

matt,
Thanks. Sounds like I do need to search it out and read it, as self-ownership, or least some version of it, is at the core of left-libertarianism as well. If hopeless utopianism is your objection to reading left-libertarianism, I would suggest reading Van Parijis and keeping an eye out for the upcoming work of Karl Widerquist. Their works are no more utopian than, say, John Rawls’. (Although I am interested in what meets your criteria in political philosophy for NOT being hopelessly utopian. Has any actual society attempted to build itaelf on Rawls’ principles? Does any appear likely to in the forseeable future?)

For all I know, not being a philosopher — narrowly understood as a scholar with a PhD in philosophy — the distinction between political philosophy and political theory may be completely unproblematic for philosophers. From the point of view of those in American political science, though, making that distinction has at least since the time of the behavioralists (late 1940s-late 1960s) been an institutional-political move. It was a way to distinguish those who did “science” (the theorists) from those who didn’t (the philosophers) — used that way by behavioralists and those who took their places as the dominant forces in political science, the quantitative-empiricists and the rational-choice/formal theorists, and also by those like Leo Strauss and Sheldon Wolin who wanted nothing to do with science.

For most working in political inquiry outside those camps, there doesn’t seem to be any reason to distinguish between political theory and philosophy, nor any obvious distinguishing characteristics that aren’t controversial or ambiguous. For myself, I use the terms interchangeably to describe my scholarship.

I tend to agree with Josh and Maurice on the theory/philosophy distinction. A few possible entries for “theory not philosophy” articles of significance:

Haraway, “Cyborg Manifesto”

Wolin, “Fugitive Democracy”

DiStefano, “Autonomy in Light of Difference”

Honig, “Ruth, the Model Emigree: Mourning and the Symbolic Politics of Immigration”

Isaac, “Oases in the Desert: Hannah Arendt on Democratic Politics”

etc. It seems to me the theory/philosophy divide doesn’t map neatly onto disciplinary boundaries, although theorist-not-philosophers don’t tend to be found in research oriented philosophy departments too much.

Identification tests for theorist-not-philosophers: When assessing major figures in the discipline, they tend to think Arendt and Wolin are in the same league as Rawls. They probably don’t read Cohen.

For philosophers-not-theorists: They are prone to complain that half the stuff in Political Theory is nonsense these days.

Josh, I think that’s right. I don’t feel at all good about my list of theory articles. I wouldn’t actually suggest every theorist should read them. All philosophers, however (and at least most theorists) should definitely read Anderson’s Equality article, as well as Dworkin, Parfit, and a few others discussed above.

I’d have thought of David Miller as a real boundary crossing figure here. At least one of his students, whose name slipped my mind (he wrote a book that contained a very nice discussion of essentially contested concepts about 10 years ago) came across as rather clearly a political philosopher to me. I see how Miller can be read as a theorist, but I suppose since the most philosophy-esque and least theory-ish chapter of my dissertation is on David Miller, I see him as more of a philosopher. Not compared to Cohen and Raz, of course.

Matt and Decnavda,

If you’re looking for criticism specifically of left-libertarianism, I suggest:

Fried, B. H. (2004). “Left-Libertarianism: A Review Essay.” Philosophy and Public Affairs. 32 (1).

And the reply by:

Vallentyne, P., H. Steiner and M. Otsuka (2005). “Why Left-Libertarianism is Not Incoherent, Indeterminate, or Irrelevant.” Philosophy and Public Affairs. 33 (2): 201-215.

The Anderson article Matt mentioned touches on at least one left-libertarian, Van Parijs. As much as I think she misses the point of PVP and others, I have to admit she has a point. I’ll have to look at the Freeman article.

For an interesting criticism that can be applied to both left- and right-libertarianism, see:

Kagan, S. (1994). “The Argument From Liberty.” In Harm’s Way: Essays in Honor of Joel Feinberg. J. L. Coleman and A. Buchanan, Eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 16-41.

In this article, Kagan talks as if right-libertarianism is the only kind of libertarianism. I’ve so far looked at it as a criticism of right-libertarianism without worrying too much about its potential application to left-libertarianism. But I’m aware that I should think about it more broadly.

Out of a general curiousity about contrarians, are any of these articles opposed to or sceptical of equality, democracy and human rights?

mouse, I’m with you. I’m interested in the distinction as an sociological phenomenon within academia, both as perceived and practiced.

I think Pettit gets left out of this discussion for the same reason Kymlicka does–he is more book oriented.

Good point on Elster: The Market and the Forum is an important article, and one could make a strong case for inclusion. I’m sure he’s written other important stuff, I don’t really keep up with his work.

With all due respect to professor Levy, isn’t it time to break free of the “political theory” vs. “political philosophy” lines?

With all due respect to rhetorical flourishes, either it was always time, or it still isn’t! What’s suddenly new to make it time?

I agree that the rough methodological or tempermental theory-philosophy distinction doesn’t perfectly track poli sci/ philosophy appointments. It does so particularly badly for people with British or British-derived (i.e. Australian) training– Waldron, Pettit. And there important ways in which normative, non-intellectual-historical, Anglo-American theorists have more in common with philosophers than they have in common with even their colleagues in political theory, to say nothing of their colleagues in political science.

But I don’t think that means the distinction does no work. I’m at a conference now where the distinction is resurfacing in spades– what arguments, and what kinds of arguments, seem important and compelling to people does depend on something like a theory-philosophy distinction. Even among non-intellectual-historian, non-continental, normative people, there remains a real difference between people who are likely to be persuaded by G.A. Cohen’s rigor and those who are likely to be drawn in by Michael Walzer’s richness, those who are likely to find Parfit or Putnam important and those who are likely to find Kateb or Shklar important, those who are drawn to ethics or metaethics as a court of appeal and those who are drawn to social science as a court of appeal, those worried about agent-neutrality and those worried about decision procedures.

The ASPLP remains committed to three-discipline parity among legal folks, political philosophers, and political theorists– and I remain struck by the wisdom of that, conference after conference, even though the conferences tend to attract people who cross boundaries and appointments.

“Time to break free?” I don’t feel chained down by the distinction– it’s not as though I don’t read work by political philosophers or hope that they’ll read mine. It’s not even the kind of distinction that’s administratively relevant, since the hiring units are different departments. If you feel chained down by the distinction, and are eager to free yourself from some imagined Straussian taint, call yourself a philosopher (and see whether philosophers will recognize you as such, since you’ll have sacrificed graduate training in the philosophy core for graduate training in empirical fields). I draw the distinction mainly to provide advice about choosing graduate programs, but am also recurrently struck by it in research-academic life.

I’ll simply add a tag to my last post: a further difference might be that political theorists share greater concerns with the history of political thought than most political philosophers. I have tried to change our Politics programme, but in essence we offer 7 modules pertaining to the history of political thought and only 2-3 on contemporary political philosophy.

For those who have jstor this quick review by Harvey Mansfield gives a nice overview of the history of political theory in the U.S.

http://www.jstor.org/view/00346705/ap050226/05a00210/0?searchUrl=http%3a//www.jstor.org/search/BasicResults%3fhp%3d25%26si%3d1%26Query%3dpolitical%2btheory%2bhegel%2bmansfield&frame=noframe&currentResult=00346705%2bap050226%2b05a00210%2b0%2c0F&userID=8da15319@georgetown.edu/01cc99333ccdab10ac22f0b77&dpi=3&config=jstor

For those who don’t the basic idea seems to be that political theory came to the U.S. as a Hegelian history of the concept of the state (Staatslehre) and turned into the history of political philosophy.

Harry — who’s that? What was his PhD? Us young’uns need role models…

I’m guessing it’s that economist who wrote that great critique of Nagel? AJ Julius?