Social and political philosophers with admirable writing styles

Should open w the caveat that I don’t read a lot of social and political philosophy these days, and I don’t read the relevant academic journals (though I used to occasionally), so others are better placed than I am to answer this. However, I recall reading a long time ago Benjamin Barber’s 1988 collection The Conquest of Politics and thinking it was well written. But if your student’s question is limited to living political philosophers writing currently, then this doesn’t fall in that category. (But you mentioned Brian Barry, who is no longer alive, so the criteria here are somewhat unclear.) G.A. Cohen, also deceased, wrote well, at least on the evidence of If You’re an Egalitarian, How Come You’re So Rich?, though I didn’t necessarily agree with a good deal of what he said. I haven’t read (the late) Charles Mills, but I would like to at some point.

In the category of living people, Walzer is almost always lucid and readable, though I certainly don’t always agree with him (in recent years my ratio of agreement with him has gone down quite a bit). Sandel (though I haven’t read a lot of him) usually writes well (again, I don’t necessarily agree with the substance). I think some of T. Pogge’s work is clear and accessible. Ditto Charles Beitz (e.g., his first book, Political Theory
and International Relations). Nancy Rosenblum’s Good Neighbors (2018) is well written, though its subject is not something that might appeal to everyone. (I haven’t read her book on political parties, which I think got more attention.)

Then there is political philosophy worth reading even if the style is nothing to write home about, but that would definitely be off-topic.

In addition to the those already suggested, I would add David Miller, and from an earlier generation, Joel Feinberg and HLA Hart. I think students also need to know that philosophical writing that displays some conspicuous writerly virtues can be poor philosophy. In very different ways, Berlin and Nozick fit that profile.

With the qualification that I’ve only read his work on immigration and refugees, and not his work on Nietzsche or Foucault, I’d mention David Owen (from Southampton – philosophy is rich in David Owens). His writing is clear, logically presented, and pleasant to read. It’s also appropriately forceful w/o becoming overly rhetorical – something that lots of writers fail at. Another who fits much of that same description is Joe Heath. I also almost always enjoy reading Jon Elster’s writing (perhaps especially impressive since English isn’t his native language) but I do sometimes feel like the prose is carrying me along a bit too fast for the argument, something which is perhaps not a virtue in a philosopher.

Interesting question – I can think of some whose writing style is ‘admirable’ in that it’s extremely clear, doesn’t hide anything, puts the best foot of the argument forward – that is, admirable political philosophy writing. Cecile Fabre and Simon Caney come to mind.

But I wouldn’t necessarily recommend reading their writing to someone who wasn’t already engaged with academic political philosophy. For that I’d probably only say Joseph Carens and Brian Barry – I regularly recommend The Ethics of Immigration to non-philosophers. Though in some ways that’s not really a question of writing style, as much as the choice of approach – there’s a lot more discussion of real world examples and practical implications, which is not exactly about aesthetic style.

Surely Robert Paul Wolff deserves mention.

Seconding Robert Paul Wolff at the top of my list.

Also a fan of Justine LaCroix (at least her Tocqueville21 stuff, haven’t read her books).

John Marenbon works more on history of philosophy but his work on medieval philosophers very much fits this, I seek it out mostly because I know it’ll be the most fun thing to read about medieval philosophy.

Moira Weigel, although that one might be more that I agree with the content.

Does the Marquis de Sade count?

(He’s clearly a social and political philospher. Opinions may very on his prose style).

Agree with Adam @14 about too-smooth prose, but re Rawls: wasn’t one of his influences to make writing in political philosophy worse, i.e. more turgid, more vaguely abstract? Of course he may have just been transmitting the virus from Kant.

Many sociologists seem to cultivate dullness and turgor as stylistic choices. Talcott Parsons had a monster writing block problem, but Comte, Halbwachs, Bourdieu, and many others don’t have that excuse. Perhaps for them, writing badly was a way of demonstrating they were scientists, not entertainers. I guess that makes reading them an exercise in asceticism.

There was an ancient critic who asserted that the two basic ways of writing well were to say something complicated in a simple way or to say something simple in a complicated way. Maybe in the modern version there are two ways of communicating ideas about society: you can convey something obvious in a sensational way or you can convey something very surprising in a sleep-inducing way. Unfortunately, many social scientists synthesize these alternatives by describing the obvious in the style of a financial accounting textbook.

There is an argument made somewhere (I forget where) either by Jacques Lacan or one of his followers, that for some types of material the writing style must be incomprehensible, because you wouldn’t be allowed to say it if everyone could understand what you were saying.

Compare: the common practise in nineteenth century works of writing the dirty bits in untranslated Latin (or Greek).

I’m a bit skeptical of Lacan, myself….