Liberalism, Perfectionism, and Restraint.(Review) (book review)

Perspectives on Political Science, June, 1999 by CARSTENS, R.W.

Wall, Steven Liberalism, Perfectionism, and Restraint Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 244 pp., $54.95, ISBN 0-521-62411-8 Publication Date: July 1998

In this very fine but very difficult book, Steven Wall, an adjunct assistant professor of political science at Baruch College, City University of New York, presents and defends the philosophical arguments of perfectionist political morality and its logical relationship to contemporary liberalism. Perfectionism, he writes, is the view that "political authorities should take an active role in creating and maintaining social conditions that best enable their subjects to lead valuable and worthwhile lives" (8). That is to say, perfectionism depends on a view of reality in which some ideals of human...

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