Some Reflections on Michael Walzer's Politics and Passion

Abstract

Michael Walzer's new book, Politics and Passion, is the attempt of a major liberal political theorist to modify the essentially triumphalist individualist thrust of much of liberalism. It is written in the spirit of the later work of John Rawls, who tried to listen to the communitarian critique of liberalism and then incorporate it in his more modest version of liberalism instead of letting it coopt liberalism. That effort, though, is much more carefully and extensively worked out by Walzer than by Rawls. Nevertheless, Walzer cannot accept any central normative role for religion in the life of a liberal polity, especially for the type of family-central, traditional community presented by Judaism and Christianity. Since most communitarians are religious, it is arguable whether they can accept the political role religion have been assigned in the liberal project by Walzer. Indeed, it can be argued that Walzer, like almost all liberals, assigns a much too ultimate role for freedom, making it the end of liberal striving and seeing it in opposition to and escape from more traditional forms of social life. It is thus argued that the individual freedom Walzer sees as transcending (although never completely) familial-religious community can be better achieved there, functioning more modestly and realistically as one of the best means to the common good and, therefore, not in opposition to it.