Book Review: Other Areas: Moralism: A Study of a Vice

AuthorEdward Hall
Date01 May 2013
DOI10.1111/1478-9302.12016_31
Published date01 May 2013
Subject MatterBook Review
and many others. Rather than offer solely a philosophi-
cal reading of these ideas, Jewish Memory enriches its
interpretation with the analysis of signif‌icant political
events and actions (including consideration of their
ideational signif‌icance). These include the destruction
of the Jewish literary heritage by the Nazis, the post-
war initiative of the Commission for European Jewish
Cultural Reconstruction (including Arendt’s involve-
ment as its research director) and the Jewish intellectual
involvement in the formation of the UN Declaration
against Genocide. A particularly noteworthy aspect of
Sznaider’s study is the inclusion of writings of and
debates among (often less quoted) East European Jews,
such as the theorist of the notion of genocide Raphael
Lemkin, the historian Simon Dubnow and the writer
and artist Bruno Schulz.
This book will be of interest to students of Jewish
political thought and, in particular, researchers of
Hannah Arendt’s intellectual legacy, as well as those
interested in the historical formation and contempo-
rary politics of the cosmopolitan idea.
Magdalena Zolkos
(University of Western Sydney)
Pluralism and Liberal Politics by Robert B.
Talisse. Abingdon: Routledge, 2012. 177pp., £80.00,
ISBN 9 780415 884211
In this provocative book Robert Talisse scrutinises the
thesis of value pluralism and its alleged relationship
with liberalism. He makes three major claims: f‌irst,that
while the existent arguments in favour of value plural-
ism have some merit, they fail to prove any metaphysi-
cal thesis about the existence of plural values; second,
that various arguments that purport to show that plu-
ralism entails liberalism fail because value pluralism is
prescriptively barren (p. 29). In light of these claims he
endorses ‘weak epistemological pluralism’, a position
that holds that ‘there is an irreducible plurality of goods
in the sense that, as things stand, we are unable to
reduce all of the things we are warranted in holding
objectively valuable’ (p. 108). In the later chapters he
articulates his third major claim when he defends social
epistemic liberalism. This position comes to liberalism
‘from a view of our most generic doxastic practices’
which Talisse claims have a set of internal norms, most
signif‌icantly the norm that when we believe we aim at
truth. To this end, he insists that despite our divergent
moral commitments all people have an overriding
interest in getting morality right (p. 142),and that this
commitment is best satisf‌ied by familiar Millian Open
Society norms (p. 120).
Despite the many virtues of the book I was ulti-
mately unconvinced by Talisse’s attempt to ground
liberal politics via epistemological f‌iat. It seems to me
that even if we share epistemological reasons for
endorsing open society norms this only entails a com-
mitment to a political regime that ensures a wide-
ranging liberty of thought and discussion. There is no
reason to think that it enshrines the kind of basic rights
and freedoms that modern liberal-egalitarians favour.
For example, our commitment to getting morality
right might actually justify the state forcing the public
to attend nightly moral philosophy classes.To ground a
thoroughgoing liberal egalitarianism we therefore
either need to endorse an additional set of moral
claims, or a particular account of liberal legitimacy, as
Talisse does at various points in his argument.However,
if we do this we have everything we need to endorse
liberalism as the best political response to the condi-
tions of reasonable pluralism we face, without recourse
to a (controversial) epistemological view.
Despite this, Talisse should be commended for
writing a stimulating and provocative book that is
crammed with a plethora of refreshingly pithy argu-
ments. I hope that it will be widely read,especially by
those who presume that the relationship between plu-
ralism and liberalism is unproblematic.
Edward Hall
(London School of Economics and Political Science)
Moralism: A Study of a Vice by Craig Taylor.
Durham: Acumen, 2012. 187pp., £14.99, ISBN 978 1
84465 494 9
This engaging book explores the vice moralism, which
Craig Taylor sees as a distortion of moral thought that
arises when we think about the place and scope of
morality in the wrong way. He examines this vice from
a variety of perspectives, especially by engaging with
literary examples, and in the process challenges some
assumptions about moral ref‌lection that analytical
moral philosophers typically endorse.
In the f‌irst three chapters Taylor argues that moralism
often involves the failure to recognise the humanity of
those who are being judged,the evasion of serious moral
BOOK REVIEWS 245
© 2013 TheAuthors. Political Studies Review © 2013 Political Studies Association
Political Studies Review: 2013, 11(2)

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