Political Studies Books
| Published date | 01 December 2001 |
| DOI | 10.1111/1467-9248.00354 |
| Date | 01 December 2001 |
| Subject Matter | Political Studies Books |
POLITICAL
STUDIES
BOOKS
Political Theory 1002 Asia-Pacific 1053
Britain 1027 Other Areas 1056
North America 1035 International Relations 1065
Europe 1043 Comparative 1075
POLITICAL THEORY
CULTURE AND EQUALITY
by Brian Barry
Oxford: Polity Press, 2000. 399 pages,
£16.99, ISBN 0 7456 2228 3
Readership: Advanced
undergraduates, postgraduates,
academic/research, professional
Rating: *****
Reviewer: ROBERT K. FULLINWIDER
(University of Maryland)
In this swashbuckling adventure, Brian
Barry takes the helm of the Good Ship
Liberalism to keep it off the shoals toward
which its motley, quarrelling crew has
allowed it to drift. Defamers on board
such as multiculturalists Iris Young, Charles
Taylor, Bhikhu Parekh, and James Tully are,
of course, put over the side in short order
(and with much spillage of blood). So too,
`false' friends among thecrew, like Michael
Walzer, William Galston, Chandran
Kukathas, and Will Kymlicka, are made to
walk the plank with Barry's cutlass at their
backs. Indeed, by the time the carnage has
ended, the Good Ship Liberalism sails with
a skeleton crew: Brian Barry at the wheel,
J. S. Mill in the crow's nest, and John Rawls
somewhere below deck.
Even sharper than his cutlass is Barry's
rhetoric. He proves himself not among
the adjectivally-challenged as he tosses
overboard argumentative baggage
described as `absurd', `bathetic', `purulent
nonsense', `plain silly', `impracticable',
and a `perversion of common sense'.
After such thorough deck-clearing the
Good Ship Liberalism is by no means
bereft of equipage, however, as Barry
fills every hold and crawl-space with
vigorous arguments of his own in de-
fence of universalism and individualism,
showing how the former admits the
particular and the conventional, just
so far as they should be admitted, while
the latter abides associations and cor-
porations, just so far as they should be
abided. In making these arguments,
Barry has a lot to say about the tricky
relationship of the liberal state to chil-
dren, their parents, and their education;
even more to say about the nettlesome
problems of `accommodation', where
individuals and associations demand on
religious or cultural grounds to be
exempted from generally applicable laws
and regulations; and something to say
about issues ranging as widely as mar-
riage, culture, voluntariness, opportunity,
and enlightenment.
THOMAS HOBBES AND THE
POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF GLORY
by Gabriella Slomp
Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2001. 209 pages,
£45.00, ISBN 0 333 72642 1
Reviewer: PRESTON KING
(Lancaster University)
This may well be the most impressive of
new books on Hobbes appearing over the
past two decades or more. Why? Because
the author writes clearly, precisely, eco-
nomically; navigates comfortably the pri-
mary texts and differences between them;
makes judicious use of biography and of
relevant contexts; commands the second-
ary literature while resisting seduction by
it; rejects reputation and fashion; displays
restrained but genuine inventiveness; lays
out a coherent case, which is absorbing
and ± if exception is made at least of the
last chapter ± even compelling.
1002 POLITICAL THEORY
Slomp sees Hobbes as a whole man,
whose method of science and perception
of the individual are one. Hobbes's under-
standing of man and the world are fused.
The psychological components of Hob-
bes's individual (especially rationality,
fear of death, desire for glory, equality)
are but another aspect of Hobbes's
science. Science is the study of motion;
the chief cause of motion in man (follow-
ing Hobbes, following Slomp) is glory.
And Slomp is right to insist that far too
little deference has been paid it. Through
the analysis of glory, Slomp confirms, in a
highly novel way, the distinctive, indivi-
dualistic modernism of Hobbes. For
Slomp, to advance glory as Hobbes's
end, must demote self-preservation to a
mere means. She argues that the aim of
humans, in and through life, becomes (for
Hobbes) that of advancing from `a lesser
to a greater power' ± `glory' being the
pleasure one derives from wielding power
over others.
Slomp supplies the fullest and the best
account of Hobbist `glory' in the litera-
ture, which alone would suffice to make
her book uniquely valuable. She plays
useful light on the alignment between
Thucydides and Hobbes (to which still
more attention is warranted) as a part of
this resuscitation of Hobbist `glory'. She
attends, from the same perspective, to the
question of gender in Hobbes ± and does
this more fully and astutely than any
predecessor, including myself. The case
Slomp makes for `glory' is impressive, no
matter that it forces intense reflection on,
and balanced consideration of, the ques-
tion whether, for Hobbes, it were ulti-
mately better to die gloriously or to
survive ingloriously.
Slomp rightly finds that Hobbes has `glory'
do hard labour in all his works, but that
this constancy slips in the transition from
De Cive to Leviathan, where glory (a mat-
ter of `nature') is reduced to only one of
six causes of human motivation (all other
causes being matters of `nurture'). Slomp
does not moderate the importance she
attributes to `glory' merely because
Hobbes came to recognize, fairly plainly,
that not everyone is driven by the impulse
to dominate others ± or certainly not
driven to this in the same degree. Having
re-tooled the causal thrust of Hobbist
glory from `standard' to `worst' case ±
from a driving force riding every agent, to
one bestriding only some ± she then
resorts to a more speculative reconfigura-
tion of Hobbes's predicament (as pre-
sented in Leviathan) in limitedly game-
theoretical terms.
Time now to shift from genuine celebra-
tion to limited lamentation. Slomp's
superior exploration of Hobbes is likely
purchased at the cost of an overly severe
defence of the oeuvre, such that no im-
portant mistake(s) or shortcoming(s) can
be admitted in it. For example, Slomp
contends that observers detect in Hobbes
diverse `ideological positions', that they
attempt to `pigeon-hole Hobbes's
thought in a single ideological box', and
that this is `an almost impossible exercise'
(p. 155) or ± more forcefully ± `an impos-
sible, indeed a futile, exercise' (p. 164).
The author overlooks two considerations.
(1) Most divergent characterizations of
writers like Hobbes are rarely strictly
opposed, i.e. mutually contradictory.
Even if we assume it to be a mistake to
view Hobbes as for example some
species of `moralist', or `conservative', it
cannot follow that a `moralist' cannot
also be `conservative'. Indeed, to hold
that Hobbes is some species of `political
geometer', as the author does, is itself
compatible with many other character-
izations that might fairly be made of
Hobbes. (2) One cannot both complain
about supposedly exclusive claims being
made about Hobbes, while oneself mak-
ing precisely such claims. If for example
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