A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy [antikvár]

PrefaceThis Companion - like the series of Blackwell Companions to Philosophy more generally -has come about through the initiative of Stephan Chambers and Alyn Shipton who, together with Richard Beatty, have been sources of sound advice and encouragement. We should record, first and foremost, our debt - and the profession's - to them.In commissioning pieces for the present volume, our first priority has of course always been academic excellence. But excellence takes many forms. Within that broad constraint, we were always also striving for a good blend of younger and more established scholars, representing a fair mix of disciplinary affiliations, national origins and intellectual styles. We are pleased with our contributors' handiwork; each, in his or her own very different way, has made a strong statement of how to do political philosophy in that particular mode. We would also like to think that, without any heavy-handed attempt on our part at imposing uniformity on what is by its nature a disparate academic community, our contributors have managed among themselves to produce a genuinely coherent synopsis of the 'state of play' in contemporary political philosophy worldwide.This Companion owes something of its character and stance to the simultaneous development of the Journal of Political Philosophy. It, too, is published by Blackwell and edited from Canberra by a team which is strongly represented in the Companion: Robert Goodin and Chandran Kukathas are the Editors of the Journal; its Associate Editors include Geoffrey Brennan, Tom Campbell, Barry Hindess, Philip Pettit, Andrew Reeve and Jeremy Waldron. We hope that one of the many purposes the Companion might serve is as something of an indication of where the Journal is coming from and where it is heading.The editing of this Companion (and that new Journal) was made much easier by the many political philosophers who are now based in Canberra. Joining long-time denizens of the Australian National University like John Passmore, Eugene Kamenka, Robert Brown and Richard Sylvan, and well-established ones like Philip Pettit, Geoffrey Brennan and Knud Haakonssen, are a spate of fairly recent arrivals including Robert Goodin from Essex, Tom Campbell from Glasgow, Peter Self from the LSE, Barry Hindess and David West from Liverpool and, on an Adjunct Professor basis, Brian Barry from the LSE and Carole Pateman from UCLA. Many other Companion contributors (among them, Russell Hardin, Alan Ryan, Gerald Dworkin and Alan Hamlin) are frequent visitors to the ANU.The form of a reference book precludes authors of individual chapters from acknowledging assistance, as several would have wished. Editors operate under no such constraint. And there is much assistance to be acknowledged. Valuable suggestions regarding the shape of the book as a whole (including possible topics and contri-