Just Finished Reading: An Introduction to Political Philosophy by Jonathan Wolff (FP: 2006)

Over the past few months I’ve been working up a head of steam to get into reading political books. As I recently discussed elsewhere a mere 6% of my reading is in the field of politics despite having strongly held opinions on the subject (or maybe because of that very reason – why read books on a subject where I’ve largely already made up my mind?).  Taken together with my utter distaste for politicians of all persuasions and my recent decision to stop voting for any of the major political parties my incentive to dive into a politics book has been pretty low. But, partly prompted by a series of books I’ve stumbled across which promises some very interesting political commentary and partially by appreciating that my lack of political depth is a deficiency that needs to be addressed, I’ve decided to bite the bullet and give it a go.

What better place to start, I thought, than a broad introductory work to get me back into the flow of things and bring me up to date with present thinking. Wolff’s book certainly provided that informed and often entertaining entry into the political world albeit from within my comfort zone of philosophy. Well, I had to start somewhere and my comfort zone seemed like a pretty good place to start from. What interested me almost from the beginning was the author’s admission that there are no easy answers to even the simplest of questions. Despite apparently endless discussion and debate down the centuries no one, it would seem, has come up with a cast-iron defence of ideas which many people in the developed west take for granted as being practically self-evident and virtually incontestable – that the State is so completely necessary that it’s non-existence is unthinkable, that Democracy is the best form of government, that Liberty is the virtue par excellence and that all other political virtues spring from this defining principle and that the individual should be the focus of all political discourse as holders of inviolate rights that can never be overturned by a higher authority. Each thought or assumption had a chapter to itself where the author struggled with ideas and defences put up (or torn down) by a host of political philosophers both past and present. The only chapter which appeared to deviate from this format was on the distribution of wealth which concentrated on, indeed seemed to be more of a detailed proposal for, rather than a debate about, the work of John Rawls. I’d come across his ideas before and was rather unconvinced by the whole thing and having to wade through a chapter on the same subject was almost too much for me. But putting one turgid chapter aside this was generally a very good book which, in true philosophic style came to no great conclusion on anything but hopefully stated that at least we understand the problem a bit more now! It did give me much to think about and much to mull over. I had thought that the foundations of western democratic capitalism had been fairly well thought out over the preceding few centuries and that we had a fair idea of what exactly it is we want and how to get it. Apparently not – which I suppose makes the whole thing that much more interesting and important. Much more politics to come.