Gerald Gaus provides in his Contemporary Theories of Liberalism the absolute best available if obviously biased introduction to contemporary theories of philosophical liberalism. Like John Rawls, Jurgen Habermas, deliberative democrates and the like (all of whom get a chapter), Gaus has his own ideas on how modern societies should organize themselves in the light of contemporary conditions of an irreducible pluralism of competing values and conceptions of human flourishing. The theory he advances he has coined "Justificatory Liberalism", the tenents of which are adequately summarized by the last reviewer. Gaus provides an overview and argument for justificatory liberalism in the book's final chapter. He has outlined the theory more competely in a previous book by the title Justificatory Liberalism (Oxford 1996). What he does here is consider the competition. We are led, almost in the fashion of a theodicy, through Isaiah Berlin/John Gray inspired pluralistic or "agonistic liberalism" to modus vivendi liberalism to theories of collectivist reasoning, Habermasian deliberative democracy, aggregative democracy, and, penultimately, political liberalism. In each case we are treated to a well-done summary of each and a brief and often convincing critique.



The book's faults lie, as mentioned, in Gaus's understandable preference for his own theory and also in the book's brevity - one feels cheated especially in the summary of deliberative democracy given that the Habermasian account is hardly the only one out there. But its brevity is also what makes this book so good. While it will seem incomplete to advanced students of the field, to entering grad students and advanced undergrads in political theory this book will be almost worth its strangely expensive asking price.