POLITICAL ARGUMENT
A Reissue with a New Introduction
Brian Barry
University of California Press, reprint (1991)
(first published by Humanities Press, Inc. in 1965)

" ...The central topic of the book is the arguments used to justify political evaluations in Britain, the U.S.A., and countries similar to them. Barry proposes to analyze the principles to which appeal is ultimately made in these communities in supporting policies and assessment, and to discuss their power and scope. He defends the view that it is possible to have genuinely rational argument about evaluations, and then distinguishes two basic classes of ultimate principle, the 'want-regarding' and the 'ideal-regarding.' The former are those which attribute all value to the satisfaction of wants just as such, and which therefore allow that all wants have some claim to be satisfied. The latter includes both those which, though attributing all value to want-satisfaction, and those which attribute value to some source entirely independent of wants. The justification for making this particular distinction, Barry says, is that it is useful in illuminating political arguments... there emerges...another use of the distinction between want- and ideal-regarding principles than that of producing clarity. It comes out in the course of an argument which runs...along the following lines. (a) Conservatism, as the claim that no principles should be implemented by political action, and a form of majoritarianism saying that only the principle 'Do what the majority wants' should be implemented politically are critisized and rejected...(b) Liberalism is taken as the view that only want-regarding principles should be carried out by politial action...(c) It is argued that there are many political evaluations and policies which we accept and which are not defensible except on a basis of ideal-regarding principle...(d) Therefore liberalism is an inadequate political philosophy...."

Excerpted from book review of Brian Barry's Political Argument by J. B. Schneewind, University of Pittsburgh, in The Philosophical Review Vol. 76, No. 4. (Oct., 1967), pp. 508-511, online at JSTOR.

BOOK DESCRIPTION
PUBLISHER
Since its publication in 1965 Political Argument has come to be recognized as occupying a key position in the revival of Anglo-American political philosophy. A number of the ideas introduced by Barry have become part of the standard vocabulary, such as the distinction between ideal-regarding and want-regarding principles and the division of principles into aggregative and distributive. Political Argument provided the first precise analysis, still frequently cited, of the conception that political values have trade-off relations; the analysis of the notion of the public interest has also enjoyed wide influence. For this long-awaited reprint, the author has prepared a substantial, new introductory essay in which he recounts the process of writing the book and sets it in the intellectual milieu of its time. He then offers extensive comments on the subsequent fate of some of the leading ideas and assesses the book in light of criticisms and later developments. Finally, Barry evaluates current approaches to political philosophy as they look today. This new edition of Political Argument will interest political theorists, philosophers, economists, and a range of other scholars. Brilliant and incisive, it will engender discussion and debate from many quarters.