Abstract

Despite its nonscholarly sounding title, this work is a trenchant reinterpretation of certain crucial aspects of Aristotle's thought for the contemporary age, and an excellent survey of the "liberal-communitarian" debate today. The author seeks to restore the philosophical language and concerns of classical moral theory, which he sees as having perennial importance, as against the "thinness" of contemporary liberal theorizing. The work has a prefatory note, including Václav Havel's warning about Western smugness, and a short Index. Footnotes, often substantial, are placed at the bottom of the page. The author's consciously chosen strategy is to raise problematic issues, and questions for further study, rather than to try to establish an unassailable theoretical structure.