Deconstructing Rorty

Mises Review 4, No. 2 (Summer 1998)

ACHIEVING OUR COUNTRY: LEFTIST THOUGHT IN 20TH-CENTURY AMERICA
Richard Rorty
Harvard University Press, 1998, 159 pgs.

Richard Rorty is a distinguished analytic philosopher, but you would never know it from this vulgar screed. Our author makes clear the basic assumptions of “infantile leftism,” in Lenin’s phrase, in a way that hardly stops short of self-parody.

The Open Conspiracy

Mises Review 4, No. 2 (Summer 1998)

THE RELUCTANT SHERIFF: THE UNITED STATES AFTER THE COLD WAR
Richard N. Haass
Council on Foreign Relations, 1997, 148 pgs.
 

Single-Issue Scholarship

Mises Review 4, No. 2 (Summer 1998)

THE RACIAL CONTRACT
Charles W. Mills
Cornell University Press, 1997,171 pgs.

Charles W. Mills has, by his own estimation, located a crucial gap in Western political and ethical theory from the Enlightenment to Rawls and Nozick. As Mills rightly says, the social contract dominates modern Western thought. But the contract, as described by Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Kant, leaves out a crucial component of the way society actually operates.

Unwitting Racial Heretic

Mises Review 4, No. 2 (Summer 1998)

THE ORDEAL OF INTEGRATION: PROGRESS AND RESENTMENT IN AMERICA’S “RACIAL” CRISIS
Orlando Patterson
Cities/Counterpoint, 1997,233 pgs.

The Rothbardian Turn of Mind

Mises Review 4, No. 2 (Summer 1998)

THE LOGIC OF ACTION
Murray N. Rothbard
Edward Elgar, 1997, Vol. I, xviii + 452 pgs.; Vol. II, ix + 416 pgs.

It is both essential and impossible to review these two volumes. Essential, because they include the bulk of the scientific papers written by a great Austrian theorist. But also impossible, because of the incredible variety of topics covered, ranging from the nature of human action to the influence of gnostic thought on Marxism.

The Left’s Favorite Killer

Mises Review 4, No. 2 (Summer 1998)

DRAWING LIFE: SURVIVING THE UNABOMBER
David Gelernter
The Free Press, 1997, viii + 158 pgs.
 

Austrian Influence

Mises Review 4, No. 2 (Summer 1998)

A HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
Paul Johnson
Harper Collins, 1997, pp. 727–46

Chapters:
“Government Credit-Management and the Wall Street Crash”
“Why the Depression Was So Deep and Long-Lasting”
“The Failure of the Great Engineer”
 

Did Hayek Write His Last Book?

Mises Review 4, No. 2 (Summer 1998)

“WHAT’S WRONG WITH LIBERTARIANISM”
Jeffrey Friedman
Critical Review 11, No. 3 (Summer 1997): 407–67
 

With Charity Toward Too Many

Mises Review 4, No. 1 (Spring 1998)

LIVING HIGH AND LETTING DIE: OUR ILLUSION OF INNOCENCE
Peter Unger
Oxford University Press, 1996, xii + 187 pgs.

Even when compared with other works of philosophy, this is an odd book. Readers who have been spared much acquaintance with contemporary moral philosophy will be inclined to toss the book away when they learn its central thesis.

More Liberal Than Thou

Mises Review 4, No. 1 (Spring 1998)

PASSIONS AND CONSTRAINT
Stephen Holmes
University of Chicago Press, 1995, xiii + 337 pgs.