Liberalism: Its Achievements and Failures

Seiyama (sociology, U. of Tokyo) addresses the questions of what kind of thought liberalism is, what it started out being, why it has come to the fore since the decline of socialism and is so frequently discussed or invoked, what it has achieved and where it has failed, and what manner of issues lurk within it. He begins by exploring the significance of John Rawls' A Theory of Justice in such terms as normative principles for pluralistic societies, the contractarian model and reflective equilibrium, and the difference principle. Then he surveys theories of contemporary liberalism, among them luck-egalitarianism and the intensification of liberalism, reasons for the value called freedom, and liberalism's miscalculations. Distributed in the US by ISBS. The Japanese Riberarizumu to wa nanika was published in 2006 by Keiso Shobo, and has been translated for this edition by Leonie R. Stickland (Japanese, U. of Western Australia) . Distributed in the US by ISBS. Annotation c2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Author: Kazuo Seiyama is Professor of Sociology in the Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology at the University of Tokyo, where he teaches sociological theory, social stratification and social research. He is the co-author of Inequality amid Affluence: Social Stratification in Japan (Trans Pacific Press 2005, with Junsuke Hara). He has also published The Structure of Institution Theory (1995), Power (2000), Introduction to Social Research (2004), and Understanding the Pension Problem Correctly (2007), all in Japanese. He is currently working on the theory of social fairness and the sustainability problem of the social welfare system in an ageing society.