Why do political philosophers why away from politics? After Politics: The Rejection of Politics in Contemporary Liberal Philosophy offers a challenging and original critique of liberalism, the dominant political philosophy of our time, tackling key issues like state legitimacy, value-pluralism, neutrality, the nature of politics, public reasons, and morality in politics. Analyzing major liberal theorists like Rawls, Habermas, Rorty, Barry, Gray, Raz, Larmore, Ackerman and others, Glen Newey argues that liberalism by-passes politics because it ignores or misunderstands human motivation, and elevates academic system-building over political realities of conflict and power.

GLEN NEWEY is Reader in Politics at the University of Strathclyde and Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Fellow at Princeton University during 2000-2001. He is the author of numerous articles on political philosophy and ethics, and of Virtue, Reason and Toleration: the place of toleration in ethical and political philosophy (1999).