Analytical Political Philosophy: From Discourse, Edification

The analytic movement has long been the dominant philosophical tradition in English-speaking countries. In Analytical Political Philosophy: From Discourse, Edification, distinguished Canadian philosopher David Braybrooke explores this movement by bringing together some of his earlier free-standing studies of the concepts of needs, rights, and rules. He combines the results with an analytical account of how to deal with consequences and thus, arrives at a program for public policy, comparable in generality at least and in trenchancy to the programs offered by Rawls, Nozick, and Gauthier.

Braybrooke illustrates how his program can deal robustly with the worst evils of recent politics, which on point after point defy and reverse what the program calls for. An essay that relates the program to utilitarianism and natural law theory brings to an end, not only the present book, but the series of books, all published by University of Toronto Press, beginning with Moral Objectives, Rules, and the Forms of Social Change (1998), and continuing with Natural Law Modernized (2001) and Utilitarianism: Restorations; Repairs; Renovations (2004). The four books, which embrace all the main themes of Braybrooke's life-work, form a mutually reinforcing whole that invites being called the author's Summa Philosophica.

David Braybrooke was a professor emeritus in the Department of Philosophy at Dalhousie University and holds the Centennial Commission Chair in the Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin.