In the library, I came across a book from 1956 that was put together as an attempt to re-establish English political philosophy (since it was an English editor, who characteristically refers to none but the most significant philosophers outside England but will discusses minor British names at equal length). It's fascinating in a small way, since it contains thoughts on political philosophy which are recent enough to be recognizable, but far enough in the past that it examines subjects which are now taken for granted. The preface, for example, deplores the fact that English philosophy (from Russell through Ryle) killed the three-hundred-year-long tradition of political philosophers writing in English, who "concern[ed] themselves with political and social relationships at the widest possible level of generality." This tradition is dead, and it outright says that the Logical Positivists killed it. And also the Marxists and the social scientists, the first because they were incorrigable relativists who looked at political theories as necessarily contingent, the second because they thought politics were too important to leave to the philosophers.

Topics in the book include an examination of the possibility of multiple moralities as opposed to a single, rationally decidable answer to every moral question; the grounds for the theory of natural rights; whether or not such a thing as the general will exists; and the philosophical justification of punishment. These topics are all discussed in contemporary writing, but I never see the premises so clearly laid out as they are in older texts, where they were still fresh. There's also an earnestness and sophistication of literary style in the old writing that is generally lacking today, alongside of a naiveté--charitably, a willingness to be naive when necessary.

It's not a book I want to read straight through, but I guess I'm glad it's in the library.