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Piety and the Philosophic Life

neo-Kantianism invites. All the communitarians are wrong and dangerous because they do not respect the need to leave well enough alone. They insist on complaining about the failings of liberalism even though their alternative would either divide civil society into sharply antagonistic camps or unify it in a potentially chauvinistic patriotism likely to lead to repressive government and civil intolerance. In presenting this spirited commentary, Kautz displays admirable erudition and sure-footedness in handling the texts, both historical and contemporary. He makes subtle distinctions and thoughtful observations. He also practices the toleration he preaches, treating those he criticizes with generosity and a lack of malice—qualities not always characteristic of his mentor Bloom. But the book also has flaws. Just because he is so anxious to do full justice to those he criticizes, he sometimes leaves the reader unclear as to how and where he differs with them. The book is repetitive and larded rather than merely illustrated with extracts. Much of the labeling is arbitrary and even self-contradictory. Having distinguished Barber as a republican and Walzer as a democrat, Kautz writes of Walzer as a republican (p. 170) and Barber as a democrat (chap. 5). A more serious problem lies in the account of the lineage of liberalism. To trace liberalism to the controversial paternity of Montesquieu while altogether ignoring such clearly central figures as the classical liberal economists, Condorcet, Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Hobhouse, Green, and de Ruggiero is bound to yield a truncated version of a rich and evolving tradition. But in the end, what is most fascinating about this book is the very fact that it is a defense of liberalism from a recognizably Straussian standpoint. "Only in America!"