Comptes Rendus

Abstract

Readers acquainted with Gary Madison's writings to date (most notably Understanding': A Phenomenological-Pragmatic Analysis, The Logic 0/ Liberty, and The Hermeneutics 0/Postmodernity: Figures and Themes) will not be disappoint~d with The Political Economy 0/Civil Society and Human Rights, an ambitious and wide-ranging investigation of numerous issues of political economy. This book carries forward the hermeneutical-liberal approach to politics Madison presented in the earlier Logic 0/Liberty while shifting focus to the classical liberal notion of civil society and its contemporary implications for issues of democracy, human rights, globalization, the market economy, and related matters. In wake of the Eastern European revolutions of 1989, Madison argues, it is especially pressing at the current time in those nations as in our own both to gain an explicit theoretical understanding of the internal dynamics of civil society as weIl as to fashion civil institutions in nations presently struggling to overcome the legacy of authoritarianisffi. The revolutionary events in Eastern Europe that culminated in the collapse of the Berlin Wall signal not only the demise of authoritarian rule but the revival of the idea of civil society an idea that while of Western origin is also, Madison contends, of universal moralpoliticallegitimacy. The book's principal thesis is that institutions of civil society and liberal democracy are alone able to accommodate demands universally expressed for both economic prosperity and politicalliberty.