ABSTRACT
The exploration of our issues from a variety of perspectives is what gives this book its special, and we believe unusually interesting, character. We have attempted to include a number of the best established and most elaborately worked out approaches here. We take up first the kind of liberal egalitarian theorizing associated with names such as those of John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin. We then proceed to the kind of libertarian, anti-statist, position represented by Robert Nozick or (a different strand this) economic liberals such as F. A. Hayek. Next we consider the applica tion of Marxist analysis to our topics. We then turn to the tradition of natural law theorizing. Lastly, we look at a system of ideas which may appear inimical to ethics: that of political realism within the study of international relations. How far this style of realism is actually opposed to ethical considerations is precisely one of the problems that will be posed here.
