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2007 Spitz Prize Winner

Political Obligations
by George Klosko

George Klosko,Political Obligations
Oxford University Press, 2005

George Klosko’s Political Obligations moves the "fairness" doctrine associated with Rawlsian liberalism in novel directions. The Spitz Committee was impressed by Klosko’s critique of libertarian and cosmopolitan conceptions of individualism, and his formidable reassertion of the state’s role in moral-philosophical discourse. He accomplishes these endeavors without resorting, either implicitly or explicitly, to some neo-nationalist form of liberalism. Moreover, unlike earlier liberal theories that draw upon fairness conceptions of justice, Klosko’s book makes room for the "participant perspective" by exploring the role of popular opinion in the development of political obligations. In the committee’s view, Klosko was the most theoretically innovative work we encountered this year; his book tried most strenuously to advance a cogent moral-philosophical conception of liberalism and succeeded in an impressively coherent and comprehensive fashion.