Vittorio Hösle

I'm not surprised that I am the first person to review this book. There is much interesting material in it, but its massive size makes it almost unreadable. I don't understand what kind of readership the author and publisher expect for a 1000 page book containing only about 400 pages of substance on the right topic, morals and politics. The pages in this book are big and the print is small, so it really contains an exceptional amount of text.

But I for one did read it cover to cover, and in my opinion parts 1 (Normative Foundations, 200 pages) and 3 (Political Ethics, 300 pages) are good, although part 3 could well have been shortened a bit. These parts form an engaging discussion of morals and politics where the emphasis is clearly philosophical in part 1 and practical in part 3. I particularly enjoyed the argument for considering political ethics the central part of ethics (p.70-72), the justifications for interculturally valid ethics (p.176-180) and the discussion of natural and positive law (p.632-634). The author shows a good touch for putting moral philosophy to practice, although in part 3 he certainly takes the scenery route by discussing just about every political topic imaginable.

In any case parts 1 and 3 lived up to my expectations for this book, so I have no complaints there. But for some reason this book also contains part 2, "Foundations of a theory of the social world", which is by far the longest (400+ pages). It's a collection of thoughts on man, society, power and the state, but unfortunately it's almost entirely detached from parts 1 and 3. A few connections are made here and there, but they are quite obvious and could just as well have been included as endnotes for parts 1 and 3.

The great majority of part 2 staggers on far beyond morals and politics with a troubling lack of focus and purpose. The author moves from game theory to rules of power to world history - beginning with hunter-gatherers, no less! His lack of judgment is baffling - it simply does not make any sense to include this much disparate material in one book. An equally big problem is that his style is much too verbose. He often seems to ramble on about any given topic for ten pages without arriving at any conclusions whatsoever. And finally, there is really nothing theoretical about part 2 so its title is quite misleading.

But I don't mean to be too critical. Parts 1 and 3 of this book are good. Nevertheless as I was reading part 3 I felt disappointed. Here we have all these plans for promoting justice, reducing poverty, preserving the environment etc., and for once they are supported by solid moral argumentation instead of simplifying rhetoric. But who's going to read them when they're buried somewhere around page 900 of an unnecessarily bloated book? If you're thinking "nobody", then you're probably not far from the right answer. And that's a shame.… (más)