Abstract

Contemporary political philosophers routinely assume that some form of the modern, territorial state must be justified and that in a justified state most of the claims that modern states make will be vindicated. The principal question for them is what form the state must take in order to achieve this justification. How minimal or extensive must the state be, how responsive to groups within its territories and to people without must it be, and so on. Christopher Morris’s An Essay on the Modern State argues, in effect, that political philosophers should take a step backward from this starting point, to first examine more carefully the state itself, its purported justifications, and the claims states typically make over people and territories. This seems to me exactly the right prescription for political philosophy, and Morris’s book is an excellent illustration of how this step might be taken. Morris’s approach not only brings contemporary preoccupations into closer contact with those of classical political philosophy, it also nicely shows just how the projects of mainstream contemporary political philosophy are related to those of more radical and revisionist theory.