Abstract

In this well-written and carefully argued book, Anthony Simon Laden proposes a theory of “deliberative liberalism” that reconciles liberalism with the politics of identity. Liberalism is often presented as a “reasonable” theory that emphasizes reason, reform over revolution, a certain reverence for existing structure, and so on, whereas the politics of identity is “radical” in that it calls for fundamental structural changes and is usually suspicious of reason as “the hidden force of the authority of the status quo”. To that extent, a reconciliation of liberalism with identity politics is a reconciliation of the reasonable with the radical, and hence the title of the book, Reasonably Radical.