Thick and Thin

Moral Argument at Home and Abroad

By: Michael Walzer

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Hardcover | 28 February 2019

At a Glance

Hardcover
128 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
21.6 x 14 x 1

Hardcover

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When Michael Walzer's Spheres of Justice was published ten years ago, the front page of The New York Times Book Review hailed the work as "an imaginative alternative to the current debate over distributive justice." Now in Thick and Thin, Walzer revises and extends his arguments in Spheres of Justice, framing his ideas about justice, social criticism, and national identity in light of the new political world that has arisen in the past decade. Walzer focuses on two different but interrelated kinds of moral argument: maximalist and minimalist, thick and thin, local and universal.
According to Walzer the first, thick type of moral argument is culturally connected, referentially entangled, detailed, and specific; the second, or thin type, is abstract, ad hoc, detached, and general. Thick arguments play the larger role in determining our views about domestic justice and in shaping our criticism of local arrangements. Thin arguments shape our views about justice in foreign places and in international society. The book begins with an account of minimalist argument, then examines two uses of maximalist arguments, focusing on distributive justice and social criticism. Walzer then discusses minimalism with a qualified defense of self-determination in international society, and concludes with a discussion of the (divided) self capable of this differentiated moral engagement.
Walzer's highly literate and fascinating blend of philosophy and historical analysis will appeal not only to those interested in the polemics surrounding Spheres of justice but also to intelligent readers who are more concerned with getting the arguments right.

Industry Reviews

"Thick and Thin is extremely readable, engaging and perceptive, ambitiously drawing into a unified framework a variety of difficult moral and political issues." -Times Literary Supplement

"[This] is a moving, eloquent, and at times inspriring meditation on the problem of obligation . . . Walzer writes on some of the most explosive issues of the day in a voice that is always calm and thoughtful. Our culture is thicker because of his presence." -Commonweal

"Walzer thoughtfully answers objections to his many influential volumes of social criticism. . . . After five tight chapters, Walzer posits that we are all made up of several selves-based in our histories, identities, and associations-that we juggle as we confront a world of complex decisions and ambiguous choices. It is among those selves, rather than in a community of eager discussants, that the most profound moral reasoning occurs, a commentary on what Walzer perceives as the current sad state of public discussion and moral debate. . . .[T]his is a well-argued . . . set of carefully wrought ideas on the state of public moral debate." -Kirkus Reviews

"Michael Walzer crowds a remarkable amount of original thought into 100 pages. His arguments undermind both the Foucauldian claim that internal, reformist social criticism entails complicity with the status quo, and the Kantian-Habermasian claim that social criticsm must proceed from universal moral truth." -Richard Rorty (1931-2007), University of Virginia

"First published in 1994, this book was an effort to define my position in the ongoing discussions of distributive justice and social criticism. The effort brought me about as close to philosophical argument as I have ever come. But Thick and Thin is chiefly a political book; I meant to defend a certain kind of left politics focused on equality at home and a liberal and constrained version of self-determination abroad. Home and abroad require different kinds of argument, which I represented with the metaphor of thick and thin-thick or maximalist arguments when we are talking to our fellow citizens, thin and minimalist arguments when we are talking to (or about) the others, citizens of foreign countries." -from the preface to the 2019 edition

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