Defending Liberalism through 'Thick and Thin'

Michael Walzer’s Thick and Thin, first published in 1994 and now reissued with a preface and afterword, differs from many academic arguments in political philosophy. He does not seek a single, true comprehensive standpoint, but tries instead to respect the moral arguments that occur in different ways of life. His “commitment” is to “cultural autonomy and national independence.” He wishes “to endorse the politics of difference.” He himself thinks “it best to be governed democratically,” or indeed, socialistically, but he does not claim that his “political views have the definitive endorsement of God or Nature or History or Reason.” Yet, at the same time, he seeks to describe and defend a certain form of universalism. The result of his efforts is to claim that although central issues of distributive justice belong to different “thick,” histories and cultures, there is also a thinner “universalist” morality embedded within each of them.

“Thin” arguments are the areas of moral agreement among cultures. These agreements include objections to tyranny, oppression of the poor and brutality. This commonality allows us to understand others and to “march” with them against tyranny: the moral minimum does not stand alone, but rather designates “some reiterated features of particular thick or maximal moralities.”

Terms of Value

Walzer differentiates minimalism from a commitment to common procedures or common rules of discursive engagement of the sort promoted by Jürgen Habermas and his acolytes. Such rules are not universal but presume much of the thick substance of liberal or social democratic equality, in which “men and women. . . acknowledge each other’s equality, claim the rights of free speech, and practice the virtues of tolerance and mutual respect. . . .” Indeed, minimal moral agreement cannot replace defending “thickly conceived values.” “Social democracy, market freedom, moral laissez-faire, republican virtue, this or that ideas of public decency or the good life—all these have to be defended on their own terms.” These arguments will likely include the moral minimum but are not “derived from it.”