Is a democratic education promoting the ideals of human equality and individual liberty still tenable in a postmodern world of increasingly diverse and competing interests? Drawing on contemporary political theorists, including Michael Walzer and John Rawls, and also on philosophers such as Descartes and Hume, David J. Blacker addresses this question, outlining the dispute between orthodoxy and proceduralism, and proposing a new approach of liberal contextualism to resolve the impasse and enrich our conception of democratic education. He discusses a wide range of controversies surrounding...

For long-term viability the left must move beyond identity emotivism and articulate a larger worldview.