Michael Walzer on His Essays

Michael Walzer discusses his "Essays on Political Criticism"

Michael Walzer:  Well, it's a... In this book, the theme that David Miller, who collect these or his favorites of my essays, the theme that he identified and used as the title is a commitment to politics. Because it has often seem to me that there is a certain kind of political theory and perhaps a certain kind of a [luddites] politics, sometimes on the right and sometimes on the left of people who don't like politics. They don't like the messiness. They think that there must be a true path and somebody must know it. And once we know it, we should just somehow find a way to walk along that path and not be distracted by personal ambition and political interests and all of the arguments. It happened with John [Rowe] that certain people read his book, which was a wonderful book, and decided that he was right. And if of different principle was the crucial principle of decent or egalitarian or just politics and that therefore the Supreme Court should start enforcing it. And you didn't have to win elections because we now knew, we now knew what was right. And that kind of a [luddism], that kind of... on the left is [vanguardism] I have always disliked.

Michael Walzer:  Well, it's a... In this book, the theme that David Miller, who collect these or his favorites of my essays, the theme that he identified and used as the title is a commitment to politics. Because it has often seem to me that there is a certain kind of political theory and perhaps a certain kind of a [luddites] politics, sometimes on the right and sometimes on the left of people who don't like politics. They don't like the messiness. They think that there must be a true path and somebody must know it. And once we know it, we should just somehow find a way to walk along that path and not be distracted by personal ambition and political interests and all of the arguments. It happened with John [Rowe] that certain people read his book, which was a wonderful book, and decided that he was right. And if of different principle was the crucial principle of decent or egalitarian or just politics and that therefore the Supreme Court should start enforcing it. And you didn't have to win elections because we now knew, we now knew what was right. And that kind of a [luddism], that kind of... on the left is [vanguardism] I have always disliked.