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17 Pol. Theory 684 (1989)
Liberal Utilitarianism: Social Choice Theory and J. S. Mill's Philosophy

handle is hein.journals/ptxa17 and id is 650 raw text is: 684 POLITICAL THEORY / NOVEMBER 1989 harmony (for Leibniz as for Republic IV) links eternal mathematical verity to psychology, ethics, politics, and cosmology by instantiating mathematical relationships in an available (here audible) form-with harmony ever- expanding, in concentric circles, from the well-tuned psyche to the polis to the kosmos. (To fit Christian caritas and bona voluntas into this particular kosmos admittedly taxed Leibniz's ingenuity.) Hobbes, De Schismate allows, is not to be despised (a left-handed compliment) when speaking of civil matters; but he will never uncover a universal jurisprudence as geometri- cally necessary as the absolutes of Phaedo 75d. And that is partly because his notion that all substance is body destroys the autonomy of the mind that Plato and Aristotle had first demonstrated (Plato explains divinely well incorporeal substances distinct from matter and ideas independent of the senses). For Plato and Leibniz (and then later for Kant), Leviathan's notion that there is no conception in a man's mind that has not been begotten upon the organs of sense by the pressure of objects makes moral ideas (including Hobbes's own) literally inconceivable. In reading the new De Schismate, one appreciates afresh George Kelly's insistence that one of Leibniz's greatest contributions was to convey a chastened Platonism into the modern world for the use of Kant-in the moral sphere the greatest idealist since Plato himself. And now one can read De Schismate, thanks to the Herculean labors of the German Academy -which will give us the whole of Leibniz by the twenty-first century. -Patrick Riley University of Wisconsin (Madison) LIBERAL UTILITARIANISM: SOCIAL CHOICE THEORY AND J. S. MILL'S PHILOSOPHY by Jonathan Riley. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer- sity Press, 1988. Pp. xiv, 398. $39.50. Coherence as well as ethical appeal has always been a rudimentary quest of moral philosophers. Too often, however, where there has been ethical appeal, coherence has suffered. And where there has been coherence, ethical appeal has diminished. Liberalism and utilitarianism exemplify this di- lemma. For proponents and sympathetic critics, liberalism is frequently regarded as having extensive ethical appeal at the cost of sacrificing coher- ence. Great liberal values are ineluctably and tragically incommensurable. Ironically, liberalism's weakness stems from its very appeal. Utilitarianism, on the other hand, is frequently castigated precisely because of its notorious coherence. Its single-minded and systematic dedication to utility subverts