Hurka, Thomas. Review of Raymond Geuss' PHILOSOPHY AND REAL POLITICS. NDPR (January 2009).

Geuss, Raymond. Philosophy and Real Politics. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2008. In this short book, which expands a lecture he gave in Athens in 2007, Raymond Geuss defends a "realist" approach to political philosophy against an "ethics-first" view that he sees dominating contemporary analytic work in the field. On the latter view political philosophy starts by stating universal normative principles that are independent of the facts about any particular political agent or society; those facts become relevant only when the principles are applied to particular cases. Geuss takes Nozick and Rawls to typify the ethics-first view and subjects their work to vigorous and even belligerent criticism. But his own realist view doesn't emerge as a clear philosophical alternative. . . . Read the whole review: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=15086