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Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at Home and Abroad frames ideas about justice, social criticism, and national identity in light of the new political world that has arisen in the past three decades.
Michael Walzer focuses on two different but interrelated kinds of moral argument: maximalist and minimalist, local and universal—thick and thin. He revises and extends the arguments in his influential Spheres of Justice to reflect his additional analysis and interrogation as well as the shift in world politics. This edition has a new preface and afterword, written by the author, describing how the reasoning of the book connects with arguments he made in Just and Unjust Wars. Walzer’s highly literate and fascinating blend of philosophy and historical analysis will appeal to any and all intelligent readers who want to understand the arguments about the morality of warfare and engage with them.
"First published in 1994, this book was an effort to define my position in the ongoing discussions of distributive justice and social criticism. The effort brought me about as close to philosophical argument as I have ever come. But Thick and Thin is chiefly a political book; I meant to defend a certain kind of left politics focused on equality at home and a liberal and constrained version of self-determination abroad. Home and abroad require different kinds of argument, which I represented with the metaphor of thick and thin—thick or maximalist arguments when we are talking to our fellow citizens, thin and minimalist arguments when we are talking to (or about) the others, citizens of foreign countries." —from the preface to the 2019 edition
Michael Walzer is Emeritus Professor of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University. He is the author of Arguing About War, On Toleration, and Just and Unjust Wars.
Preface to the 2019 Edition
Introduction
1. Moral Minimalism
2. Distributive Justice as a Maximalist Morality
3. Maximalism and the Social Critic
4. Justice and Tribalism: Minimal Morality in International Politics
5. The Divided Self
Acknowledgments
Afterword to the 2019 Edition
Index of Names