Introduction

IN The Curious Enlightenment of Professor Caritat—Steven Lukes' fictionalized round-up of contemporary political theory—the hapless professor has been kidnapped by the resistance movement and sent off to search for grounds for optimism. In Utilitaria, he is asked to give a lecture on “Breaking Free from the Past;” in Communitaria, on “Why the Enlightenment Project Had to Fail.” Neither topic is much to his taste, but it is only when he reaches Libertaria (not, as one of its gloomy inhabitants tells him, a good place to be unlucky, unemployed, or employed by the state) that he is made to recognize the limited purchase of his academic expertise. At the end of the book, the professor still has not found the mythical land of Egalitaria. But he has derived one important lesson from his adventures: in the pursuit of any one ideal, it is disastrous to lose sight of all the others.