It is tempting to think of liberal democracy in terms of immortality. Democra- cies have survived wars and depressions, Nazis and communists – so much so that at the end of the Cold War Francis Fukuyama famously declared the “end of history.” In The Culturalist Challenge to Liberal Republicanism, Michael Lusztig assesses the risks that multiculturalism and other forms of culturalism pose to liberal democracy. Establishing the nature of the current regime and exploring the emergence of a cogent theory of justice grounded in both liberal and republican theory, Lusztig demonstrates the inconsistencies between liberal republicanism and culturalist theories of justice. Exploring both the institutional and cultural effects of the tension between culturalism and liberal republicanism, he seeks a balanced view that falls somewhere between Fukuyama’s optimism for regime mortality and the pessimism inherent in the work of more conservative theorists like Samuel Huntington. Lusztig concludes that the narrowness of liberal republican justice is ameliorated by multiculturalism, but the hidden danger is that multiculturalism can serve as a stalking horse for more perni- cious agendas. Given the increasing cultural diversity faced by North American and European nations, The Culturalist Challenge to Liberal Republicanism has important implications for political stability in the twenty-first century. Michael Lusztig is professor of political science at Southern Methodist University. How are we meant to behave? And how are we to defend whatever answer we give? Morals and Consent grounds our notion of morality in natural evolution, and from that basis, Malcolm Murray shows why contractarianism is a far more viable moral theory than is widely believed. The scope of Morals and Consent has two main parts: theory and applica- tion. In his discussion of theory, Murray defends contractarianism by appeal- ing to evolutionary game theory and metaethical analyses. His main argument is that we are not going to find morality as an objective fact in the world, and that instead, we can understand morality as a reciprocal cooperative trait. From this minimal moral architecture, Murray derives his innovative consent principle. The application of the theory, detailing what contractarians can – or ought to – say about moral matters, takes up the greater portion of the work. Murray offers a trenchant examination of what moral constraints we can claim concerning death (abortion, euthanasia, and capital punishment), sex (pornography, prostitution, and sexual assault), beneficence (toward pres- ent and future people, animals, and the environment), and liberty (genetic enhancement, organ sales, and torture). By focusing on evolutionary contractarianism and the epistemic justifica- tion of our moral claims – or lack thereof – Malcolm Murray’s Morals and Consent is a serious advance in the field of applied ethics and fills an impor- tant void. Malcolm Murray is a professor of moral philosophy at the University of Prince Edward Island and co-author, with Nebojsa Kujundzic, of Critical Reflection: A Textbook for Critical Thinking. 3 4 M Q U P F A L L 2 0 1 7 S P E C I F I C AT I O N S October 2017 978-0-7735-5111-4 $34.95A CDN, $34.95A US, £29.99 paper 978-0-7735-5110-7 $120.00S CDN, $120.00S US, £103.00 cloth 6 x 9 416pp eBook available P H I L O S O P H Y Morals and Consent Contractarian Solutions to Ethical Woes malcolm murray An evolutionary defence of contractarian ethics as applied to social norms. S P E C I F I C AT I O N S McGill-Queen’s Studies in the History of Ideas September 2017 978-0-7735-5105-3 $34.95A CDN, $34.95A US, £29.99 paper 978-0-7735-5104-6 $110.00S CDN, $110.00S US, £95.00 cloth 6 x 9 296pp eBook available The Culturalist Challenge to Liberal Republicanism michael lusztig An exploration of the volatile mix of politics and diversity. P O L I T I C A L P H I L O S O P H Y • C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S