C.B. Macpherson and Philosophy, “Crypto” or Otherwise: A Response to Frank Cunningham

Abstract

I have a high regard for Frank Cunningham and his work, on socialism, on democratic theory—and on C.B. Macpherson. To take one example, his new introductions to the recent reissues of Macpherson's books from Oxford University Press, including The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism and Democratic Theory: Essays in Retrieval, are excellent. Lucid and informative, they highlight the value Macpherson's ideas hold for contemporary political thought. So I am grateful that he has offered so fulsome a critical response to my book—even though he finds my approach, based on the idea that there is a suppressed philosophical dimension in Macpherson's work, though (dubiously) audacious, to be of limited accuracy or usefulness—indeed ultimately misguided. It results, he claims, in an analysis that “detracts from Macpherson's political-theoretical and political strengths.”