chapter 1
...................................................................................................................................................INTRODUCTION
...................................................................................................................................................john s. dryzek
bonnie honig
anne phillips
‘‘What’s your line of business, then?’’
‘‘I’m a scholar of the Enlightenment,’’ said Nicholas.
‘‘Oh Lord!’’ the young man said. ‘‘Another producer of useless
graduates!’’
Nicholas felt despondent.
(Lukes 1995 : 199 )InThe Curious Enlightenment of Professor Caritat—Steven Lukes’Wctiona-
lized round-up of contemporary political theory—the hapless professor has
been kidnapped by the resistance movement and sent oVto 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