During and especially after the Second World War, a group of
leading scholars who had been perilously close to the war's
devastation joined others fortunate enough to have been protected
by distance in an effort to redefine and reinvigorate Western
liberal ideals for a radically new age. Treating evil as an
analytical category, they sought to discover the sources of
twentieth-century horror and the potentialities of the modern state
in the wake of western desolation. In the process, they devised
strikingly new ways to understand politics, sociology and history
that reverberate still. In this major intellectual history, Ira
Katznelson examines the works of Hannah Arendt, Robert Dahl,
Richard Hofstadter, Harold Lasswell, Charles Lindblom, Karl
Polanyi, and David Truman, detailing their engagement with the
larger project of reclaiming the West's moral bearing.
In light of their epoch's calamities these intellectuals
insisted that the tradition of Enlightenment thought required a new
realism, a good deal of renovation, and much recommitment. This
array of historians, political philosophers, and social scientists
understood that a simple reassertion of liberal modernism had been
made radically insufficient by the enormities and moral
catastrophes of war, totalitarianism, and holocaust. Confronting
their period's dashed hopes for reason and knowledge, they asked
not just whether the Enlightenment should define modernity, but
which Enlightenment we should wish to have. Decades later, in the
midst of a new type of war and reanimated discussions of the
concept of evil, we share no small stake in assessing their
successes and limitations.
General
Imprint: |
Columbia University Press
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Series: |
Leonard Hastings Schoff Lectures |
Release date: |
August 2004 |
First published: |
August 2004 |
Authors: |
Ira Katznelson
|
Dimensions: |
229 x 152 x 16mm (L x W x T) |
Format: |
Paperback - Trade
|
Pages: |
208 |
Edition: |
New ed |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-231-11195-9 |
Categories: |
Books >
Social sciences >
Politics & government >
General
|
LSN: |
0-231-11195-9 |
Barcode: |
9780231111959 |
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