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"One of the most important political books of 2018."-Rod Dreher,
American Conservative Of the three dominant ideologies of the
twentieth century-fascism, communism, and liberalism-only the last
remains. This has created a peculiar situation in which
liberalism's proponents tend to forget that it is an ideology and
not the natural end-state of human political evolution. As Patrick
Deneen argues in this provocative book, liberalism is built on a
foundation of contradictions: it trumpets equal rights while
fostering incomparable material inequality; its legitimacy rests on
consent, yet it discourages civic commitments in favor of
privatism; and in its pursuit of individual autonomy, it has given
rise to the most far-reaching, comprehensive state system in human
history. Here, Deneen offers an astringent warning that the
centripetal forces now at work on our political culture are not
superficial flaws but inherent features of a system whose success
is generating its own failure.
Science, Virtue, and the Future of Humanity addresses each of the
key public policy issues of our techno-future from the perspective
of deeply informed and philosophically inclined public
intellectuals. Among the issues addressed are the detachment of our
idea of justice from any credible foundation; Tocqueville's
prescience on how a "cognitive elite" might be the aristocracy to
be most feared in our time; robotization and the possibility of
being ruled by morally challenged robots; organ markets; the
degradation of liberal education by obsessive techno-enthusiasm;
biotechnology and biological determinism; the birth dearth and the
inevitable erosion of our entitlements; the possibility that our
techno-domination is basically an unfolding of the Lockean logic of
our foundation; and the future of the free exercise of religion in
an aggressively libertarian time. All in all, this book should
provoke widespread discussion about the relationship between
scientific/technological progress and the one true moral/spiritual
progress that takes place over the course of every particular human
life.
This is a robust and relevant collection from a truly distinguished
group of political theorists actively rethinking the promise and
perils of democracy. The book is coherent in its focus on a common
theme and aim: to advance and refine the political project of
promoting democratic theory and practice. While the contributors
are admirers of the promotion of various models of democracy they
also express distinct approaches and concerns. Each builds on and
expands the central theme of democracy and ultimately contends with
potential limits of current configurations of democratic life.
While to some extent they share common concerns they express
considerable dissent and fruitful opposition that deepens and
advances the debate. Contributors explore democracy from different
perspectives: law and constitutionalism, globalization and
development, public life and the arts, pluralism, democracy and
education, and democratic listening and democratic participation.
The contributions point towards new ways of living and thinking
politically, new directions for contending with some of the more
significant and seemingly intractable political problems,
challenging conventional presuppositions about democracy by
expanding the boundaries of what kinds of democracy may be
possible. The book critiques liberal notions of democracy that
forefront rational autonomy and a citizenship characterized by
narrow self-interest, and critique naive claims that any
infringement on the rights of the autonomous individual must
invariably lead to authoritarianism and totalitarianism. Instead
contributors suggest that the abandonment of the res publica in
pursuit of private interests may well lead to arid politics or
authoritarianism. Citizens are called upon to be more than just
voters but rather define themselves by participation in a community
beyond their self-interest-in fact arguing, like Aristotle,
Rousseau, Jefferson and Arendt, that we are only human when we
participate in something beyond ourselves, that we forge and
preserve our political community by our commitment to and
participation in robust debate and meaningful political action.
Contributors are not only revolutionary scholars that challenge
problematic streams of democratic theory and traditions, but are
deeply involved in shaping the character and constitution of the
American body politic and promoting debates about community and
citizenship and justice around the world.
Science, Virtue, and the Future of Humanity addresses each of the
key public policy issues of our techno-future from the perspective
of deeply informed and philosophically inclined public
intellectuals. Among the issues addressed are the detachment of our
idea of justice from any credible foundation; Tocqueville's
prescience on how a "cognitive elite" might be the aristocracy to
be most feared in our time; robotization and the possibility of
being ruled by morally challenged robots; organ markets; the
degradation of liberal education by obsessive techno-enthusiasm;
biotechnology and biological determinism; the birth dearth and the
inevitable erosion of our entitlements; the possibility that our
techno-domination is basically an unfolding of the Lockean logic of
our foundation; and the future of the free exercise of religion in
an aggressively libertarian time. All in all, this book should
provoke widespread discussion about the relationship between
scientific/technological progress and the one true moral/spiritual
progress that takes place over the course of every particular human
life.
This volume brings together leading thinkers who offer reflections
on the place of Western civilization in the academy, at a time when
there is indifference or even antipathy toward the study of the
West at most institutions of higher learning. Alternative
narratives-including multiculturalism, diversity, and
sustainability-have come to the fore in the stead of Western
civilization. The present volume is designed to explore the roots,
extent, and long-term consequences of this educational climate: How
and why did undergraduate education turn its back on what was once
an important component of its mission? To what extent has such
change affected the experience of undergraduates and the ability of
colleges to educate citizens of a constitutional republic? What are
the likely individual and social outcomes of such a shift in
educational priorities? The volume's theme is, and will continue to
be, the subject of national scholarly and media attention.
The Active Society, published in 1968, is the most ambitious book
in Amitai Etzioni's remarkable career. It is sociology in the grand
tradition, with at least one foot outside its own time. In it,
Etzioni confronts the great modern irony- that setting out to
become the masters of nature, humans become mastered by their own
instruments- championing the sense of agency and aiming to
demonstrate that humanity can direct its own creations, or at
least, that societies can aspire to a greater measure of authentic
self-government. In this new collection of essays, Wilson Carey
McWilliams brings together scholars in a range of disciplines to
analyze the significance and shortcomings of this important work.
They comment on the importance of Etzioni's contributions, the
magnitude of his achievement, and the extent to which The Active
Society speaks to contemporary social and political life.
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The Active Society Revisited (Paperback)
Wilson Carey McWilliams; Contributions by Frank Adloff, Richard Boyd, Melissa Buis-Michaux, Patrick J. Deneen, …
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R1,486
Discovery Miles 14 860
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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The Active Society, published in 1968, is the most ambitious book
in Amitai Etzioni's remarkable career. It is sociology in the grand
tradition, with at least one foot outside its own time. In it,
Etzioni confronts the great modern irony that setting out to become
the masters of nature, humans become mastered by their own
instruments championing the sense of agency and aiming to
demonstrate that humanity can direct its own creations, or at
least, that societies can aspire to a greater measure of authentic
self-government. In this new collection of essays, Wilson Carey
McWilliams brings together scholars in a range of disciplines to
analyze the significance and shortcomings of this important work.
They comment on the importance of Etzioni's contributions, the
magnitude of his achievement, and the extent to which The Active
Society speaks to contemporary social and political life.
In this edited collection, Peter Lawler presents a lucid and
comprehensive introduction to a diverse set of political issues
according to Tocqueville. Democracy and Its Friendly Critics
addresses a variety of modern political and social concerns, such
as the moral dimension of democracy, the theoretical challenges to
democracy in our time, the religious dimension of liberty, and the
meaning of work in contemporary American Life. Taking innovative
and unexpected approaches toward familiar topics, the essays
present engaging insights into a democratic society, and the
contributors include some of today's leading figures in political
philosophy. No other collection on Tocqueville addresses
contemporary American political issues in such a direct and
accessible fashion, making this book a valuable resource for the
study of political theory in America.
In this edited collection, Peter Lawler presents a lucid and
comprehensive introduction to a diverse set of political issues
according to Tocqueville. Democracy and Its Friendly Critics
addresses a variety of modern political and social concerns, such
as the moral dimension of democracy, the theoretical challenges to
democracy in our time, the religious dimension of liberty, and the
meaning of work in contemporary American Life. Taking innovative
and unexpected approaches toward familiar topics, the essays
present engaging insights into a democratic society, and the
contributors include some of today's leading figures in political
philosophy. No other collection on Tocqueville addresses
contemporary American political issues in such a direct and
accessible fashion, making this book a valuable resource for the
study of political theory in America.
This path-breaking and eloquent analysis of The Odyssey, and the
way it has been interpreted by political philosophers throughout
the centuries, has dramatic implications for the current state of
political thought. This important book offers readers original
insights into The Odyssey and it provides a new understanding of
the classic works of Plato, Rousseau, Vico, Horkheimer, and Adorno.
Through his analysis Patrick J. Deneen requires readers to rethink
the issues that are truly at the heart of our contemporary 'Culture
Wars,' and he encourages us to reassess our assumptions about the
Western canon's virtues or viciousness. Deneen's penetrating
exploration of Odysseus's and our own enduring battles between the
dual temptations of homecoming and exploration, patriotism and
cosmopolitanism, and relativism and universality provides an
original perspective on contentious debates at the center of modern
political theory and philosophy.
Do we believe the law good because it is just, or is it just
because we think it is good? This collection of essays addresses
the relationship of justice to law through the works of Homer,
Herodotus, Plato, Aristotle, Sophocles and the Islamic thinker al
Farabi. The issues explored include the foundations of our
understanding of justice; the foundation of authority of law; the
relative merits of the rule of law versus the authority of a wise
and just king; the uneasy relationship between particular laws and
the general notion of justice (equity); various aspects of justice
(reciprocity, proportionality) and their application in law; and
the necessity of the rule of law to the goodness and success of a
political order. The distinguished contributors often make explicit
comparisons to modern situations and contemporary debates. This
book will be valuable for those interested in classical political
theory, political philosophy, and law.
In 1973, Wilson Carey McWilliams (1933--2005) published The Idea of
Fraternity in America, a groundbreaking book that argued for an
alternative to America's dominant philosophy of liberalism. This
alternative tradition emphasized that community and fraternal bonds
were as vital to the process of maintaining political liberty as
was individual liberty. McWilliams expanded on this idea throughout
his prolific career as a teacher, writer, and activist, promoting a
unique definition of American democracy. In The Democratic Soul: A
Wilson Carey McWilliams Reader, editors Patrick J. Deneen and Susan
J. McWilliams, daughter of the famed intellectual, have assembled
key essays, articles, reviews, and lectures that trace McWilliams's
evolution as a scholar and explain his often controversial views on
education, religion, and literature. The book also showcases his
thoughts and opinions on prominent twentieth-century figures such
as George Orwell and Leo Strauss. The first comprehensive volume of
Wilson Carey McWilliams' collected writings, The Democratic Soul
will be welcomed by scholars of political science and American
political thought as a long-overdue contribution to the field.
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Redeeming Democracy in America (Hardcover)
Wilson Carey McWilliams; Edited by Patrick J. Deneen, Susan J. McWilliams; Introduction by Patrick J. Deneen, Susan J. McWilliams
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R1,982
Discovery Miles 19 820
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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Wherever we turn in America today, we see angry citizens
disparaging government, distrusting each other, avoiding civic
life, and professing a hatred of politics and politicians of all
stripes. Is our situation hopeless? Wilson Carey McWilliams
wouldn’t think so. McWilliams, one of the preeminent political
theorists of the twentieth century, was closely identified with an
ambitious intellectual enterprise to reclaim and restore democracy
as a source of national veneration, inspiration, and salvation.
Better than most of his contemporaries, he understood and
illuminated the major sources of the political malaise that
afflicts our nation’s citizens. For him, the key to
reinvigorating our republic depends on our ability to reclaim the
“second voice” of American politics—the one that emanates
from our literature, churches, families, and schools and speaks out
on behalf of community and civic responsibility. The writings
gathered here cohere into McWilliams’s most mature and most
developed philosophical statement—the distillation of a
distinguished career of thinking about the American experiment.
From insights into “The Framers and the Constitution” to
reflections on “America as Technological Republic,” he shares a
love for an older tradition of democracy, one based upon the active
self-rule of self-governing citizens. “Protestant Prudence and
Natural Rights” and “On Equality as the Moral Foundation for
Community” may force readers to adjust their understandings of
American politics, while “Democracy and the Citizen” and
“Political Parties as Civic Associations” will resound for
observers of the current political scene, regardless of party.
Carey McWilliams not only offers a prescient analysis of the
current crisis in American citizenship and governance but also
shows us what sources within the American tradition might exist to
save us from our worst selves. His broad and iconoclastic approach
to American politics should appeal to both conservatives and
liberals—to anyone, in fact, who cares about the state of
democracy in America.
Now with a new foreword by Patrick J. Deneen. Jean Bethke Elshtain
brings Augustine's thought into the contemporary political arena
and presents an Augustine who created a complex moral map that
offers space for loyalty, love, and care, as well as a chastened
form of civic virtue. The result is a controversial book about one
of the world's greatest and most complex thinkers whose thought
continues to haunt all of Western political philosophy. What is our
business "within this common mortal life?" Augustine asks and bids
us to ask ourselves. What can Augustine possibly have to say about
the conditions that characterize our contemporary society and
appear to put democracy in crisis? Who is Augustine for us now and
what do his words have to do with political theory? These are the
underlying questions that animate Jean Bethke Elshtain's
fascinating engagement with the thought and work of Augustine, the
ancient thinker who gave no political theory per se and refused to
offer up a positive utopia. In exploring the questions, Why
Augustine, why now? Elshtain argues that Augustine's great works
display a canny and scrupulous attunement to the here and now and
the very real limits therein. She discusses other aspects of
Augustine's thought as well, including his insistence that no human
city can be modeled on the heavenly city, and further elaborates on
Hannah Arendt's deep indebtedness to Augustine's understanding of
evil. Elshtain also presents Augustine's arguments against the
pridefulness of philosophy, thereby linking him to later currents
in modern thought, including Wittgenstein and Freud.
Do we believe the law good because it is just, or is it just
because we think it is good? This collection of essays addresses
the relationship of justice to law through the works of Homer,
Herodotus, Plato, Aristotle, Sophocles and the Islamic thinker al
Farabi. The issues explored include the foundations of our
understanding of justice; the foundation of authority of law; the
relative merits of the rule of law versus the authority of a wise
and just king; the uneasy relationship between particular laws and
the general notion of justice (equity); various aspects of justice
(reciprocity, proportionality) and their application in law; and
the necessity of the rule of law to the goodness and success of a
political order. The distinguished contributors often make explicit
comparisons to modern situations and contemporary debates. This
book will be valuable for those interested in classical political
theory, political philosophy, and law.
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