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This is a collection of articles on citizenship by a group of
well-known and highly respected political theorists, including
Habermas, Walzer, Flathman, MacIntyre, Ignatieff, and George
Armstrong Kelly.
What is political philosophy? Ronald Beiner makes the case that it
is centrally defined by supremely ambitious reflection on the ends
of life. We pursue this reflection by exposing ourselves to, and
participating in, a perennial dialogue among epic theorists who
articulate grand visions of what constitutes the authentic good for
human beings. Who are these epic theorists, and what are their
strengths and weaknesses? Beiner selects a dozen leading
candidates: Arendt, Oakeshott, Strauss, Loewith, Voegelin, Weil,
Gadamer, Habermas, Foucault, MacIntyre, Rawls, and Rorty. In each
case, he shows both why the political philosophies continue to be
intellectually compelling and why they are problematic or can be
challenged in various ways. In this sense, Political Philosophy
attempts to draw up a balance sheet for political philosophy in the
twentieth century, by identifying a canon of towering contributions
and reviewing the extent to which they fulfil their intellectual
aspirations.
This volume explores some of the tensions and pressures of
citizenship in Western liberal democracies. Citizenship has adopted
many guises in the Western context, although historically
citizenship is attached only to some variant of democracy. How
democracy is configured is thus at the core of citizenship.
Beginning in ancient Greece, citizenship is attached to the notion
of a public sphere of deliberation, open only to a small number of
males. Nonetheless, we take from these origins an understanding of
citizenship that is attached to friendship, preservation of a
distinct community, and adherence to law. These early conceptions
of citizenship in the west have been dramatically altered in the
modern context by the ascendancy of individual rights and equality,
expanding the inclusiveness of definition of citizenship. The
universality of rights claims has led to debate about the
legitimacy of the nation state and questioning of borders. A
further development in our understanding of citizenship, and one
that has shifted citizenship studies considerably in the last few
decades, is the backlash against the universalism of rights in the
defense of cultural recognition within democratic polities.
Multiculturalism as a broad spectrum of citizenship studies defends
the autonomy and recognition of cultural, and sometimes religious,
identity within an overarching scheme of rights and equality. This
collection draws upon the many threads of citizenship in the
Western tradition to consider how all of them are still extant, and
contentious, in contemporary liberal democracy.
Judgment, Imagination, and Politics brings together for the first
time leading essays on the nature of judgment. Drawing from themes
in Kant's Critique of Judgment and Hannah Arendt's discussion of
judgment from Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy, these essays
deal with: the role of imagination in judgment; judgment as a
distinct human faculty; the nature of judgment in law and politics;
and the many puzzles that arise from the 'enlarged mentality, ' the
capacity to consider the perspectives of others that aren't in Kant
treated as essential to judgment
Motivated by the reentry of tyranny into political discourse and
political action, this new collection of essays compares ancient
and contemporary accounts of tyranny in an effort to find responses
to current political dilemmas and enduring truths. Identified by
Plato and Aristotle as the worst kind of regime, the concept of
tyranny was called into question during the Enlightenment and
finally rejected in the 20th century as questions of good and evil
were separated from facts-the proper domain for political science.
However, in our globally interconnected world, tyrants are no
longer dangerous solely to their subjects and neighbors, but to
all. Confronting Tyranny brings together distinguished scholars to
explore the lessons of classical political philosophy for the
present political crisis of understanding and action.
Motivated by the reentry of tyranny into political discourse and
political action, this new collection of essays compares ancient
and contemporary accounts of tyranny in an effort to find responses
to current political dilemmas and enduring truths. Identified by
Plato and Aristotle as the worst kind of regime, the concept of
tyranny was called into question during the Enlightenment and
finally rejected in the 20th century as questions of good and evil
were separated from facts-the proper domain for political science.
However, in our globally interconnected world, tyrants are no
longer dangerous solely to their subjects and neighbors, but to
all. Confronting Tyranny brings together distinguished scholars to
explore the lessons of classical political philosophy for the
present political crisis of understanding and action.
Civil Religion offers philosophical commentaries on more than
twenty thinkers stretching from the sixteenth to the twentieth
century. It examines four important traditions within the history
of modern political philosophy. The civil religion tradition,
principally defined by Machiavelli, Hobbes and Rousseau, seeks to
domesticate religion by putting it solidly in the service of
politics. The liberal tradition pursues an alternative strategy of
domestication by seeking to put as much distance as possible
between religion and politics. Modern theocracy is a militant
reaction against liberalism, reversing the relationship of
subordination asserted by civil religion. Finally, a fourth
tradition is defined by Nietzsche and Heidegger. Aspects of their
thought are not just modern, but hyper-modern, yet they manifest an
often-hysterical reaction against liberalism that is fundamentally
shared with the theocratic tradition. Together, these four
traditions compose a vital dialogue that carries us to the heart of
political philosophy itself.
What are the chief challenges posed to contemporary democracy by
modern technology, and how can democratic theory best respond to,
or at least reflect on, those challenges? Inhabiting the kind of
technologically advanced era in which we live, what sources are
available within political theory for theoretical insight
concerning the problem of democratic engagement with technology?
The purpose of this volume is to canvas a broad range of theorists
and theoretical traditions in order to address these questions,
including Hegel and Marx, Rousseau and John Dewey, Heidegger and
Simone Weil, Habermas and Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt and Hans
Jonas. Commentaries on all these important thinkers -- focused on
the issue of contemporary technology as posing unique social and
political challenges for democratic political life -- yields rich
and ambitious resources for theoretical reflection.
Originally published in 1983. One of the basic capacities of man
as a political being is his faculty of judgement. Yet for all the
books on concepts like freedom, equality and authority,
surprisingly little attention has been given to this topic in the
tradition of Western political thought. What is the nature of
political judgement? What endows us, as human beings, with the
ability to make reasonable judgements about human affairs and to
judge the common world we share with others? By what means to we
secure validity for our judgements? What are the underlying
conditions of this human capacity, and what implications does it
have the understanding of politics? These questions, central as
they are to any reflection on politics have rarely been addressed
in a systematic way. This book examines Kant's concept of taste and
Aristotle's concept of prudence, as well as recent works of
political philosophy by Arendt, Gadamer and Habermas, all crucially
influenced by Kant and Aristotle.
Civil Religion offers philosophical commentaries on more than
twenty thinkers stretching from the sixteenth to the twentieth
century. It examines four important traditions within the history
of modern political philosophy. The civil religion tradition,
principally defined by Machiavelli, Hobbes and Rousseau, seeks to
domesticate religion by putting it solidly in the service of
politics. The liberal tradition pursues an alternative strategy of
domestication by seeking to put as much distance as possible
between religion and politics. Modern theocracy is a militant
reaction against liberalism, reversing the relationship of
subordination asserted by civil religion. Finally, a fourth
tradition is defined by Nietzsche and Heidegger. Aspects of their
thought are not just modern, but hyper-modern, yet they manifest an
often-hysterical reaction against liberalism that is fundamentally
shared with the theocratic tradition. Together, these four
traditions compose a vital dialogue that carries us to the heart of
political philosophy itself.
What is political philosophy? Ronald Beiner makes the case that it
is centrally defined by supremely ambitious reflection on the ends
of life. We pursue this reflection by exposing ourselves to, and
participating in, a perennial dialogue among epic theorists who
articulate grand visions of what constitutes the authentic good for
human beings. Who are these epic theorists, and what are their
strengths and weaknesses? Beiner selects a dozen leading
candidates: Arendt, Oakeshott, Strauss, Loewith, Voegelin, Weil,
Gadamer, Habermas, Foucault, MacIntyre, Rawls, and Rorty. In each
case, he shows both why the political philosophies continue to be
intellectually compelling and why they are problematic or can be
challenged in various ways. In this sense, Political Philosophy
attempts to draw up a balance sheet for political philosophy in the
twentieth century, by identifying a canon of towering contributions
and reviewing the extent to which they fulfil their intellectual
aspirations.
Hannah Arendt's last philosophical work was an intended three-part
project entitled "The Life of the Mind." Unfortunately, Arendt
lived to complete only the first two parts, "Thinking" and
"Willing." Of the third, "Judging," only the title page, with
epigraphs from Cato and Goethe, was found after her death. As the
titles suggest, Arendt conceived of her work as roughly parallel to
the three "Critiques" of Immanuel Kant. In fact, while she began
work on "The Life of the Mind," Arendt lectured on "Kant's
Political Philosophy," using the" Critique of Judgment" as her main
text. The present volume brings Arendt's notes for these lectures
together with other of her texts on the topic of judging and
provides important clues to the likely direction of Arendt's
thinking in this area.
Following the fall of the Berlin Wall and demise of the Soviet
Union, prominent Western thinkers began to suggest that liberal
democracy had triumphed decisively on the world stage. Having
banished fascism in World War II, liberalism had now buried
communism, and the result would be an end of major ideological
conflicts, as liberal norms and institutions spread to every corner
of the globe. With the Brexit vote in Great Britain, the resurgence
of right-wing populist parties across the European continent, and
the surprising ascent of Donald Trump to the American presidency,
such hopes have begun to seem hopelessly naïve. The far right is
back, and serious rethinking is in order. In Dangerous Minds,
Ronald Beiner traces the deepest philosophical roots of such
right-wing ideologues as Richard Spencer, Aleksandr Dugin, and
Steve Bannon to the writings of Nietzsche and Heidegger—and
specifically to the aspects of their thought that express revulsion
for the liberal-democratic view of life. Beiner contends that
Nietzsche's hatred and critique of bourgeois, egalitarian societies
has engendered new disciples on the populist right who threaten to
overturn the modern liberal consensus. Heidegger, no less than
Nietzsche, thoroughly rejected the moral and political values that
arose during the Enlightenment and came to power in the wake of the
French Revolution. Understanding Heideggerian dissatisfaction with
modernity, and how it functions as a philosophical magnet for those
most profoundly alienated from the reigning liberal-democratic
order, Beiner argues, will give us insight into the recent and
unexpected return of the far right. Beiner does not deny that
Nietzsche and Heidegger are important thinkers; nor does he seek to
expel them from the history of philosophy. But he does advocate
that we rigorously engage with their influential thought in light
of current events—and he suggests that we place their severe
critique of modern liberal ideals at the center of this engagement.
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which
commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out
and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and
impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes
high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using
print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in
1992.
Certainly one of the key German philosophers of the twentieth
century, Hans-Georg Gadamer also influenced the study of
literature, art, music, sacred and legal texts, and medicine.
Indeed, while much attention has been focused on Gadamer's writings
about ancient Greek and modern German philosophy, the relevance of
his work for other disciplines is only now beginning to be properly
considered and understood. In an effort to address this slant, this
volume brings together many prominent scholars to assess,
re-evaluate, and question Hans-Georg Gadamer's works, as well as
his place in intellectual history. The book includes a recent essay
by Gadamer on 'the task of hermeneutics', as well as essays by
distinguished contributors including Jurgen Habermas, Richard
Rorty, Gerald Bruns, Georgia Warnke, and many others. The
contributors situate Gadamer's views in surprising ways and show
that his writings speak to a range of contemporary debates - from
constitutional questions to issues of modern art. A controversial
final section attempts to uncover and clarify Gadamer's history in
relation to National Socialism. More an investigation and
questioning than a celebration of this venerable and profoundly
influential philosopher, this collection will become a catalyst for
any future rethinking of philosophical hermeneutics, as well as a
significant starting place for rereading and reviewing Hans-Georg
Gadamer.
In Liberalism, Nationalism, Citizenship, Ronald Beiner engages
critically with a wide range of important political thinkers and
current debates in light of the Aristotelian idea that shared
citizenship is an essential human calling. Virtually every aspect
of contemporary political experience - globalization, international
migration, secessionist movements, the politics of multiculturalism
- pose urgent challenges to modern citizenship. Beiner's work on
the philosophy of citizenship is essential reading not just for
students of politics and political philosophy, but for all those
who rightly sense that these kinds of recent challenges demand an
ambitious rethinking of the nature of political community.
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which
commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out
and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and
impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes
high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using
print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in
1992.
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