In the first half of the twentieth century, the rationalist tide had reached its high mark in the arts, politics, and work. But the Holocaust, the Gulag, and other failures have dimmed the popularity of rationalism. However, the evidence of those practical failures would not have been as convincing as it was if not for the existence of a theoretical diagnosis of the malady. This book compares and contrasts the ideas of some of the leading twentieth-century critics of rationalism: Hans-Georg Gadamer, F.A. Hayek, Aurel Kolnai, Alasdair MacIntyre, Michael Oakeshott, Michael Polanyi, Gilbert Ryle, Eric Voegelin, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. While each can be seen as a critic of rationalism, were they each attacking the same thing? In what senses did their analyses overlap, and in what senses did they differ? Clarifying these issues, this book will provide important insights into this major intellectual trend of the past century. By including these major thinkers, Tradition v. Rationalism, we see that that these thinkers believed that tradition should still have a place in the world as a repository of wisdom. As our lives becomes increasingly dominated by various forms of rationalisms-whether political, technological, economic, or cultural-we need to ask ourselves whether this is the type of world in which we want to live; and if not, how can we critique and propose an alternative to it? The thinkers in this book provide us a starting point on our journey towards thinking about how we can have a more hopeful, humane, and brighter future.

Douglas B. Rasmussen and Douglas J. Den Uyl's recent book Norms of Liberty: A Perfectionist Basis for Non-Perfectionist Politics (Penn State University Press, 2005) is being received in philosophy and political theory as an important and original defense of liberalism. The book offers a neo-Aristotelian ethic of human flourishing as a basis for a liberal conception of human rights. One of the authors' central contentions is that a key problem for any (liberal) political philosophy is how to establish a political/legal order which in principle does not require that any one person or group's well-being be given structured preference over that of any other. This companion volume, an interpretive and critical reader, features essays from both philosophers and political scientists, as well as an omnibus reply by Rasmussen and Den Uyl. Norms of Liberty makes challenging arguments about key issues, which makes a multi-disciplinary reader a valuable asset for both students and scholars. Reading Rasmussen and Den Uyl is designed both to explicate the book's arguments and to explore possible objections.

Literary works, through their very personal means of characterization, reveal the direct effect of politics on individuals in a way a political treatise cannot. The distinguished contributors to this volume share the belief that Shakespeare is the author who most effectively sets forth the multifarious pageant of politics. Shakespeare's rich canon presents monarchy and republic, tyrant and king, thinker and soldier, and Christian and pagan. The twelve essays in Shakespeare's Political Pageant discuss a broad range of Shakespeare's dramatic poetry from the perspective of the political theorist. This innovative book demonstrates the immense value of seeing Shakespeare's plays in the context of political philosophy. It will be an important source for students and scholars of both political science and literature.

Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince is one of the most celebrated and notorious books in the history of Western political thought. It continues to influence discussions of war and peace, the nature of politics, and the relation of private ethics to public duties. Ostensibly a sixteenth-century manual of instruction on certain aspects of princely rule and behavior, The Prince anticipates and complicates modern political and philosophical questions. What is the right order of society? Can Western politics still be the model for progress toward peace and prosperity, or does our freedom to create our individual purposes and pursuits undermine our public responsibilities? Are the characteristics of our politics markedly different, for better or for worse, than the politics of earlier eras? Machiavelli argues that there is no ideal, transcendent order to which one can conform, and that the right order is merely the one that has the capacity to persist over time. The Prince's emphasis on the importance of an effective truth over any abstract ideal marks it as one of the first works of modern political philosophy. Machiavelli's Legacy situates Machiavelli in general and The Prince in particular at the birth of modernity. Joining the conversation with established Machiavelli scholars are political theorists, Americanists, and international relations scholars, ensuring a diversity of viewpoints and approaches. Each contributor elucidates different features of Machiavelli's thinking, from his rejection of classical antiquity and Christianity, to his proposed dissolution of natural roles and hierarchies among human beings. The essays cover topics such as Machiavelli's vision for a heaven-sent redemptive ruler of Italy, an argument that Machiavelli accomplished a profoundly democratic turn in political thought, and a tough-minded liberal critique of his realistic agenda for political life, resulting in a book that is, in effect, a spirited conversation about Machiavelli's legacy. Contributors: Thomas E. Cronin, David Hendrickson, Harvey Mansfield, Clifford Orwin, Arlene Saxonhouse, Maurizio Viroli, David Wootton, Catherine Zuckert.

This volume brings together a diverse range of perspectives reflecting the international appeal and multi-disciplinary interest that Oakeshott now attracts. The essays offer a variety of approaches to Oakeshott's thought - testament to the abiding depth, originality, suggestiveness and complexity of his writings. The essays include contributions from well- known Oakeshott scholars along with ample representation from a new generation. As a collection these essays challenge Oakeshott's reputation as merely a 'critic of social planning'.

Title: Address delivered at the eleventh anniversary of the Massachusetts Peace Society: December 25, 1826.Author: Timothy FullerPublisher: Gale, Sabin Americana Description: Based on Joseph Sabin's famed bibliography, Bibliotheca Americana, Sabin Americana, 1500--1926 contains a collection of books, pamphlets, serials and other works about the Americas, from the time of their discovery to the early 1900s. Sabin Americana is rich in original accounts of discovery and exploration, pioneering and westward expansion, the U.S. Civil War and other military actions, Native Americans, slavery and abolition, religious history and more.Sabin Americana offers an up-close perspective on life in the western hemisphere, encompassing the arrival of the Europeans on the shores of North America in the late 15th century to the first decades of the 20th century. Covering a span of over 400 years in North, Central and South America as well as the Caribbean, this collection highlights the society, politics, religious beliefs, culture, contemporary opinions and momentous events of the time. It provides access to documents from an assortment of genres, sermons, political tracts, newspapers, books, pamphlets, maps, legislation, literature and more.Now for the first time, these high-quality digital scans of original works are available via print-on-demand, making them readily accessible to libraries, students, independent scholars, and readers of all ages.++++The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: ++++SourceLibrary: Huntington LibraryDocumentID: SABCP04685800CollectionID: CTRG04-B103PublicationDate: 18270101SourceBibCitation: Selected Americana from Sabin's Dictionary of books relating to AmericaNotes: Collation: 27 p.; 25 cm

Title: An oration pronounced at Lexington, Massachusetts, on the fourth of July, A.D. 1814: being the thirty-eighth anniversary of American independence.Author: Timothy FullerPublisher: Gale, Sabin Americana Description: Based on Joseph Sabin's famed bibliography, Bibliotheca Americana, Sabin Americana, 1500--1926 contains a collection of books, pamphlets, serials and other works about the Americas, from the time of their discovery to the early 1900s. Sabin Americana is rich in original accounts of discovery and exploration, pioneering and westward expansion, the U.S. Civil War and other military actions, Native Americans, slavery and abolition, religious history and more.Sabin Americana offers an up-close perspective on life in the western hemisphere, encompassing the arrival of the Europeans on the shores of North America in the late 15th century to the first decades of the 20th century. Covering a span of over 400 years in North, Central and South America as well as the Caribbean, this collection highlights the society, politics, religious beliefs, culture, contemporary opinions and momentous events of the time. It provides access to documents from an assortment of genres, sermons, political tracts, newspapers, books, pamphlets, maps, legislation, literature and more.Now for the first time, these high-quality digital scans of original works are available via print-on-demand, making them readily accessible to libraries, students, independent scholars, and readers of all ages.++++The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: ++++SourceLibrary: Huntington LibraryDocumentID: SABCP04686200CollectionID: CTRG04-B107PublicationDate: 18140101SourceBibCitation: Selected Americana from Sabin's Dictionary of books relating to AmericaNotes: Collation: 23 p

The Making of the Modern Law: Legal Treatises, 1800-1926 includes over 20,000 analytical, theoretical and practical works on American and British Law. It includes the writings of major legal theorists, including Sir Edward Coke, Sir William Blackstone, James Fitzjames Stephen, Frederic William Maitland, John Marshall, Joseph Story, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. and Roscoe Pound, among others. Legal Treatises includes casebooks, local practice manuals, form books, works for lay readers, pamphlets, letters, speeches and other works of the most influential writers of their time. It is of great value to researchers of domestic and international law, government and politics, legal history, business and economics, criminology and much more.++++The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: ++++Harvard Law School Libraryocm18925448Attributed to Timothy Fuller. Cf. Shoemaker. A checklist of American imprints for 1823.Boston: Printed for the author by True and Greene, 1823. 27 p.; 23 cm.

Michael Oakeshott's lifelong interest in religion and its relation to politics is made explicit in this collection of essays. It comprises four important unpublished pieces, together with a further six which originally appeared in remote and inaccessible journals, and provides an illuminating complement to Oakeshott's best-known writings. Much of the collection emanates from his early career, and reveals not only his initial intellectual preoccupations, but the nature of his religious outlook, the moral convictions that governed the life he himself lived, and his sense of what it means to live 'religiously' in the world. What the essays disclose is a view of a moral life without fixities, but with choices of conduct in accord with one's self-understanding. Faith lies not in resisting but exploring life's contingencies, seeking an imaginative response to the events that come one's way. Oakeshott's writing is persuasive and compelling, and the essays offer a calm and civil dissent from the dominant rationalism of our time. In a substantial introduction, Timothy Fuller provides the first full explanation of Oakeshott's religious ideas, setting them within their philosophic context.He shows how, in these essays, Oakeshott elaborated the implications of 'Experience and its Modes', worked out his political theory as summarized in 'Rationalism in Politics', and gradually assembled his own philosophical account of the ideal that European civilization had made concrete in history - civil association under the rule of law - and to which he gave definitive expression in 'On Human Conduct'. Michael Oakeshott was born in 1901 and educated at the Universities of Cambridge, Tubingen and Marburg. A fellow of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, he was appointed to the chair of Political Science at the London School of Economics in 1950. He died in 1990. His publications include 'Experience and its Modes' (1933), and edition of Hobbes's 'Leviathan' (1946), 'Rationalism in Politics' (1962), 'On Human Conduct' (1975) and 'The Voice of Liberal Learning' (1989). Timothy Fuller was Dean of the College, Colorado College, and editor of 'The Voice of Liberal Learning: Michael Oakeshott on Education'.

In this carefully reasoned work, discovered after Michael Oakeshott's death in 1990 and here published for the first time, the preeminent political philosopher describes the fundamental dichotomy that has divided discussion of the role of government in Europe since the Renaissance. Oakeshott exposes the weaknesses of each opposing position and proposes a middle ground, incorporating some scepticism and some faith. By general consensus, Oakeshott is the most striking and original British political thinker of the century...Anyone interested in the nature of politics and government will find this book of interest, and many will want to direct their senior students to it as an accessible introduction to Oakeshott's thought.-William Christian, University of Guelph, Perspectives on Political Science The Politics of Faith and the Politics of Scepticism is concerned to trace the deepest and most permanent features of the modern European political landscape over the last five hundred years, and this it does in an original, insightful, and frequently eloquent manner. We are fortunate that the book has finally seen the light of day.-Paul Franco, Bowdoin College, Political Theory We are grateful to the editor Tim Fuller for making available this little gem that combines philosophical insight and historical investigation in the exposure of the two 'styles' of modern European politics, without the elaborate prose to which Oakeshott has accustomed his readers: the absence of the typical flamboyant style that characterizes Oakeshott's published works, enables us to grasp his line of thought in the making and renders his arguments crystal clear...A sublime mememto.-Giovanni Giorgini, Political Studies