Narrative Power and Liberal Truth
Narrative Power and Liberal Truth

Author: Eldon J. Eisenach

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 9780742507913

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Liberal political thought-from its origins in the seventeenth-century through today's rights discourse-is grounded in the ideal of the autonomous individual. As the theory holds, these individuals are 'born in freedom' from religious, political, social or economic obligations and then construct these systems through individual and collective choices. Over the past thirty years, however, this understanding of freedom has been challenged from a variety of perspectives. Eldon J. Eisenach has been at the forefront of that challenge, stressing the centrality of religious elements and assumptions in liberal writings that many scholars suppressed or ignored. In Narrative Power and Liberal Truth Eisenach brings together eleven of his previously published essays to demonstrate that many 'postmodernist' ideas of persons and freedom are already present within the tradition of liberal political philosophy and that liberalism itself is more capacious of human experience and meanings than modern critiques allow.

Liberalism
Liberalism

Author: Michael Freeden

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 161

ISBN-13: 0199670439

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Michael Freeden explores the concept of liberalism, one of the longest-standing and central political theories and ideologies. Combining a variety of approaches, he distinguishes between liberalism as a political movement, as a system of ideas, and as a series of ethical and philosophical principles.

The Secular Contract
The Secular Contract

Author: Alex Schulman

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2011-06-23

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 1441184678

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The Secular Contract seeks to defend the European Enlightenment's secularization of political philosophy by promoting an understanding of Enlightenment secular liberalism and extending it to contemporary issues. The work proposes that the Enlightenment united the secularizing trends that occurred at the time across all areas of knowledge into a "secular contract" for modern politics. It argues that this was a normatively valuable enterprise whose aims and arguments need to be recovered today, especially in light of the challenges faced by the West, including fundamentalist Christianity in the US and radical Islam in Europe. Looking at the works of many thinkers, such as Hobbes, Jefferson, Madison, Rousseau, the book then shifts to the present day to argue for a different liberalism, as suggested by such contemporary thinkers as William Galston or Stephen Macedo. An engaging read, The Secular Contract will appeal to anyone interested in political theory and the history of ideas.

These Truths: A History of the United States
These Truths: A History of the United States

Author: Jill Lepore

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2018-09-18

Total Pages: 733

ISBN-13: 0393635252

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“Nothing short of a masterpiece.” —NPR Books A New York Times Bestseller and a Washington Post Notable Book of the Year In the most ambitious one-volume American history in decades, award-winning historian Jill Lepore offers a magisterial account of the origins and rise of a divided nation. Widely hailed for its “sweeping, sobering account of the American past” (New York Times Book Review), Jill Lepore’s one-volume history of America places truth itself—a devotion to facts, proof, and evidence—at the center of the nation’s history. The American experiment rests on three ideas—“these truths,” Jefferson called them—political equality, natural rights, and the sovereignty of the people. But has the nation, and democracy itself, delivered on that promise? These Truths tells this uniquely American story, beginning in 1492, asking whether the course of events over more than five centuries has proven the nation’s truths, or belied them. To answer that question, Lepore wrestles with the state of American politics, the legacy of slavery, the persistence of inequality, and the nature of technological change. “A nation born in contradiction… will fight, forever, over the meaning of its history,” Lepore writes, but engaging in that struggle by studying the past is part of the work of citizenship. With These Truths, Lepore has produced a book that will shape our view of American history for decades to come.

Bentham
Bentham

Author: John Rowland Dinwiddy

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13: 9780804745192

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Jeremy Bentham, the founder of utilitarianism, made a powerful impact on several major areas of thought and policy: ethics, jurisprudence, political and constitutional theory, and social and administrative reform. Yet from the start his ideas have been subject to misunderstanding and caricature. John Dinwiddy's Bentham is regarded as the best introduction to this important jurist and reformer. Dinwiddy examines the various components of Bentham's philosophy and shows how each was shaped by the radical rethinking entailed by the utilitarian approach. He also discusses interpretations of Benthamism and its contemporary significance and the controversial question of Bentham's influence on reform. Bentham is reproduced here in full together with three classic essays that deal with key issues in understanding Bentham: his conversion to political radicalism, the relations between private and public ethics, and his theory of adjudication. A new introduction and select bibliography by William Twining set the context and survey the developments in Bentham studies since the book's original publication in 1989.

Fifty Major Philosophers
Fifty Major Philosophers

Author: Kathryn Plant

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2007-01-24

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 1134281307

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A comprehensive update of the best-selling first edition, this revitalized new text presents readers with a series of clear, well-written entries focusing on fifty of the most influential philosophers from the last two thousand years. Chosen to present the traditional mainstream of European philosophy, the text also provides a critical survey that meets the needs of readers seeking a broad basic understanding as well as a foundation for further philosophical enquiry. Encompassing a wide range of ancient, medieval and modern philosophers, features of the second edition include: new entries on Dewey, Collingwood, Popper, Quine, Merleau-Ponty, Ayer and Rawls a thorough revision of existing entries a complete update of the further reading section an expanded glossary the addition of an alphabetical table of contents and an index for ease of use. Authoritative and highly readable, this book is a vital reference tool for all those wishing to improve their understanding of some of the world’s most fascinating intellectual figures.

Why America Needs a Left
Why America Needs a Left

Author: Eli Zaretsky

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2013-04-26

Total Pages: 183

ISBN-13: 0745656560

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The United States today cries out for a robust, self-respecting, intellectually sophisticated left, yet the very idea of a left appears to have been discredited. In this brilliant new book, Eli Zaretsky rethinks the idea by examining three key moments in American history: the Civil War, the New Deal and the range of New Left movements in the 1960s and after including the civil rights movement, the women's movement and gay liberation.In each period, he argues, the active involvement of the left - especially its critical interaction with mainstream liberalism - proved indispensable. American liberalism, as represented by the Democratic Party, is necessarily spineless and ineffective without a left. Correspondingly, without a strong liberal center, the left becomes sectarian, authoritarian, and worse. Written in an accessible way for the general reader and the undergraduate student, this book provides a fresh perspective on American politics and political history. It has often been said that the idea of a left originated in the French Revolution and is distinctively European; Zaretsky argues, by contrast, that America has always had a vibrant and powerful left. And he shows that in those critical moments when the country returns to itself, it is on its left/liberal bases that it comes to feel most at home.

Political Philosophy from an Intercultural Perspective
Political Philosophy from an Intercultural Perspective

Author: Bianca Boteva-Richter

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-06-28

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 1000402959

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The objective of the following collected volume is to encourage a critical reflection on the relationship between "power" and "non-power" in our contemporary "world" and, proceeding from various philosophical traditions, to investigate the multifaceted aspects of this relationship. The authors’ respective investigations proceed from an intercultural perspective and fall predominantly in the domain of political theory and philosophy. This volume takes an intercultural political perspective, which means, on the one hand, involving non-European philosophies in a global debate about power relations and their effects in the world and, on the other hand, confronting local traditions of thought with a global inquiry in order to enter into a philosophical-political dialogue with these traditions. An intercultural approach of this type to political philosophy seeks not only to join others in reflecting upon global problems, but also to decenter of our understanding of the world, drawing attention to new ways of thinking. Insofar as the authors of the planned volume deal with "concrete" philosophical-political problems unfolding in various regions of the world, they seek to shed light on burning issues like migration, human rights violations, dictatorship and language, global poverty, power asymmetries, experiences of injustice with the further goal of offering a particularly intercultural analysis of these problems along with approaches to resolving them. To date, there is no book that collects various essays from different countries and perspectives and poses political-philosophical problems from an intercultural point of view.

Rorty, Public Reason, and Modernity's Crisis of Critique
Rorty, Public Reason, and Modernity's Crisis of Critique

Author: Ivan Marquez

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2024-11-15

Total Pages: 169

ISBN-13: 1666968765

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Starting with Richard Rorty’s critique of reason, this book discusses modernity’s legitimation crisis in political discourse. Rorty, Public Reason, and Modernity's Crisis of Critique explores the contemporary crisis of rational justification and collective will-formation in our current political institutions and the public sphere, arguing that there is an array of untapped rational resources that should be deployed to justify social, political, and economic views, agendas, and programs. It also identifies limits to the powers of public reason to generate rational agreement and collective will-formation. Using a critical analysis of Rorty’s non-foundationalist perspective as a vehicle to study modernity’s project of rational critique, Ivan Marquez highlights both the strengths and promise and the weaknesses and limitations of liberal and democratic societies—especially within pluralistic socio-cultural contexts—and some possible ways to work within this space of possibilities and constraints. Ultimately, this book can be seen as elaborating a political epistemology view that argues for a redefinition of philosophy and defends a type of post-metaphysical culture.