Rousseau's Social Contract
Rousseau's Social Contract

Author: David Lay Williams

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2014-01-13

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 0521197554

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Rousseau's Social Contract: An Introduction offers a thorough and systematic tour of this notoriously paradoxical and challenging text.

Politics of Romanticism
Politics of Romanticism

Author: Zoe Beenstock

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Published: 2016-04-08

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 147440104X

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Redefines Romantic sociability through a reading of social contract theoryThe Politics of Romanticism examines the relationship between two major traditions which have not been considered in conjunction: British Romanticism and social contract philosophy. She argues that an emerging political vocabulary was translated into a literary vocabulary in social contract theory, which shaped the literature of Romantic Britain, as well as German Idealism, the philosophical tradition through which Romanticism is more usually understood. Beenstock locates the Romantic movement's coherence in contract theory's definitive dilemma: the critical disruption of the individual and the social collective. By looking at the intersection of the social contract, Scottish Enlightenment philosophy, and canonical works of Romanticism and its political culture, her book provides an alternative to the model of retreat which has dominated accounts of Romanticism of the last century. Key Features Develops new understanding of Romanticism as political movementOffers fresh readings of canonical works by Coleridge, Wordsworth, Godwin, Mary Shelley and Carlyle by tracing their implicit dialogue with the political philosophy of Rousseau and other Enlightenment political theoristsShows that the philosophical routes of Romanticism and its ties to German Idealism originate in empiricism Carries important consequences for the contemporary understanding of the self, an understanding that is partly rooted in notions that originated with the Romantics

Rousseau and the Ethics of Virtue
Rousseau and the Ethics of Virtue

Author: James Delaney

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2006-09-15

Total Pages: 171

ISBN-13: 1847144160

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Jean-Jacques Rousseau is an enigmatic figure in many ways. There is much debate about whether he was an advocate of the Enlightenment project or a critic of it. Sometimes Rousseau seems to be arguing against traditional values and hierarchies. But elsewhere he seems to be an enemy of progress altogether. This book explains Rousseau's true place in the Enlightenment by paying particular attention to his account of virtue. Virtue ethics is one of the main branches in moral philosophy, and its most famous advocate is Aristotle. Many recent philosophers have tried to revive virtue ethics, most notably Alasdair MacIntyre in his 1984 book, After Virtue. MacIntyre argues that the Enlightenment project was doomed to fail precisely because Enlightenment philosophers had discarded Aristotle. They do this by rejecting Aristotle's claim that all things are, by nature, directed towards some proper end. The enlightenment figures whom MacIntyre discusses at length in his critique are Hume, Kant, and Kierkegaard. And while Rousseau is mentioned as an Enlightenment thinker, very little attention is paid to him. This book puts Rousseau's ethics into historical perspective, showing that Rousseau shares important characteristics with his contemporaries as well as with the tradition of Aristotle. The dichotomy set up by MacIntyre and others between the ethics of the ancient tradition and that of the Enlightenment is oversimplified. By taking a serious look at Rousseau's ethics, we can see that he forms a bridge between these two rich traditions in the history of Western philosophy.

The Democratic Sublime
The Democratic Sublime

Author: Jason Frank

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2021-03-15

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 0190658185

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The transition from royal to popular sovereignty during the age of democratic revolutions--from 1776 to 1848--entailed not only the reorganization of institutions of governance and norms of political legitimacy, but also a dramatic transformation in the iconography and symbolism of political power. The personal and external rule of the king, whose body was the physical locus of political authority, was replaced with the impersonal and immanent self-rule of the people, whose power could not be incontestably embodied. This posed representational difficulties that went beyond questions of institutionalization and law, extending into the aesthetic realm of visualization, composition, and form. How to make the people's sovereign will tangible to popular judgment was, and is, a crucial problem of democratic political aesthetics. The Democratic Sublime offers an interdisciplinary exploration of how the revolutionary proliferation of popular assemblies--crowds, demonstrations, gatherings of the "people out of doors"--came to be central to the political aesthetics of democracy during the age of democratic revolutions. Jason Frank argues that popular assemblies allowed the people to manifest as a collective actor capable of enacting dramatic political reforms and change. Moreover, Frank asserts that popular assemblies became privileged sites of democratic representation as they claimed to support the voice of the people while also signaling the material plenitude beyond any single representational claim. Popular assemblies continue to retain this power, in part, because they embody that which escapes representational capture: they disrupt the representational space of appearance and draw their power from the ineffability and resistant materiality of the people's will. Engaging with a wide range of sources, from canonical political theorists (Rousseau, Burke, and Tocqueville) to the novels of Hugo, the visual culture of the barricades, and the memoirs of popular insurgents, The Democratic Sublime demonstrates how making the people's sovereign will tangible to popular judgment became a central dilemma of modern democracy, and how it remains so today.

The Faith of the Faithless
The Faith of the Faithless

Author: Simon Critchley

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2014-02-04

Total Pages: 235

ISBN-13: 1781684332

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The return to religion has perhaps become the dominant clich of contemporary theory, which rarely offers anything more than an exaggerated echo of a political reality dominated by religious war. Somehow, the secular age seems to have been replaced by a new era, where political action flows directly from metaphysical conflict. The Faith of the Faithless asks how we might respond. Following Critchley's Infinitely Demanding, this new book builds on its philosophical and political framework, also venturing into the questions of faith, love, religion and violence. Should we defend a version of secularism and quietly accept the slide into a form of theism-or is there another way? From Rousseau's politics and religion to the return to St. Paul in Taubes, Agamben and Badiou, via explorations of politics and original sin in the work of Schmitt and John Gray, Critchley examines whether there can be a faith of the faithless, a belief for unbelievers. Expanding on his debate with Slavoj Zizek, Critchley concludes with a meditation on the question of violence, and the limits of non-violence.

Modern Peoplehood
Modern Peoplehood

Author: John Lie

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2011-04

Total Pages: 395

ISBN-13: 0520289781

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"[A] most impressive achievement by an extraordinarily intelligent, courageous, and—that goes without saying—'well-read' mind. The scope of this work is enormous: it provides no less than a comprehensive, historically grounded theory of 'modern peoplehood,' which is Lie’s felicitous umbrella term for everything that goes under the names 'race,' 'ethnicity,' and nationality.'" Christian Joppke, American Journal of Sociology "Lie's objective is to treat a series of large topics that he sees as related but that are usually treated separately: the social construction of identities, the origins and nature of modern nationalism, the explanation of genocide, and racism. These multiple themes are for him aspects of something he calls 'modern peoplehood.' His mode of demonstration is to review all the alternative explanations for each phenomenon, and to show why each successively is inadequate. His own theses are controversial but he makes a strong case for them. This book should renew debate." Immanuel Wallerstein, Yale University and author of The Decline of American Power: The U.S. in a Chaotic World