The Natural Republic

The Natural Republic

Author: The Monotheist Group

Publisher: The Monotheist Group

Published: 2008-10

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 0979671582

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SHORTLY AFTER the end of the revelation of the Qur'an and the death of the Prophet Mohammed, Muslims splintered into various sects, with each group claiming that they were the only ones who retained the true message of Islam. The unfortunate truth is that none of them had followed the message and teachings of the Qur'an, abandoning it for the message and opinions of their scholars and leaders. THE NATURAL REPUBLIC is a long overdue attempt to return to the pure teachings of the Qur'an and abandon all sectarianism. However, please note that this book is not for the fainthearted reader as the contents of its pages will be very disturbing to those Muslims who refuse to accept the Oneness of God and insist on setting partners up with Him. [b]About the Author[/b] The Monotheist Group is a pen name used by the Free-Minds Organization which is an Islamic reform movement that began in 1997, dedicated to the promotion of God Alone. The movement seeks the abandonment of all sectarian innovations through a return to the principles of the Qur'an.


The Republic of Nature

The Republic of Nature

Author: Mark Fiege

Publisher: University of Washington Press

Published: 2012-03-20

Total Pages: 601

ISBN-13: 0295804149

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In the dramatic narratives that comprise The Republic of Nature, Mark Fiege reframes the canonical account of American history based on the simple but radical premise that nothing in the nation's past can be considered apart from the natural circumstances in which it occurred. Revisiting historical icons so familiar that schoolchildren learn to take them for granted, he makes surprising connections that enable readers to see old stories in a new light. Among the historical moments revisited here, a revolutionary nation arises from its environment and struggles to reconcile the diversity of its people with the claim that nature is the source of liberty. Abraham Lincoln, an unlettered citizen from the countryside, steers the Union through a moment of extreme peril, guided by his clear-eyed vision of nature's capacity for improvement. In Topeka, Kansas, transformations of land and life prompt a lawsuit that culminates in the momentous civil rights case of Brown v. Board of Education. By focusing on materials and processes intrinsic to all things and by highlighting the nature of the United States, Fiege recovers the forgotten and overlooked ground on which so much history has unfolded. In these pages, the nation's birth and development, pain and sorrow, ideals and enduring promise come to life as never before, making a once-familiar past seem new. The Republic of Nature points to a startlingly different version of history that calls on readers to reconnect with fundamental forces that shaped the American experience. For more information, visit the author's website: http://republicofnature.com/


The Terror of Natural Right

The Terror of Natural Right

Author: Dan Edelstein

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2009-10-15

Total Pages: 351

ISBN-13: 0226184404

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Natural right—the idea that there is a collection of laws and rights based not on custom or belief but that are “natural” in origin—is typically associated with liberal politics and freedom. In The Terror of Natural Right, Dan Edelstein argues that the revolutionaries used the natural right concept of the “enemy of the human race”—an individual who has transgressed the laws of nature and must be executed without judicial formalities—to authorize three-quarters of the deaths during the Terror. Edelstein further contends that the Jacobins shared a political philosophy that he calls “natural republicanism,” which assumed that the natural state of society was a republic and that natural right provided its only acceptable laws. Ultimately, he proves that what we call the Terror was in fact only one facet of the republican theory that prevailed from Louis’s trial until the fall of Robespierre. A highly original work of historical analysis, political theory, literary criticism, and intellectual history, The Terror of Natural Right challenges prevailing assumptions of the Terror to offer a new perspective on the Revolutionary period.


Nature's God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic

Nature's God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic

Author: Matthew Stewart

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2014-07-01

Total Pages: 502

ISBN-13: 0393244318

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Longlisted for the National Book Award. Where did the ideas come from that became the cornerstone of American democracy? America’s founders intended to liberate us not just from one king but from the ghostly tyranny of supernatural religion. Drawing deeply on the study of European philosophy, Matthew Stewart brilliantly tracks the ancient, pagan, and continental ideas from which America’s revolutionaries drew their inspiration. In the writings of Spinoza, Lucretius, and other great philosophers, Stewart recovers the true meanings of “Nature’s God,” “the pursuit of happiness,” and the radical political theory with which the American experiment in self-government began.


Bounding Power

Bounding Power

Author: Daniel H. Deudney

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2010-12-16

Total Pages: 410

ISBN-13: 1400837278

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Realism, the dominant theory of international relations, particularly regarding security, seems compelling in part because of its claim to embody so much of Western political thought from the ancient Greeks to the present. Its main challenger, liberalism, looks to Kant and nineteenth-century economists. Despite their many insights, neither realism nor liberalism gives us adequate tools to grapple with security globalization, the liberal ascent, and the American role in their development. In reality, both realism and liberalism and their main insights were largely invented by republicans writing about republics. The main ideas of realism and liberalism are but fragments of republican security theory, whose primary claim is that security entails the simultaneous avoidance of the extremes of anarchy and hierarchy, and that the size of the space within which this is necessary has expanded due to technological change. In Daniel Deudney's reading, there is one main security tradition and its fragmentary descendants. This theory began in classical antiquity, and its pivotal early modern and Enlightenment culmination was the founding of the United States. Moving into the industrial and nuclear eras, this line of thinking becomes the basis for the claim that mutually restraining world government is now necessary for security and that political liberty cannot survive without new types of global unions. Unique in scope, depth, and timeliness, Bounding Power offers an international political theory for our fractious and perilous global village.


Natural Rights and the New Republicanism

Natural Rights and the New Republicanism

Author: Michael Zuckert

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2011-06-27

Total Pages: 418

ISBN-13: 1400821525

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In Natural Rights and the New Republicanism, Michael Zuckert proposes a new view of the political philosophy that lay behind the founding of the United States. In a book that will interest political scientists, historians, and philosophers, Zuckert looks at the Whig or opposition tradition as it developed in England. He argues that there were, in fact, three opposition traditions: Protestant, Grotian, and Lockean. Before the English Civil War the opposition was inspired by the effort to find the "one true Protestant politics--an effort that was seen to be a failure by the end of the Interregnum period. The Restoration saw the emergence of the Whigs, who sought a way to ground politics free from the sectarian theological-scriptural conflicts of the previous period. The Whigs were particularly influenced by the Dutch natural law philosopher Hugo Grotius. However, as Zuckert shows, by the mid-eighteenth century John Locke had replaced Grotius as the philosopher of the Whigs. Zuckert's analysis concludes with a penetrating examination of John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, the English "Cato," who, he argues, brought together Lockean political philosophy and pre-existing Whig political science into a new and powerful synthesis. Although it has been misleadingly presented as a separate "classical republican" tradition in recent scholarly discussions, it is this "new republicanism" that served as the philosophical point of departure for the founders of the American republic.


The Terror of Natural Right

The Terror of Natural Right

Author: Dan Edelstein

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 589

ISBN-13: 0226184390

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"Natural right - the idea that there is a collection of laws and rights based not on custom or belief but that are "natural" in origin - is typically associated with liberal politics and freedom. But during the French Revolution, this tradition was interpreted to justify the most repressive actions of the violent period known as the Terror." "In The Terror of Natural Right, Dan Edelstein argues that the revolutionaries used the natural right concept of the "enemy of the human race" - an individual who has transgressed the laws of nature and must be executed without judicial formalities - to authorize three-quarters of the deaths during the Terror. But the significance of the natural right did not end with its legal application. Edelstein argues that the Jacobins shared a political philosophy that he calls "natural republicanism," which assumed the natural state of society was a republic and that natural right provided its only acceptable laws. Ultimately, he argues that what we call the Terror was in fact only one facet of the republican theory that prevailed from Louis's trial until the fall of Robespierre." "A work of historical analysis, political theory, literary criticism, and intellectual history, The Terror of Natural Right challenges prevailing assumptions of the Terror to offer a new perspective on the Revolutionary period."--BOOK JACKET.


God is Beautiful

God is Beautiful

Author: Navid Kermani

Publisher: Polity

Published: 2015-02-16

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780745651675

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The melodious recitation of the Quran is a fundamental aesthetic experience for Muslims, and the start of a compelling journey of ideas. In this important new book, the prominent German writer and Islamic scholar Navid Kermani considers the manner in which the Quran has been perceived, apprehended and experienced by its recipients from the time of the Prophet to the present day. Drawing on a wide range of Muslim sources, from historians, theologians and philosophers to mystics and literary scholars, Kermani provides a close reading of the nature of this powerful text. He proceeds to analyze ancient and modern testimonies about the impact of Quranic language from a variety of angles. Although people have always reflected on the reception of texts, images and sounds that they find beautiful or moving, Kermani explains that Islam provides a particularly striking example of the close correlation, grounded in a common origin, between art and religion, revelation and poetry, and religious and aesthetic experience. This major new book will enhance the dialogue between Islam and the West and will appeal to students and scholars of Islam and comparative religion, as well as to a wider readership interested in Islam and the Quran.


The Profits of Nature

The Profits of Nature

Author: Peter B. Lavelle

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2020-03-03

Total Pages: 195

ISBN-13: 0231550952

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In the nineteenth century, the Qing empire experienced a period of profound turmoil caused by an unprecedented conjunction of natural disasters, domestic rebellions, and foreign incursions. The imperial government responded to these calamities by introducing an array of new policies and institutions to bolster its power across its massive territories. In the process, Qing officials launched campaigns for natural resource development, seeking to take advantage of the unexploited lands, waters, and minerals of the empire’s vast hinterlands and borderlands. In this book, Peter B. Lavelle uses the life and career of Chinese statesman Zuo Zongtang (1812–1885) as a lens to explore the environmental history of this era. Although known for his pacification campaigns against rebel movements, Zuo was at the forefront of the nineteenth-century quest for natural resources. Influenced by his knowledge of nature, geography, and technology, he created government bureaus and oversaw state-funded projects to improve agriculture, sericulture, and other industries in territories across the empire. His work forged new patterns of colonial development in the Qing empire’s northwest borderlands, including Xinjiang, at a time when other empires were scrambling to secure access to resources around the globe. Weaving a narrative across the span of Zuo’s lifetime, The Profits of Nature offers a unique approach to understanding the dynamic relationship among social crises, colonialism, and the natural world during a critical juncture in Chinese history, between the high tide of imperial power in the eighteenth century and the challenges of modern state-building in the twentieth century.


Race in America

Race in America

Author: Patricia Reid-Merritt

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2017-01-23

Total Pages: 571

ISBN-13: 1440849935

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Focusing on the socially explosive concept of race and how it has affected human interactions, this work examines the social and scientific definitions of race, the implementation of racialized policies and practices, the historical and contemporary manifestations of the use of race in shaping social interactions within U.S. society and elsewhere, and where our notions of race will likely lead. More than a decade and a half into the 21st century, the term "race" remains one of the most emotionally charged words in the human language. While race can be defined as "a local geographic or global human population distinguished as a more or less distinct group by genetically transmitted physical characteristics," the concept of race can better be understood as a socially defined construct—a system of human classification that carries tremendous weight, yet is complex, confusing, contradictory, controversial, and imprecise. This collection of essays focuses on the socially explosive concept of race and how it has shaped human interactions across civilization. The contributed work examines the social and scientific definitions of race, the implementation of racialized policies and practices, and the historical and contemporary manifestations of the use of race in shaping social interactions (primarily) in the United States—a nation where the concept of race is further convoluted by the nation's extensive history of miscegenation as well as the continuous flow of immigrant groups from countries whose definitions of race, ethnicity, and culture remain fluid. Readers will gain insights into subjects such as how we as individuals define ourselves through concepts of race, how race affects social privilege, "color blindness" as an obstacle to social change, legal perspectives on race, racialization of the religious experience, and how the media perpetuates racial stereotypes.