Aristocratic Souls In Democratic Times

Aristocratic Souls In Democratic Times Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle version is available to download in english. Read online anytime anywhere directly from your device. Click on the download button below to get a free pdf file of Aristocratic Souls In Democratic Times book. This book definitely worth reading, it is an incredibly well-written.

Aristocratic Souls in Democratic Times

Author : Richard Avramenko,Ethan Alexander-Davey
Publisher : Lexington Books
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 2018-05-07
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781498553278

Get Book

Aristocratic Souls in Democratic Times by Richard Avramenko,Ethan Alexander-Davey Pdf

Great statesmen and gentlemen, men of honor and rank, seem to be phenomena of a bygone Aristocratic era. Aristocracies, which emphasize rank, and value difference, quality, beauty, rootedness, continuity, stand in direct contrast to democracies, which value equality, autonomy, novelty, standardization, quantity, utility and mobility. Is there any place for aristocratic values and virtues in the modern democratic social and political order? This volume consists of essays by political theorists, historians, and literary theorists that explore this question in the works of aristocratic thinkers, both ancient and modern. The volume includes analyses of aristocratic virtues, interpretations of aristocratic assemblies and constitutions, both historic and contemporary, as well as critiques of liberal virtues and institutions. Essays on Tacitus, Hobbes, Burke, Tocqueville, Nietzsche, as well as some lesser known figures, such as Henri de Boulainvilliers, John Randolph of Roanoke, Louis de Bonald, Konstantin Leontiev, Jose Ortega y Gasset, Richard Weaver, and the Eighth Duke of Northumberland, explore ways of preserving and adapting the salutary aspects of the aristocratic ethos to the needs of modern liberal societies.

Dostoevsky's Political Thought

Author : Richard Avramenko,Lee Trepanier
Publisher : Lexington Books
Page : 262 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2013-05-23
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780739173770

Get Book

Dostoevsky's Political Thought by Richard Avramenko,Lee Trepanier Pdf

Recognized as one of the greatest novelists of all-time, Fyodor Dostoevsky continues to inspire and instigate questions about religion, philosophy, and literature. However, there has been a neglect looking at his political thought: its philosophical and religious foundations, its role in nineteenth-century Europe, and its relevance for us today. Dostoevsky’s Political Thought explores Dostoevsky’s political thought in his fictional and nonfictional works with contributions from scholars of political science, philosophy, history, and Russian Studies. From a variety of perspectives, these scholars contribute to a greater understanding of Dostoevsky not only as a political thinker but also as a writer, philosopher, and religious thinker.

The Cambridge Companion to Democracy in America

Author : Richard Boyd
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 505 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 2022-03-24
Category : History
ISBN : 9781107189812

Get Book

The Cambridge Companion to Democracy in America by Richard Boyd Pdf

These essays explore important themes and contemporary legacies of Alexis de Tocqueville's classic work Democracy in America.

Liberalism as a Way of Life

Author : Alexandre Lefebvre
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 304 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2024-06-04
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780691255538

Get Book

Liberalism as a Way of Life by Alexandre Lefebvre Pdf

Why liberalism is all you need to lead a good, fun, worthy, and rewarding life—and how you can become a better and happier person by taking your liberal beliefs more seriously Where do you get your values and sensibilities from? If you grew up in a Western democracy, the answer is probably liberalism. Conservatives are right about one thing: liberalism is the ideology of our times, as omnipresent as religion once was. Yet, as Alexandre Lefebvre argues in Liberalism as a Way of Life, many of us are liberal without fully realizing it—or grasping what it means. Misled into thinking that liberalism is confined to politics, we fail to recognize that it’s the water we swim in, saturating every area of public and private life, shaping our psychological and spiritual outlooks, and influencing our moral and aesthetic values—our sense of what is right, wrong, good, bad, funny, worthwhile, and more. This eye-opening book shows how so many of us are liberal to the core, why liberalism provides the basis for a good life, and how we can make our lives better and happier by becoming more aware of, and more committed to, the beliefs we already hold. A lively, engaging, and uplifting guide to living well, the liberal way, Liberalism as a Way of Life is filled with examples from television, movies, stand-up comedy, and social media—from Parks and Recreation and The Good Place to the Borat movies and Hannah Gadsby. Along the way, you’ll also learn about seventeen benefits of being a liberal—including generosity, humor, cheer, gratitude, tolerance, and peace of mind—and practical exercises to increase these rewards. You’re probably already waist-deep in the waters of liberalism. Liberalism as a Way of Life invites you to dive in.

Plato's Fable

Author : Joshua Mitchell
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 227 pages
File Size : 53,9 Mb
Release : 2009-01-10
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781400827176

Get Book

Plato's Fable by Joshua Mitchell Pdf

This book is an exploration of Plato's Republic that bypasses arcane scholarly debates. Plato's Fable provides refreshing insight into what, in Plato's view, is the central problem of life: the mortal propensity to adopt defective ways of answering the question of how to live well. How, in light of these tendencies, can humankind be saved? Joshua Mitchell discusses the question in unprecedented depth by examining one of the great books of Western civilization. He draws us beyond the ancients/moderns debate, and beyond the notion that Plato's Republic is best understood as shedding light on the promise of discursive democracy. Instead, Mitchell argues, the question that ought to preoccupy us today is neither "reason" nor "discourse," but rather "imitation." To what extent is man first and foremost an "imitative" being? This, Mitchell asserts, is the subtext of the great political and foreign policy debates of our times. Plato's Fable is not simply a work of textual exegesis. It is an attempt to move debates within political theory beyond their current location. Mitchell recovers insights about the depth of the problem of mortal imitation from Plato's magnificent work, and seeks to explicate the meaning of Plato's central claim--that "only philosophy can save us."

Tocqueville: A Very Short Introduction

Author : Harvey C. Mansfield
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 136 pages
File Size : 51,6 Mb
Release : 2010-07-13
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0199746311

Get Book

Tocqueville: A Very Short Introduction by Harvey C. Mansfield Pdf

No one has ever described American democracy with more accurate insight or more profoundly than Alexis de Tocqueville. After meeting with Americans on extensive travels in the United States, and intense study of documents and authorities, he authored the landmark Democracy in America, publishing its two volumes in 1835 and 1840. Ever since, this book has been the best source for every serious attempt to understand America and democracy itself. Yet Tocqueville himself remains a mystery behind the elegance of his style. Now one of our leading authorities on Tocqueville explains him in this splendid new entry in Oxford's acclaimed Very Short Introduction series. Harvey Mansfield addresses his subject as a thinker, clearly and incisively exploring Tocqueville's writings--not only his masterpiece, but also his secret Recollections, intended for posterity alone, and his unfinished work on his native France, The Old Regime and the Revolution. Tocqueville was a liberal, Mansfield writes, but not of the usual sort. The many elements of his life found expression in his thought: his aristocratic ancestry, his ventures in politics, his voyages abroad, his hopes and fears for America, and his disappointment with France. All his writings show a passion for political liberty and insistence on human greatness. Perhaps most important, he saw liberty not in theories, but in the practice of self-government in America. Ever an opponent of abstraction, he offered an analysis that forces us to consider what we actually do in our politics--suggesting that theory itself may be an enemy of freedom. And that, Mansfield writes, makes him a vitally important thinker for today. Translator of an authoritative edition of Democracy in America, Harvey Mansfield here offers the fruit of decades of research and reflection in a clear, insightful, and marvelously compact introduction.

John Locke and the Uncivilized Society

Author : Scott Robinson
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 252 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2021-04-19
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781793617583

Get Book

John Locke and the Uncivilized Society by Scott Robinson Pdf

John Locke’s influence on American political culture has been largely misunderstood by his commentators. Though often regarded as the architect of a rationally ordered and civilized liberalism, John Locke and the Uncivilized Society demonstrates that Locke’s thought is culpable for the rather uncivilized expressions of political engagement seen recently in America. By relying upon Eric Voegelin’s concept of pneumopathology, Locke is shown to be subtly constructing a liberal ideology and thereby individuals who approach liberalism as closed-minded ideologues, not as deeply responsible and mature citizens. Because Locke’s citizens will be slogan chanters instead of deep thinkers, Locke’s work does not create a liberalism that provides the best possible regime for humans, but a mere shadow of the best possible regime.

The Political Philosophy of the European City

Author : Ferenc Hörcher
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 299 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 2021-06-03
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781793610836

Get Book

The Political Philosophy of the European City by Ferenc Hörcher Pdf

The Political Philosophy of the European City is a courageous and wide-ranging panorama of the political life and thought of the European city. Its novel hypothesis is that modern Western political thought, since the time of Hobbes and Locke, underestimated the political significance and value of the community of urban citizens, called ‘civitas’, united by local customs, or even a formal or informal urban constitution at a certain location, which had a recognizable countenance, with natural and man-made, architectural marks, called ‘urbs’. Recalling the golden age of the European city in ancient Greece and Rome, and offering a detailed description of its turbulent life in the Renaissance Italian city-states, it makes a case for the city not only as a hotbed of modern democracy, but also as a remedy for some of the distortions of political life in the alienated contemporary, centralized, Weberian bureaucratic state. Overcoming the north-south divide, or the core and periphery partition, the book’s material is particularly rich in Central European case studies. All in all, it is an enjoyable read which offers sound arguments to revisit the offer of the small and middle-sized European town, in search of a more sustainable future for Europe.

Idolizing the Idea

Author : Wayne Cristaudo
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 345 pages
File Size : 42,6 Mb
Release : 2019-10-16
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781793602367

Get Book

Idolizing the Idea by Wayne Cristaudo Pdf

Ever since Plato made the case for the primacy of ideas over names, philosophy has tended to elevate the primacy of its ideas over the more common understanding and insights that are circulated in the names drawn upon by the community. Commencing with a critique of Plato’s original philosophical decision, Cristaudo takes up the argument put forward by Thomas Reid that modern philosophy has generally continued along the ‘way of ideas’ to its own detriment. His argument identifies the major paradigmatic developments in modern philosophy commencing from the new metaphysics pioneered by Descartes up until the analytic tradition and the anti-domination philosophies which now dominate social and political thought. Along the way he argues that the paradigmatic shifts and break-downs that have occurred in modern philosophy are due to being beholden to an inadequate sovereign idea, or small cluster of ideas, which contribute to the occlusion of important philosophical questions. In addition to chapters on Descartes, and the analytic tradition and anti-domination philosophies, his critical history of modern philosophy explores the core ideas of Locke, Berkeley, Malebranche, Locke, Hume, Reid, Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Schelling, Marx, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Husserl and Heidegger. The common thread uniting these disparate philosophies is what Cristaudo calls ‘ideaism’ (sic.). Rather than expanding our reasoning capacity, ‘ideaism’ contributes to philosophers imposing dictatorial principles or models that ultimately occlude and distort our understanding of our participative role within reality. Drawing upon thinkers such as Pascal, Vico, Hamann, Herder, Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber and Eugen Rosensock-Huessy Cristaudo advances his argument by drawing upon the importance of encounter, dialogue, and a more philosophical anthropological and open approach to philosophy.

The Politics of Private Property

Author : Simone Knewitz
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 299 pages
File Size : 55,9 Mb
Release : 2021-04-21
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781793623768

Get Book

The Politics of Private Property by Simone Knewitz Pdf

Located at the intersections of law and culture, The Politics of Private Propertyprovides a fresh perspective on the functions of private property within U.S. cultural discourse by establishing a long historical arch from the early nineteenth to the twenty-first century. The study challenges the assumption of an unquestioned cultural consensus in the United States on the subject of individual property rights, instead mobilizing property as an analytical category to examine how social and political debates generate competing and contested claims to ownership. The property narratives arising out of political conflicts, the book suggests, serve to naturalize the unequal social and economic structures and legitimize the hegemonic order, which however remains to be shifting and subject to challenges. Analyzing the property narratives at the heart of the U.S. American self-conception, The Politics of Private Property addresses the gap between the ideal of the U.S. as a universal middle-class society, characterized by a wide diffusion of property ownership, and the actual social reality which is defined by unequal dissemination of wealth and race-based structures of exclusion.

Heaven Can Indeed Fall

Author : Christopher H. Owen
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 257 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2021-09-27
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781793624451

Get Book

Heaven Can Indeed Fall by Christopher H. Owen Pdf

Willmoore Kendall was a man against the world, a "maverick," an "iconoclast." His thoughts were profound, his countless enemies powerful, his personal life full of drama. Heaven Can Indeed Fall is the first full-length biography of Kendall and integrates the man with the teacher, thinker, and cold warrior. Once a Marxist, Kendall became a fearsome foe of global communism. He never apologized for supporting Joseph McCarthy. As the co-founder of National Review he helped turn the word liberal into an insult. A "stormy petrel," Kendall was a man “who never lost an argument or kept a friend.” Yet he was one of the most effective and sensitive teachers of his age. His ideas shaped Cold War practices of intelligence analysis and psychological warfare. As an academic he became the premier American theorist for conservative populism. The recent reemergence of populist ideas among American conservatives makes understanding Kendall ever more imperative. This book shows how a child prodigy and bucolic boy scout became an ambitious intelligence analyst, razor-tongued polemicist and profound student of American politics. By knowing Kendall one can better understand Cold War America, and contemporary America as well.

The Democratic Soul

Author : Aaron L. Herold
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
Page : 253 pages
File Size : 47,7 Mb
Release : 2021-08-06
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780812299892

Get Book

The Democratic Soul by Aaron L. Herold Pdf

In The Democratic Soul, Aaron L. Herold argues that liberal democracy's current crisis—of extreme polarization, rising populism, and disillusionment with political institutions—must be understood as the culmination of a deeper dissatisfaction with the liberal Enlightenment. Major elements of both the Left and the Right now reject the Enlightenment's emphasis on rights as theoretically unfounded and morally undesirable and have sought to recover a contrasting politics of obligation. But this has re-opened questions about the relationship between politics and religion long thought settled. To address our situation, Herold examines the political thought of Spinoza and Tocqueville, two authors united in support of liberal democracy but with differing assessments of the Enlightenment. Through an original reading of Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise, Herold uncovers the theological foundation of liberal democracy: a comprehensive moral teaching rehabilitating human self-interest, denigrating "devotion" as a relic of "superstition," and cultivating a pride in living, acting, and thinking for oneself. In his political vision, Spinoza articulates our highest hopes for liberalism, for he is confident such an outlook will produce both intellectual flourishing and a paradoxical recovery of community. But Spinoza's project contains tensions which continue to trouble democracy today. As Herold shows via a new interpretation of Tocqueville's Democracy in America, the dissatisfactions now destabilizing democracy can be traced to the Enlightenment's failure to find a place for religious longings whose existence it largely denied. In particular, Tocqueville described a natural human desire for a kind of happiness found, at least partly, in self-sacrifice. Because modernity weakens religion precisely as it makes democracy stronger than liberalism, it permits this desire to find new and dangerous outlets. Tocqueville thus sought to design a "new political science" which could rectify this problem and which therefore remains indispensable today in recovering the moderation lacking in contemporary politics.

Rethinking Utopia

Author : Ebru Deniz Ozan
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 133 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 2022-06-21
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781666906967

Get Book

Rethinking Utopia by Ebru Deniz Ozan Pdf

Rethinking Utopia is a collection that discusses utopian thinking in relation to different philosophical themes. It seeks utopianism in political theory (particularly in Kant and Derrida), populism, Turkish Islamism, international law, and it fleshes out themes of modernism and classless society in the selected utopian examples. By discussing and showing the relationship between utopia and these topics, the book shows that the range of subjects related to utopias is wider than the current literature suggests. The book attempts to bring together academic fields, which are not cross-fertilized in the existing debates on utopia, by building bridges between actual politics and futuristic visions. On the one hand, it looks at utopia as a means to think about and reconfigure contemporary politics (as in the case of international law and populist politics); on the other hand, it investigates how different philosophical/literary texts, from widely-known More and Le Guin to lesser-known Turkish Islamists Kısakürek, Karakoç and Özel, imagine their distinct utopian vision where a new form of anarchist, classless or Islamist society could be possible.

Citizenship and Civic Leadership in America

Author : Carol McNamara,Trevor Shelley
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 327 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2022-03-14
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781666900682

Get Book

Citizenship and Civic Leadership in America by Carol McNamara,Trevor Shelley Pdf

The purpose of this volume is to discuss the concept of citizenship—in terms of its origins, its meanings, and its contemporary place and relevance in American democracy, and within a global context. The authors in this collection wrestle with the connection of citizenship to major tensions between liberty and equality, dynamism and stability, and civic disagreement and social cohesion. The essays also raise fundamental questions about the relationship between citizenship and leadership, and invite further reflection on the features of citizenship and civic leadership under the American Constitution. Finally, this collection offers various suggestions about how to revitalize citizenship and civic leadership through an education that is conducive to a renewal of American civic practices and institutions.

Canadian Conservative Political Thought

Author : Lee Trepanier,Richard Avramenko
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 234 pages
File Size : 53,6 Mb
Release : 2023-03-24
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781000858884

Get Book

Canadian Conservative Political Thought by Lee Trepanier,Richard Avramenko Pdf

This book corrects an imbalance in Canadian political literature through offering a conservative account of Canadian political thought. Across 15 chronologically organized chapters, and with a mixture of established and rising scholars, the book offers an investigation of the defining features and characteristics of Canadian conservative political thought, asking what have Canadian conservative political thinkers and practitioners learned from other traditions and, in turn, what have they contributed to our understanding of conservative political thought today? Rather than its culmination, Canadian Conservative Political Thought will be the beginning of conservative political thought’s recovery and will spark debates and future research. The book will be a great resource for courses on Canadian politics, history, political philosophy and conservatism, Canadian Studies, and political theory.