Author: Alex Zakaras
Publisher:
ISBN: 0195384687
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 263
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Book Description
Alex Zakaras argues that we must develop an ideal of citizenship suitable for mass society. To do so, he turns to a pair of 19th-century philosophers - John Stuart Mill and Ralph Waldo Emerson - who were among the first to confront the specific challenge of making mass democracy work.
Author: Alex Zakaras
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199738238
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 263
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Book Description
Democracy, unlike any other form of government, demands that citizens take responsibility for their politics. And yet, over the past fifty years, observers of American democracy have worried that Americans are failing to do so. With occasional exceptions, voter turnout and civic engagement are declining, and the average citizen's knowledge of public affairs is flimsy at best. Citizens' political posture is mostly passive: they receive political propaganda designed by marketing professionals and consume staged political spectacles that are scarcely distinguishable from other forms of "reality" entertainment. The Rockwellian ideal of democracy--participatory, deliberative, egalitarian--that still captivates our imaginations is for the most part anachronistic. How should we respond to these worries? Alex Zakaras argues that we must develop an ideal of citizenship suitable for mass society. To do so, he turns to a pair of nineteenth-century philosophers--John Stuart Mill and Ralph Waldo Emerson--who were among the first to confront the specific challenge of making mass democracy work, and whose moral and political insights are deeply relevant to America today. He focuses especially on the idea of individuality, which lies at the very center of their theories of democracy. Individuality emphasizes each citizen's personal complicity in the injustices committed by democratic officials, and calls on each of us to resist such complicity by speaking and acting against injustice. Individuality suggests that those of us who do no more than vote--who otherwise lead strictly private lives--are guilty of moral and civic negligence.
Author: Stephen S. Bush
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107135958
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 253
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Book Description
A study of William James' philosophy of democracy and pluralism, and its relevance to modern debates.
Author: Alex Zakaras
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069122630X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 432
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Book Description
A panoramic history of American individualism from its nineteenth-century origins to today’s bitterly divided politics Individualism is a defining feature of American public life. Its influence is pervasive today, with liberals and conservatives alike promising to expand personal freedom and defend individual rights against unwanted intrusion, be it from big government, big corporations, or intolerant majorities. The Roots of American Individualism traces the origins of individualist ideas to the turbulent political controversies of the Jacksonian era (1820–1850) and explores their enduring influence on American politics and culture. Alex Zakaras plunges readers into the spirited and rancorous political debates of Andrew Jackson’s America, drawing on the stump speeches, newspaper editorials, magazine articles, and sermons that captivated mass audiences and shaped partisan identities. He shows how these debates popularized three powerful myths that celebrated the young nation as an exceptional land of liberty: the myth of the independent proprietor, the myth of the rights-bearer, and the myth of the self-made man. The Roots of American Individualism reveals how generations of politicians, pundits, and provocateurs have invoked these myths for competing political purposes. Time and again, the myths were used to determine who would enjoy equal rights and freedoms and who would not. They also conjured up heavily idealized, apolitical visions of social harmony and boundless opportunity, typically centered on the free market, that have distorted American political thought to this day.
Author: Jeremy Gilbert
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781849649773
Category : Democracy
Languages : en
Pages : 258
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Book Description
Common Ground explores the philosophical relationship between collectivity, individuality, affect and agency in the neoliberal era. Jeremy Gilbert argues that individualism is forced upon us by neoliberal culture, fatally limiting our capacity to escape the current crisis of democratic politics. The book asks how forces and ideas opposed to neoliberal hegemony, and to the individualist tradition in Western thought, might serve to protect some form of communality, and how far we must accept assumptions about the nature of individuality and collectivity which are the legacy of an elitist tradition. Along the way it examines different ideas and practices of collectivity, from conservative notions of hierarchical and patriarchal communities to the politics of 'horizontality' and 'the commons' which are at the heart of radical movements today. Exploring this fundamental faultline in contemporary political struggle, Common Ground proposes a radically non-individualist mode of imagining social life, collective creativity and democratic possibility.
Author: Nadia Urbinati
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139462512
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 349
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Book Description
The year 2006 marked the two hundredth anniversary of John Stuart Mill's birth. Though his philosophical reputation has varied greatly, it is now clear that Mill ranks among the most influential modern political thinkers. Despite his enduring influence, the breadth and complexity of Mill's political thought is often underappreciated. While his writings remain a touchstone for debates over liberty and liberalism, many other important dimensions of his political philosophy have until recently been ignored. This book aims to correct such neglect, by illustrating the breadth and depth of Mill's political writings, by drawing together a collection of essays whose authors explore underappreciated elements of Mill's political philosophy. The book shows how Mill's thinking remains pertinent to our own political life in three broad areas - democratic institutions and culture, liberalism, and international politics - and offers a critical reassessment of Mill's political philosophy in light of recent political developments and transformations.
Author: Stefan Jonsson
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231164785
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 338
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Book Description
Between 1918 and 1933, the masses became a decisive preoccupation of European culture, fueling modernist movements in art, literature, architecture, theater, and cinema, as well as the rise of communism, fascism, and experiments in radical democracy. Spanning aesthetics, cultural studies, intellectual history, and political theory, this volume unpacks the significance of the shadow agent known as “the mass” during a critical period in European history. It follows its evolution into the preferred conceptual tool for social scientists, the ideal slogan for politicians, and the chosen image for artists and writers trying to capture a society in flux and a people in upheaval. This volume is the second installment in Stefan Jonsson’s epic study of the crowd and the mass in modern Europe, building on his work in A Brief History of the Masses, which focused on monumental artworks produced in 1789, 1889, and 1989.
Author: Charles Horton Cooley
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Social psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 468
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Book Description
Author: Stephen S. Bush
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108515320
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 254
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Book Description
William James (1842–1910) argued for a philosophy of democracy and pluralism that advocates individual and collective responsibility for our social arrangements, our morality, and our religion. In James' view, democracy resides first and foremost not in governmental institutions or in procedures such as voting, but rather in the characteristics of individuals, and in qualities of mind and conduct. It is a philosophy for social change, counselling action and hope despite the manifold challenges facing democratic politics, and these issues still resonate strongly today. In this book, Stephen Bush explores how these themes connect to James' philosophy of religion, his moral thought, his epistemology, his psychology, and his metaphysics. His fresh and original study highlights the relevance of James' thought to modern debates, and will appeal to scholars and students of moral and political philosophy.
Author: Herbert Hoover
Publisher: Garden City, Doubleday
ISBN:
Category : Individualism
Languages : en
Pages : 90
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Book Description
In this book, Hoover expounds and vigorously defends what has come to be called American exceptionalism: the set of beliefs and values that still makes America unique. He argues that America can make steady, sure progress if we preserve our individualism, preserve and stimulate the initiative of our people, insist on and maintain the safeguards to equality of opportunity, and honor service as a part of our national character.
