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Author: James Finn
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
ISBN: 9781412831932
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 160
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Book Description
Private virtue is a major factor in forming public policies, including those that affect the material well-being of citizens. This is a central thesis of Catholic social thought, but it is not a parochial view. As this affluent nation grapples with resistant social issues of all kinds-drugs, homelessness, poverty, the consequences of sexual permissiveness, inadequate education, and the breakdown of families-it is becoming increasingly evident that the need for private virtue is a central fact of our political and social life. In this respect, Catholic social thought and the American experience are mutually supportive. This volume examines the implications of this statement. In a sense, it is the next step in the dialogue and debate initiated by the Catholic bishops in the United States over a period of years in the mid-eighties. The pastoral letter that resulted from their deliberatons asked how the economic life of the United States could best serve the material and spiritual well-being of people, both those in the United States and those in other countries. It also proposed some answers. Even before the bishops released their statement, the Lay Commission on Catholic Social teaching and the U.S. Economy joined the debate with its own lay letter, which both overlaps and differs in significant respects from the bishops' statement. This volume, which is initiated by the Lay Commission, takes the debate even further. Various experts discuss the relationship between public policies and private, virtue and examine specific aspects of economic life. Among these are: the meaning of "economic rights," what to do about Third World debt, economic justice and the family, and certain macroeconomic issues. Their view is independent, authoritative, clearly articulated, and inevitably they will be controversial. They also enrich and further the ongoing dialogue on how best to make the economy serve the people, and in particular the most deprived. Contributors include William E. Simon and Michael Novak, chairman and vice-chairman of the Lay Commission, J. Brian Benestad, Allan Carlson, J. Peter Grace, Howard J. Wiarda, John P. Cullity, James Q. Wilson, and the editor of this volume James Finn.
Author: James Finn
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
ISBN: 9781412831932
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 160
Get Book Here
Book Description
Private virtue is a major factor in forming public policies, including those that affect the material well-being of citizens. This is a central thesis of Catholic social thought, but it is not a parochial view. As this affluent nation grapples with resistant social issues of all kinds-drugs, homelessness, poverty, the consequences of sexual permissiveness, inadequate education, and the breakdown of families-it is becoming increasingly evident that the need for private virtue is a central fact of our political and social life. In this respect, Catholic social thought and the American experience are mutually supportive. This volume examines the implications of this statement. In a sense, it is the next step in the dialogue and debate initiated by the Catholic bishops in the United States over a period of years in the mid-eighties. The pastoral letter that resulted from their deliberatons asked how the economic life of the United States could best serve the material and spiritual well-being of people, both those in the United States and those in other countries. It also proposed some answers. Even before the bishops released their statement, the Lay Commission on Catholic Social teaching and the U.S. Economy joined the debate with its own lay letter, which both overlaps and differs in significant respects from the bishops' statement. This volume, which is initiated by the Lay Commission, takes the debate even further. Various experts discuss the relationship between public policies and private, virtue and examine specific aspects of economic life. Among these are: the meaning of "economic rights," what to do about Third World debt, economic justice and the family, and certain macroeconomic issues. Their view is independent, authoritative, clearly articulated, and inevitably they will be controversial. They also enrich and further the ongoing dialogue on how best to make the economy serve the people, and in particular the most deprived. Contributors include William E. Simon and Michael Novak, chairman and vice-chairman of the Lay Commission, J. Brian Benestad, Allan Carlson, J. Peter Grace, Howard J. Wiarda, John P. Cullity, James Q. Wilson, and the editor of this volume James Finn.
Author: Charles L. Schultze
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 0815719051
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 104
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Book Description
According to conventional wisdom, government may intervene when private markets fail to provide goods and services that society values. This view has led to the passage of much legislation and the creation of a host of agencies that have attempted, by exquisitely detailed regulations, to compel legislatively defined behavior in a broad range of activities affecting society as a whole—health care, housing, pollution abatement, transportation, to name only a few. Far from achieving the goals of the legislators and regulators, these efforts have been largely ineffective; worse, they have spawned endless litigation and countless administrative proceedings as the individuals and firms on who the regulations fall seek to avoid, or at least soften, their impact. The result has been long delays in determining whether government programs work at all, thwarting of agreed-upon societal aims, and deep skepticism about the power of government to make any difference. Strangely enough in a nation that since its inception has valued both the means and the ends of the private market system, the United States has rarely tried to harness private interests to public goals. Whenever private markets fail to produce some desired good or service (or fail to deter undesirable activity), the remedies proposed have hardly ever involved creating a system of incentives similar to those of the market place so as to make private choice consonant with public virtue. In this revision of the Godkin Lectures presented at Harvard University in November and December 1976, Charles L. Schultze examines the sources of this paradox. He outlines a plan for government intervention that would turn away from the direct "command and control" regulating techniques of the past and rely instead on market-like incentives to encourage people indirectly to take publicly desired actions.
Author: Emma Saunders-Hastings
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226816133
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 259
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Book Description
A thought-provoking challenge to our ideas about philanthropy, marking it as a deeply political activity that allows the wealthy to dictate more than we think. Philanthropy plays a huge role in supporting the provision of many public goods in contemporary societies. As a result, decisions that affect public outcomes and people’s diverse interests are often dependent on the preferences and judgments of the rich. Political theorist Emma Saunders-Hastings argues that philanthropy is a deeply political activity. She asks readers to look at how the power wielded by philanthropy impacts democracy and deepens political inequality by enabling the wealthy to exercise outsize influence in public life and by putting in place paternalistic relationships between donors and their intended beneficiaries. If philanthropy is to be made compatible with a democratic society of equals, it must be judged not simply on the benefits it brings but on its wider political consequences. Timely and thought-provoking, Private Virtues, Public Vices will challenge readers’ thoughts on what philanthropy is and how it truly affects us.
Author: Richard Vetterli
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780847681730
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 294
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Book Description
When In Search of the Republic was originally published in 1987, scholarly interpretations of the concept of virtue in the American founding were considered peripheral to mainstream political theory. Since then, the authors' arguments that public virtue, civic responsibility, and private morality were at the heart of the Founding Fathers' political thought is now accepted by a growing number of contemporary political theorists. This revised edition includes a new preface that places In Search of the Republic within the context of contemporary debates over the role of virtue and religion in early American political discourse. This is a superb introduction for students and scholars interested in learning about the moral, political, and constitutional theories of the Founding Fathers.
Author: Judith A. Swanson
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501740830
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 261
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Book Description
Aristotle offers a conception of the private and its relationship to the public that suggests a remedy to the limitations of liberalism today, according to Judith A. Swanson. In this fresh and lucid interpretation of Aristotle's political philosophy, Swanson challenges the dominant view that he regards the private as a mere precondition to the public. She argues, rather, that for Aristotle private activity develops virtue and is thus essential both to individual freedom and happiness and to the well-being of the political order. Swanson presents an innovative reading of The Politics which revises our understanding of Aristotle's political economy and his views on women and the family, slavery, and the relation between friendship and civic solidarity. She examines the private activities Aristotle considers necessary to a complete human life—maintaining a household, transacting business, sustaining friendships, and philosophizing. Focusing on ways Aristotle's public invests in the private through law, rule, and education, she shows how the public can foster a morally and intellectually virtuous citizenry. In contrast to classical liberal theory, which presents privacy as a shield of rights protecting individuals from one another and from the state, for Aristotle a regime can attain self-sufficiency only by bringing about a dynamic equilibrium between the public and the private. The Public and the Private in Aristotle's Political Philosophy will be essential reading for scholars and students of political philosophy, political theory, classics, intellectual history, and the history of women.
Author: Helen Ingram
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 0815717725
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 287
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Book Description
A fundamental rethinking is under way about the roles of government, citizens, and community organizations in public policy. Can government be reconstructed to make public policies more responsive to citizens and thus more effective? This challenge is apparent in the activist policy agenda of the Clinton administration, which supports national service programs, government-voluntary collaborations, and community-based development projects. Public Policy for Democracy is an important and timely contribution to the current discussion of how to get people more involved in their own governance. In this book, contributors urge policymakers and policy analysts to promote a more vigorous and inclusive democracy by incorporating concerns about citizenship in their craft, rather than strictly emphasizing efficiency and effectiveness. The authors provide insight into how the social construction of politics affects the recipients of the policies and the public in general. They call attention to how policies reinforce negative stereotypes of some groups, such as welfare recipients, and often lead to political alienation and withdrawal. In addition, they discuss how polices using "clinical reason"—a term borrowed from medicine and used as a way to classify people—are increasingly applied to nonmedical situations, such as domestic violence, to restrict individual power and legitimacy. The authors argue that much needs to be done by the government itself to improve policy design and empower all citizens to participate in the democratic process. They identify concrete strategies for policymakers to enhance the role of citizens without sacrificing program effectiveness.
Author: Peter Berkowitz
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400822904
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 256
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Book Description
Virtue has been rediscovered in the United States as a subject of public debate and of philosophical inquiry. Politicians from both parties, leading intellectuals, and concerned citizens from diverse backgrounds are addressing questions about the content of our character. William Bennett's moral guide for children, A Book of Virtues, was a national bestseller. Yet many continue to associate virtue with a prudish, Victorian morality or with crude attempts by government to legislate morals. Peter Berkowitz clarifies the fundamental issues, arguing that a certain ambivalence toward virtue reflects the liberal spirit at its best. Drawing on recent scholarship as well as classical political philosophy, he makes his case with penetrating analyses of four central figures in the making of modern liberalism: Hobbes, Locke, Kant, and Mill. These thinkers are usually understood to have neglected or disparaged virtue. Yet Berkowitz shows that they all believed that government resting on the fundamental premise of liberalism--the natural freedom and equality of all human beings--could not work unless citizens and officeholders possess particular qualities of mind and character. These virtues, which include reflective judgment, sympathetic imagination, self-restraint, the ability to cooperate, and toleration do not arise spontaneously but must be cultivated. Berkowitz explores the various strategies the thinkers employ as they seek to give virtue its due while respecting individual liberty. Liberals, he argues, must combine energy and forbearance, finding public and private ways to support such nongovernmental institutions as the family and voluntary associations. For these institutions, the liberal tradition powerfully suggests, play an indispensable role not only in forming the virtues on which liberal democracy depends but in overcoming the vices that it tends to engender. Clearly written and vigorously argued, this is a provocative work of political theory that speaks directly to complex issues at the heart of contemporary philosophy and public discussion. New Forum Books makes available to general readers outstanding, original, interdisciplinary scholarship with a special focus on the juncture of culture, law, and politics. New Forum Books is guided by the conviction that law and politics not only reflect culture, but help to shape it. Authors include leading political scientists, sociologists, legal scholars, philosophers, theologians, historians, and economists writing for nonspecialist readers and scholars across a range of fields. Looking at questions such as political equality, the concept of rights, the problem of virtue in liberal politics, crime and punishment, population, poverty, economic development, and the international legal and political order, New Forum Books seeks to explain--not explain away--the difficult issues we face today.
Author: George Washington
Publisher: Bnpublishing.Com
ISBN: 9789562911771
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 52
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Book Description
Author: Stephen Strehle
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
ISBN: 1412808162
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 324
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Book Description
"Strehle explores some of the most cherished political ideals of modern society, including equality and democracy, liberty and natural rights, progress and capitalism, federalism and mixed government. He has no illusions about forging an exhaustive study that includes all possible forces - inside or outside the religious community. He does not dismiss the vital contribution of other possible sources of inspiration from the world of religion or undermine the well-established place of "secular" sources. Instead Strehle demonstrates that certain ideas associated with the religious community were entangled within the overall process and have left an indelible mark upon significant aspects of the emerging American landscape."--BOOK JACKET.
Author: John Martin Gillroy
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre
ISBN: 082297150X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 546
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Book Description
Combining philosophy with practical politics, an expanding area of policy studies applies moral precepts, critical principles, and conventional values to collective decisions. This evolving new approach to policy analysis asserts that the same variety of ethical principles available to the individual are also available to make collective decisions in the public interest and should be used.Although policy analysis has long been dominated by assumptions originally developed for the examination of markets, such as efficiency, these essays by leading scholars - the best work done in the field over the past three decades - explore alternatives to the "market paradigm" and show how moral discrimination and choice can extend beyond the individual to encompass public decisions.Chapters by John Martin Gillroy and Maurice Wade review the political philosophies of Immanuel Kant and David Hume as backgrounds for the development of modern concepts of public policy choice. They present this anthology as a first step in codifying options, arguments, and methods within this important developing area of policy studies.
