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Author: Ernest Lefever
Publisher: Westview Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 318
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Book Description
They reveal his dramatic transformation from a liberal pacifist during World War II to a human realist.
Author: Ernest Lefever
Publisher: Westview Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 318
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Book Description
They reveal his dramatic transformation from a liberal pacifist during World War II to a human realist.
Author: Reinhold Niebuhr
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226583996
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 202
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Book Description
“[Niebuhr] is one of my favorite philosophers. I take away [from his works] the compelling idea that there’s serious evil in the world, and hardship and pain. And we should be humble and modest in our belief we can eliminate those things. But we shouldn’t use that as an excuse for cynicism and inaction. I take away . . . the sense we have to make these efforts knowing they are hard.”—President Barack Obama Forged during the tumultuous but triumphant postwar years when America came of age as a world power, The Irony of American History is more relevant now than ever before. Cited by politicians as diverse as Hillary Clinton and John McCain, Niebuhr’s masterpiece on the incongruity between personal ideals and political reality is both an indictment of American moral complacency and a warning against the arrogance of virtue. Impassioned, eloquent, and deeply perceptive, Niebuhr’s wisdom will cause readers to rethink their assumptions about right and wrong, war and peace. “The supreme American theologian of the twentieth century.”—Arthur Schlesinger Jr., New York Times “Niebuhr is important for the left today precisely because he warned about America’s tendency—including the left’s tendency—to do bad things in the name of idealism. His thought offers a much better understanding of where the Bush administration went wrong in Iraq.”—Kevin Mattson, The Good Society “Irony provides the master key to understanding the myths and delusions that underpin American statecraft. . . . The most important book ever written on US foreign policy.”—Andrew J. Bacevich, from the Introduction
Author: James Longenbach
Publisher: Graywolf Press
ISBN: 1555970672
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 179
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Book Description
An illuminating look at the many forms of poetry's essential excellence by James Longenbach, a writer with "an ear as subtle and assured as any American poet now writing" (John Koethe) "This book proposes some of the virtues to which the next poem might aspire: boldness, change, compression, dilation, doubt, excess, inevitability, intimacy, otherness, particularity, restraint, shyness, surprise, and worldliness. The word ‘virtue' came to English from Latin, via Old French, and while it has acquired a moral valence, the word in its earliest uses gestured toward a magical or transcendental power, a power that might be embodied by any particular substance or act. With vices I am not concerned. Unlike the short-term history of taste, which is fueled by reprimand or correction, the history of art moves from achievement to achievement. Contemporary embodiments of poetry's virtues abound, and only our devotion to a long history of excellence allows us to recognize them." –from James Longenbach's preface The Virtues of Poetry is a resplendent and ultimately moving work of twelve interconnected essays, each of which describes the way in which a particular excellence is enacted in poetry. Longenbach closely reads poems by Shakespeare, Donne, Blake, Keats, Dickinson, Yeats, Pound, Bishop, and Ashbery (among others), sometimes exploring the ways in which these writers transmuted the material of their lives into art, and always emphasizing that the notions of excellence we derive from art are fluid, never fixed. Provocative, funny, and astute, The Virtues of Poetry is indispensable for readers, teachers, and writers. Longenbach reminds us that poetry delivers meaning in exacting ways, and that it is through its precision that we experience this art's lasting virtues.
Author: Richard J. Bernstein
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509505741
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 180
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Book Description
"Just as philosophy begins with doubt, so also a life that may be called human begins with irony" so wrote Kierkegaard. While we commonly think of irony as a figure of speech where someone says one thing and means the opposite, the concept of irony has long played a more fundamental role in the tradition of philosophy, a role that goes back to Socrates Ð the originator and exemplar of the urbane ironic life. But what precisely is Socratic irony and what relevance, if any, does it have for us today? Bernstein begins his inquiry with a critical examination of the work of two contemporary philosophers for whom irony is vital: Jonathan Lear and Richard Rorty. Despite their sharp differences, Bernstein argues that they complement one other, each exploring different aspects of ironic life. In the background of Lear’s and Rorty’s accounts stand the two great ironists: Socrates and Kierkegaard. Focusing on the competing interpretations of Socratic irony by Gregory Vlastos and Alexander Nehamas, Bernstein shows how they further develop our understanding of irony as a form of life and as an art of living. Bernstein also develops a distinctive interpretation of Kierkegaard’s famous claim that a life that may be called human begins with irony. Bernstein weaves together the insights of these thinkers to show how each contributes to a richer understanding of ironic life. He also argues that the emphasis on irony helps to restore the balance between two different philosophical traditions philosophy as a theoretical discipline concerned with getting things right and philosophy as a practical discipline that shapes how we ought to live our lives.
Author: Daniel A. Morris
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498500757
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 269
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Book Description
What virtues are necessary for democracy to succeed? This book turns to John Dewey and Reinhold Niebuhr, two of America’s most influential theorists of democracy, to answer this question. Dewey and Niebuhr both implied—although for very different reasons—that humility and mutuality are important virtues for the success of people rule. Not only do these virtues allow people to participate well in their own governance, they also equip us to meet challenges to democracy generated by free-market economic policy and practices. Ironically, though, Dewey and Niebuhr quarreled with each other for twenty years and missed the opportunity to achieve political consensus. In their discourse with each other they failed to become “one out of many,” a task that is distilled in the democratic rallying cry “e pluribus unum.” This failure itself reflects a deficiency in democratic virtue. Thus, exploring the Dewey/Niebuhr debate with attention to their discursive failures reveals the importance of a third virtue: democratic tolerance. If democracy is to succeed, we must cultivate a deeper hospitality toward difference than Dewey and Niebuhr were able to extend to each other.
Author: Mark A. Tietjen
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253008719
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 171
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Book Description
“Tietjen offers the kind of approach that encourages us to put the emphasis where it rightly belongs: on Kierkegaard’s philosophical ideas.” —Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews In contrast to recent postmodern and deconstructionist readings, Mark A. Tietjen believes that the purpose behind Kierkegaard’s writings is the moral and religious improvement of the reader. Tietjen defends Kierkegaard against claims that certain features of his works, such as pseudonymity, indirect communication, irony, and satire are self-deceived or deceitful. Kierkegaard, Communication, and Virtue reveals how they are directly related to the virtues or moral issues being discussed. In fact, Tietjen argues, the manner of presentation is a critical element of the philosophical message being conveyed. Reading broadly in Kierkegaard’s writings, he develops a hermeneutics of trust that fully illustrates Kierkegaard’s aim to evoke faith in his reader. “Tietjen’s critique of deconstructionist readings of Kierkegaard along with an emphasis on employing a hermeneutic of trust clearly distinguishes his work from other treatments of Kierkegaard as a virtue ethicist and edifying writer.” —Sylvia Walsh, Stetson University
Author: William J. Bennett
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439126259
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 2005
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Book Description
Responsibility. Courage. Compassion. Honesty. Friendship. Persistence. Faith. Everyone recognizes these traits as essentials of good character. In order for our children to develop such traits, we have to offer them examples of good and bad, right and wrong. And the best places to find them are in great works of literature and exemplary stories from history. William J. Bennett has collected hundreds of stories in The Book of Virtues, an instructive and inspiring anthology that will help children understand and develop character -- and help adults teach them. From the Bible to American history, from Greek mythology to English poetry, from fairy tales to modern fiction, these stories are a rich mine of moral literacy, a reliable moral reference point that will help anchor our children and ourselves in our culture, our history, and our traditions -- the sources of the ideals by which we wish to live our lives. Complete with instructive introductions and notes, The Book of Virtues is a book the whole family can read and enjoy -- and learn from -- together.
Author: Sylvia Walsh
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107180589
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 261
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Book Description
Focusing on the concepts of personality, character, and virtue, this work examines what it means to exist religiously for Kierkegaard.
Author: Holly A. Crocker
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812251415
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 360
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Book Description
If material bodies have inherent, animating powers—or virtues, in the premodern sense—then those bodies typically and most insistently associated in the premodern period with matter—namely, women—cannot be inert and therefore incapable of ethical action, Holly Crocker contends. In The Matter of Virtue, Crocker argues that one idea of what it means to be human—a conception of humanity that includes vulnerability, endurance, and openness to others—emerges when we consider virtue in relation to modes of ethical action available to premodern women. While a misogynistic tradition of virtue ethics, from antiquity to the early modern period, largely cast a skeptical or dismissive eye on women, Crocker seeks to explore what happened when poets thought about the material body not as a tool of an empowered agent whose cultural supremacy was guaranteed by prevailing social structures but rather as something fragile and open, subject but also connected to others. After an introduction that analyzes Hamlet to establish a premodern tradition of material virtue, Part I investigates how retellings of the demise of the title female character in Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, Henryson's Testament of Cresseid, and Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida among other texts structure a poetic debate over the potential for women's ethical action in a world dominated by masculine violence. Part II turns to narratives of female sanctity and feminine perfection, including ones by Chaucer, Bokenham, and Capgrave, to investigate grace, beauty, and intelligence as sources of women's ethical action. In Part III, Crocker examines a tension between women's virtues and household structures, paying particular attention to English Griselda- and shrew-literatures, including Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew. She concludes by looking at Chaucer's Legend of Good Women to consider alternative forms of virtuous behavior for women as well as men.
Author: Søren Kierkegaard
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400846927
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 663
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Book Description
A work that "not only treats of irony but is irony," wrote a contemporary reviewer of The Concept of Irony, with Continual Reference to Socrates. Presented here with Kierkegaard's notes of the celebrated Berlin lectures on "positive philosophy" by F.W.J. Schelling, the book is a seedbed of Kierkegaard's subsequent work, both stylistically and thematically. Part One concentrates on Socrates, the master ironist, as interpreted by Xenophon, Plato, and Aristophanes, with a word on Hegel and Hegelian categories. Part Two is a more synoptic discussion of the concept of irony in Kierkegaard's categories, with examples from other philosophers and with particular attention given to A. W. Schlegel's novel Lucinde as an epitome of romantic irony. The Concept of Irony and the Notes of Schelling's Berlin Lectures belong to the momentous year 1841, which included not only the completion of Kierkegaard's university work and his sojourn in Berlin, but also the end of his engagement to Regine Olsen and the initial writing of Either/Or.
