The Liberal Approach to the Past: A Reader PDF Download
Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download The Liberal Approach to the Past: A Reader PDF full book. Access full book title The Liberal Approach to the Past: A Reader by Michael J. Douma. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.
Author: Michael J. Douma
Publisher: Cato Institute
ISBN: 9781952223105
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 326
Get Book
Book Description
What do we mean by liberalism or liberal history? It seems that every scholar in the social sciences would like to define liberalism in their own way. Certainly there is plenty of room for differences of opinion on this matter. But defining any "-ism" requires circumscribing a set of beliefs or drawing lines in such a way as to connect ideas that we believe form a coherent tradition. Liberal history is primarily concerned with ideas and with the reasons why individuals acted as they did in the past. Liberal historians prefer to study themes of power and liberty, particularly as they relate to the rise and fall of political systems that protect liberties and individual rights. As the selections in this reader show, the liberal approach to the past is generally skeptical of laws of history and suggestions of historical determinism.
Author: Michael J. Douma
Publisher: Cato Institute
ISBN: 1948647834
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 325
Get Book
Book Description
What do we mean by liberalism or liberal history? It seems that every scholar in the social sciences would like to define liberalism in their own way. Certainly there is plenty of room for differences of opinion on this matter. But defining any “-ism” requires circumscribing a set of beliefs or drawing lines in such a way as to connect ideas that we believe form a coherent tradition. Liberal history is primarily concerned with ideas and with the reasons why individuals acted as they did in the past. Liberal historians prefer to study themes of power and liberty, particularly as they relate to the rise and fall of political systems that protect liberties and individual rights. As the selections in this reader show, the liberal approach to the past is generally skeptical of laws of history and suggestions of historical determinism.
Author: Michael J. Douma
Publisher: Cato Institute
ISBN: 9781952223105
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 326
Get Book
Book Description
What do we mean by liberalism or liberal history? It seems that every scholar in the social sciences would like to define liberalism in their own way. Certainly there is plenty of room for differences of opinion on this matter. But defining any "-ism" requires circumscribing a set of beliefs or drawing lines in such a way as to connect ideas that we believe form a coherent tradition. Liberal history is primarily concerned with ideas and with the reasons why individuals acted as they did in the past. Liberal historians prefer to study themes of power and liberty, particularly as they relate to the rise and fall of political systems that protect liberties and individual rights. As the selections in this reader show, the liberal approach to the past is generally skeptical of laws of history and suggestions of historical determinism.
Author: Michael J. Douma
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498536115
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 269
Get Book
Book Description
Historians working in the classical liberal tradition believe that individual decision-making and individual rights matter in the making of history. History written in the classical liberal tradition emerged largely in the nineteenth century, when the field of history was first professionalized in Europe and the Americas. Professional historical research was then imbued with liberal values, which included rigorous attention to the sources, historicist suspicion of an ultimate mover, an honest and dispassionate rational outlook, and humility towards what could be known. Above all, liberals wanted to chart the history of liberty, warn against threats to liberty, and defend it in an evolving political world. They believed history was real, and that it had lessons to teach, but that these lessons could not provide sufficient knowledge to predict the future or reorganize society around a central plan. This book demonstrates how the classical liberal tradition in historical writing persists to this day, but how it is often neglected and due for renewal. The book contrasts the classical liberal view on history with conservative, progressive, Marxist, and post-modern views. Each of the eleven chapters address a different historical topic, from the development of classical liberalism in nineteenth century America to the the history of civil liberties and civil rights that stemmed from this tradition. Authors give particular attention to the importance of social and economic analysis. Each contributor was chosen as an expert in their field to provide a historiographical overview of their subject, and to explain what the classical liberal contribution to this historiography has been and should be. Authors then provide guidance towards possible tools of analysis and related research topics that future historians working in the classical liberal tradition could take up. The authors wish to call upon other historians to recognize the important contributions to historical understanding that have come and can be provided by the insights of classical liberalism.
Author: Michael Freeden
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199670439
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 161
Get Book
Book Description
Michael Freeden explores the concept of liberalism, one of the longest-standing and central political theories and ideologies. Combining a variety of approaches, he distinguishes between liberalism as a political movement, as a system of ideas, and as a series of ethical and philosophical principles.
Author: B. Jahn
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137348437
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 324
Get Book
Book Description
This study provides an original conception of liberalism that accounts for its internal contradictions and explains the current crisis of liberal internationalism. Examining the disjuncture between liberal theory and practice, it offers a firmer grasp on the historical role of liberalism in world politics.
Author: Michael W. Doyle
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136644555
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 296
Get Book
Book Description
Comprising essays by Michael W. Doyle, Liberal Peace examines the special significance of liberalism for international relations. The volume begins by outlining the two legacies of liberalism in international relations - how and why liberal states have maintained peace among themselves while at the same time being prone to making war against non-liberal states. Exploring policy implications, the author focuses on the strategic value of the inter-liberal democratic community and how it can be protected, preserved, and enlarged, and whether liberals can go beyond a separate peace to a more integrated global democracy. Finally, the volume considers when force should and should not be used to promote national security and human security across borders, and argues against President George W. Bush’s policy of "transformative" interventions. The concluding essay engages with scholarly critics of the liberal democratic peace. This book will be of great interest to students of international relations, foreign policy, political philosophy, and security studies.
Author: Domenico Losurdo
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 178168166X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 385
Get Book
Book Description
One of Europe’s leading intellectual historians deconstructs the dark side of liberalism, sifting through 3 centuries of liberal writings by John Locke, Alexis de Tocqueville, and others. In this definitive historical investigation, Italian author and philosopher Domenico Losurdo argues that from the outset liberalism, as a philosophical position and ideology, has been bound up with the most illiberal of policies: slavery, colonialism, genocide, racism and snobbery. Narrating an intellectual history running from the eighteenth through to the twentieth centuries, Losurdo examines the thought of preeminent liberal writers such as Locke, Burke, Tocqueville, Constant, Bentham, and Sieyès, revealing the inner contradictions of an intellectual position that has exercised a formative influence on today’s politics. Among the dominant strains of liberalism, he discerns the counter-currents of more radical positions, lost in the constitution of the modern world order.
Author: Knud Erik Jørgensen
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030526437
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 151
Get Book
Book Description
This book examines how the liberal international theory tradition evolved in Europe. It includes nine chapters focusing on both historical and contemporary branches of liberal IR theorizing. The combined portrait of the prominent IR theory orientation shows a long and rich theoretical tradition but also a tradition that the scholarly community rarely fully recognize. It is currently somewhat challenged and therefore in need of further advances. Concerning the historical branches, the authors present a truly European tradition that thus was not only present in a few countries. The contributors introduce examples of liberal theorizing that IR scholars tend to dismiss and they trace the boundaries between the liberal and other theoretical traditions. Given the prominence of the tradition, the book is surprisingly among the first to present a transnational perspective on the development of the liberal international theory tradition in Europe.
Author: Andrew Sartori
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520281683
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 282
Get Book
Book Description
While the need for a history of liberalism that goes beyond its conventional European limits is well recognized, the agrarian backwaters of the British Empire might seem an unlikely place to start. Yet specifically liberal preoccupations with property and freedom evolved as central to agrarian policy and politics in colonial Bengal.Ê Liberalism in Empire explores the generative crisis in understanding propertyÕs role in the constitution of a liberal polity, which intersected in Bengal with a new politics of peasant independence based on practices of commodity exchange. Thus the conditions for a new kind of vernacular liberalism were created. Andrew SartoriÕs examination shows the workings of a section of liberal policy makers and agrarian leaders who insisted that norms governing agrarian social relations be premised on the property-constituting powers of labor, which opened a new conceptual space for appeals to both political economy and the normative significance of property. It is conventional to see liberalism as traveling through the space of empire with the extension of colonial institutions and intellectual networks. SartoriÕs focus on the Lockeanism of agrarian discourses of property, however, allows readers to grasp how liberalism could serve as a normative framework for both a triumphant colonial capitalism and a critique of capitalism from the standpoint of peasant property.
Author: David Johnston
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400821517
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 215
Get Book
Book Description
Liberalism, the founding philosophy of many constitutional democracies, has been criticized in recent years from both the left and the right for placing too much faith in individual rights and distributive justice. In this book, David Johnston argues for a reinterpretation of liberal principles he contends will restore liberalism to a position of intellectual leadership from which it can guide political and social reforms. He begins by surveying the three major contemporary schools of liberal political thought--rights-based, perfectionist, and political liberalism--and, by weeding out their weaknesses, sketches a new approach he calls humanist liberalism. The core of Johnston's humanist liberalism is the claim that the purpose of political and social arrangements should be to empower individuals to be effective agents. Drawing on and modifying the theories of John Rawls, Michael Walzer, Ronald Dworkin, Joseph Raz, Amartya Sen, and others, Johnston explains how this purpose can be realized in a world in which human beings hold fundamentally different conceptions of the ends of life. His humanist liberalism responds constructively to feminist, neo-Marxist, and other criticisms while remaining faithful to the core values of the liberal tradition.
