Author: Peter Berkowitz
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400822904
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 256
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.
Virtue and the Making of Modern Liberalism
Author: Peter Berkowitz
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400822904
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 256
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.
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400822904
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 256
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.
The Liberal Tradition in Focus
Author: João Carlos Espada
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 9780739100837
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 184
Book Description
The Liberal Tradition in Focus is a collection of essays by prominent scholars in their fields on the nature of liberalism at the close of the twentieth century. Using a variety of analytical and substantive approaches, the authors compare the "old liberalism" of Locke, Smith, Hume, and Montesquieu to the variety of "new liberalisms" of thinkers such as Rawls, Dworkin, and Foucault. Each chapter of this engaging volume takes up a particular theme--democracy, capitalism, morality, feminism, toleration, constitutionalism, Third Way liberalism--and considers how the new liberalism's understanding differs from the old. The Liberal Tradition in Focus will be a valuable addition to the collections of scholars and students of political science and political philosophy.
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 9780739100837
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 184
Book Description
The Liberal Tradition in Focus is a collection of essays by prominent scholars in their fields on the nature of liberalism at the close of the twentieth century. Using a variety of analytical and substantive approaches, the authors compare the "old liberalism" of Locke, Smith, Hume, and Montesquieu to the variety of "new liberalisms" of thinkers such as Rawls, Dworkin, and Foucault. Each chapter of this engaging volume takes up a particular theme--democracy, capitalism, morality, feminism, toleration, constitutionalism, Third Way liberalism--and considers how the new liberalism's understanding differs from the old. The Liberal Tradition in Focus will be a valuable addition to the collections of scholars and students of political science and political philosophy.
Visions of Progress
Author: Doug Rossinow
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812220951
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 334
Book Description
Rossinow revisits the period between the 1880s and the 1940s, when reformers and radicals worked together along a middle path between the revolutionary left and establishment liberalism. He takes the story up to the present, showing how the progressive connection was lost and explaining the consequences that followed.
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812220951
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 334
Book Description
Rossinow revisits the period between the 1880s and the 1940s, when reformers and radicals worked together along a middle path between the revolutionary left and establishment liberalism. He takes the story up to the present, showing how the progressive connection was lost and explaining the consequences that followed.
An Intellectual History of Liberalism
Author: Pierre Manent
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691207194
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 146
Book Description
Highlighting the social tensions that confront the liberal tradition, Pierre Manent draws a portrait of what we, citizens of modern liberal democracies, have become. For Manent, a discussion of liberalism encompasses the foundations of modern society, its secularism, its individualism, and its conception of rights. The frequent incapacity of the morally neutral, democratic state to further social causes, he argues, derives from the liberal stance that political life does not serve a higher purpose. Through quick-moving, highly synthetic essays, he explores the development of liberal thinking in terms of a single theme: the decline of theological politics. The author traces the liberal stance to Machiavelli, who, in seeking to divorce everyday life from the pervasive influence of the Catholic church, separated politics from all notions of a cosmological order. What followed, as Manent demonstrates in his analyses of Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau, Guizot, and Constant, was the evolving concept of an individual with no goals outside the confines of the self and a state with no purpose but to prevent individuals from dominating one another. Weighing both the positive and negative effects of such a political arrangement, Manent raises important questions about the fundamental political issues of the day, among them the possibility of individual rights being reconciled with the necessary demands of political organization, and the desirability of a government system neutral about religion but not about public morals.
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691207194
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 146
Book Description
Highlighting the social tensions that confront the liberal tradition, Pierre Manent draws a portrait of what we, citizens of modern liberal democracies, have become. For Manent, a discussion of liberalism encompasses the foundations of modern society, its secularism, its individualism, and its conception of rights. The frequent incapacity of the morally neutral, democratic state to further social causes, he argues, derives from the liberal stance that political life does not serve a higher purpose. Through quick-moving, highly synthetic essays, he explores the development of liberal thinking in terms of a single theme: the decline of theological politics. The author traces the liberal stance to Machiavelli, who, in seeking to divorce everyday life from the pervasive influence of the Catholic church, separated politics from all notions of a cosmological order. What followed, as Manent demonstrates in his analyses of Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau, Guizot, and Constant, was the evolving concept of an individual with no goals outside the confines of the self and a state with no purpose but to prevent individuals from dominating one another. Weighing both the positive and negative effects of such a political arrangement, Manent raises important questions about the fundamental political issues of the day, among them the possibility of individual rights being reconciled with the necessary demands of political organization, and the desirability of a government system neutral about religion but not about public morals.
The Making of Modern Liberalism
Author: Alan Ryan
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691163685
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 680
Book Description
One of the world's leading political thinkers explores the history, nature, and prospects of the liberal tradition The Making of Modern Liberalism is a deep and wide-ranging exploration of the origins and nature of liberalism from the Enlightenment through its triumphs and setbacks in the twentieth century and beyond. The book is the fruit of the more than four decades during which Alan Ryan, one of the world's leading political thinkers, reflected on the past of the liberal tradition—and worried about its future. This is essential reading for anyone interested in political theory or the history of liberalism.
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691163685
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 680
Book Description
One of the world's leading political thinkers explores the history, nature, and prospects of the liberal tradition The Making of Modern Liberalism is a deep and wide-ranging exploration of the origins and nature of liberalism from the Enlightenment through its triumphs and setbacks in the twentieth century and beyond. The book is the fruit of the more than four decades during which Alan Ryan, one of the world's leading political thinkers, reflected on the past of the liberal tradition—and worried about its future. This is essential reading for anyone interested in political theory or the history of liberalism.
Passions and Constraint
Author: Stephen Holmes
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226349688
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 360
Book Description
Holmes argues that the aspirations of liberal democracy - including individual liberty, the equal dignity of citizens, and a tolerance for diversity - are best understood in relation to two central themes of classical liberal theory: the psychological motivations of individuals and the necessary constraints on individual passions provided by robust institutions. Paradoxically, Holmes argues, such institutional restraints serve to enable, rather than limit or dilute, effective democracy.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226349688
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 360
Book Description
Holmes argues that the aspirations of liberal democracy - including individual liberty, the equal dignity of citizens, and a tolerance for diversity - are best understood in relation to two central themes of classical liberal theory: the psychological motivations of individuals and the necessary constraints on individual passions provided by robust institutions. Paradoxically, Holmes argues, such institutional restraints serve to enable, rather than limit or dilute, effective democracy.
Why Liberalism Failed
Author: Patrick J. Deneen
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300240023
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 263
Book Description
"One of the most important political books of 2018."—Rod Dreher, American Conservative Of the three dominant ideologies of the twentieth century—fascism, communism, and liberalism—only the last remains. This has created a peculiar situation in which liberalism’s proponents tend to forget that it is an ideology and not the natural end-state of human political evolution. As Patrick Deneen argues in this provocative book, liberalism is built on a foundation of contradictions: it trumpets equal rights while fostering incomparable material inequality; its legitimacy rests on consent, yet it discourages civic commitments in favor of privatism; and in its pursuit of individual autonomy, it has given rise to the most far-reaching, comprehensive state system in human history. Here, Deneen offers an astringent warning that the centripetal forces now at work on our political culture are not superficial flaws but inherent features of a system whose success is generating its own failure.
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300240023
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 263
Book Description
"One of the most important political books of 2018."—Rod Dreher, American Conservative Of the three dominant ideologies of the twentieth century—fascism, communism, and liberalism—only the last remains. This has created a peculiar situation in which liberalism’s proponents tend to forget that it is an ideology and not the natural end-state of human political evolution. As Patrick Deneen argues in this provocative book, liberalism is built on a foundation of contradictions: it trumpets equal rights while fostering incomparable material inequality; its legitimacy rests on consent, yet it discourages civic commitments in favor of privatism; and in its pursuit of individual autonomy, it has given rise to the most far-reaching, comprehensive state system in human history. Here, Deneen offers an astringent warning that the centripetal forces now at work on our political culture are not superficial flaws but inherent features of a system whose success is generating its own failure.
Liberalism
Author: Michael Freeden
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199670439
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 161
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.
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199670439
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 161
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.
A World Safe for Democracy
Author: G. John Ikenberry
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300256094
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 429
Book Description
A sweeping account of the rise and evolution of liberal internationalism in the modern era For two hundred years, the grand project of liberal internationalism has been to build a world order that is open, loosely rules-based, and oriented toward progressive ideas. Today this project is in crisis, threatened from the outside by illiberal challengers and from the inside by nationalist-populist movements. This timely book offers the first full account of liberal internationalism’s long journey from its nineteenth-century roots to today’s fractured political moment. Creating an international “space” for liberal democracy, preserving rights and protections within and between countries, and balancing conflicting values such as liberty and equality, openness and social solidarity, and sovereignty and interdependence—these are the guiding aims that have propelled liberal internationalism through the upheavals of the past two centuries. G. John Ikenberry argues that in a twenty-first century marked by rising economic and security interdependence, liberal internationalism—reformed and reimagined—remains the most viable project to protect liberal democracy.
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300256094
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 429
Book Description
A sweeping account of the rise and evolution of liberal internationalism in the modern era For two hundred years, the grand project of liberal internationalism has been to build a world order that is open, loosely rules-based, and oriented toward progressive ideas. Today this project is in crisis, threatened from the outside by illiberal challengers and from the inside by nationalist-populist movements. This timely book offers the first full account of liberal internationalism’s long journey from its nineteenth-century roots to today’s fractured political moment. Creating an international “space” for liberal democracy, preserving rights and protections within and between countries, and balancing conflicting values such as liberty and equality, openness and social solidarity, and sovereignty and interdependence—these are the guiding aims that have propelled liberal internationalism through the upheavals of the past two centuries. G. John Ikenberry argues that in a twenty-first century marked by rising economic and security interdependence, liberal internationalism—reformed and reimagined—remains the most viable project to protect liberal democracy.
Liberalism and Capitalism: Volume 28, Part 2
Author: Ellen Frankel Paul
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107640261
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 309
Book Description
Political philosophers, theorists and historians address what are the core values of liberalism and how can they best be promoted?
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107640261
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 309
Book Description
Political philosophers, theorists and historians address what are the core values of liberalism and how can they best be promoted?