Author: Ismail Kurun
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498527418
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257
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Book Description
This eye-opening book offers a critical survey of the true origins of liberalism. It challenges the widely held belief among social scientists that liberalism was developed in opposition to Christianity. Beginning with the Protestant Reformation, it illustrates how Christian thinkers reinterpreted Christianity and used a set of indemonstrable biblical presuppositions from their reinterpretations to develop the first liberal ideas, starting a process that culminates in the birth of the first liberal political theory in the writings of a devout Christian philosopher, John Locke. It explains how the Protestant Reformation, covenant theology, anti-trinitarianism and medieval Christian natural law theories formed the foundations of liberalism. Thus, the central claim of this book is that liberalism is better understood as a radical reinterpretation of Christianity that emerged in the post-Reformation and early modern period. As a logical consequence of revealing the hitherto generally neglected roots of liberalism, it eventually proposes that a legally pluralist liberal political theory is the best way to maintain human dignity and peace in multi-religious societies of today’s globalized world.
Author: Eric Nelson
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674242955
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 233
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Book Description
One of our most important political theorists pulls the philosophical rug out from under modern liberalism, then tries to place it on a more secure footing. We think of modern liberalism as the novel product of a world reinvented on a secular basis after 1945. In The Theology of Liberalism, one of the country’s most important political theorists argues that we could hardly be more wrong. Eric Nelson contends that the tradition of liberal political philosophy founded by John Rawls is, however unwittingly, the product of ancient theological debates about justice and evil. Once we understand this, he suggests, we can recognize the deep incoherence of various forms of liberal political philosophy that have emerged in Rawls’s wake. Nelson starts by noting that today’s liberal political philosophers treat the unequal distribution of social and natural advantages as morally arbitrary. This arbitrariness, they claim, diminishes our moral responsibility for our actions. Some even argue that we are not morally responsible when our own choices and efforts produce inequalities. In defending such views, Nelson writes, modern liberals have implicitly taken up positions in an age-old debate about whether the nature of the created world is consistent with the justice of God. Strikingly, their commitments diverge sharply from those of their proto-liberal predecessors, who rejected the notion of moral arbitrariness in favor of what was called Pelagianism—the view that beings created and judged by a just God must be capable of freedom and merit. Nelson reconstructs this earlier “liberal” position and shows that Rawls’s philosophy derived from his self-conscious repudiation of Pelagianism. In closing, Nelson sketches a way out of the argumentative maze for liberals who wish to emerge with commitments to freedom and equality intact.
Author: Gary J. Dorrien
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
ISBN: 9780664223540
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 534
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Book Description
This text identifies the indigenous roots of American liberal theology and uncovers a wider, longer-running tradition than has been thought. Taking a narrative approach the text provides a biographical reading of important religious thinkers of the time.
Author: Michael Allen Gillespie
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
ISBN: 1459606124
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 762
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Book Description
Taking as his starting point the collapse of the medieval world, Gillespie argues that from the very beginning moderns sought not to eliminate religion but to support a new view of religion and its place in human life- and that they did so not out of hostility but in order to sustain certain religious beliefs. He goes on to explore the ideas of such figures as William of Ockham, Petrarch, Erasmus, Luther, Descartes, and Hobbes, showing that modernity is best understood as the result of a series of attempts to formulate a new and coherent metaphysics or theology.
Author: Larry Siedentop
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674417534
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 443
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Book Description
Here, in a grand narrative spanning 1,800 years of European history, a distinguished political philosopher firmly rejects Western liberalism’s usual account of itself: its emergence in opposition to religion in the early modern era. Larry Siedentop argues instead that liberal thought is, in its underlying assumptions, the offspring of the Church. “It is a magnificent work of intellectual, psychological, and spiritual history. It is hard to decide which is more remarkable: the breadth of learning displayed on almost every page, the infectious enthusiasm that suffuses the whole book, the riveting originality of the central argument, or the emotional power and force with which it is deployed.” —David Marquand, New Republic “Larry Siedentop has written a philosophical history in the spirit of Voltaire, Condorcet, Hegel, and Guizot...At a time when we on the left need to be stirred from our dogmatic slumbers, Inventing the Individual is a reminder of some core values that are pretty widely shared.” —James Miller, The Nation “In this learned, subtle, enjoyable and digestible work [Siedentop] has offered back to us a proper version of ourselves. He has explained us to ourselves...[A] magisterial, timeless yet timely work.” —Douglas Murray, The Spectator “Like the best books, Inventing the Individual both teaches you something new and makes you want to argue with it.” —Kenan Malik, The Independent
Author: Thomas L. Pangle
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226645525
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 205
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Book Description
The Spirit of the Laws—Montesquieu’s huge, complex, and enormously influential work—is considered one of the central texts of the Enlightenment, laying the foundation for the liberally democratic political regimes that were to embody its values. In his penetrating analysis, Thomas L. Pangle brilliantly argues that the inherently theological project of Enlightenment liberalism is made more clearly—and more consequentially— in Spirit than in any other work. In a probing and careful reading, Pangle shows how Montesquieu believed that rationalism, through the influence of liberal institutions and the spread of commercial culture, would secularize human affairs. At the same time, Pangle uncovers Montesquieu’s views about the origins of humanity’s religious impulse and his confidence that political and economic security would make people less likely to sacrifice worldly well-being for otherworldly hopes. With the interest in the theological aspects of political theory and practice showing no signs of diminishing, this book is a timely and insightful contribution to one of the key achievements of Enlightenment thought.
Author: Pierre Manent
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691207194
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 146
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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.
Author: Nancey Murphy
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1563381761
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 175
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Book Description
This book clarifies differences between the intellectual positions of the so-called two-party system of liberals and conservatives in American Protestant Christianity. Nancey Murphy advances the thesis that the philosophy of the modern period is largely responsible for the polarity of Protestant Christian thought. A second thesis is that the modern philosophical positions driving the division between liberals and conservatives have themselves been called into question. This, then, presents the opportunity to ask how theology ought to be done in a postmodern era and to envision a rapprochement between theologians of the left and right. The book concludes by speculating on the future and the likelihood that the compulsion to separate into two distinct camps will be precluded by the coexistence of a wide range of theological positions from left to right.
Author: John Perry
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199339953
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 279
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Book Description
In the face of ongoing religious conflicts and unending culture wars, what are we to make of liberalism's promise that it alone can arbitrate between church and state? In this wide-ranging study, John Perry examines the roots of our thinking on religion and politics, placing the early-modern founders of liberalism in conversation with today's theologians and political philosophers. From the story of Antigone to debates about homosexuality and bans on religious attire, it is clear that liberalism's promise to solve all theo-political conflict is a false hope. The philosophy connecting John Locke to John Rawls seeks a world free of tragic dilemmas, where there can be no Antigones. Perry rejects this as an illusion. Disputes like the culture wars cannot be adequately comprehended as border encroachments presided over by an impartial judge. Instead, theo-political conflict must be considered a contest of loyalties within each citizen and believer. Drawing on critics of Rawls ranging from Michael Sandel to Stanley Hauerwas, Perry identifies what he calls a 'turn to loyalty' by those who recognize the inadequacy of our usual thinking on the public place of religion. The Pretenses of Loyalty offers groundbreaking analysis of the overlooked early work of Locke, where liberalism's founder himself opposed toleration. Perry discovers that Locke made a turn to loyalty analogous to that of today's communitarian critics. Liberal toleration is thus more sophisticated, more theologically subtle, and ultimately more problematic than has been supposed. It demands not only governmental neutrality (as Rawls believed) but also a reworked political theology. Yet this must remain under suspicion for Christians because it places religion in the service of the state. Perry concludes by suggesting where we might turn next, looking beyond our usual boundaries to possibilities obscured by the liberalism we have inherited.
Author: Peter Barnes
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780851519777
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
At first sight in Peter Barnes' book, A Handful of Pebbles, the word 'liberalism' does not seem threatening in any way. Quite the reverse, it is often associated with ideas like 'democracy', 'freedom' and 'generosity of spirit'. However, there is something quite sinister about 'theological liberalism'; although not a well-defined term, it usually refers to a belief system which rejects the orthodox view of the Christian faith as set out in the Bible, and summarized in the church's historic creeds and confessions. This book traces the origins and development of theological liberalism and convincingly demonstrates what a dangerous and destructive thing it is to the Christian church. The author shows that a battle continues to rage today, not between two varieties of true Christianity, but between truth and error, light and darkness, good and evil.
