A Liberal Descent

A Liberal Descent PDF Author: J. W. Burrow
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521240796
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
The idea of a 'Whig interpretation' of English history incorporates the two fundamental notions of progress and continuity. The former made it possible to read English history as a 'success story', the latter endorsed a pragmatic, gradualist political style as the foundation of English freedom. Dr Burrow's book explore these ideas, and the tensions between them in studies of four major Victorian historians: Macaulay, Stubbs, Freeman and (as something of an anti type) Froude. It analyses their works in terms of their rhetorical suggestiveness as well as their explicit arguments, and attempts to place them in their cultural and historiographical context. In doing so, the book also seeks to establish the significance for the Victorians of three great crises of English history - the Norman conquest, the reformation and the revolution of the seventeenth century - and the nature and limits of the self-confidence they were able to derive from the national past. The book will interest students and teachers working on nineteenth-century English history, literature or social and political thought, the history of ideas, and legal and constitutional history. It will also be of value to the general reader interested in Victorian literature and cultural history.

A Liberal Descent

A Liberal Descent PDF Author: J. W. Burrow
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521240796
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
The idea of a 'Whig interpretation' of English history incorporates the two fundamental notions of progress and continuity. The former made it possible to read English history as a 'success story', the latter endorsed a pragmatic, gradualist political style as the foundation of English freedom. Dr Burrow's book explore these ideas, and the tensions between them in studies of four major Victorian historians: Macaulay, Stubbs, Freeman and (as something of an anti type) Froude. It analyses their works in terms of their rhetorical suggestiveness as well as their explicit arguments, and attempts to place them in their cultural and historiographical context. In doing so, the book also seeks to establish the significance for the Victorians of three great crises of English history - the Norman conquest, the reformation and the revolution of the seventeenth century - and the nature and limits of the self-confidence they were able to derive from the national past. The book will interest students and teachers working on nineteenth-century English history, literature or social and political thought, the history of ideas, and legal and constitutional history. It will also be of value to the general reader interested in Victorian literature and cultural history.

Contours of Descent

Contours of Descent PDF Author: Robert Pollin
Publisher: Verso
ISBN: 9781844675340
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
The concepts of modernity and modernism are among the most controversial and vigorously debated in contemporary philosophy and cultural theory. In this new, muscular intervention, Pollin explores these notions in a fresh and illuminating manner.

Political Descent

Political Descent PDF Author: Piers J. Hale
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022610852X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 451

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Book Description
Historians of science have long noted the influence of the nineteenth-century political economist Thomas Robert Malthus on Charles Darwin. In a bold move, Piers J. Hale contends that this focus on Malthus and his effect on Darwin’s evolutionary thought neglects a strong anti-Malthusian tradition in English intellectual life, one that not only predated the 1859 publication of the Origin of Species but also persisted throughout the Victorian period until World War I. Political Descent reveals that two evolutionary and political traditions developed in England in the wake of the 1832 Reform Act: one Malthusian, the other decidedly anti-Malthusian and owing much to the ideas of the French naturalist Jean Baptiste Lamarck. These two traditions, Hale shows, developed in a context of mutual hostility, debate, and refutation. Participants disagreed not only about evolutionary processes but also on broader questions regarding the kind of creature our evolution had made us and in what kind of society we ought therefore to live. Significantly, and in spite of Darwin’s acknowledgement that natural selection was “the doctrine of Malthus, applied to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms,” both sides of the debate claimed to be the more correctly “Darwinian.” By exploring the full spectrum of scientific and political issues at stake, Political Descent offers a novel approach to the relationship between evolution and political thought in the Victorian and Edwardian eras.

The Liberal Delusion

The Liberal Delusion PDF Author: John Marsh
Publisher: Arena books
ISBN: 1906791996
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 181

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Book Description
Is western civilisation based on a mistaken understanding of humanity? Fundamental to any society is its comprehension of human nature. It shapes attitudes and policies on a whole range of issues: interpersonal relations, child-rearing, discipline and punishment, economics and welfare. For millennia western societies were based on the idea that human nature is flawed. This was turned upside down 300 years ago during the Enlightenment by writers such as Rousseau, who argued that we are born good and later warped by parents and society; a liberal view of human nature which is now being challenged by scientific discoveries in the fields of the mind, the brain, and genetics (including the Human Genome), evolutionary psychology, and anthropology. This fundamental change has had profound effects. If we are essentially good then we can safely maximize freedom and abandon morality, religion and tradition. Many aspects of life have been liberalised - sexual behaviour, alcohol consumption, censorship, gambling, divorce laws and economic activity. Economic liberals thought free markets were rational and good and favoured minimal government interference and light-touch regulations. This led to the credit crunch and the greatest financial crisis since World War Two. Many parents now hesitate to discipline their own children. The belief that we are essentially good but corrupted by society has also influenced penal policy. Liberals see criminals as victims, not as wrongdoers; because surely no-one would choose to do something wrong. This is a world far removed from the self-sacrifice and fraternity shown during World War Two. It has not brought happiness but rather more alienated individuals. The outcome of egalitarian aims or methods has often missed its mark: e.g., in education it has led to the dumbing down of academic standards, grade inflation and a decline in social mobility. Egalitarian regimes from the French Revolution to the Soviet era have been amongst the most bigoted, brutal and bloody in history. The drive for greater social justice and fairness must remain an essential objective. There is, therefore, an urgent need to separate out the positive from the negative aspects of liberal thought and practice, as otherwise there is the risk of descent into moral anarchy and social disintegration.

Descent

Descent PDF Author: Tim Johnston
Publisher: Algonquin Books
ISBN: 1616203048
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
A Breakout NEW YORK TIMES Bestseller A USA Today Bestseller An Indie National Bestseller “Outstanding . . . The days when you had to choose between a great story and a great piece of writing? Gone.” —Esquire “The story unfolds brilliantly, always surprisingly . . . The magic of his prose equals the horror of Johnston’s story; each somehow enhances the other . . . Read this astonishing novel.” —The Washington Post “Tim Johnston’s high-wire literary thriller . . . will leave you gasping.” —Vanity Fair “A riveting literary thriller of the can’t-stop-turning-the-page, stay-up-all-night variety.” —Alice LaPlante, author of A Circle of Wives The Rocky Mountains have cast their spell over the Courtlands, a young family from the plains taking a last summer vacation before their daughter begins college. For eighteen-year-old Caitlin, the mountains loom as the ultimate test of her runner’s heart, while her parents hope that so much beauty, so much grandeur, will somehow repair a damaged marriage. But when Caitlin and her younger brother, Sean, go out for an early morning run and only Sean returns, the mountains become as terrifying as they are majestic, as suddenly this family find themselves living the kind of nightmare they’ve only read about in headlines or seen on TV. As their world comes undone, the Courtlands are drawn into a vortex of dread and recrimination. Why weren’t they more careful? What has happened to their daughter? Is she alive? Will they ever know? Caitlin’s disappearance, all the more devastating for its mystery, is the beginning of the family’s harrowing journey down increasingly divergent and solitary paths until all that continues to bind them together are the questions they can never bring themselves to ask: At what point does a family stop searching? At what point will a girl stop fighting for her life? Written with a precision that captures every emotion, every moment of fear, as each member of the family searches for answers, Descent is a perfectly crafted thriller that races like an avalanche toward its heart-pounding conclusion, and heralds the arrival of a master storyteller.

Why Govern?

Why Govern? PDF Author: Amitav Acharya
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107170818
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
A timely and authoritative assessment of the crisis in global cooperation and prospects for its reform and transformation.

The Descent of Icarus

The Descent of Icarus PDF Author: Yaron Ezrahi
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
Contains the Proceedings of the Second International Symposium (see title) held at Fort Collins, Colorado in June of 1989. Discussing the impact of science on centuries of political theory, Ezrahi (political science, Hebrew U., Jerusalem) eschews the interpretation that the Enlightenment did rationalize politics through science, only to be overpowered by the forces of unreason. He posits instead the notion of the specifically political and ideological role of science in upholding modern conceptions of action, authority, and accountability. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The Once and Future Liberal

The Once and Future Liberal PDF Author: Mark Lilla
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 1849049955
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 158

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Book Description
For nearly 40 years, Ronald Reagan's vision--small government, lower taxes, and self-reliant individualism--has remained America's dominant political ideology. The Democratic Party has offered no truly convincing competing vision. Instead, American liberalism has fallen under the spell of identity politics.Mark Lilla argues with acerbic wit that liberals, originally driven by a sincere desire to protect the most vulnerable Americans, have now unwittingly invested their energies in social movements rather than winning elections. This abandonment of political priorities has had dire consequences. But, with the Republican Party led by an unpredictable demagogue and in ideological disarray, Lilla believes liberals now have an opportunity to turn from the divisive politics of identity, and offer positive ideas for a shared future. A fiercely-argued, no-nonsense book, The Once and Future Liberal is essential reading for our momentous times.

Karl Polanyi

Karl Polanyi PDF Author: Gareth Dale
Publisher: Polity
ISBN: 0745640710
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation is generally acclaimed as being among the most influential works of economic history in the twentieth century, and remains as vital in the current historical conjuncture as it was in his own. In its critique of nineteenth-century ‘market fundamentalism’ it reads as a warning to our own neoliberal age, and is widely touted as a prophetic guidebook for those who aspire to understand the causes and dynamics of global economic turbulence at the end of the 2000s. Karl Polanyi: The Limits of the Market is the first comprehensive introduction to Polanyi’s ideas and legacy. It assesses not only the texts for which he is famous – prepared during his spells in American academia – but also his journalistic articles written in his first exile in Vienna, and lectures and pamphlets from his second exile, in Britain. It provides a detailed critical analysis of The Great Transformation, but also surveys Polanyi’s seminal writings in economic anthropology, the economic history of ancient and archaic societies, and political and economic theory. Its primary source base includes interviews with Polanyi’s daughter, Kari Polanyi-Levitt, as well as the entire compass of his own published and unpublished writings in English and German. This engaging and accessible introduction to Polanyi’s thinking will appeal to students and scholars across the social sciences, providing a refreshing perspective on the roots of our current economic crisis.

The Retreat of Western Liberalism

The Retreat of Western Liberalism PDF Author: Edward Luce
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 1408710390
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
'A panorama of the unravelling world order as riveting as any beach read' New Yorker 'Read this book: in the three hours it takes you will get a new, bracing and brilliant understanding of the dangers we in the democratic West now face. Luce is one of the smartest journalists working today, and his perceptions are priceless' Jane Mayer, staff writer on the New Yorker 'No one was more prescient about the economic malaise and popular resentment that has hit the United States than Ed Luce in his previous book, Time to Start Thinking. His new book, Retreat of Western Liberalism, broadens that picture to cover the Western world. It is a must read for anyone trying to make sense of the waves of populism and nationalism we face today' Liaquat Ahamed In his widely acclaimed book Time to Start Thinking, Financial Times columnist and commentator Edward Luce charted the course of American economic and geopolitical decline, proving to be a prescient voice on our current social and political turmoil. In The Retreat of Western Liberalism, Luce makes a larger statement about the weakening of western hegemony and the crisis of democratic liberalism - of which Donald Trump and his European counterparts are not the cause, but a symptom. Luce argues that we are on a menacing trajectory brought about by ignorance of what it took to build the West, arrogance towards society's losers, and complacency about our system's durability - attitudes that have been emerging since the fall of the Berlin Wall, treated by the West as an absolute triumph over the East. We cannot move forward without a clear diagnosis of what has gone wrong. Luce contrasts Western democratic and economic ideals, which rest on an assumption of linear progress, with more cyclical views of economic strength - symbolized by the nineteenth-century fall and present-day rise of the Chinese and Indian economies - and with the dawn of a new multipolar age. Combining on-the-ground reporting with intelligent synthesis of the vast literature already available, Luce offers a detailed projection of the consequences of the Trump administration and a forward-thinking analysis of what those who believe in enlightenment values must do to defend them from the multiple onslaughts they face in the coming years.