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Author: Colin Bird
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108832024
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 291
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Book Description
That human dignity matters politically is widely affirmed, yet how it matters remains unresolved. This book aims to settle that question.
Author: Colin Bird
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108832024
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 291
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Book Description
That human dignity matters politically is widely affirmed, yet how it matters remains unresolved. This book aims to settle that question.
Author: Patrick Riordan
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
ISBN: 1647123690
Category : Christian ethics
Languages : en
Pages : 256
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Book Description
"This book pursues two goals in the context of resurgence of interest in "the common good" as a topic in political philosophy and Christian ethics. The first goal is the clarification of the notion of common good, elaborating it through the three lenses of Aristotelian practical philosophy, twentieth century Catholic Social Thought, and political liberalism. The second goal is to make the case that the espousal of the common good does not entail a rejection of liberalism, but that a commitment to liberal politics is compatible with faithful adherence to the Catholic tradition. The first goal is warranted by the fact that many authors such as Michael Sandel who invoke "the common good" do not explain the concept. The second is necessitated by the tendency among many contemporary Catholic authors to polarize liberalism and the common good, presenting readers with a stark choice. Instead of exacerbating divisions this book explores what is common, even where there is difference and division. The Second Vatican Council's Gaudium et spes invites all to a dialogue about the common good as the set of economic, political, legal, and cultural conditions for the flourishing of human beings, whether as individuals or as communities. The challenge of dialogue is taken up through the three lenses, identifying a heuristic concept of the common good, along with two criteria for its application. First, no systematic exclusion of any person or group, and second, no systematic exclusion of any genuine dimension of the human good. These criteria have their counterparts in the principles of solidarity and subsidiarity. They prove their usefulness in discussion of democracy, human rights, and religious liberty, accepting a political liberalism that can facilitate the collaboration in political life by exponents of many different worldviews and religious doctrines"--
Author: James Greenaway
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793611017
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 253
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Book Description
A life of liberty and responsibility does not just happen, but requires a particular kind of education, one that aims at both a growth of the human soul and an enrichment of political society in justice and the common good. This we call a liberal education. Forgetfulness of liberty is also a forgetfulness of the multi-dimensional nature of the human person, and a diminution of political life. Keeping in mind what can be lost when liberal education is lost, this volume makes the case for recovering what is perennially noble and good in the liberal arts, and why the liberal arts always have a role to play in human flourishing. Each of the authors herein focuses on the connection of three primary themes: human dignity, liberal education, and political society. Intentionally rooted in the hub that joins the three themes, each author seeks to unfold the contemporary significance of that hub. As a whole, the volume explores how the three themes are crucial to each other: how they illuminate each other, how they need each other, and how the loss of one jeopardizes the wellbeing of the others. In individual chapters, the authors engage various relevant aspects of liberal education. As a result, the volume is organized into three parts: Liberal Education and a Life Well Lived; Thinkers on Dignity and Education in History; Contemporary Topics in Dignity and Education. As education is increasingly channeled into an ever more narrow focus on technical specialization, and measured against professional success, students themselves face a maelstrom of campus politics and competing political orthodoxies. These are among the issues that tend to militate against the operative liberty of the student to think and to speak as a person. This edited collection is offered as an invitation to think again about the liberal arts in order to recover the meaning of education as the authentic pursuit of the good life or eudemonia.
Author: Francis Fukuyama
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374717486
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240
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Book Description
The New York Times bestselling author of The Origins of Political Order offers a provocative examination of modern identity politics: its origins, its effects, and what it means for domestic and international affairs of state In 2014, Francis Fukuyama wrote that American institutions were in decay, as the state was progressively captured by powerful interest groups. Two years later, his predictions were borne out by the rise to power of a series of political outsiders whose economic nationalism and authoritarian tendencies threatened to destabilize the entire international order. These populist nationalists seek direct charismatic connection to “the people,” who are usually defined in narrow identity terms that offer an irresistible call to an in-group and exclude large parts of the population as a whole. Demand for recognition of one’s identity is a master concept that unifies much of what is going on in world politics today. The universal recognition on which liberal democracy is based has been increasingly challenged by narrower forms of recognition based on nation, religion, sect, race, ethnicity, or gender, which have resulted in anti-immigrant populism, the upsurge of politicized Islam, the fractious “identity liberalism” of college campuses, and the emergence of white nationalism. Populist nationalism, said to be rooted in economic motivation, actually springs from the demand for recognition and therefore cannot simply be satisfied by economic means. The demand for identity cannot be transcended; we must begin to shape identity in a way that supports rather than undermines democracy. Identity is an urgent and necessary book—a sharp warning that unless we forge a universal understanding of human dignity, we will doom ourselves to continuing conflict.
Author: Brad Stetson
Publisher: Praeger
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 208
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Book Description
The author of Human Dignity and Contemporary Liberalism argues that the nature and application of contemporary liberalism is significantly dissonant with the deepest inclinations and most persistent moral sentiments of human beings, and it therefore distorts human self-understanding and defaces human dignity. This mismatch between human nature and the essence of contemporary liberalism hobbles our public life, and—the author suggests—is the Gordian knot that must be loosed if the new millennium is to manifest a more humane and satisfying American civitas. This wide-ranging book begins with a discussion of certain consequences and implications of contemporary liberalism's heavy emphasis on individual rights, moving into a reflection on two general categories of human dignity, suggesting that there is in contemporary liberal thought a lack of clarity concerning the meaning and gravity of this concept. The focus then shifts to the idea of desert or deservingness. The viability of desert, rightly understood, is advanced as a useful general concept for understanding American public life, and as an important tool for restoring a measure of common sense to our politics. The second section of the book concentrates on the actual application of contemporary liberalism's values as it has occurred since the 1960s, particularly in the culturally contentious areas of race and abortion. Emerging from this survey is an unflattering image of a political paradigm which, according to the author, must be abandoned, or at least radically revised, if America is to strike a posture of moral intensity and genuine social understanding.
Author: Colin Bird
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108934307
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 291
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Book Description
Many, including Marx, Rawls, and the contemporary 'Black Lives Matter' movement, embrace the ambition to secure terms of co-existence in which the worth of people's lives becomes a lived reality rather than an empty boast. This book asks whether, as some believe, the philosophical idea of human dignity can help achieve that ambition. Offering a new fourfold typology of dignity concepts, Colin Bird argues that human dignity can perform this role only if certain traditional ways of conceiving it are abandoned. Accordingly, Bird rejects the idea that human dignity refers to the inherent worth or status of individuals, and instead reinterprets it as a social relation, constituted by affects of respect and the modes of mutual attention which they generate. What emerges is a new vision of human dignity as a vital political value, and an arresting vindication of its role as an agent of critical reflection on politics.
Author: Patrick Riordan, SJ
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
ISBN: 1647123704
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 292
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Book Description
A deeply considered examination of the “common good” reconciling Catholic Social Thought with secular politics and philosophy The Second Vatican Council invites dialogue about the common good as the set of economic, political, legal, and cultural conditions for human flourishing, whether as individuals or as communities. However, some contemporary Catholic authors jeopardize this dialogue by polarizing liberalism and the common good, interpreting the commitment to individual liberty as incompatible with commitment to the common good. Human Dignity and Liberal Politics clarifies the meaning of the common good through the three lenses of Aristotelian practical philosophy, twentieth-century Catholic Social Thought, and political liberalism. It makes the case that embracing the common good does not entail a rejection of liberalism, but that a commitment to liberal politics is compatible with faithful adherence to the Catholic tradition. The book argues that liberal political philosophy is not only compatible with Catholic Social Teaching but may also be the most appropriate framework for communicating the richness of the Church’s tradition today. Furthermore, accepting political liberalism can facilitate collaboration in political life between those who hold different worldviews and foster an enriched discussion of democracy, human rights, and religious liberty. Students and scholars of Christian ethics and political philosophy will benefit from this response to the challenges of dialogue about the “common good” in the context of the resurgence of this topic.
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: Timothy P. Jackson
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 0802872468
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 441
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Book Description
What is the place of Christian love in a pluralistic society dedicated to liberty and justice for all ? What would it mean to take both Jesus Christ and Abraham Lincoln seriously and attempt to translate love of God and neighbor into every quarter of life, including law and politics? Timothy Jackson addresses such questions in Political Agape: Prophetic Christianity and Liberal Democracy. Jackson argues that love of God and neighbor is the perilously neglected civil virtue of our time and that it must be considered even before justice in structuring political principles and policies. To indicate the specific implications of civic agapism, he looks at such issues as the death penalty, Christian complicity in the Holocaust, the case for same-sex marriage, and the morality of adoption. The book concludes with Jackson s reflections on Martin Luther King Jr. as a Christian hero.
Author: Samuel Moyn
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812292774
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 258
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Book Description
In Christian Human Rights, Samuel Moyn asserts that the rise of human rights after World War II was prefigured and inspired by a defense of the dignity of the human person that first arose in Christian churches and religious thought in the years just prior to the outbreak of the war. The Roman Catholic Church and transatlantic Protestant circles dominated the public discussion of the new principles in what became the last European golden age for the Christian faith. At the same time, West European governments after World War II, particularly in the ascendant Christian Democratic parties, became more tolerant of public expressions of religious piety. Human rights rose to public prominence in the space opened up by these dual developments of the early Cold War. Moyn argues that human dignity became central to Christian political discourse as early as 1937. Pius XII's wartime Christmas addresses announced the basic idea of universal human rights as a principle of world, and not merely state, order. By focusing on the 1930s and 1940s, Moyn demonstrates how the language of human rights was separated from the secular heritage of the French Revolution and put to use by postwar democracies governed by Christian parties, which reinvented them to impose moral constraints on individuals, support conservative family structures, and preserve existing social hierarchies. The book ends with a provocative chapter that traces contemporary European struggles to assimilate Muslim immigrants to the continent's legacy of Christian human rights.
