Author: Mark Sydney Cladis
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231139694
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 364
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Book Description
Mark S. Cladis pinpoints the origins of contemporary notions of the public and private and their relationship to religion in the work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. His thesis cuts across many fields and issues-philosophy of religion, women's studies, democratic theory, modern European history, American culture, social justice, privacy laws, and notions of solitude and community-and wholly reconsiders the political, cultural, and legal nature of modernity in relation to religion. Turning to Rousseau's Garden, its inhabitants, the Solitaires, and the question of restoration and redemption that preoccupied much of Rousseau's thought, Cladis examines how Rousseau addressed the tension between the joys and moral obligations of social engagement and the desire for solitude. He was caught between two possibilities: active involvement in the creation of an enlightened and humane society or extrication from social entanglements in favor of cultivating a spiritual interior life. Yet Rousseau did not view this conflict as a desperate division. Rather, for him it was a moral struggle to be endured by those who had fallen from the Garden. For this edition Cladis has added a substantive introduction that discusses the role of religion in contemporary democratic societies, particularly in American public life. Cladis proposes four models of thinking about religion in public and champions what he calls spiritual democracy-a dynamic, culturally specific, and progressive democracy. Cladis argues that spiritual democracy refers not only to a society's legal codes and principles but also to its democratic culture and symbols and its daily practices and institutions. It encompasses the nation's character, diverse identities, and a distinctivel exchange between the nation's public vision and citizens' complex, private lives.
Author: William Henry Chafe
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674018778
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 446
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Book Description
A political leader's decisions can determine the fate of a nation, but what determines how and why that leader makes certain choices? William H. Chafe, a distinguished historian of twentieth century America, examines eight of the most significant political leaders of the modern era in order to explore the relationship between their personal patterns of behavior and their political decision-making process. The result is a fascinating look at how personal lives and political fortunes have intersected to shape America over the past fifty years. One might expect our leaders to be healthy, wealthy, genteel, and happy. In fact, most of these individuals--from Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Martin Luther King, Jr., from John F. Kennedy to Bill Clinton--came from dysfunctional families, including three children of alcoholics; half grew up in poor or only marginally secure homes; most experienced discord in their marriages; and at least two displayed signs of mental instability. What links this extraordinarily diverse group is an intense ambition to succeed, and the drive to overcome adversity. Indeed, adversity offered a vehicle to develop the personal attributes that would define their careers and shape the way they exercised power. Chafe probes the influences that forged these men's lives, and profiles the distinctive personalities that molded their exercise of power in times of danger and strife. The history of the United States from the Depression into the new century cannot be understood without exploring the dynamic and critical relationship between personal history and political leadership that these eight life stories so poignantly reveal.
Author: Mark Sydney Cladis
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 298
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Book Description
Author: Jack Gedney
Publisher: Heyday Books
ISBN: 9781597145749
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 224
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Book Description
A book to help the ordinary birdwatcher appreciate the fascinating songs, stories, and science of common birds Jack Gedney's studies of birds provide resonant, affirming answers to the questions: Who is this bird? In what way is it beautiful? Why does it matter? Masterfully linking an abundance of poetic references with up-to-date biological science, Gedney shares his devotion to everyday Western birds in fifteen essays. Each essay illuminates the life of a single species and its relationship to humans, and how these species can help us understand birds in general. A dedicated birdwatcher and teacher, Gedney finds wonder not only in the speed and glistening beauty of the Anna's hummingbird, but also in her nest building. He acclaims the turkey vulture's and red-tailed hawk's roles in our ecosystem, and he venerates the inimitable California scrub jay's work planting acorns. Knowing that we hear birds much more often than we see them, Gedney offers his expert's ear to help us not only identify bird songs and calls but also understand what the birds are saying. The crowd at the suet feeder will never look quite the same again. Join Gedney in the enchanted world of these not-so-ordinary birds, each enlivened by a hand-drawn portrait by artist Anna Kus Park.
Author: Henry A. Giroux
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780742525269
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 228
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Book Description
While many of the essays in this book were written before 9/11, they point to a number of important issues such as the commercialization of public life, the stepped up militarization, racial profiling, and the threat to basic civil liberties that have been resurrected since the terrorist attacks. Public Spaces, Private Lives serves to legitimate the claim that there is much in America that has not changed since 9/11. Rather than a dramatic change, what we are witnessing is an intensification and acceleration of the contradictions that threatened American democracy before the tragic events of 9/11. Hence, Public Spaces, Private Lives offers a context for both understanding and critically engaging the combined threats posed by the increase in domestic militarization and a neoliberal ideology that substitutes market values for those democratic values that are crucial to rethinking what a vibrant democracy would look like in the aftermath of September 11th.
Author: John T. Scott
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226825507
Category : Philosophical anthropology
Languages : en
Pages : 273
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Book Description
"Rousseau's God offers a comprehensive interpretation of Rousseau's theological and religious writings, both in themselves and in relation to his philosophy of the natural goodness of man. John T. Scott argues that there is a complicated relationship between Rousseau's philosophy, on the one hand, and his theological and religious thought. This relationship revolves around two oppositions: first, between the attributes and psychological needs of natural man and social or moral man; second, between the criteria of truth and utility for evaluating theological and religious doctrines. In short, because the justification of nature through the natural goodness of man does not suffice for developed humans, Rousseau offers theological and religious doctrines which are less true than useful, psychologically, morally, or politically"--
Author: W. S. F. Pickering
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 0857456458
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 205
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Book Description
Until recently the subject of suffering and evil was neglected in the sociological world and was almost absent in Durkheimian studies as well. This book aims to fill the gap, with particular reference to the Durkheimian tradition, by exploring the different meanings that the concepts of evil and suffering have in Durkheim's works, together with the general role they play in his sociology. It also examines the meanings and roles of these concepts in relation to suffering and evil in the work of other authors within the group of the Année sociologique up until the beginning of World War II. Finally, the Durkheimian legacy in its wider aspects is assessed, with particular reference to the importance of the Durkheimian categories in understanding and conceptualizing contemporary forms of evil and suffering.
Author: Sue Roe
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0060545585
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 374
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Book Description
Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Cézanne, Renoir, Degas, Sisley, Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt. Though they were often ridiculed or ignored by their contemporaries, today astonishing sums are paid for the works of these artists, whose paintings are celebrated for their ability to capture the moment, not only in the fleeting lights of a landscape but in scenes of daily life. Their dazzling pictures are familiar—but how well does the world know the Impressionists as people? The Private Lives of the Impressionists tells their story. It is the first book to offer an intimate and lively biography of the world's most popular group of artists. In a vivid and moving narrative, biographer Sue Roe shows the Impressionists in the studios of Paris, rural lanes of Montmartre and rowdy riverside bars as Paris underwent Baron Haussmann's spectacular transformation. For more than twenty years they lived and worked together as a group, struggling to rebuild their lives after the Franco-Prussian War and supporting one another through shocked public reactions to unfamiliar canvases depicting laundresses, dancers, spring blossoms and boating scenes. This intimate, colorful, superbly researched account takes us into their homes and studios, and describes their unconventional, volatile and precarious lives, as well as the stories behind the paintings.
Author: Marvin Olasky
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1668047918
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 464
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Book Description
What makes a leader truly great? Is it simply a matter of management style and personality? Or is it character that matters most? Moral Visions takes an insightful look into America’s leaders of the past to answer these questions and demonstrates that values and moral convictions are critical to the strength of a nation. Supposedly, we learn about the candidates for the highest office through a series of tests called “debates,” which are instead an exchange of soundbites. We can’t know whether an aspirant to the presidency has the ability to ask good questions or only a suave or belligerent ability to answer them. Moral Vision is a human-interest introduction to American history through studies of nineteen leaders: presidents, almost presidents, a tycoon, a crusading journalist, and even a leading 19th century abortionist. Its lessons can help voters sort through the candidates in 2024 and beyond by measuring them against previous leaders—none of whom was faultless. It shows how the deepest views often grow out of religious belief and influence political goals, racial prejudices, sexual activities, uses of power, and senses of service. In his 1789 inaugural address, George Washington pledged that “the foundation for national policy will be laid in the sure and immutable principles of private morality.” Marvin Olasky shows how 19th-century leaders like Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and Grover Cleveland partly upheld and partly ignored that promise, and 20th-century leaders like Woodrow Wilson, John F. Kennedy, and Bill Clinton tried to “compartmentalize” the private and the public. An extensively updated version of The American Leadership Tradition, Moral Vision is for anyone tired of today’s textbook tendencies to submerge the role of individuals as big economic and demographic waves roll in. History is more than statistics, economics, and group identities. Human beings are more than paper boats riding the rainfall into gutters.
Author: Steven Deace
Publisher: Xulon Press
ISBN: 1602666423
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 278
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Book Description
According to the author, Americans are a confused people who want to post the Ten Commandments in public, but often don't live by them in their private lives. He urges this generation to get back to basics and boldly proclaim the vision of grace found only in the transforming truth of the Word of God. (Christian)
