Author: Steven F. Pittz
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438479794
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240
Book Description
Liberalism is often castigated for being spiritually empty and unable to provide meaning for individuals. Is it true that there simply is no spiritual side to liberalism? In Recovering the Liberal Spirit, Steven F. Pittz develops a novel conception of spiritual freedom. Drawing from Nietzsche and his figure of the "free spirit," as well as from thinkers as varied as Mill, Emerson, Goethe, Hesse, C. S. Lewis, and Tocqueville, Pittz examines a tradition of individual freedom best described as spiritual. Spiritual freedom is an often overlooked category of liberal freedom, and it provides a path to meaning without a return to communal or traditional life. While carefully considering Progressive and Communitarian counterarguments Pittz argues for both the possibility and the desirability of a free-spirited life. Citizens who are "free spirits" deliver great benefits to liberal democracies, primarily by combatting dogmatism and fanaticism and the putative authority of public opinion.
Recovering the Liberal Spirit
Author: Steven F. Pittz
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438479794
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240
Book Description
Liberalism is often castigated for being spiritually empty and unable to provide meaning for individuals. Is it true that there simply is no spiritual side to liberalism? In Recovering the Liberal Spirit, Steven F. Pittz develops a novel conception of spiritual freedom. Drawing from Nietzsche and his figure of the "free spirit," as well as from thinkers as varied as Mill, Emerson, Goethe, Hesse, C. S. Lewis, and Tocqueville, Pittz examines a tradition of individual freedom best described as spiritual. Spiritual freedom is an often overlooked category of liberal freedom, and it provides a path to meaning without a return to communal or traditional life. While carefully considering Progressive and Communitarian counterarguments Pittz argues for both the possibility and the desirability of a free-spirited life. Citizens who are "free spirits" deliver great benefits to liberal democracies, primarily by combatting dogmatism and fanaticism and the putative authority of public opinion.
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438479794
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240
Book Description
Liberalism is often castigated for being spiritually empty and unable to provide meaning for individuals. Is it true that there simply is no spiritual side to liberalism? In Recovering the Liberal Spirit, Steven F. Pittz develops a novel conception of spiritual freedom. Drawing from Nietzsche and his figure of the "free spirit," as well as from thinkers as varied as Mill, Emerson, Goethe, Hesse, C. S. Lewis, and Tocqueville, Pittz examines a tradition of individual freedom best described as spiritual. Spiritual freedom is an often overlooked category of liberal freedom, and it provides a path to meaning without a return to communal or traditional life. While carefully considering Progressive and Communitarian counterarguments Pittz argues for both the possibility and the desirability of a free-spirited life. Citizens who are "free spirits" deliver great benefits to liberal democracies, primarily by combatting dogmatism and fanaticism and the putative authority of public opinion.
The Theological Basis of Liberal Modernity in Montesquieu's "Spirit of the Laws"
Author: Thomas L. Pangle
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226645525
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 205
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.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226645525
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 205
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.
Political Liberalism
Author: Shaun P. Young
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791461754
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 206
Book Description
Leading theorists explore the concept of political liberalism.
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791461754
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 206
Book Description
Leading theorists explore the concept of political liberalism.
After Ideology
Author: David Walsh
Publisher: Catholic University of Amer Press
ISBN: 9780813208336
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 296
Book Description
The crises of the twentieth century - wars, genocide, the proliferation of atomic weapons, the rise and fall of communism, the breakup of the family - have shaken our faith in modernity and in the fundamental conceit upon which it is grounded: that human beings are capable of providing their own moral and political order. Ideologies based on this conceit have at their heart the revolt against God that has so characterized modern history, and these ideologies have failed us. Walsh contends that the solution is to recover the spiritual foundations of freedom and order. To make his case, he draws lessons from the intellectual pilgrimages of four contemporary thinkers who overcame the modern spirit of revolt against God: Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn, Camus, and Voegelin. He shows how each confronted the full consequences of secular messianism and found within his own experience the means of overcoming it. In the process of mounting a critique of modernity and articulating the direction in which the alternative lies, the four recovered what is in essence philosophic Christianity. They show us that beyond nihilism, beyond the revolt against God, there is the existential rediscovery of transcendent truth. Walsh believes liberal democracy is redeemable, but that its redemption hinges on our return to a proper understanding of human nature and to a spiritual foundation based on Christian principles. We must first recognize, however, that without God, without moral absolutes, without divine order, we can not resolve our worldwide modern crisis.
Publisher: Catholic University of Amer Press
ISBN: 9780813208336
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 296
Book Description
The crises of the twentieth century - wars, genocide, the proliferation of atomic weapons, the rise and fall of communism, the breakup of the family - have shaken our faith in modernity and in the fundamental conceit upon which it is grounded: that human beings are capable of providing their own moral and political order. Ideologies based on this conceit have at their heart the revolt against God that has so characterized modern history, and these ideologies have failed us. Walsh contends that the solution is to recover the spiritual foundations of freedom and order. To make his case, he draws lessons from the intellectual pilgrimages of four contemporary thinkers who overcame the modern spirit of revolt against God: Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn, Camus, and Voegelin. He shows how each confronted the full consequences of secular messianism and found within his own experience the means of overcoming it. In the process of mounting a critique of modernity and articulating the direction in which the alternative lies, the four recovered what is in essence philosophic Christianity. They show us that beyond nihilism, beyond the revolt against God, there is the existential rediscovery of transcendent truth. Walsh believes liberal democracy is redeemable, but that its redemption hinges on our return to a proper understanding of human nature and to a spiritual foundation based on Christian principles. We must first recognize, however, that without God, without moral absolutes, without divine order, we can not resolve our worldwide modern crisis.
Recovering Liberties
Author: C. A. Bayly
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139505181
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 405
Book Description
One of the world's leading historians examines the great Indian liberal tradition, stretching from Rammohan Roy in the 1820s, through Dadabhai Naoroji in the 1880s to G. K. Gokhale in the 1900s. This powerful new study shows how the ideas of constitutional, and later 'communitarian' liberals influenced, but were also rejected by their opponents and successors, including Nehru, Gandhi, Indian socialists, radical democrats and proponents of Hindu nationalism. Equally, Recovering Liberties contributes to the rapidly developing field of global intellectual history, demonstrating that the ideas we associate with major Western thinkers – Mills, Comte, Spencer and Marx – were received and transformed by Indian intellectuals in the light of their own traditions to demand justice, racial equality and political representation. In doing so, Christopher Bayly throws fresh light on the nature and limitations of European political thought and re-examines the origins of Indian democracy.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139505181
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 405
Book Description
One of the world's leading historians examines the great Indian liberal tradition, stretching from Rammohan Roy in the 1820s, through Dadabhai Naoroji in the 1880s to G. K. Gokhale in the 1900s. This powerful new study shows how the ideas of constitutional, and later 'communitarian' liberals influenced, but were also rejected by their opponents and successors, including Nehru, Gandhi, Indian socialists, radical democrats and proponents of Hindu nationalism. Equally, Recovering Liberties contributes to the rapidly developing field of global intellectual history, demonstrating that the ideas we associate with major Western thinkers – Mills, Comte, Spencer and Marx – were received and transformed by Indian intellectuals in the light of their own traditions to demand justice, racial equality and political representation. In doing so, Christopher Bayly throws fresh light on the nature and limitations of European political thought and re-examines the origins of Indian democracy.
Beauty for Truth's Sake
Author: Stratford Caldecott
Publisher: Brazos Press
ISBN: 1493410601
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 183
Book Description
Based in the riches of Christian worship and tradition, this brief, eloquently written introduction to Christian thinking and worldview helps readers put back together again faith and reason, truth and beauty, and the fragmented academic disciplines. By reclaiming the classic liberal arts and viewing disciplines such as science and mathematics through a poetic lens, the author explains that unity is present within diversity. Now repackaged with a new foreword by Ken Myers, this book will continue to benefit parents, homeschoolers, lifelong learners, Christian students, and readers interested in the history of ideas.
Publisher: Brazos Press
ISBN: 1493410601
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 183
Book Description
Based in the riches of Christian worship and tradition, this brief, eloquently written introduction to Christian thinking and worldview helps readers put back together again faith and reason, truth and beauty, and the fragmented academic disciplines. By reclaiming the classic liberal arts and viewing disciplines such as science and mathematics through a poetic lens, the author explains that unity is present within diversity. Now repackaged with a new foreword by Ken Myers, this book will continue to benefit parents, homeschoolers, lifelong learners, Christian students, and readers interested in the history of ideas.
The Growth of the Liberal Soul
Author: David Walsh
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
ISBN: 9780826210821
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 408
Book Description
The widespread abandonment of the search for foundations by John Rawls, Richard Rorty, Michael Oakeshott, and the deconstructionists has been interpreted as signifying the absence of any sustaining inner resources. The result has been the confusion of contemporary liberal democratic self-understanding, which cannot make sense of its own extraordinary historical success nor apparently prevent the evident unraveling of its own moral code.
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
ISBN: 9780826210821
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 408
Book Description
The widespread abandonment of the search for foundations by John Rawls, Richard Rorty, Michael Oakeshott, and the deconstructionists has been interpreted as signifying the absence of any sustaining inner resources. The result has been the confusion of contemporary liberal democratic self-understanding, which cannot make sense of its own extraordinary historical success nor apparently prevent the evident unraveling of its own moral code.
Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith
Author: Andrew Preston
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0307957608
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 779
Book Description
A richly detailed, profoundly engrossing story of how religion has influenced American foreign relations, told through the stories of the men and women—from presidents to preachers—who have plotted the country’s course in the world. Ever since John Winthrop argued that the Puritans’ new home would be “a city upon a hill,” Americans’ role in the world has been shaped by their belief that God has something special in mind for them. But this is a story that historians have mostly ignored. Now, in the first authoritative work on the subject, Andrew Preston explores the major strains of religious fervor—liberal and conservative, pacifist and militant, internationalist and isolationist—that framed American thinking on international issues from the earliest colonial wars to the twenty-first century. He arrives at some startling conclusions, among them: Abraham Lincoln’s use of religion in the Civil War became the model for subsequent wars of humanitarian intervention; nineteenth-century Protestant missionaries made up the first NGO to advance a global human rights agenda; religious liberty was the centerpiece of Franklin Roosevelt’s strategy to bring the United States into World War II. From George Washington to George W. Bush, from the Puritans to the present, from the colonial wars to the Cold War, religion has been one of America’s most powerful sources of ideas about the wider world. When, just days after 9/11, George W. Bush described America as “a prayerful nation, a nation that prays to an almighty God for protection and for peace,” or when Barack Obama spoke of balancing the “just war and the imperatives of a just peace” in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, they were echoing four hundred years of religious rhetoric. Preston traces this echo back to its source. Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith is an unprecedented achievement: no one has yet attempted such a bold synthesis of American history. It is also a remarkable work of balance and fair-mindedness about one of the most fraught subjects in America.
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0307957608
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 779
Book Description
A richly detailed, profoundly engrossing story of how religion has influenced American foreign relations, told through the stories of the men and women—from presidents to preachers—who have plotted the country’s course in the world. Ever since John Winthrop argued that the Puritans’ new home would be “a city upon a hill,” Americans’ role in the world has been shaped by their belief that God has something special in mind for them. But this is a story that historians have mostly ignored. Now, in the first authoritative work on the subject, Andrew Preston explores the major strains of religious fervor—liberal and conservative, pacifist and militant, internationalist and isolationist—that framed American thinking on international issues from the earliest colonial wars to the twenty-first century. He arrives at some startling conclusions, among them: Abraham Lincoln’s use of religion in the Civil War became the model for subsequent wars of humanitarian intervention; nineteenth-century Protestant missionaries made up the first NGO to advance a global human rights agenda; religious liberty was the centerpiece of Franklin Roosevelt’s strategy to bring the United States into World War II. From George Washington to George W. Bush, from the Puritans to the present, from the colonial wars to the Cold War, religion has been one of America’s most powerful sources of ideas about the wider world. When, just days after 9/11, George W. Bush described America as “a prayerful nation, a nation that prays to an almighty God for protection and for peace,” or when Barack Obama spoke of balancing the “just war and the imperatives of a just peace” in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, they were echoing four hundred years of religious rhetoric. Preston traces this echo back to its source. Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith is an unprecedented achievement: no one has yet attempted such a bold synthesis of American history. It is also a remarkable work of balance and fair-mindedness about one of the most fraught subjects in America.
Reinventing Liberal Christianity
Author: Theo Hobson
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 0802868401
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 340
Book Description
In past years liberal Christianity challenged centuries of authoritarian tradition and had great political influence. Today it is widely dismissed as a watering-down of the faith, and more conservative forms of Christianity are increasingly dominant. Can the liberal Christian tradition recover its influence? Hobson argues that a simple revival is not possible, because liberal Christianity consists of two traditions. He aims to transform liberal Christianity through the rediscovery of faith and ritual.
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 0802868401
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 340
Book Description
In past years liberal Christianity challenged centuries of authoritarian tradition and had great political influence. Today it is widely dismissed as a watering-down of the faith, and more conservative forms of Christianity are increasingly dominant. Can the liberal Christian tradition recover its influence? Hobson argues that a simple revival is not possible, because liberal Christianity consists of two traditions. He aims to transform liberal Christianity through the rediscovery of faith and ritual.
Four Steps to Spiritual Freedom
Author: Thomas Ryan
Publisher: Paulist Press
ISBN: 9780809141456
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 292
Book Description
This beautiful book: - offers a method of ongoing spiritual examination called "an Examen" step by step.- explains and demonstrates contemplative prayer, including the "Marantha."- teaches an ongoing focus on both attention and intention in spiritual life.- includes the practice of communal prayer as well as individual prayer.- delineates how to use in meditation a famous prayer by St. Ignatius of Loyola, "Take Lord and Receive."- presents a unique daily process "Contemplation to Attain the Love of God."
Publisher: Paulist Press
ISBN: 9780809141456
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 292
Book Description
This beautiful book: - offers a method of ongoing spiritual examination called "an Examen" step by step.- explains and demonstrates contemplative prayer, including the "Marantha."- teaches an ongoing focus on both attention and intention in spiritual life.- includes the practice of communal prayer as well as individual prayer.- delineates how to use in meditation a famous prayer by St. Ignatius of Loyola, "Take Lord and Receive."- presents a unique daily process "Contemplation to Attain the Love of God."