An Intellectual History of Liberalism

An Intellectual History of Liberalism
Author :
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Total Pages : 146
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780691207193
ISBN-13 : 0691207194
Rating : 4/5 (93 Downloads)

Synopsis An Intellectual History of Liberalism by : Pierre Manent

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.

The Lost History of Liberalism

The Lost History of Liberalism
Author :
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Total Pages : 364
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780691203966
ISBN-13 : 0691203962
Rating : 4/5 (66 Downloads)

Synopsis The Lost History of Liberalism by : Helena Rosenblatt

"The Lost History of Liberalism challenges our most basic assumptions about a political creed that has become a rallying cry - and a term of derision - in today's increasingly divided public square. Taking readers from ancient Rome to today, Helena Rosenblatt traces the evolution of the words "liberal" and "liberalism," revealing the heated debates that have taken place over their meaning. In this timely and provocative book, Rosenblatt debunks the popular myth of liberalism as a uniquely Anglo-American tradition centered on individual rights. It was only during the Cold War and America's growing world hegemony that liberalism was refashioned into an American ideology focused so strongly on individual freedoms."--

At the Edges of Liberalism

At the Edges of Liberalism
Author :
Publisher : Springer
Total Pages : 286
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781137002280
ISBN-13 : 113700228X
Rating : 4/5 (80 Downloads)

Synopsis At the Edges of Liberalism by : Steven E. Aschheim

The essays in this volume seek to confront some of the charged meeting points of European—especially German—and Jewish history. All, in one way or another, explore the entanglements, the intertwined moments of empathy and enmity, belonging and estrangement, creativity and destructiveness that occurred at these junctions. These encounters typically unfolded within an uneasy continuum of conflict and co-operation, conformity and resistance, refashioning or maintaining personal and collective dimensions of identity. Clearly, they never allowed for the luxury of indifference. Yet it would be wrong to present meetings of this kind as exclusively confrontational, as stark either-or choices. Life at the junctions may be vulnerable and insecure but it can also yield fresh angles of perception and new opportunities. If these boundary situations generated a modicum of friction, confusion and anxiety, and at times even murderousness, they also produced new alliances and friendships, creative projects and novel fusions and formations of identity. In exploring these dramatic moments in history, Steven Aschheim provides valuable new insights into the history of Europe, Israel, and global Judaism.

Global Intellectual History

Global Intellectual History
Author :
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Total Pages : 354
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780231160483
ISBN-13 : 0231160488
Rating : 4/5 (83 Downloads)

Synopsis Global Intellectual History by : Samuel Moyn

Where do ideas fit into historical accounts that take an expansive, global view of human movements and events? Teaching scholars of intellectual history to incorporate transnational perspectives into their work, while also recommending how to confront the challenges and controversies that may arise, this original resource explains the concepts, concerns, practice, and promise of "global intellectual history," featuring essays by leading scholars on various approaches that are taking shape across the discipline. The contributors to Global Intellectual History explore the different ways in which one can think about the production, dissemination, and circulation of "global" ideas and ask whether global intellectual history can indeed produce legitimate narratives. They discuss how intellectuals and ideas fit within current conceptions of global frames and processes of globalization and proto-globalization, and they distinguish between ideas of the global and those of the transnational, identifying what each contributes to intellectual history. A crucial guide, this collection sets conceptual coordinates for readers eager to map an emerging area of study.

Thinking Through Transition

Thinking Through Transition
Author :
Publisher : Central European University Press
Total Pages : 611
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9789633860854
ISBN-13 : 9633860857
Rating : 4/5 (54 Downloads)

Synopsis Thinking Through Transition by : Michal Kope?ek

This book is the first concentrated effort to explore the most recent chapter of East Central European past from the perspective of intellectual history. Post-socialism can be understood both as a period of scarcity and preponderance of ideas, the dramatic eclipsing of the dissident legacy?as well as the older political traditions?and the rise of technocratic and post-political governance. This book, grounded in empirical research sensitive to local contexts, proposes instead a history of adaptations, entanglements, and unintended consequences. In order to enable and invite comparison, the volume is structured around major domains of political thought, some of them generic (liberalism, conservatism, the Left), others (populism and politics of history) deemed typical for post-socialism. However, as shown by the authors, the generic often turns out to be heavily dependent on its immediate setting, and the typical resonates with processes that are anything but vernacular.

The System of Liberty

The System of Liberty
Author :
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Total Pages : 237
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781107005075
ISBN-13 : 1107005078
Rating : 4/5 (75 Downloads)

Synopsis The System of Liberty by : George H. Smith

Liberal individualism, or "classical liberalism" as it is often called, refers to a political philosophy in which liberty plays the central role. This book demonstrates a conceptual unity within the manifestations of classical liberalism by tracing the history of several interrelated and reinforcing themes. Concepts such as order, justice, rights, and freedom have imparted unity to this diverse political ideology by integrating context and meaning. However, they have also sparked conflict, as classical liberals split on a number of issues, such as legitimate exceptions to the "presumption of liberty," the meaning of "the public good," natural rights versus utilitarianism, the role of the state in education, and the rights of resistance and revolution. This book explores these conflicts and their implications for contemporary liberal and libertarian thought.

Liberalism

Liberalism
Author :
Publisher : Verso Books
Total Pages : 480
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781781682166
ISBN-13 : 178168216X
Rating : 4/5 (66 Downloads)

Synopsis Liberalism by : Domenico Losurdo

One of Europe’s leading intellectual historians deconstructs the dark side of liberalism, sifting through 3 centuries of liberal writings by John Locke, Alexis de Tocqueville, and others. In this definitive historical investigation, Italian author and philosopher Domenico Losurdo argues that from the outset liberalism, as a philosophical position and ideology, has been bound up with the most illiberal of policies: slavery, colonialism, genocide, racism and snobbery. Narrating an intellectual history running from the 18th through to the 20th centuries, Losurdo examines the thought of preeminent liberal writers such as Locke, Burke, Tocqueville, Constant, Bentham, and Sieyès, revealing the inner contradictions of an intellectual position that has exercised a formative influence on today’s politics. Among the dominant strains of liberalism, he discerns the counter-currents of more radical positions, lost in the constitution of the modern world order.

Liberalism

Liberalism
Author :
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Total Pages : 492
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780691168395
ISBN-13 : 0691168393
Rating : 4/5 (95 Downloads)

Synopsis Liberalism by : Edmund Fawcett

A compelling history of liberalism from the nineteenth century to today Liberalism dominates today's politics just as it decisively shaped the American and European past. This engrossing history of liberalism—the first in English for many decades—traces liberalism’s ideals, successes, and failures through the lives and ideas of a rich cast of European and American thinkers and politicians, from the early nineteenth century to today. An enlightening account of a vulnerable but critically important political creed, Liberalism provides the vital historical and intellectual background for hard thinking about liberal democracy’s future.

Liberty Before Liberalism

Liberty Before Liberalism
Author :
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Total Pages : 155
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781107689534
ISBN-13 : 1107689538
Rating : 4/5 (34 Downloads)

Synopsis Liberty Before Liberalism by : Quentin Skinner

Provides one of the most substantial statements about the importance, relevance, and potential excitement of this form of historical enquiry.

Raymond Aron and Liberal Thought in the Twentieth Century

Raymond Aron and Liberal Thought in the Twentieth Century
Author :
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Total Pages : 319
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781108484442
ISBN-13 : 1108484441
Rating : 4/5 (42 Downloads)

Synopsis Raymond Aron and Liberal Thought in the Twentieth Century by : Iain Stewart

The first historical account of Raymond Aron's role in the reconfiguration of liberal thought in the short twentieth century.