Download or read book Political Theory for Mortals written by John E. Seery and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-18 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite an abundance of violence occurring in political contexts, no liberal political theorist since Thomas Hobbes has talked directly and coherently about death. John E. Seery does. He contends that liberalism desperately needs a theoretical framework in which to discuss pressing matters of human mortality. Among the contemporary political issues that cry out for theoretical articulation, Seery suggests, are abortion politics, ethnic cleansing, suicide assistance, national reparations, environmental degradation, and capital punishment. Seery offers a new conception of social contract theory as a framework for confronting death issues. He urges us to look to an older tradition of descent into an underworld, wherein classic theorists consulted poetically with the dead and acquired from them political insight and direction.In this lively book, Seery excavates the infernal tradition by rereading the politics of death in Platonism, early Christianity, and contemporary feminism. Building on those traditions, he proposes a new, constructive image of death that can serve democratic theory productively. Reconsidered from the "land of the shades," social contractarian theory is sufficiently altered that, for example, a pro-life Christian and a pro-choice secularist might be able to strike common ground upon which to discuss abortion politics.
Download or read book Handbook of Political Theory written by Gerald F Gaus and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2004-08-21 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Containing state-of-the-art reviews of political theories, past and present, this edited collection offers a complete guide to all the main areas and fields of political and philosophical enquiry.
Download or read book America Goes to College written by John E. Seery and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A rallying cry on behalf of a distinctly American institution of higher learning—the small liberal arts college—America Goes to College combines broad-based scholarship with personal narrative and reflection. In a highly entertaining manner, John E. Seery showcases the precarious successes of a well-rounded liberal arts college education, while at the same time signaling some of the dangers that loom on the horizon. Seery contends that the liberal arts are best pursued within the face-to-face interactive setting, characteristic of the small college classroom, as opposed to the large university lecture hall. Moreover and more provocatively, he identifies political theorists as the proper custodians and practitioners of the liberal arts tradition as it unfolds today. It is the unfettered freedom of the small liberal arts college, where vision and practice can actually coincide, that makes it the embodiment of the advantages of the American higher education system—a national treasure deserving of support.
Download or read book Political Theory written by James L. Wiser and published by Cengage Learning. This book was released on 1986 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This gracefully written, intellectually rigorous book explores the major issues of political theory by presenting the perspectives of major theorists. It gives students necessary historical background while examining basic themes and assessing the validity of basic arguments. Written in a clear, direct style, it can be easily understood by students with little previous exposure to political science. Rather than simply presenting an abstract or formal discussion of the major issues of political theory, it examines how the issues were understood by specific political thinkers including Plato, Machiavelli, Locke, Hobbes, Marx, Dahl, Popper, Nozick. T.H. Green, and others. This is a useful thematic introduction to political theory that places theory in an interesting historical and intellectual context.
Download or read book The Foundations of Political Theory written by H.R.G. Greaves and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-12-24 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1958, The Foundations of Political Theory strives to answer essential questions of politics by studying its foundations. In this book, Mr. Greaves treats the state as only one among several associations whose function is to promote entirely human ends. He tries to reinterpret such ideas as ‘self-realization’ and the ‘good life’ in ways acceptable to students of contemporary philosophy, who reject the theological and metaphysical doctrines these ideas have been tied to in the past. He insists that men get their moral standards and their ideas about what makes life worth living by reflecting on their experience; that there are no ultimate and self-evident moral principles. While admitting that moral standards are subjective in the sense that we cannot explain how men come to have them except by showing how they serve their needs, he refuses to allow that rational argument about them is therefore impossible. Since men are rational, since they have purposes and ideals and not merely desires, and since they know that to realize these purposes they must live with others, there are moral standards acceptable to all men when their function is understood.
Download or read book History of Political Thought written by Raymond Garfield Gettell and published by . This book was released on 1924 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book States Without Nations written by Jacqueline Stevens and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2009-11-17 with total page 479 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As citizens, we hold certain truths to be self-evident: that the rights to own land, marry, inherit property, and especially to assume birthright citizenship should be guaranteed by the state. The laws promoting these rights appear not only to preserve our liberty but to guarantee society remains just. Yet considering how much violence and inequality results from these legal mandates, Jacqueline Stevens asks whether we might be making the wrong assumptions. Would a world without such laws be more just? Arguing that the core laws of the nation-state are more about a fear of death than a desire for freedom, Jacqueline Stevens imagines a world in which birthright citizenship, family inheritance, state-sanctioned marriage, and private land ownership are eliminated. Would chaos be the result? Drawing on political theory and history and incorporating contemporary social and economic data, she brilliantly critiques our sentimental attachments to birthright citizenship, inheritance, and marriage and highlights their harmful outcomes, including war, global apartheid, destitution, family misery, and environmental damage. It might be hard to imagine countries without the rules of membership and ownership that have come to define them, but as Stevens shows, conjuring new ways of reconciling our laws with the condition of mortality reveals the flaws of our present institutions and inspires hope for moving beyond them.
Download or read book The Odyssey of Political Theory written by Patrick J. Deneen and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2003-04-14 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This path-breaking and eloquent analysis of The Odyssey, and the way it has been interpreted by political philosophers throughout the centuries, has dramatic implications for the current state of political thought. This important book offers readers original insights into The Odyssey and it provides a new understanding of the classic works of Plato, Rousseau, Vico, Horkheimer, and Adorno. Through his analysis Patrick J. Deneen requires readers to rethink the issues that are truly at the heart of our contemporary 'Culture Wars,' and he encourages us to reassess our assumptions about the Western canon's virtues or viciousness. Deneen's penetrating exploration of Odysseus's and our own enduring battles between the dual temptations of homecoming and exploration, patriotism and cosmopolitanism, and relativism and universality provides an original perspective on contentious debates at the center of modern political theory and philosophy.
Download or read book Mortals written by Norman Rush and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-03-23 with total page 738 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The greatly anticipated new novel by Norman Rush—whose first novel, Mating, won the National Book Award and was everywhere acclaimed—is his richest work yet. It is at once a political adventure, a social comedy, and a passionate triangle. It is set in the 1990s in Botswana—the African country Rush has indelibly made his own fictional territory. Mortals chronicles the misadventures of three ex-pat Americans: Ray Finch, a contract CIA agent, operating undercover as an English instructor in a private school, who is setting out on perhaps his most difficult assignment; his beautiful but slightly foolish and disaffected wife, Iris, with whom he is obsessively in love; and Davis Morel, an iconoclastic black holistic physician, who is on a personal mission to “lift the yoke of Christian belief from Africa.” The passions of these three entangle them with a local populist leader, Samuel Kerekang, whose purposes are grotesquely misconstrued by the CIA, fixated as the agency is on the astonishing collapse of world socialism and the simultaneous, paradoxical triumph of radical black nationalism in South Africa, Botswana’s neighbor. And when a small but violent insurrection erupts in the wild northern part of the country, inspired by Kerekang but stoked by the erotic and political intrigues of the American trio—the outcome is explosive and often explosively funny. Along the way, there are many pleasures. Letters from Ray’s brilliantly hostile brother and Iris’s woebegone sister provide a running commentary on contemporary life in America. Africa and Africans are powerfully evoked, and the expatriate scene is cheerfully skewered. Through lives lived ardently in an unforgiving land, Mortals examines with wit and insight the dilemmas of power, religion, rebellion, and contending versions of liberation and love. It is a study of a marriage over time, and a man’s struggle to find his way when his private and public worlds are shifting. It is Norman Rush’s most commanding work.
Download or read book A History of Political Theories Ancient and Mediaeval written by William Archibald Dunning and published by . This book was released on 1910 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Political Theory written by George Kateb and published by New York : St. Martian's Press. This book was released on 1968 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book History of Political Theory An Introduction written by George Klosko and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-05 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: History of Political Theory: An Introduction is an engaging introduction to the main figures in the history of Western Political Theory and their most important works. Volume I traces the development of political theory "from the beginning" in ancient Greece through the Reformation. Main subjects examined include the Classical political theory of the Greek polis, the Hellenistic period, the rise of Christian political theory, political theory of the middle ages, and the Reformation. Major figures examined include Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, St. Thomas, Marsilius of Padua, and Martin Luther. Throughout, the great theorists are closely examined in their historical contexts, with extensive quotations allowing them to speak for themselves. Central concepts employed in their works are carefully examined, with special attention to how these fit together to form coherent theories. The works of the great theorists are further considered in regard to how they bear on issues of contemporary concern, such as constitutionalism, natural law, and resistance to unjust authority. The result is not only an exploration of the great works of political theory but a demonstration of their continuing relevance.
Download or read book Vocations of Political Theory written by Jason A. Frank and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Content Description pt. 1. Invoking political theory. Political theory : from vocation to invocation / Sheldon S. Wolin -- pt. 2. Theorizing loss. Specters and angels at the end of history / Wendy Brown -- The politics of nostalgia and theories of loss / J. Peter Euben -- pt. 3. Thinking in time. Can theorists make time for belief? / Russell Arben Fox -- The history of political thought as a vocation : a pragmatist defense / David Paul Mandell -- pt. 4. The politics of ordinary life. Political theory for losers / Thomas L. Dumm -- Feminism's flight from the ordinary / Linda M.B. Zerilli -- pt. 5. Political knowledge. Conceptions of science in political theory : a tale of cloaks and daggers / Mark B. Brown -- Political theory as a provocation : an ethos of political theory / Lon Troyer -- Gramsci, organic intellectuals, and cultural studies : lessons for political theorists? / Shane Gunster -- pt. 6. Practicing political theory. Reading the body : hobbes, body politics, and the task of political theory / Samantha Frost -- Work, shame, and the chain gang : the new civic education / Jill Locke -- The nobility of democracy / William E. Connolly.
Download or read book Political Theory written by Scott John Hammond and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2008-11-30 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Liberty. Justice. Nature. Law. First formulated millennia ago by the founding philosophers of the Western tradition, these basic concepts of human thought remain central to our conception of ourselves, our place in the world, and our relationships with others-that is, our politics. Readers encountering such broad political concepts, their practical expressions in political movements and systems of government, the ideas of influential ancient and modern political thinkers—or simply familiar or unfamiliar catchphrases for which they would like a succinct yet informative explanation—will welcome this accessible encyclopedic guide. The major political concepts, themes, issues, movements, groups, and schools that have developed over time and shaped our modern world appear here in all their diversity, along with biographical entries and articles on the principal works of political theorists from Plato to John Rawls. Further, serious students and browsers alike will delight in the numerous entries on familiar quotations and political catchphrases, from the banality of evil and Big Brother to the war of all against all.
Download or read book The Nature of Political Theory written by Andrew Vincent and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2004-03-25 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his controversial new book, Andrew Vincent sets out to analyse and challenge the established nostrums of contemporary political theory. The nature of Political Theory offers three major contributions to current scholarship. It offers, first, a comprehensive, synoptic, and comparative analysis of the major conceptions of political theory, predominantly during the twentieth century. This analysis incorporates systematic critiques of both Anglo-American and continental contributions. The 'nature' of theory is seen as intrinsically pluralistic and internally divided. Secondly, the idea of foundationalism is employed in the book to bring some coherence to this internally complex and fragmented practice. The book consequently focuses on the various foundational concerns embedded within conceptions of political theory. Thirdly, the book argues for an adjustment to the way we think about the discipline. Political theory is reconceived as a theoretically-based, indeterminate subject, which should be more attuned to practice and history. Andrew Vincent makes a case for a more ecumenical and tolerant approach to the discipline, suggesting that there are different, but equally legitimate, answers to the question, 'what is political theory?'. Acceptance of this view would involve a supplementation of the standard substantive approaches to contemporary political theory. The Nature of Political Theory offers a unique and idiosyncratic perspective on our current understanding of political theory, making it an indispensable resource for all scholars and students of the discipline.
Download or read book A History of Medi val Political Theory in the West written by Sir Robert Warrand Carlyle and published by . This book was released on 1903 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book An Introduction to Political Thought written by Peri Roberts and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2004-12 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Introduction to Political Thought emphasizes a dual approach to political theory by providing a chronological overview of both major figures and texts as well as an understanding of the development of key concepts and themes. In this way the authors provide a basic sense of the history and development of political thought and a critical grasp of the theoretical and philosophical issues at the heart of politics. Beginning with the idea that laws and constitutions are only beneficial insofar as they give effective expression to our moral and political beliefs, the authors argue that moral and political ideas are the foundations of politics. Political philosophers covered in depth include: Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Marx, Bentham, Rawls, and Burke. Key concepts such as the moral order, liberty, human nature, freedom, the social contract, distributive justice, liberalism, socialism, feminism, human rights, and multiculturalism are also all covered. In exploring these issues the authors offer a critical guide through key arguments in the history of political thought and contemporary political theory.
