Download or read book Willful Liberalism written by Richard Flathman and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-06 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book Richard E. Flathman argues vigorously for a new understanding of the proper place of voluntarism, individuality, and plurality in the political and moral theory of liberalism. Giving close and sympathetic attention to thinkers who are seldom considered in debates about liberalism, he draws upon thinking within and outside the liberal canon to articulate a refashioned liberalism that gives a more secure prominence to plurality and a robust individuality. Flathman focuses on political philosophers whose work deals with willfulness and the will in human practice. He is concerned with the thinking of such nominalist medieval theologians as John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham; of Hobbes; and of Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, and William James. He also explores the writings of such contemporary philosophical psychologists as Brian O'Shaughnessy and, in particular, Wittgenstein, and of such twentiethcentury political theorists as Isaiah Berlin, John Rawls, Hannah Arendt, and especially Michael Oakeshott. Appropriating ideas from widely disapproved thinkers and from theological sources commonly thought to be incompatible with liberalism, he formulates what is in many ways a strongly personal statement, one that is unorthodox and potentially disturbing. Sharply controversial, Willful Liberalism is certain to enliven and invigorate political and moral debate, and it may well help to revive liberalism as the dominant public philosophy of our culture, setting it on a new and better course.
Download or read book Liberalism and Social Action written by John Dewey and published by Great Books in Philosophy. This book was released on 2000 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this, one of Dewey's most accessible works, he surveys the history of liberal thought from John Locke to John Stuart Mill, in his search to find the core of liberalism for today's world. While liberals of all stripes have held to some very basic values-liberty, individuality, and the critical use of intelligence-earlier forms of liberalism restricted the state function to protecting its citizens while allowing free reign to socioeconomic forces. But, as society matures, so must liberalism as it reaches out to redefine itself in a world where government must play a role in creating an environment in which citizens can achieve their potential. Dewey's advocacy of a positive role for government-a new liberalism-nevertheless finds him rejecting radical Marxists and fascists who would use violence and revolution rather than democratic methods to aid the citizenry.
Download or read book Willful written by Richard Robb and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2019-11-12 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A revelatory alternative to the standard economic models of human behavior that proposes an exciting new way to understand decision-making Why do we do the things we do? The classical view of economics is that we are rational individuals, making decisions with the intention of maximizing our preferences. Behaviorists, on the other hand, see us as relying on mental shortcuts and conforming to preexisting biases. Richard Robb argues that neither explanation accounts for those things that we do for their own sake, and without understanding these sorts of actions, our picture of decision†‘making is at best incomplete. Robb explains how these choices made seemingly without reason belong to a realm of behavior he identifies as “for†‘itself.” A provocative combination of philosophy and economics that offers a key to many of our quixotic choices, this groundbreaking volume provides a new way to understand everything from investing to how hard we work to how we manage daily interactions.
Download or read book Toward a Liberalism written by Richard Flathman and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-15 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No detailed description available for "Toward a Liberalism".
Download or read book Skepticism Individuality and Freedom written by and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Liberalism Nationalism Citizenship written by Ronald Beiner and published by UBC Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Liberals believe that the purpose of politics is to guarantee that individuals do not face unfair impediments in pursuing the lives they choose for themselves. Nationalists believe that the purpose of politics is to ensure that a people's sense of authentic nationhood wins full expression in powers of collective sovereignty or self-rule. Both of these forms of political commitment yield world-transforming political philosophies, but do either of these visions do adequate justice to a philosophically robust ideal of shared citizenship and civic membership? In Liberalism, Nationalism, Citizenship, Ronald Beiner engages critically with a wide range of important political thinkers and current debates in light of the Aristotelean idea that shared citizenship is an essential human calling. Virtually every aspect of contemporary political experience - globalization, international migration, secessionist movements, the politics of multiculturalism - pose urgent challenges to modern citizenship. Beiner's work on the philosophy of citizenship is essential reading not just for students of politics and political philosophy, but for all those who rightly sense that these kinds of recent challen
Download or read book Reflections of a Would be Anarchist written by Richard E. Flathman and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A superbly original version of liberalism by a major figure in political theory. In this provocative work, Richard E. Flathman puts forward his idiosyncratic view of liberalism, one that is particularly concerned with putting freedom and individuality first, one that warns of the individualism-limiting potential of even liberal efforts to promote social justice. Focusing on the ideals he regards as appropriate to liberalism, Flathman analyzes repeated patterns and tendencies that influence societies -- their sustaining institutions. Part I (Ideals) elaborates and vigorously promotes a conception of the ideals appropriate to liberalism and liberal politics, a conception that foregrounds and celebrates individual self-making or self-enactment. Drawing on but critically assessing ideas and arguments from liberal thinkers from Locke and Kant through Mill, Berlin, and Rawls, the work also reaches out to sources usually regarded as not only outside of but actually antagonistic to liberal tradition: Hobbes, Nietzsche, William James, Proust, Ortega y Gasset, and Oakeshott. Part II (Institutions) goes on to critically examine the relationship between these ideals and various institutions that are prominent in all liberal societies -- the rule of law, police power, and institutionalized education. At once attracted and resistant to anarchist, antinomian, and active nihilist arguments, Flathman approaches these institutions in a skeptical and wary spirit influenced by such thinkers as Montaigne, Wittgenstein, Cavell, Derrida, and Foucault. Reflections of a Would-Be Anarchist is a unique attempt to move liberal thought and action toward individuality and away from homogeneity, toward achastening skepticism and away from unifying conceptions of rationality and reasonableness. It will be required reading for political, moral, and legal theorists, as well as anyone concerned with the challenges of sustaining and enlivening liberal thought and action.
Download or read book Willful Subjects written by Sara Ahmed and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2014-08-25 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Willful Subjects Sara Ahmed explores willfulness as a charge often made by some against others. One history of will is a history of attempts to eliminate willfulness from the will. Delving into philosophical and literary texts, Ahmed examines the relation between will and willfulness, ill will and good will, and the particular will and general will. Her reflections shed light on how will is embedded in a political and cultural landscape, how it is embodied, and how will and willfulness are socially mediated. Attentive to the wayward, the wandering, and the deviant, Ahmed considers how willfulness is taken up by those who have received its charge. Grounded in feminist, queer, and antiracist politics, her sui generis analysis of the willful subject, the figure who wills wrongly or wills too much, suggests that willfulness might be required to recover from the attempt at its elimination.
Download or read book Reconceiving Liberalism written by Oren M. Levin-Waldman and published by University of Pittsburgh Pre. This book was released on 2010-11-23 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Levin-Waldman argues that if American public policy were to be evaluated against a different set of principles-ones more closely aligned with core liberal values, especially the common good-liberalism would be in greater harmony with contemporary public opinion and thought. Liberalism rests on a moral vision of what constitutes the good life and a set of principles that can measure whether public policy accords with society's underlying philosophical principles. Levin-Waldman faults modern liberalism for obscuring these principles through a misplaced reliance on neutrality. Liberalism, he contends, appears to have diverged from mainstream perceptions of traditional American values because policy is debated and formulated within the confines of this neutrality standard. Levin-Waldman develops a new methodology intended to take us away from the usual cost-benefit analysis and move us closer to assessing public policies in terms of what best serves the common good.
Download or read book Liberalism After Communism written by Jerzy Szacki and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 1995-01-01 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work is the first comprehensive presentation of liberal thought in Central Europe, especially in Poland, before and after 1989. The book contains a critical analysis of the proto-liberal anti-communist democratic opposition, in particular its ideas of the autonomy of the individual and civil society, and a description of economic liberalism as an alternative liberal orientation. The author's main theme, however, is the dilemma of liberalism in a post-communist society in which it is faced with historically unprecedented challenges. In countries which have no liberal tradition or the social or economic conditions which encouraged the emergence of liberalism in the past, the classic tenets of liberalism are undergoing essential modifications. Liberalism inescapably is becoming "constructivist" and serves primarily as the justification for a remarkable kind of social engineering whose objective is the rapid building of capitalism. This book is both an important contribution to our knowledge of the post-communist world and a voice in thh discussion on the nature and future of liberalism.
Download or read book Liberalism Versus Conservatism written by François B. Gérard and published by Nova Publishers. This book was released on 2000 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everyone eschews labels yet we all seem to posses them in the minds of legions of politicians, marketers and even the ever-peering government. We are being targeted daily by flaming liberals, left-wing liberals, right-wing conservatives, compassionate conservatives, religious conservatives and liberals, pinko liberals, middle-of-the-road liberals conservatives and liberals, pinko liberals, middle-of-the-road liberals and conservatives and of course by neoconservatives and neoliberals. The search is on for kindred souls -- the types who will open their wallets to support whatever it is the hucksters are peddling. But what to these concepts mean and do their torchbearers grasp the underlying philosophies or do they care? This bibliography lists over hundreds of entries under each category which are then indexed by title an author.
Download or read book Putting Liberalism in Its Place written by Paul W. Kahn and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-01-10 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this wide-ranging interdisciplinary work, Paul W. Kahn argues that political order is founded not on contract but on sacrifice. Because liberalism is blind to sacrifice, it is unable to explain how the modern state has brought us to both the rule of law and the edge of nuclear annihilation. We can understand this modern condition only by recognizing that any political community, even a liberal one, is bound together by faith, love, and identity. Putting Liberalism in Its Place draws on philosophy, cultural theory, American constitutional law, religious and literary studies, and political psychology to advance political theory. It makes original contributions in all these fields. Not since Charles Taylor's The Sources of the Self has there been such an ambitious and sweeping examination of the deep structure of the modern conception of the self. Kahn shows that only when we move beyond liberalism's categories of reason and interest to a Judeo-Christian concept of love can we comprehend the modern self. Love is the foundation of a world of objective meaning, one form of which is the political community. Arguing from these insights, Kahn offers a new reading of the liberalism/communitarian debate, a genealogy of American liberalism, an exploration of the romantic and the pornographic, a new theory of the will, and a refoundation of political theory on the possibility of sacrifice. Approaching politics from the perspective of sacrifice allows us to understand the character of twentieth-century politics, which combined progress in the rule of law with massive slaughter for the state. Equally important, this work speaks to the most important political conflicts in the world today. It explains why American response to September 11 has taken the form of war, and why, for the most part, Europeans have been reluctant to follow the Americans in their pursuit of a violent, sacrificial politics. Kahn shows us that the United States has maintained a vibrant politics of modernity, while Europe is moving into a postmodern form of the political that has turned away from the idea of sacrifice. Together with its companion volume, Out of Eden, Putting Liberalism in Its Place finally answers Clifford Geertz's call for a political theology of modernity.
Download or read book Richard E Flathman written by P.E. Digeser and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-08-25 with total page 447 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Richard E. Flathman is a ground-breaking theorist of key political concepts, a fierce defender of individuality, a close and original reader of Hobbes and an advocate of a willful conception of liberalism. In this volume P E Digeser draws together some of his key works. The collection is framed by an introduction and an interview with Flathman, where he reflects on his contributions. By thinking through and with Wittgenstein’s later philosophy of language, his work clarifies and refines terms that are central to politics and to the tradition of political thought. His work also seeks to cure certain persistent muddles and confusions in our political concepts as well as create and defend a space for the opaque and opalescent features of ourselves. Flathman advances a liberalism that is more open to and celebratory of the idiosyncratic as well as to voices not ordinarily associated with the liberal tradition. The editor has focused on her work in three key areas: The first part focuses on Flathman as a theorist of meaning and presents excepts from his analyses of quality, authority, and rights; The second part focuses on his contributions to understanding the meaning and value of freedom; The final part presents selections that illustrate his conception of liberalism and individuality. Helping to highlight how the innovations in Flathman's thought have shaped the field of political theory, this collection will be of interest to students and scholars.
Download or read book Thomas Hobbes written by Richard E. Flathman and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2002 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his unconventional reading of the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, Flathman (political science, Johns Hopkins U.) suggests a liberal reading of Hobbes that is skeptical of ethical and metaphysical arguments that claim to know God or God's moral requirements. This leads to a view that the preferred political order is one in which disagreement and disturbance are to be privileged over an imposed homogeneity or uniformity. The foregoing suggests that we cannot do well without government, but we should chasten our expectations for government to provide the conditions necessary for the pursuit of our individual happiness. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book Mill and the Moral Character of Liberalism written by Eldon J. Eisenach and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-11-01 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Liberalism and Empire written by Uday Singh Mehta and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-06-29 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We take liberalism to be a set of ideas committed to political rights and self-determination, yet it also served to justify an empire built on political domination. Uday Mehta argues that imperialism, far from contradicting liberal tenets, in fact stemmed from liberal assumptions about reason and historical progress. Confronted with unfamiliar cultures such as India, British liberals could only see them as backward or infantile. In this, liberals manifested a narrow conception of human experience and ways of being in the world. Ironically, it is in the conservative Edmund Burke—a severe critic of Britain's arrogant, paternalistic colonial expansion—that Mehta finds an alternative and more capacious liberal vision. Shedding light on a fundamental tension in liberal theory, Liberalism and Empire reaches beyond post-colonial studies to revise our conception of the grand liberal tradition and the conception of experience with which it is associated.
Download or read book Liberalism and Its Discontents written by Patrick Neal and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-07-27 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In these essays the reigning models of liberal political theory of John Rawls and Joseph Raz are immanently criticized. Neal argues that neither 'political' nor 'perfectionist' liberalism adequately gives expression to the liberal spirit. Surprisingly, Neal finds resources for the expression of such a spirit in the much maligned tradition of Hobbesian, or 'vulgar', liberalism. He argues that a turn in this direction is necessary for the articulation of a liberalism more genuinely responsive to the diversity of modes of life in the twenty-first century.
