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Politics on the Edges of Liberalism

Author: Benjamin Arditi

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Published: 2007-01-10

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 0748630767

An innovative exploration of ways of thinking and doing politics that challenge liberal assumptions.'Politics on the edges of liberalism' refers to a grey zone where phenomena such as difference, populism, revolution and agitation turn the distinction between the inside and the outside of liberalism into a matter of dispute.Each chapter takes on one of these ideas, discussing the intellectual background animating the politics of the culture wars and its celebration of particularism over the universalism of classical liberal thought. Populism becomes a spectral recurrence rather than an outside of democracy. Agitation reappaers in emancipatory politics, and the idea of revolution is thought through outside the Jacobin view of insurrection, overthrow and total re-foundation.This is truly interdisciplinary inquiry at the cutting edge of contemporary debates in politics, critical theory, philosophy and sociology. The author draws from an impressive range of thinkers such as Kant, Benjamin, Derrida, Freu

At the Edges of Liberalism

Author: Steven E. Aschheim

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2012-05-15

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 113700228X

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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.

Against Liberalism

Author: John Kekes

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2018-10-18

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 1501721879

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Liberalism is doomed to failure, John Kekes argues in this penetrating criticism of its basic assumptions. Liberals favor individual autonomy, a wide plurality of choices, and equal rights and resources, seeing them as essential for good lives. They oppose such evils as selfishness, intolerance, cruelty, and greed. Yet the more autonomy, equality, and pluralism there is, Kekes contends, the greater is the scope for evil. According to Kekes, liberalism is inconsistent because the conditions liberals regard as essential for good lives actually foster the very evils liberals want to avoid, and avoiding those evils depends on conditions contrary to the ones liberals favor. Kekes argues further that the liberal conceptions of equality, justice, and pluralism require treating good and evil people with equal respect, distributing resources without regard to what recipients deserve, and restricting choices to those that conform to liberal preconceptions. All these policies are detrimental to good lives. Kekes concludes that liberalism cannot cope with the prevalence of evil, that it is vitiated by inconsistent commitments, and that—contrary to its aim—liberalism is an obstacle to good lives.

The System of Liberty

Author: George H. Smith

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2013-04-22

Total Pages: 237

ISBN-13: 1107005078

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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.

Predisposed

Author: John R. Hibbing

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-09-23

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 1136281215

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Buried in many people and operating largely outside the realm of conscious thought are forces inclining us toward liberal or conservative political convictions. Our biology predisposes us to see and understand the world in different ways, not always reason and the careful consideration of facts. These predispositions are in turn responsible for a significant portion of the political and ideological conflict that marks human history. With verve and wit, renowned social scientists John Hibbing, Kevin Smith, and John Alford—pioneers in the field of biopolitics—present overwhelming evidence that people differ politically not just because they grew up in different cultures or were presented with different information. Despite the oft-heard longing for consensus, unity, and peace, the universal rift between conservatives and liberals endures because people have diverse psychological, physiological, and genetic traits. These biological differences influence much of what makes people who they are, including their orientations to politics. Political disputes typically spring from the assumption that those who do not agree with us are shallow, misguided, uninformed, and ignorant. Predisposed suggests instead that political opponents simply experience, process, and respond to the world differently. It follows, then, that the key to getting along politically is not the ability of one side to persuade the other side to see the error of its ways but rather the ability of each side to see that the other is different, not just politically, but physically. Predisposed will change the way you think about politics and partisan conflict. As a bonus, the book includes a "Left/Right 20 Questions" game to test whether your predispositions lean liberal or conservative.

Democracy's Edges

Author: Ian Shapiro

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1999-08-19

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 9780521643894

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Conference papers.Companion to: Democracy's value. Includes Bibliographical references and index.

Liberalism

Author: Edmund Fawcett

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2015-09-22

Total Pages: 492

ISBN-13: 0691168393

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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.

Liberalism, Imperialism, and the Historical Imagination

Author: Theodore Koditschek

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2011-02-10

Total Pages: 367

ISBN-13: 1139494880

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This book examines the ways in which imperial agendas informed the writing of history in nineteenth-century Britain and how historical writing transformed imperial agendas. Using the published writings and personal papers of Walter Scott, J. A. Froude, James Mill, Rammohun Roy, T. B. Macaulay, E. A. Freeman, W. E. Gladstone, and J. R. Seeley among others, Theodore Koditschek sheds light on the role of the historical imagination in the establishment and legitimation of liberal imperialism. He shows how both imperialists and the imperialized were drawn to reflect back on the Empire's past as a result of the need to construct a modern, multi-national British imperial identity for a more economically expansive and enlightened present. By tracing the imperial lives and historical works of these pivotal figures, Theodore Koditschek illuminates the ways in which discourse altered practice, and vice versa, as well as how the history of Empire was continuously written and re-written.

Foundations of Liberalism

Author: Margaret Moore

Publisher:

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13:

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This book is an original critique of contemporary liberal theories of justice, focusing on the problem of how to relate the personal point of view of the individual to the impartial perspective of justice. Margaret Moore's examination of prominent contemporary arguments for liberal justice reveals that individualist theories are subject to two serious difficulties: the motivation problem and the integrity problem. Individualists cannot explain why the individual should be motivated to act in accordance with the dictates of liberal justice, and - related to this - offer radically incoherent accounts of the person. Revisionist liberal attempts to ground liberalism in contextual and perfectionist terms offer more defensible foundations, but Dr Moore argues that such theories do not support liberal political principles. She concludes by sketching a historical and concrete approach to political and ethical theorizing which reformulates the relation between self-interest and morality, and is not subject to the problems that beset liberal individualist theories of justice. Her book advances the debate between communitarians and liberals about the kind of moral foundation which a liberal society requires.

The Retreat of Western Liberalism

Author: Edward Luce

Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press

Published: 2017-06-13

Total Pages: 168

ISBN-13: 0802188869

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An “insightful and harrowing” analysis of the state of Western-style democracy by the Financial Times columnist and author of Time to Start Thinking (The New York Times). In his widely acclaimed book Time to Start Thinking, Financial Times columnist Edward Luce charted the course of America’s economic and geopolitical decline, proving to be a prescient voice on the state of the nation. In The Retreat of Western Liberalism, Luce makes a larger statement about the weakening of western hegemony and the crisis of democratic liberalism—of which Donald Trump and his European counterparts are not the cause, but a symptom. Luce argues that we are on a menacing trajectory brought about by ignorance of what it took to build the West, arrogance toward society’s economic losers, and complacency about our system’s durability—attitudes that have been emerging since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Unless the West can rekindle an economy that produces gains for the majority of its people, its political liberties may be doomed. Combining on-the-ground reporting with economic analysis, Luce offers a detailed projection of the consequences of the Trump administration and a forward-thinking analysis of what those who believe in enlightenment values must do to protect them.