Reason and Politics

Reason and Politics
Author: Mark Blitz
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess
Total Pages: 229
Release: 2021-03-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0268109141

Reason and Politics explores the central phenomena of political life and, therefore, of human affairs in general. Amidst the seemingly endless books on more and more narrowly specialized topics within politics, Mark Blitz offers something very different. Reason and Politics: The Nature of Political Phenomena examines the central phenomena of political life in order to clarify their meaning, source, and range. Blitz gives particular attention to the notions of freedom, rights, justice, virtue, power, property, nationalism, and the common good. At the same time, Blitz shows how, in order to understand political matters correctly, we must also understand how they affect us directly. We do not merely theorize over political questions; we experience them. Blitz also considers matters such as the powers and motions of the soul, the nature of experience, and the varieties of pleasure and attachment. Living at a time when technological change makes it difficult even to claim convincingly that there are defining human characteristics and natural limits that we simply cannot change, Reason and Politics proposes that there are in fact basic phenomena not only in politics, but that make up human affairs as such. In examining these central phenomena in a lucid and articulate manner, this book makes a unique contribution not only to the study of politics but also to the study of philosophy more broadly. It will interest undergraduate and graduate students, political scientists and philosophers, those interested in politics, and general readers.

The Origins of Political Order

The Origins of Political Order
Author: Francis Fukuyama
Publisher: Profile Books
Total Pages: 529
Release: 2011-05-12
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1847652816

Nations are not trapped by their pasts, but events that happened hundreds or even thousands of years ago continue to exert huge influence on present-day politics. If we are to understand the politics that we now take for granted, we need to understand its origins. Francis Fukuyama examines the paths that different societies have taken to reach their current forms of political order. This book starts with the very beginning of mankind and comes right up to the eve of the French and American revolutions, spanning such diverse disciplines as economics, anthropology and geography. The Origins of Political Order is a magisterial study on the emergence of mankind as a political animal, by one of the most eminent political thinkers writing today.

Political Reason and Interest

Political Reason and Interest
Author: Herman H.H. van Erp
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2018-02-05
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1351750046

This title was first published in 2000: Politics cannot be conceived of as just a subsystem of society, or as a network of particular interests. The concept of interests and their role within the normative political debate is given a new interpretation by this book, which examines how political interest, market mechanisms and rational choice theories exist in the light of democratic freedom and social justice. The book builds on different concepts of procedural justice, from Schumpeter, Buchanan and Habermas’s conceptions of democracy and the role of political compromise and coalition in the idea of consensus as a condition for political legitimation.

Politics and the Order of Love

Politics and the Order of Love
Author: Eric Gregory
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 434
Release: 2008-08-15
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0226307514

Augustine—for all of his influence on Western culture and politics—was hardly a liberal. Drawing from theology, feminist theory, and political philosophy, Eric Gregory offers here a liberal ethics of citizenship, one less susceptible to anti-liberal critics because it is informed by the Augustinian tradition. The result is a book that expands Augustinian imaginations for liberalism and liberal imaginations for Augustinianism. Gregory examines a broad range of Augustine’s texts and their reception in different disciplines and identifies two classical themes which have analogues in secular political theory: love—and related notions of care, solidarity, and sympathy—and sin—as well as related notions of cruelty, evil, and narrow self-interest. From an Augustinian point of view, Gregory argues, love and sin constrain each other in ways that yield a distinctive vision of the limits and possibilities of politics. In providing a constructive argument for Christian participation in liberal democratic societies, Gregory advances efforts to revive a political theology in which love’s relation to justice is prominent. Politics and the Order of Love will provoke new conversations for those interested in Christian ethics, moral psychology, and the role of religion in a liberal society.

Anarchy and Legal Order

Anarchy and Legal Order
Author: Gary Chartier
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 433
Release: 2013
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1107032288

This book elaborates and defends law without the state. It explains why the state is illegitimate, dangerous and unnecessary.

Reason, Revelation, and the Civic Order

Reason, Revelation, and the Civic Order
Author: Carson Holloway
Publisher: Northern Illinois University Press
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2014-03-14
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1501751298

While the dominant approaches to the current study of political philosophy are various, with some friendlier to religious belief than others, almost all place constraints on the philosophic and political role of revelation. Mainstream secular political theorists do not entirely disregard religion. But to the extent that they pay attention, their treatment of religious belief is seen more as a political or philosophic problem to be addressed rather than as a positive body of thought from which we might derive important insights about the nature of politics and the truth of the human condition. In a one-of-a-kind collection, DeHart and Holloway bring together leading scholars from various fields, including political science, philosophy, and theology, to challenge the prevailing orthodoxy and to demonstrate the role that religion can and does play in political life. Contributing authors include such important thinkers as Peter Augustine Lawler, Robert C. Koons, J. Budziszewski, Francis J. Beckwith, and James Stoner.

The Individual and the Political Order

The Individual and the Political Order
Author: Norman E. Bowie
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 294
Release: 2008
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780742550056

The Individual and the Political Order examines major theoretical perspectives, both historical and contemporary, in major issues in social and political philosophy. It combines accessibility with appreciation of philosophical complexity and discusses applied issues, such as morality and war, as well as theoretical approaches to justice, rights, and democratic liberal thought.

The Idea of Order

The Idea of Order
Author: H. Barth
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 214
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9401036799

In these essays toward a political philosophy we shall be con cerned with fundamentals. And because it is a question of fundamentals, they will, we imagine, be of interest to many readers. We should like to contribute to a clarification, histor ically and systematically, of some concepts with which every philosophy of society and the state has to deal. We shall admit historical considerations for the sake of insights into the sys tematic ones, and we trust that our inquiry into the systematic will help us to understand the historical. For we are moving in that circle exemplarily described by Johann Gustav Droysen in his Vorlesungen fiber Enzyklopadie und Methodologie der Ge schichte (§ 37) when he writes: 'Undoubtedly we only under stand completely that which is, when we recognize and make clear to ourselves how it came to be. But how it came to be, we recognize only if we investigate and understand, as exactly as possible, how it is. Our grasping that which came to be and comprehending its becoming is only one form and expression of our understanding of the present and existing. And this becoming and having come to be can be derived only by temporally conceiving and analysing the existing in order to understand it. ' We must, therefore, center our attention on what may be called the structure and logic of social order.

When Reason Goes on Holiday

When Reason Goes on Holiday
Author: Neven Sesardic
Publisher: Encounter Books
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2016-11-15
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1594038805

Philosophers usually emphasize the importance of logic, clarity and reason. Therefore when they address political issues they will usually inject a dose of rationality in these discussions, right? Wrong. This book gives a lot of examples showing the unexpected level of political irrationality among leading contemporary philosophers. The body of the book presents a detailed analysis of extreme leftist views of a number of famous philosophers and their occasional descent into apology for—and occasionally even active participation in—totalitarian politics. Most of these episodes are either virtually unknown (even inside the philosophical community) or have received very little attention. The author tries to explain how it was possible that so many luminaries of twentieth-century philosophy, who invoked reason and exhibited rigor and careful thinking in their professional work, succumbed to irrationality and ended up supporting some of the most murderous political regimes and ideologies. The huge leftist bias in contemporary philosophy and its persistence over the years is certainly a factor but it is far from being the whole story. Interestingly, the indisputably high intelligence of these philosophers did not actually protect them from descending into political insanity. It is argued that, on the contrary, both their brilliance and the high esteem they enjoyed in the profession only made them more self-confident and less cautious, thereby eventually making them blind to their betrayal of reason and the monstrosity of the causes they defended.

How Change Happens

How Change Happens
Author: Duncan Green
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 287
Release: 2016
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0198785399

"DLP, Developmental Leadership Program; Australian Aid; Oxfam."