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Author: Leslie G. Rubin Publisher: ISBN: 9781481300568 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 310
Book Description
Aristotle's political imagination capitalizes on the virtues of a middle-class republic. America's experiment in republican liberty bears striking similarities to Aristotle's best political regime--especially at the point of the middling class and its public role. Author Leslie Rubin, by holding America up to the mirror of Aristotle, explores these correspondences and their many implications for contemporary political life. Rubin begins with the Politics, in which Aristotle asserts the best political regime maintains stability by balancing oligarchic and democratic tendencies, and by treating free and relatively equal people as capable of a good life within a law-governed community that practices modest virtues. The second part of the book focuses upon America, showing how its founding opinion leaders prioritized the virtues of the middle in myriad ways. Rubin uncovers a surprising range of evidence, from moderate property holding by a large majority of the populace to citizen experience of both ruling and being ruled. She singles out the importance of the respect for the middle-class virtues of industriousness, sobriety, frugality, honesty, public spirit, and reasonable compromise. Rubin also highlights the educational institutions that foster the middle class--public education affords literacy, numeracy, and job skills, while civic education provides the history and principles of the nation as well as the rights and duties of all its citizens. Wise voices from the past, both of ancient Greece and postcolonial America, commend the middle class. The erosion of a middle class and the descent of political debate into polarized hysteria threaten a democratic republic. If the rule of the people is not to fall into demagoguery, then the body politic must remind itself of the requirements--both political and personal--of free, stable, and fair political life.
Author: Glassman Publisher: BRILL ISBN: 9004618066 Category : Architecture Languages : en Pages : 447
Book Description
This volume presents an in-depth study of the commercial middle class and its link with legal-democratic processes. The material presented is critical for understanding both the future of democracy, and its past.
Author: Ganesh Sitaraman Publisher: Vintage ISBN: 1101973455 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 434
Book Description
In this original, provocative contribution to the debate over economic inequality, Ganesh Sitaraman argues that a strong and sizable middle class is a prerequisite for America’s constitutional system. For most of Western history, Sitaraman argues, constitutional thinkers assumed economic inequality was inevitable and inescapable—and they designed governments to prevent class divisions from spilling over into class warfare. The American Constitution is different. Compared to Europe and the ancient world, America was a society of almost unprecedented economic equality, and the founding generation saw this equality as essential for the preservation of America’s republic. Over the next two centuries, generations of Americans fought to sustain the economic preconditions for our constitutional system. But today, with economic and political inequality on the rise, Sitaraman says Americans face a choice: Will we accept rising economic inequality and risk oligarchy or will we rebuild the middle class and reclaim our republic? The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution is a tour de force of history, philosophy, law, and politics. It makes a compelling case that inequality is more than just a moral or economic problem; it threatens the very core of our constitutional system.
Author: Michael Meckler Publisher: Baylor University Press ISBN: 1932792325 Category : Civilization, Classical Languages : en Pages : 243
Book Description
history and illustrates how the ancient Greeks and Romans continue to influence political theory and determine policy in the United States, from the education of the Founders to the War in Iraq.
Author: Aristotle Publisher: Penguin UK ISBN: 0141913266 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 455
Book Description
Twenty-three centuries after its compilation, 'The Politics' still has much to contribute to this central question of political science. Aristotle's thorough and carefully argued analysis is based on a study of over 150 city constitutions, covering a huge range of political issues in order to establish which types of constitution are best - both ideally and in particular circumstances - and how they may be maintained. Aristotle's opinions form an essential background to the thinking of philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas, Machiavelli and Jean Bodin and both his premises and arguments raise questions that are as relevant to modern society as they were to the ancient world.
Author: Eugene Garver Publisher: University of Chicago Press ISBN: 0226284042 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 313
Book Description
“Man is a political animal,” Aristotle asserts near the beginning of the Politics. In this novel reading of one of the foundational texts of political philosophy, Eugene Garver traces the surprising implications of Aristotle’s claim and explores the treatise’s relevance to ongoing political concerns. Often dismissed as overly grounded in Aristotle’s specific moment in time, in fact the Politics challenges contemporary understandings of human action and allows us to better see ourselves today. Close examination of Aristotle’s treatise, Garver finds, reveals a significant, practical role for philosophy to play in politics. Philosophers present arguments about issues—such as the right and the good, justice and modes of governance, the relation between the good person and the good citizen, and the character of a good life—that politicians must then make appealing to their fellow citizens. Completing Garver’s trilogy on Aristotle’s unique vision, Aristotle’s Politics yields new ways of thinking about ethics and politics, ancient and modern.
Author: Ronald P. Formisano Publisher: JHU Press ISBN: 1421417405 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 268
Book Description
This data-driven book offers insight into the fallacy of widespread opportunity, the fate of the middle class, and the mechanisms that perpetuate income disparity.
Author: Angel Jaramillo Torres Publisher: Springer ISBN: 3319744453 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 328
Book Description
This book aims to recover from ancient and modern thinkers valuable arguments about statesmanship, leadership, and tyranny which illuminate reassessments of political science and practice after the election of Donald Trump. Like almost everyone else, contemporary political scientists were blind-sided by the rise of Trump. No one expected a candidate to win who repeatedly violated both political norms and the conventional wisdom about campaign best practices. Yet many of the puzzles that Trump’s rise presents have been examined by the great political philosophers of the past. For example, it would come as no surprise to Plato that by its very emphasis on popularity, democracy creates the potential for tyranny via demagoguery. And, perhaps no problem is more alien to empirical political science than asking if statesmanship entails virtue or if so, in what that virtue consists: This is a theme treated by Plato, Aristotle, and Machiavelli, among others. Covering a range of thinkers such as Confucius, Plutarch, Kant, Tocqueville, and Deleuze, the essays in this book then seek to place the rise of Trump and the nature of his political authority within a broader institutional context than is possible for mainstream political science.