Author: Roger Boesche Publisher: Cornell University Press ISBN: 1501745514 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 291
Book Description
The Strange Liberalism of Alexis de Tocqueville places Tocqueville's political though in the context of his time and place, and shows why his ideas defy easy classification. Responding to the twentieth-century tendency to impose anachronistic political categories on Tocqueville, Roger Boesche reminds us that like Stendhal, Balzac, Hugo, Lamartine, Flaubert, and other writers of his generation, he was a nineteenth-century Frenchman reacting to contemporary French concerns, aspirations, and anxieties.
Author: Patrick J. Deneen Publisher: Yale University Press ISBN: 0300240023 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 263
Book Description
"One of the most important political books of 2018."—Rod Dreher, American Conservative Of the three dominant ideologies of the twentieth century—fascism, communism, and liberalism—only the last remains. This has created a peculiar situation in which liberalism’s proponents tend to forget that it is an ideology and not the natural end-state of human political evolution. As Patrick Deneen argues in this provocative book, liberalism is built on a foundation of contradictions: it trumpets equal rights while fostering incomparable material inequality; its legitimacy rests on consent, yet it discourages civic commitments in favor of privatism; and in its pursuit of individual autonomy, it has given rise to the most far-reaching, comprehensive state system in human history. Here, Deneen offers an astringent warning that the centripetal forces now at work on our political culture are not superficial flaws but inherent features of a system whose success is generating its own failure.
Author: Lucien Jaume Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 1400846722 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 358
Book Description
A major intellectual biography of Toqueville that restores democracy in America to its essential context Many American readers like to regard Alexis de Tocqueville as an honorary American and democrat—as the young French aristocrat who came to early America and, enthralled by what he saw, proceeded to write an American book explaining democratic America to itself. Yet, as Lucien Jaume argues in this acclaimed intellectual biography, Democracy in America is best understood as a French book, written primarily for the French, and overwhelmingly concerned with France. "America," Jaume says, "was merely a pretext for studying modern society and the woes of France." For Tocqueville, in short, America was a mirror for France, a way for Tocqueville to write indirectly about his own society, to engage French thinkers and debates, and to come to terms with France's aristocratic legacy. By taking seriously the idea that Tocqueville's French context is essential for understanding Democracy in America, Jaume provides a powerful and surprising new interpretation of Tocqueville's book as well as a fresh intellectual and psychological portrait of the author. Situating Tocqueville in the context of the crisis of authority in postrevolutionary France, Jaume shows that Tocqueville was an ambivalent promoter of democracy, a man who tried to reconcile himself to the coming wave, but who was also nostalgic for the aristocratic world in which he was rooted—and who believed that it would be necessary to preserve aristocratic values in order to protect liberty under democracy. Indeed, Jaume argues that one of Tocqueville's most important and original ideas was to recognize that democracy posed the threat of a new and hidden form of despotism.
Author: Roger Boesche Publisher: Lexington Books ISBN: 9780739116654 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 238
Book Description
Tocqueville's Road Map is a long overdue addition to Tocqueville scholarship that will find an audience among scholars of political thought and history."--Jacket.
Author: Roger Boesche Publisher: Penn State Press ISBN: 9780271044057 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 508
Book Description
Ch. 10 (pp. 381-454), "Fromm, Neumann, and Arendt: Three Early Interpretations of Nazi Germany", discusses the views of Franz Neumann and Hannah Arendt on Nazi antisemitism. Neumann, in his "Behemoth" (1942), stated that the Nazis needed a fictitious enemy in order to unify the completely atomized German society into one large "Volksgemeinschaft". The terrorization of Jews was a prototype of the terror to be used against other peoples. Arendt contends in "The Origins of Totalitarianism" (1951) that it was imperialism which brought about Nazism, Nazi antisemitism, and the Holocaust. Totalitarianism is nothing but imperialism which came home. Insofar as imperialism transcends national boundaries, racism may be very helpful for it, because racism proposes another principle to define the enemy. Jews and other ethnic groups (e.g. Slavs) became easy targets as groups whose claims clashed with those of the expanding German nation. Terror is the essence of totalitarianism, and extermination camps were necessary for the Nazis to prove the omnipotence of their regime and their capability of total domination.
Author: Andrew J. S. Jainchill Publisher: Cornell University Press ISBN: 9780801446696 Category : France Languages : en Pages : 336
Book Description
In the wake of the Terror, France's political and intellectual elites set out to refound the Republic and, in so doing, reimagined the nature of the political order. They argued vigorously over imperial expansion, constitutional power, personal liberty, and public morality. In Reimagining Politics after the Terror, Andrew Jainchill rewrites the history of the origins of French Liberalism by telling the story of France's underappreciated "republican moment" during the tumultuous years between 1794 and Napoleon's declaration of a new French Empire in 1804. Examining a wide range of political and theoretical debates, Jainchill offers a compelling reinterpretation of the political culture of post-Terror France and of the establishment of Napoleon's Consulate. He also provides new readings of works by the key architects of early French Liberalism, including Germaine de Staël, Benjamin Constant, and, in the epilogue, Alexis de Tocqueville. The political culture of the post-Terror period was decisively shaped by the classical republican tradition of the early modern Atlantic world and, as Jainchill persuasively argues, constituted France's "Machiavellian Moment." Out of this moment, a distinctly French version of liberalism began to take shape. Reimagining Politics after the Terror is essential reading for anyone concerned with the history of political thought, the origins and nature of French Liberalism, and the end of the French Revolution.
Author: Alexis de Tocqueville Publisher: Library of America ISBN: 1598531816 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 960
Book Description
An exclusive new translation of the most perceptive and influential book ever written about American politics and society—“the bible on democracy” (The Texas Observer) Alexis de Tocqueville, a young aristocratic French lawyer, came to the United States in 1831 to study its penitentiary systems. His nine-month visit and subsequent reading and reflection resulted in this landmark masterpiece of political observation and analysis. In Democracy in America, Tocqueville vividly describes the unprecedented social equality he found in America and explores its implications for European society in the emerging modern era. His book provides enduring insight into the political consequences of widespread property ownership, the potential dangers to liberty inherent in majority rule, the vital role of religion in American life, and the importance of civil institutions in an individualistic culture dominated by the pursuit of material self-interest. He also probes the deep differences between the free and slave states, writing prophetically of racism, bigotry, and prejudice in the United States. Brought to life by Arthur Goldhammer’s clear, fluid, and vigorous translation, this volume of Democracy in America is the first to fully capture Tocqueville’s achievements both as an accomplished literary stylist and as a profound political thinker.
Author: Aurelian Cr_iu_u Publisher: Penn State Press ISBN: 0271033908 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 298
Book Description
"A collection of essays that discuss representative eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French and English views of American democracy and society, and offer a critical assessment of various narrative constructions of American life, society, and culture"--Provided by publisher.
Author: Roger Boesche
Author: Roger Boesche
Author: Patrick J. Deneen
Author: Lucien Jaume
Author: Roger Boesche
Author: Alexis de Tocqueville
Author: Roger Boesche
Author: Andrew J. S. Jainchill
Author: Alexis de Tocqueville
Author: Aurelian Cr_iu_u