Liberalism and the Good PDF Download

Author: R. Bruce Douglass
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000704742
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
First published in 1990. Liberalism and the Good is a collection of critical essays by an inter-disciplinary group of American and English scholars that seeks to address the long-standing problem of the good in light of the most recent developments in liberal theory. With contributions from both liberal apologists and critics who pursue arguments informed by sources as disparate as Nietzsche and Aristotle, it breaks fresh ground in a number of different directions and offers proposals for the future of the discussion.

Author: Roberto S. Goizueta
Publisher: Orbis Books
ISBN: 1608331938
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 406

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Book Description
While the growth in both numbers and influence of Hispanics in North American Catholicism and Protestantism has been commented on widely, up until now there has been no systematic attempt to define a Hispanic theology. Roberto Goizueta, a Cuban-American theologian, aware that "Hispanic" and "Latino" can be terms imposed artificially on diverse peoples, finds a common link in the Spanish language and in a shared culture. Central to this culture is the experience of exile, of being a people at the margins of a society, who must find and make their way together. Central also is faith, and its grounding in this experience of being in exile. In delineating the very particular nature and worldview of Hispanic/Latino theology, Caminemos con Jesus challenges both traditional Euro-American theologies and modern Western epistemological assumptions. It examines the implications of this theological method for the Church and the academy, as well as for the future of the Latino community and North American society. Caminemos con Jesus provides lessons in discipleship for non-Hispanics and Hispanics alike, for students of contemporary theology, and all those engaged in pastoral and church-based work.

Author: Cécile Laborde
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 067498157X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
Liberal societies conventionally treat religion as unique under the law, requiring both special protection (as in guarantees of free worship) and special containment (to keep religion and the state separate). But recently this idea that religion requires a legal exception has come under fire from those who argue that religion is no different from any other conception of the good, and the state should treat all such conceptions according to principles of neutrality and equal liberty. Cécile Laborde agrees with much of this liberal egalitarian critique, but she argues that a simple analogy between the good and religion misrepresents the complex relationships among religion, law, and the state. Religion serves as more than a statement of belief about what is true, or a code of moral and ethical conduct. It also refers to comprehensive ways of life, political theories of justice, modes of voluntary association, and vulnerable collective identities. Disaggregating religion into its various dimensions, as Laborde does, has two clear advantages. First, it shows greater respect for ethical and social pluralism by ensuring that whatever treatment religion receives from the law, it receives because of features that it shares with nonreligious beliefs, conceptions, and identities. Second, it dispenses with the Western, Christian-inflected conception of religion that liberal political theory relies on, especially in dealing with the issue of separation between religion and state. As a result, Liberalism’s Religion offers a novel answer to the question: Can Western theories of secularism and religion be applied more universally in non-Western societies?

Author: Will Kymlicka
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780198278719
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
Examines the nature and value of community and culture from a liberal viewpoint, and links the theories under discussion to more familiar liberal views on individual rights and state neutrality.

Author: George Crowder
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0826450482
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
Value pluralism is the idea, associated with the late Isaiah Berlin, that fundamental human values are irreducibly plural and incommensurable. Ends like liberty, equality and community are intrinsic goods which can neither be ranked in an absolute hierarchy nor translated into units of a common denominator. If that is true, how can we choose among such values when they come into conflict in particular cases? In particular, what reason is there to justify the value ranking characteristic of liberal democracy, favouring personal autonomy and toleration? Recent commentators have seen value pluralism as undermining the traditional claims of liberalism to universal authority, rendering it at best no more than one political form among others with no greater claim to legitimacy. Against that view, George Crowder argues that a strong distinctive case for liberalism as a universal project is implied by value pluralism itself. Reflection on the elements of value pluralism yields a set of ethical principles, including respect for universal values, rejection of political utopianism, promotion of value diversity, accommodation of reasonable disagreement, and cultivation of civic virtues. Those principles are best satisfied by a liberal form of politics characterised by a strong commitment to personal autonomy, by policies of moderate redistribution and multiculturalism, and by constitutional restraints on democractic politics. This is the first book-length defence of liberalism on the basis of value pluralism, complementing and extending the work of Berlin and others.

Author: Bradley C. S. Watson
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 9780739100387
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
In Civil Rights and the Paradox of Liberal Democracy, Bradley Watson demonstrates the paradox of liberal democracy: that its cornerstone principles of equality and freedom are principles inherently directed toward undermining it. Modernity, beyond bringing definition to political equality, unleashed a whirlwind of individualism, which feeds the soul's basic impulse to rule without limitationincluding the limitation of consent. Here Watson begins his analysis of the foundations of liberalism, looking carefully and critically at the moral and political philosophies that justify modern civil rights litigation. He goes on to examine the judicial manifestations of the paradox of liberal democracy, seeking to bring a broad philosophical coherence to legal decision making in the United States and Canada. Finally, Watson illuminates the extent to which this decision making is in tension with liberal democracy, and outlines proposals for reform.

Author: Jeffrey H. Reiman
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780847683147
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
In this important book, Jeffrey Reiman responds to recent assaults on liberal theory by proposing a 'critical moral liberalism.' It is liberal in maintaining the emphasis of classical liberalism on individual freedom, moral in adhering to a distinctive vision of the good life rather than professing neutrality, and critical in taking seriously the objection-raised by feminists and Marxists, among others-that liberal theories often serve as ideological cover for oppression of one group by others. Critical moral liberalism has a conception of ideology, and resources for testing the suspicion that arrangements that look free are really oppressive. Reiman sets forth the basic arguments for the liberal moral obligation to maximize people's ability to govern their own lives, and for the conception of the good life that goes with this. He considers and answers objections to the liberal project, and defends liberal conceptions of privacy, moral virtue, economic justice, and Constitutional interpretation. Reiman then takes up specific policy issues, among them abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, moral education, capital punishment, and threats to privacy from modern information technology. Critical Moral Liberalism will be of interest to scholars and students of ethics, social and political philosophy, political theory, and public policy.

Author: David Walsh
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
ISBN: 9780826210821
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Book Description
The widespread abandonment of the search for foundations by John Rawls, Richard Rorty, Michael Oakeshott, and the deconstructionists has been interpreted as signifying the absence of any sustaining inner resources. The result has been the confusion of contemporary liberal democratic self-understanding, which cannot make sense of its own extraordinary historical success nor apparently prevent the evident unraveling of its own moral code.

Author: John Christman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139444204
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
In recent years the concepts of individual autonomy and political liberalism have been the subjects of intense debate, but these discussions have occurred largely within separate academic disciplines. Autonomy and the Challenges to Liberalism contains essays devoted to foundational questions regarding both the notion of the autonomous self and the nature and justification of liberalism. Written by leading figures in moral, legal and political theory, the volume covers inter alia the following topics: the nature of the self and its relation to autonomy, the social dimensions of autonomy and the political dynamics of respect and recognition, and the concept of autonomy underlying the principles of liberalism.

Author: David E. Guinn
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 9780739117644
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
Faith on Trial explains how the Supreme Court's reliance on "procedural liberalism" hampers its ability to adequately address the reality of religion as a pluralistic social institution.