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Flannery O’Connor’s fiction continues to haunt American readers, in part because of its uncanny ability to remind us who we are and what we need. Foss’s book reveals the extent to which O’Connor was a serious reader of the history of political philosophy. She understood the ideas upon which the American regime rests, and she evaluated those ideas from the standpoint of both faith and reason. Foss’s book explains why O’Connor feared that the modern habit to govern by tenderness would lead to terror. After a thorough account of her familiarity with the history of political philosophy, Foss shows how the works of Plato, Aristotle, Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Machiavelli, ...
Flannery O'Connor's fiction continues to haunt American readers, in part because of its uncanny ability to remind us who we are and what we need. This book reveals the extent to which O'Connor was a serious reader of the history of political philosophy and why O'Connor feared that the habit to govern by tenderness would lead to terror.
"The best books on politics offer us fresh insight into the way things are, and powerful arguments about how things ought to be. Jerome Foss's superb book accomplishes both of these ends, rescuing John Rawls's work from the dusty corners of overly abstract theorizing by emphasizing Rawls's dedication to a very practical reinvention of the American political experiment. This approach has the virtue not only of according with Rawls's mature interpretation of his work, but also of setting up a lively contrast between the constitutional republicanism of the framers and Rawls's constitutional democracy. This book is a trustworthy guide to the American constitutional tradition as well as Rawls's i...
A constructive model of engagement with unjust laws from the ground up The current political atmosphere would suggest that law is imposed only from above, specifically by the chief executive acting upon some sort of perceived populist mandate. In Law from Below, Elisabeth Rain Kincaid argues that the theology of the early modern legal theorist and theologian, Francisco Suárez, SJ may be successfully retrieved to provide a constructive model of legal engagement for Christians today. Suárez’s theology was developed to combat an authoritarian view of law, suggesting that communities may work to change law from the ground up as they function within the legal system, not just outside it. Law ...
This volume provides a fresh perspective on current democratic theory and practice by recovering the rich evaluations of democracy in the history of political thought. Each author addresses a single thinker’s reflections on the virtues and defects of democracy and the relationship between democracy and other regimes. Together, these essays explore the tensions within the democratic way of life that arise from an attachment to equality, liberty, citizenship, law, and the divine. Above all, this work aims at recovering a more complex understanding of democracy, connecting the perennial questions of political philosophy to the perplexities and crises of modern democracy.
Constitutionalism and Liberty: Essays in Honor of David K. Nichols explores the relationship between liberty and constitutionalism in American politics and political theory, and is organized around the question of how human liberty is preserved and advanced while empowering government to have the necessary authority to effectively govern society. The essays themselves are divided into three areas reflecting the breadth and diversity of David K. Nichols’s scholarship. The first assesses how we should understand separation of powers and checks and balances in the American constitutional system. The second area treats different aspects of American legal practice and jurisprudence, including t...
This book links the questions people ask about why things exist, why the world is the way it is, and whether and how it is possible to change their society or world with the societal myths they develop and teach to answer those questions and organize and bring order to their communal lives. It also is about the need for change in western societies’ current organizing concept, classical (Lockean) liberalism. Despite the attempts of numerous insightful political thinkers, the myth of classical liberalism has developed so many cracks that it cannot be put back together again. If not entirely failed, it is at this point unsalvageable in its present form. Never the thought of just one person, t...
This collection, the first of its kind, brings together specially commissioned academic essays to mark fifty years since the death of John Kennedy Toole.
In 2005, Father Julián Carrón became the leader of the global ecclesial movement Communion and Liberation, following the death of the movement's founder, Father Luigi Giussani. Disarming Beauty is the English translation of an engaging and thought-provoking collection of essays by one of the principal Catholic leaders and intellectuals in the world today. Adapted from talks given by Fr. Carrón, these essays have been thoroughly reworked by the author to offer an organic presentation of a decade-long journey. They present the content of his elaboration of the gospel message in light of the tradition of Fr. Giussani, the teachings of the popes, and the urgent needs of contemporary people. C...
Age of Anxiety: Meaning, Identity, and Politics in 21st Century Film and Literature analyzes literature and films that speak to our age of anxiety resulting from the decline of narratives that provided individuals with a meaningful human life. The authors argue that the twentieth-century sought to free individuals from the constraints of authoritative cultural traditions and institutions, liberating the autonomous self. Yet this has given rise to anxiety rather than liberation. Instead of deriving one’s sense of purpose from one’s role and place within a community, the consumer has been deceived into thinking that their identity can be purchased through the meaning represented by the con...