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A major statement by senior US scholar on the development and transmission of liberal thought.
Subversive Itinerary investigates the theoretical evolution of the influential political theorist Gad Horowitz, as well as the historical impact of his ideas on Canadian life and letters. Bringing together dynamic new works by both established and emerging scholars, along with three new articles by Horowitz himself, this volume examines the concepts he developed and extends his approach beyond the current historical moment. The book includes a history of Horowitz's engagements as a public intellectual through appraisals of his early, mid, and late-career contributions, from the sixties to the present day. Along the way, the contributors present innovative new work in Canadian political thought, continental theory, Jewish philosophy, Buddhism, and radical general semantics. Subversive Itinerary demonstrates how Horowitz's itinerary delivers invaluable tools for understanding issues of critical importance today.
An innovative historical study of the longstanding debate over executive term limits in American politics . . . By successfully seeking a third term in 1940, Franklin D. Roosevelt shattered a tradition that was as old as the American republic. The longstanding yet controversial two-term tradition reflected serious tensions in American political values. In Presidential Term Limits in American History, Michael J. Korzi recounts the history of the two-term tradition as well as the “perfect storm” that enabled Roosevelt to break with that tradition. He also shows that Roosevelt and his close supporters made critical errors of judgment in 1943-44, particularly in seeking a fourth term against...
The Oxford Handbook of Nineteenth-Century American Literature will offer a cutting-edge assessment of the period's literature, offering readers practical insights and proactive strategies for exploring novels, poems, and other literary creations.
A panoramic history of American individualism from its nineteenth-century origins to today’s bitterly divided politics Individualism is a defining feature of American public life. Its influence is pervasive today, with liberals and conservatives alike promising to expand personal freedom and defend individual rights against unwanted intrusion, be it from big government, big corporations, or intolerant majorities. The Roots of American Individualism traces the origins of individualist ideas to the turbulent political controversies of the Jacksonian era (1820–1850) and explores their enduring influence on American politics and culture. Alex Zakaras plunges readers into the spirited and ran...
Forrest McDonald has long been recognized as one of our most respected and provocative intellectual hsitorians. With this new book, he once again delivers an illuminating meditation on a major theme in American history and politics. Elegantly and accessibly written for a broad readership, McDonald's book provides an insightful look at states' rights-an issue that continues to stir debate nationwide. From constitutional scholars to Supreme Court justices to an electorate that's grown increasingly wary of federal power, the concept of states' rights has become a touchstone for a host of political and legal controversies. But, as McDonald shows, that concept has deep roots that need to be exami...
Relativism, or the claim that it is possible that the appearances and opinions of each of us are correct for each of us, and hence that any view is as true as any other, has remained a continuing problem for philosophy and science for 2,500 years. Today, because of the widespread acceptance of relativism, the problem is greater than ever before. This book argues that Plato in fact solved this problem. In the first two chapters, by means of a study of Husserl and Locke, Davis shows that it is possible to return to and take seriously Plato’s treatment of this problem. The third chapter presents Plato’s solution to it. This book is distinctive in that it shows that a problem that has been thought to be present throughout the history of Western thought was in fact solved by Plato, and in that it shows that we can, beginning from our contemporary situation, return to Plato’s solution.
Originally published in 1997 and now back in print, Making the American Self by Daniel Walker Howe, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of What Hath God Wrought, charts the genesis and fascinating trajectory of a central idea in American history. One of the most precious liberties Americans have always cherished is the ability to "make something of themselves"--to choose not only an occupation but an identity. Examining works by Benjamin Franklin, Jonathan Edwards, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and others, Howe investigates how Americans in the 18th and 19th centuries engaged in the process of "self-construction," "self-improvem...
ABSTRACT This dissertation assesses the design and incentive structures that link the presidency to constitutional maintenance and renewal when extraordinary times occur, and posits that institutional power and historical context were priced into the presidency since its creation. This finding has robust implications for understanding the presidency's role in constitutional change, and in particular, the construction of constitutional regimes. Presidents are naturally drawn to the lure of constructing a constitutional regime by the nature of the office, as presidents want to constitutionalize their priorities from rival political interests in order to secure their legacy. Some fortunate pres...
This study locates the philosophical origins of the Anglo-American political and constitutional tradition in the philosophical, theological, and political controversies in seventeenth-century England. By examining the quarrel it identifies the source of modern liberal, republican and conservative ideas about natural rights and government in the seminal works of the Exclusion Whigs Locke, Sidney, and Tyrrell and their philosophical forebears Hobbes, Grotius, Spinoza, and Pufendorf. This study illuminates how these first Whigs and their diverse eighteenth-century intellectual heirs such as Bolingbroke, Montesquieu, Hume, Blackstone, Otis, Jefferson, Burke, and Paine contributed to the formation of Anglo-American political and constitutional theory in the crucial period from the Glorious Revolution through to the American Revolution and the creation of a distinctly American understanding of rights and government in the first state constitutions.