There is a crisis in America revolving around social and political life, and the contributors to this essay collection believe it has provoked a renewed attention to the issue of community in political thought. The 14 essays approach the question of community and political thought from a variety of perspectives, ranging from political philosophy to social theory. All the essays, however, share the concern of the opening essay by Hertzke and McRorie about moral ecology, or determining what is required for a vital and free social and political life and preserving it from erosion by individualism in its various forms.
Two of the essays, by Jardine and Stier, deal with understanding the communitarian impulse. Three, by Frohnen, Stone, and Woolfolk, evaluate perhaps the first major contribution to the communitarian movement, Habits of the Heart. While McClay's chapter seeks to restore the connection between federalism and communitarianism, Sharpe's essay connects the liberal-communitarian debate to the classic works of de Tocqueville and Arendt. Two essays, by Knippenberg and Lawler, criticize the quirky communitarianism of America's leading professor of philosophy, Richard Rorty. Lawler also criticizes Bloom for his similarity to Rorty, joining Nichols in her discussion of Bloom's excessive debt to Rousseau. McDaniel and Mahoney present unfashionable appreciations, not without criticism, of the achievement of Leo Strauss's illiberal if not exactly communitarian thought. Finally, Anderson discusses Raymond Aron's prudent opposition to the oxymoronic global community. This is a unique and significant collection for all students and researchers interested in contemporary social and political thought.
Show moreThere is a crisis in America revolving around social and political life, and the contributors to this essay collection believe it has provoked a renewed attention to the issue of community in political thought. The 14 essays approach the question of community and political thought from a variety of perspectives, ranging from political philosophy to social theory. All the essays, however, share the concern of the opening essay by Hertzke and McRorie about moral ecology, or determining what is required for a vital and free social and political life and preserving it from erosion by individualism in its various forms.
Two of the essays, by Jardine and Stier, deal with understanding the communitarian impulse. Three, by Frohnen, Stone, and Woolfolk, evaluate perhaps the first major contribution to the communitarian movement, Habits of the Heart. While McClay's chapter seeks to restore the connection between federalism and communitarianism, Sharpe's essay connects the liberal-communitarian debate to the classic works of de Tocqueville and Arendt. Two essays, by Knippenberg and Lawler, criticize the quirky communitarianism of America's leading professor of philosophy, Richard Rorty. Lawler also criticizes Bloom for his similarity to Rorty, joining Nichols in her discussion of Bloom's excessive debt to Rousseau. McDaniel and Mahoney present unfashionable appreciations, not without criticism, of the achievement of Leo Strauss's illiberal if not exactly communitarian thought. Finally, Anderson discusses Raymond Aron's prudent opposition to the oxymoronic global community. This is a unique and significant collection for all students and researchers interested in contemporary social and political thought.
Show moreEssays on the issue of community and contemporary political thought.
Introduction
The Concept of Moral Ecology by Allen D. Hertzke and Chris
McRorie
Are Communitarians "Premodern" or "Postmodern?" The Place of
Communitarian Thought in Contemporary Political Theory by Murray
Jardine
How Much of Communitarianism is Left (and Right)? by Marc Stier
Does Robert Bellah Care about History? by Bruce Frohnen
Universal Benevolence, Adjective Justice, and the Rousseauean Way
by Brad Lowell Stone
Communitarianism and the Federal Idea by Wilfred M. McClay
Readings of Therapeutic Culture: From Phillip Reiff to Robert
Bellah by Alan Woolfolk
Advice from a Tocquevillian Liberal: Arendt, Tocqueville, and the
Liberal-Communitarian Debate by Barry Sharpe
Liberal Ironism and the Decay of Citizenship by Joseph
Knippenberg
Bloom's Ineffectual Response to Rorty by Peter Augustine Lawler
Romanticism, Cultural Literacy, and the Great Books: The Goals of
Education by Mary P. Nichols
The Illiberal Leo Strauss by Robb A. McDaniel
The Experience of Totalitarianism and the Recovery of Nature:
Reflections on Philosophy and Community in the Thought of
Solzhenitsyn, Havel, and Strauss by Daniel J. Mahoney
The Universal and the Particular: Of Nations and Empires in Raymond
Aron's Thought by Brian C. Anderson
Selected Bibliography
Index
PETER AUGUSTINE LAWLER is Professor of Political Science at
Berry College, Georgia. He is the author or editor of eight books
and more than 100 articles and book chapters.
DALE MCCONKEY is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Director of
the Freshman Center at Berry College. He has written various works
on the sociology of religion.
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