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Breaking Democracys Spell
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Book Synopsis Breaking Democracy's Spell by : John Dunn
Download or read book Breaking Democracy's Spell written by John Dunn and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-01 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this timely and important work, eminent political theorist John Dunn argues that democracy is not synonymous with good government. The author explores the labyrinthine reality behind the basic concept of democracy, demonstrating how the political system that people in the West generally view as straightforward and obvious is, in fact, deeply unclear and, in many cases, dysfunctional. Consisting of four thought-provoking lectures, Dunn’s book sketches the path by which democracy became the only form of government with moral legitimacy, analyzes the contradictions and pitfalls of modern American democracy, and challenges the academic world to take responsibility for giving the world a more coherent understanding of this widely misrepresented political institution. Suggesting that the supposedly ideal marriage of liberal economics with liberal democracy can neither ensure its continuance nor even address the problems of contemporary life, this courageous analysis attempts to show how we came to be so gripped by democracy’s spell and why we must now learn to break it.
Book Synopsis Breaking the Spell by : Daniel C. Dennett
Download or read book Breaking the Spell written by Daniel C. Dennett and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2006-02-02 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times bestseller – a “crystal-clear, constantly engaging” (Jared Diamond) exploration of the role that religious belief plays in our lives and our interactions For all the thousands of books that have been written about religion, few until this one have attempted to examine it scientifically: to ask why—and how—it has shaped so many lives so strongly. Is religion a product of blind evolutionary instinct or rational choice? Is it truly the best way to live a moral life? Ranging through biology, history, and psychology, Daniel C. Dennett charts religion’s evolution from “wild” folk belief to “domesticated” dogma. Not an antireligious screed but an unblinking look beneath the veil of orthodoxy, Breaking the Spell will be read and debated by believers and skeptics alike.
Download or read book High Conflict written by Amanda Ripley and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-04-05 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In the tradition of bestselling explainers like The Tipping Point, [this] book [is] based on cutting edge science that breaks down the idea of extreme conflict--the kind that paralyzes people and places--and then shows how to escape it"--
Download or read book On Tyranny written by Timothy Snyder and published by Crown. This book was released on 2017-02-28 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A “bracing” (Vox) guide for surviving and resisting America’s turn towards authoritarianism, from “a rising public intellectual unafraid to make bold connections between past and present” (The New York Times) “Timothy Snyder reasons with unparalleled clarity, throwing the past and future into sharp relief. He has written the rare kind of book that can be read in one sitting but will keep you coming back to help regain your bearings.”—Masha Gessen The Founding Fathers tried to protect us from the threat they knew, the tyranny that overcame ancient democracy. Today, our political order faces new threats, not unlike the totalitarianism of the twentieth century. We are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience. On Tyranny is a call to arms and a guide to resistance, with invaluable ideas for how we can preserve our freedoms in the uncertain years to come.
Book Synopsis Wittgenstein and Democratic Politics by : Lotar Rasiński
Download or read book Wittgenstein and Democratic Politics written by Lotar Rasiński and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-10-28 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume demonstrates how Wittgenstein’s philosophy can illuminate our understanding of politics and open new ways of conceptualizing democratic theory and practice. Its focus is on language, reason and communication as central to identifying present confusions in our understanding of democracy. The book seeks to engage Wittgenstein’s philosophical insights, aiming to go beyond the dichotomous oppositions and conceptual entanglements pervading existing frameworks of social and political theories of democracy. Its key topic is the irreplaceable role of dialogue in civic democratic engagement as a condition for the understanding of self and others and, hence, for political life in which reason has a role. Indeed, it presents concrete examples of how Wittgenstein can be constructively applied to current political discourse. Part I of the volume focuses on the general idea of applying Wittgenstein’s philosophy to political and democratic theory and explains the deep and intrinsic relation between Wittgenstein’s thought and politics. Part II discusses Wittgenstein’s concrete concepts as illuminating for understanding selected aspects of democratic politics. Part III deals with a possible exchange between Wittgenstein and other political thinkers, especially Hannah Arendt. Wittgenstein and Democratic Politics will appeal to researchers and advanced students working on Wittgenstein’s philosophy, political philosophy and democratic theory.
Book Synopsis Politics against Domination by : Ian Shapiro
Download or read book Politics against Domination written by Ian Shapiro and published by Belknap Press. This book was released on 2016-04-04 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ian Shapiro makes a compelling case that the overriding purpose of politics should be to combat domination. Moreover, he shows how to put resistance to domination into practice at home and abroad. This is a major work of applied political theory, a profound challenge to utopian visions, and a guide to fundamental problems of justice and distribution. “Shapiro’s insights are trenchant, especially with regards to the Citizens United decision, and his counsel on how the ‘status-quo bias’ in national political institutions favors the privileged. After more than a decade of imperial overreach, his restrained account of foreign policy should likewise find support.” —Scott A. Lucas, Los Angeles Review of Books “Shapiro has a brief and compelling section on the importance of hope in his first chapter. This book enacts and encourages hope, with its analytical clarity, deep engagement of complicated political issues that resist easy theorizing, and emphasis on the politically possible.” —Kathleen Tipler, Political Science Quarterly “Offers important insights for thinking about democracy’s prospects.” —Christopher Hobson, Perspectives on Politics
Book Synopsis Democracy: Clarifying the Muddle by : Howard Burton
Download or read book Democracy: Clarifying the Muddle written by Howard Burton and published by Open Agenda Publishing. This book was released on 2020-10-01 with total page 39 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and renowned political theorist John Dunn, University of Cambridge. Through an engaging dialogue format, John Dunn candidly shares his deep insights on the historical development and current significance and future of democracy in different parts of the world and the relevance of political science departments in achieving democracy and other worthwhile goals. This carefully-edited book includes an introduction, Democratic Daze, and questions for discussion at the end of each chapter: I. Illusions and Confusions - Unmasking American stereotypes II. Historical Examinations - The power of etymology III. Thinking Deeper - Minimizing political bads IV. Trust and Belief - Thinking critically V. China - Challenging Western ideals? VI. India - The world’s largest democracy VII. Power to the People - Overthrowing autocracy and what happens next VIII. Towards Progress - Why we should care about all of this IX. Professional Indulgence - Critically examining “political science” About Ideas Roadshow Conversations: Presented in an accessible, conversational format, Ideas Roadshow books not only explore frontline academic research but also reveal the inspirations and personal journeys behind the research.
Book Synopsis The Enchantments of Mammon by : Eugene McCarraher
Download or read book The Enchantments of Mammon written by Eugene McCarraher and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2019-11-12 with total page 817 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An extraordinary work of intellectual history as well as a scholarly tour de force, a bracing polemic, and a work of Christian prophecy...McCarraher challenges more than 200 years of post-Enlightenment assumptions about the way we live and work.” —The Observer At least since Max Weber, capitalism has been understood as part of the “disenchantment” of the world, stripping material objects and social relations of their mystery and magic. In this magisterial work, Eugene McCarraher challenges this conventional view. Capitalism, he argues, is full of sacrament, whether one is prepared to acknowledge it or not. First flowering in the fields and factories of England and brought to America by Puritans and evangelicals, whose doctrine made ample room for industry and profit, capitalism has become so thoroughly enmeshed in the fabric of our society that our faith in “the market” has become sacrosanct. Informed by cultural history and theology as well as management theory, The Enchantments of Mammon looks to nineteenth-century Romantics, whose vision of labor combined reason, creativity, and mutual aid, for salvation. In this impassioned challenge to some of our most firmly held assumptions, McCarraher argues that capitalism has hijacked our intrinsic longing for divinity—and urges us to break its hold on our souls. “A majestic achievement...It is a work of great moral and spiritual intelligence, and one that invites contemplation about things we can’t afford not to care about deeply.” —Commonweal “More brilliant, more capacious, and more entertaining, page by page, than his most ardent fans dared hope. The magnitude of his accomplishment—an account of American capitalism as a religion...will stun even skeptical readers.” —Christian Century
Book Synopsis Democracy and Complexity by : Danilo Zolo
Download or read book Democracy and Complexity written by Danilo Zolo and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a highly original and provocative contribution to democratic theory. Zolo argues that the increasing complexity of modern societies represents a fundamental challenge to the basic assumptions of the Western democratic tradition and calls for a reformulation of some of the key questions of political theory. Zolo maintains that, as modern societies become more complex and more involved in the "information revolution," they are subjected to new and unprecedented forms of stress--as manifested, for instance, in the growing autonomy and power of political parties, and in new kinds of political communication which create the fiction of consensus. These stresses have become so serious that they threaten to undermine some of the values traditionally associated with democracy, such as the rationality and autonomy of the individual, and the visibility and accountability of power. In conclusion, Zolo develops a set of proposals which seek to renew democratic values and to contribute to a fundamental reform of Western political systems.
Download or read book Party Life written by Eric Li and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-10-31 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The emergence of China as a great power is perhaps the most consequential development for the world in the 21st century. Yet, what the Western world sees in this development is largely through the prism of misinterpreted ideological dichotomy and misguided geopolitical rivalry. This book offers a deep look at the Chinese Communist Party and the nation it leads at conceptual, historic, and operational levels. If Thomas Kuhn’s concept of paradigm shift can be used in the social sciences, then China would represent the most significant anomaly to the dominant liberal exemplar. For students of China and of politics in general, and for the Western political and commercial elites, if they were to read one book about China to grasp the nature and weight of the Chinese phenomenon, Party Life would be it.
Download or read book Me the People written by Nadia Urbinati and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2019-08-06 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A timely and incisive assessment of what the success of populism means for democracy. Populist movements have recently appeared in nearly every democracy around the world. Yet our grasp of this disruptive political phenomenon remains woefully inadequate. Politicians of all stripes appeal to the interests of the people, and every opposition party campaigns against the current establishment. What, then, distinguishes populism from run-of-the-mill democratic politics? And why should we be concerned by its rise? In Me the People, Nadia Urbinati argues that populism should be regarded as a new form of representative government, one based on a direct relationship between the leader and those the leader defines as the “good” or “right” people. Populist leaders claim to speak to and for the people without the need for intermediaries—in particular, political parties and independent media—whom they blame for betraying the interests of the ordinary many. Urbinati shows that, while populist governments remain importantly distinct from dictatorial or fascist regimes, their dependence on the will of the leader, along with their willingness to exclude the interests of those deemed outside the bounds of the “good” or “right” people, stretches constitutional democracy to its limits and opens a pathway to authoritarianism. Weaving together theoretical analysis, the history of political thought, and current affairs, Me the People presents an original and illuminating account of populism and its relation to democracy.
Book Synopsis Demos Assembled by : Stephen W. Sawyer
Download or read book Demos Assembled written by Stephen W. Sawyer and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-04-13 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An intelligent, engaging, and in-depth reading of the nature of the state and the establishment of the modern political order in the mid-nineteenth century. Previous studies have covered in great detail how the modern state slowly emerged from the early Renaissance through the seventeenth century, but we know relatively little about the next great act: the birth and transformation of the modern democratic state. And in an era where our democratic institutions are rife with conflict, it’s more important now than ever to understand how our institutions came into being. Stephen W. Sawyer’s Demos Assembled provides us with a fresh, transatlantic understanding of that political order’s genesis. While the French influence on American political development is well understood, Sawyer sheds new light on the subsequent reciprocal influence that American thinkers and politicians had on the establishment of post-revolutionary regimes in France. He argues that the emergence of the stable Third Republic (1870–1940), which is typically said to have been driven by idiosyncratic internal factors, was in fact a deeply transnational, dynamic phenomenon. Sawyer’s findings reach beyond their historical moment, speaking broadly to conceptions of state formation: how contingent claims to authority, whether grounded in violence or appeals to reason and common cause, take form as stateness.
Download or read book People power written by Robert G. Ingram and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2022-07-19 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: People power explores the history of the theory and practice of popular power. Western thinking about politics has two fundamental features: 1) popular power in practice is problematic and 2) nothing confers political legitimacy except popular sovereignty. This book explains how we got to our current default position, in which rule of, for and by the people is simultaneously a practical problem and a received truth of politics. The book asks readers to think about how appreciating that history shapes the way we think about the people’s power in the present. Drawn from the disciplines of history and political theory, the contributors to this volume engage in a mutually informing conversation about popular power. They conclude that the problems that first gave rise to popular sovereignty remain simultaneously compelling, unresolved and worthy of further attention.
Download or read book Democracy written by Paul Cartledge and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-03-03 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ancient Greece first coined the concept of "democracy", yet almost every major ancient Greek thinker-from Plato and Aristotle onwards- was ambivalent towards or even hostile to democracy in any form. The explanation for this is quite simple: the elite perceived majority power as tantamount to a dictatorship of the proletariat. In ancient Greece there can be traced not only the rudiments of modern democratic society but the entire Western tradition of anti-democratic thought. In Democracy, Paul Cartledge provides a detailed history of this ancient political system. In addition, by drawing out the salient differences between ancient and modern forms of democracy he enables a richer understanding of both. Cartledge contends that there is no one "ancient Greek democracy" as pure and simple as is often believed. Democracy surveys the emergence and development of Greek politics, the invention of political theory, and-intimately connected to the latter- the birth of democracy, first at Athens in c. 500 BCE and then at its greatest flourishing in the Greek world 150 years later. Cartledge then traces the decline of genuinely democratic Greek institutions at the hands of the Macedonians and-subsequently and decisively-the Romans. Throughout, he sheds light on the variety of democratic practices in the classical world as well as on their similarities to and dissimilarities from modern democratic forms, from the American and French revolutions to contemporary political thought. Authoritative and accessible, Cartledge's book will be regarded as the best account of ancient democracy and its long afterlife for many years to come.
Download or read book Democracy in China written by Jiwei Ci and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2019-11-19 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A respected Chinese political philosopher calls for the Communist Party to take the lead in moving China along the path to democracy before it is too late. With Xi Jinping potentially set as president for life, China’s move toward political democracy may appear stalled. But Jiwei Ci argues that four decades of reform have created a mentality in the Chinese people that is just waiting for the political system to catch up, resulting in a disjunction between popular expectations and political realities. The inherent tensions in a largely democratic society without a democratic political system will trigger an unprecedented crisis of legitimacy, forcing the Communist Party to act or die. Two crises loom for the government. First is the waning of the Communist Party’s revolutionary legacy, which the party itself sees as a grave threat. Second is the fragility of the next leadership transition. No amount of economic success will compensate for the party’s legitimacy deficit when the time comes. The only effective response, Ci argues, will be an orderly transition to democracy. To that end, the Chinese government needs to start priming its citizens for democracy, preparing them for new civil rights and civic responsibilities. Embracing this pragmatic role offers the Communist Party a chance to survive. Its leaders therefore have good reason to initiate democratic change. Sure to challenge the Communist Party and stir debate, Democracy in China brings an original and important voice to an issue with far-reaching consequences for China and the world.
Book Synopsis Moderate and Radical Liberalism by : Nathaniel Wolloch
Download or read book Moderate and Radical Liberalism written by Nathaniel Wolloch and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-01-31 with total page 982 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new reading of a crucial chapter in the history of social and political thought – the transition from the late Enlightenment to early liberalism.
Book Synopsis Liberal Disorder, States of Exception, and Populist Politics by : Valur Ingimundarson
Download or read book Liberal Disorder, States of Exception, and Populist Politics written by Valur Ingimundarson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-12-20 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Liberal democracy is in trouble. This volume considers the crosscutting causes and manifestations of the current crisis facing the liberal order. Over the last decade, liberal democracy has come under mounting pressure in many unanticipated ways. In response to seemingly endless crisis conditions, governments have turned with alarming frequency to extraordinary emergency powers derogating the rule of law and democratic processes. The shifting interconnections between new technologies and public power have raised questions about threats posed to democratic values and norms. Finally, the liberal order has been challenged by authoritarian and populist forces promoting anti- pluralist agendas. Adopting a synoptic perspective that puts liberal disorder at the center of its investigation, this book uses multiple sources to build a common historical and conceptual framework for understanding major contemporary political currents. The contributions weave together historical studies and conceptual analyses of states of exception, emergency powers, and their links with technological innovations, as well as the tension-ridden relationship between populism and democracy and its theoretical, ideological, and practical implications. The book will be of interest to scholars and students of a number of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences: history, political science, philosophy, constitutional and international law, sociology, cultural studies, anthropology, and economics.
