Ronald Beiner

In Dangerous Minds, Ronald Beiner traces the deeper philosophical roots of such far-right ideologues as Richard Spencer, Aleksandr Dugin, and Steve Bannon, to the writings of Nietzsche and Heidegger—and specifically to the aspects of their thought that express revulsion for the liberal-democratic view of life.

Nietzsche, Heidegger, and the Return of the Far Right

Dangerous Minds

Liberals believe that the purpose of politics is to guarantee that individuals do not face unfair impediments in pursuing the lives they choose for themselves. Nationalists believe that the purpose of politics is to ensure that a people's sense of authentic nationhood wins full expression in powers of collective sovereignty or self-rule. Both of these forms of political commitment yield world-transforming political philosophies, but do either of these visions do adequate justice to a philosophically robust ideal of shared citizenship and civic membership? In Liberalism, Nationalism, Citizenship, Ronald Beiner engages critically with a wide range of important political thinkers and current debates in light of the Aristotelean idea that shared citizenship is an essential human calling. Virtually every aspect of contemporary political experience - globalization, international migration, secessionist movements, the politics of multiculturalism - pose urgent challenges to modern citizenship. Beiner's work on the philosophy of citizenship is essential reading not just for students of politics and political philosophy, but for all those who rightly sense that these kinds of recent challen

Essays on the Problem of Political Community

Liberalism, Nationalism, Citizenship

Civil Religion offers philosophical commentaries on more than twenty thinkers stretching from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. It examines four important traditions within the history of modern political philosophy. The civil religion tradition, principally defined by Machiavelli, Hobbes and Rousseau, seeks to domesticate religion by putting it solidly in the service of politics. The liberal tradition pursues an alternative strategy of domestication by seeking to put as much distance as possible between religion and politics. Modern theocracy is a militant reaction against liberalism, reversing the relationship of subordination asserted by civil religion. Finally, a fourth tradition is defined by Nietzsche and Heidegger. Aspects of their thought are not just modern, but hyper-modern, yet they manifest an often-hysterical reaction against liberalism that is fundamentally shared with the theocratic tradition. Together, these four traditions compose a vital dialogue that carries us to the heart of political philosophy itself.

A Dialogue in the History of Political Philosophy

Civil Religion

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1992.

What's the Matter with Liberalism?

Originally published in 1983. One of the basic capacities of man as a political being is his faculty of judgement. Yet for all the books on concepts like freedom, equality and authority, surprisingly little attention has been given to this topic in the tradition of Western political thought. What is the nature of political judgement? What endows us, as human beings, with the ability to make reasonable judgements about human affairs and to judge the common world we share with others? By what means to we secure validity for our judgements? What are the underlying conditions of this human capacity, and what implications does it have the understanding of politics? These questions, central as they are to any reflection on politics have rarely been addressed in a systematic way. This book examines Kant’s concept of taste and Aristotle’s concept of prudence, as well as recent works of political philosophy by Arendt, Gadamer and Habermas, all crucially influenced by Kant and Aristotle.

Political Judgement

Richard B. Day

Joseph Masciulli

What are the chief challenges posed to contemporary democracy by modern technology, and how can democratic theory best respond to, or at least reflect on, those challenges? Inhabiting the kind of technologically advanced era in which we live, what sources are available within political theory for theoretical insight concerning the problem of democratic engagement with technology? The purpose of this volume is to canvas a broad range of theorists and theoretical traditions in order to address these questions, including Hegel and Marx, Rousseau and John Dewey, Heidegger and Simone Weil, Habermas and Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt and Hans Jonas. Commentaries on all these important thinkers -- focused on the issue of contemporary technology as posing unique social and political challenges for democratic political life -- yields rich and ambitious resources for theoretical reflection.

Democratic Theory and Technological Society

Political Judgement (Routledge Library Editions: Political Science Volume 20)

Jennifer Nedelsky

Fourteen contributions from international academics examine the themes of judgment, imagination, and politics in the philosophy of Hannah Arendt and Immanuel Kant. In the introduction, Beiner and Nedelsky (both political science, U. of Toronto) discuss the problem of political judgment and the recognition of subjectivity. Other topics include the challenges of diversity to the law, the public use of reason, and Arendt's lectures on Kant. c. Book News Inc.

Ronald Beiner

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