Liberty Before Liberalism

Liberty Before Liberalism PDF Author: Quentin Skinner
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107689538
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 155

Book Description
Provides one of the most substantial statements about the importance, relevance, and potential excitement of this form of historical enquiry.

Liberty Before Liberalism

Liberty Before Liberalism PDF Author: Quentin Skinner
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521638760
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 152

Book Description
This extended essay by one of the world's leading historians seeks, in its first part, to excavate, and to vindicate, the neo-Roman theory of free citizens and free states as it developed in early-modern Britain. This analysis leads on to a powerful defence of the nature, purposes and goals of intellectual history and the history of ideas. As Quentin Skinner says, 'the intellectual historian can help us to appreciate how far the values embodied in our present way of life, and our present ways of thinking about those values, reflect a series of choices made at different times between different possible worlds'. This essay thus provides one of the most substantial statements yet made about the importance, relevance and potential excitement of this form of historical enquiry. Liberty before Liberalism is based on Quentin Skinner's Inaugural Lecture as Regius Professor of Modern History in the University of Cambridge, delivered in November 1997. Professor Skinner has been awarded the Balzan Prize Life Time Achievement Award for Political Thought, History and Theory. Full details of this award can be found at http://www.balzan.it/News_eng.aspx?ID=2474

Freedom

Freedom PDF Author: Annelien De Dijn
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674988337
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 433

Book Description
Winner of the PROSE Award An NRC Handelsblad Best Book of the Year “Ambitious and impressive...At a time when the very survival of both freedom and democracy seems uncertain, books like this are more important than ever.” —The Nation “Helps explain how partisans on both the right and the left can claim to be protectors of liberty, yet hold radically different understandings of its meaning...This deeply informed history of an idea has the potential to combat political polarization.” —Publishers Weekly “Ambitious and bold, this book will have an enormous impact on how we think about the place of freedom in the Western tradition.” —Samuel Moyn, author of Not Enough “Brings remarkable clarity to a big and messy subject...New insights and hard-hitting conclusions about the resistance to democracy make this essential reading for anyone interested in the roots of our current dilemmas.” —Lynn Hunt, author of History: Why It Matters For centuries people in the West identified freedom with the ability to exercise control over the way in which they were governed. The equation of liberty with restraints on state power—what most people today associate with freedom—was a deliberate and dramatic rupture with long-established ways of thinking. So what triggered this fateful reversal? In a masterful and surprising reappraisal of more than two thousand years of Western thinking about freedom, Annelien de Dijn argues that this was not the natural outcome of such secular trends as the growth of religious tolerance or the creation of market societies. Rather, it was propelled by an antidemocratic backlash following the French and American Revolutions. The notion that freedom is best preserved by shrinking the sphere of government was not invented by the revolutionaries who created our modern democracies—it was first conceived by their critics and opponents. De Dijn shows that far from following in the path of early American patriots, today’s critics of “big government” owe more to the counterrevolutionaries who tried to undo their work.

Hobbes and Republican Liberty

Hobbes and Republican Liberty PDF Author: Quentin Skinner
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521886767
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
A dazzling comparison of two rival theories about the nature of human liberty.

The Making of Modern Liberalism

The Making of Modern Liberalism PDF Author: Alan Ryan
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691163685
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 680

Book Description
One of the world's leading political thinkers explores the history, nature, and prospects of the liberal tradition The Making of Modern Liberalism is a deep and wide-ranging exploration of the origins and nature of liberalism from the Enlightenment through its triumphs and setbacks in the twentieth century and beyond. The book is the fruit of the more than four decades during which Alan Ryan, one of the world's leading political thinkers, reflected on the past of the liberal tradition—and worried about its future. This is essential reading for anyone interested in political theory or the history of liberalism.

The Invention of Market Freedom

The Invention of Market Freedom PDF Author: Eric MacGilvray
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139498959
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 217

Book Description
How did the value of freedom become so closely associated with the institution of the market? Why did the idea of market freedom hold so little appeal before the modern period and how can we explain its rise to dominance? In The Invention of Market Freedom, Eric MacGilvray addresses these questions by contrasting the market conception of freedom with the republican view that it displaced. After analyzing the ethical core and exploring the conceptual complexity of republican freedom, MacGilvray shows how this way of thinking was confronted with, altered in response to, and finally overcome by the rise of modern market societies. By learning to see market freedom as something that was invented, we can become more alert to the ways in which the appeal to freedom shapes and distorts our thinking about politics.

Liberalism

Liberalism PDF Author: Edmund Fawcett
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691168393
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 492

Book Description
A compelling history of liberalism from the nineteenth century to today Liberalism dominates today's politics just as it decisively shaped the American and European past. This engrossing history of liberalism—the first in English for many decades—traces liberalism’s ideals, successes, and failures through the lives and ideas of a rich cast of European and American thinkers and politicians, from the early nineteenth century to today. An enlightening account of a vulnerable but critically important political creed, Liberalism provides the vital historical and intellectual background for hard thinking about liberal democracy’s future.

Let Freedom Ring

Let Freedom Ring PDF Author: Sean Hannity
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0060735651
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 356

Book Description
As Americans, we face two fundamental questions: First, are we truly prepared to fight this new war to wipe out terrorism and terrorist regimes, and win it decisively -- no matter what sacrifices it requires or how long it takes? Second, are we once again prepared to teach our children the fundamental principles and values that make this country great -- the values that make this country worth fighting for, living for, and dying for? Sean Hannity is the hottest new phenomenon in TV and talk radio today. His gutsy, take-no-prisoners interviews and commentary on the Fox News Channel's Hannity & Colmes have made him one of cable television's most popular personalities. And his ascendance to the top of the talk radio world with ABC Radio's The Sean Hannity Show has won him a huge and devoted following that includes not only conservatives but anyone else who values straight talk over pandering and excuses. Now, in Let Freedom Ring, Sean Hannity offers a survey of the world -- political, social, and cultural -- as he sees it. Devoting special attention to 9/11, the war on terror, and the continuing threat we face at home and abroad, he makes clear that the greatest challenge we have to overcome may not be an attack from overseas, but the slow compromising of our national character. And he asks why, particularly in this time of war, should we entrust our future to the voices of the Left -- the very people who have spent decades ravaging so many of our core values and traditions? Our nation, as Hannity reminds us, was founded on the idea of freedom. And in order to protect our freedoms, he argues, we must stand vigilant against liberal attempts to compromise our strengths. From our military and intelligence forces, to our borders and airports, to our unified commitment to root out terrorists at home and abroad, he reveals how our strongest lines of defense have come under attack -- by left-wing voices within our government, media, schools, and elsewhere. And he shows how even domestic issues like taxation, education, patriotism, and the family have been exploited by liberals with their own agendas -- with potentially disastrous results. Filled with the commonsense commentary and passionate argument that have made Sean Hannity the most compelling conservative voice since Rush Limbaugh, Let Freedom Ring is an urgent call to arms. For, as Hannity warns, "We are engaged in a war of ideas. And civilization is at stake."

Republicanism

Republicanism PDF Author: Philip Pettit
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198290837
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 317

Book Description
This is the first full-length presentation of a republican alternative to the liberal and communitarian theories that have dominated political philosophy in recent years. The latest addition to the acclaimed Oxford Political Theory series, Pettit's eloquent and compelling account opens with an examination of the traditional republican conception of freedom as non-domination, contrasting this with established negative and positive views of liberty. The first part of the book traces the rise and decline of this conception, displays its many attractions, and makes a case for why it should still be regarded as a central political ideal. The second part of the book looks at what the implementation of the ideal would require with regard to substantive policy-making, constitutional and democratic design, regulatory control and the relation between state and civil society. Prominent in this account is a novel concept of democracy, under which government is exposed to systematic contestation, and a vision of state-societal relations founded upon civility and trust. Pettit's powerful and insightful new work offers not only a unified, theoretical overview of the many strands of republican ideas, but also a new and sophisticated perspective on studies in related fields including the history of ideas, jurisprudence, and criminology.

An Intellectual History of Liberalism

An Intellectual History of Liberalism PDF Author: Pierre Manent
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691207194
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 146

Book Description
Highlighting the social tensions that confront the liberal tradition, Pierre Manent draws a portrait of what we, citizens of modern liberal democracies, have become. For Manent, a discussion of liberalism encompasses the foundations of modern society, its secularism, its individualism, and its conception of rights. The frequent incapacity of the morally neutral, democratic state to further social causes, he argues, derives from the liberal stance that political life does not serve a higher purpose. Through quick-moving, highly synthetic essays, he explores the development of liberal thinking in terms of a single theme: the decline of theological politics. The author traces the liberal stance to Machiavelli, who, in seeking to divorce everyday life from the pervasive influence of the Catholic church, separated politics from all notions of a cosmological order. What followed, as Manent demonstrates in his analyses of Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau, Guizot, and Constant, was the evolving concept of an individual with no goals outside the confines of the self and a state with no purpose but to prevent individuals from dominating one another. Weighing both the positive and negative effects of such a political arrangement, Manent raises important questions about the fundamental political issues of the day, among them the possibility of individual rights being reconciled with the necessary demands of political organization, and the desirability of a government system neutral about religion but not about public morals.
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