Strong Liberalism: Habits of Mind for Democratic Citizenship

封面
UPNE, 2008 - 270 頁
In this age of "total" war on terrorism, many liberals fail to recognize the dangers of adopting the methods of their enemies--of meeting propaganda with propaganda, cruelty with cruelty, and violence with violence. Other liberals reject even modest efforts to teach and regulate good citizenship, fearing that in doing so they will come to resemble their enemies. Can liberal democracy be strengthened and secured without either compromising basic liberal principles or emasculating fundamental liberal purposes? The great totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century are gone, but the need for "strong liberalism" has never been more urgent.

Jason A. Scorza argues that liberalism can generate an account of citizenship responsive to such pressing contemporary challenges as political fear, political apathy, and conformist political membership. Strong Liberalism is founded on understanding thoroughly the canonical defenders of liberal democracy (John Stuart Mill, John Rawls, and Judith Shklar), moving beyond the thinking of prominent contemporary theorists (Stephen Macedo, William Galston, and Thomas Spragens), and parrying the arguments of liberalism's critics (Benjamin Barber, Michael Sandel, and Mary Ann Glendon). Scorza imparts a sharp theory of "strong liberalism" that summons liberal philosophy to the battlefield of the inner life of politics and recalls it to its own essential but often overlooked strengths: civic friendship, political courage, political self-reliance, civic toleration, and political irreverence. The theory of strong liberalism accepts that civic strength is rooted in civic pluralism. Liberal democracy is best served by the cultivation of multiple examples of good citizenship rather than by the insistence that a single, ideal civic character can be identified and universally imposed through civic education.

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內容

Fear and the Inner Life of Politics II
11
Emersons Legacy for Strong Liberalism
36
From Civic Pluralism to Civic Toleration
56
Political SelfReliance and Liberal Citizenship
78
Civic Friendship for Uncivil Society
98
The Ambivalence of Political Courage
116
The Jokes the Thing
134
Civic Education for Strong Liberalism
162
Conclusion
186
Works Cited
243
Index
263
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關於作者 (2008)

JASON A. SCORZA is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Political Science; Director of the School of English, Philosophy and Humanities, and Director of the School of Art and Media Studies at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck, New Jersey.

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