UID:
edocfu_9958352637102883
Format:
1 online resource (352 pages) :
,
illustrations.
Edition:
Course Book.
Edition:
Electronic reproduction. Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, 1996. Mode of access: World Wide Web.
Edition:
System requirements: Web browser.
Edition:
Access may be restricted to users at subscribing institutions.
ISBN:
9781400821778
Content:
Why have radical political theorists, whose thinking inspired mass movements for democracy, been so suspicious of political plurality? According to Joseph Schwartz, their doubts were involved with an effort to transcend politics. Mistakenly equating all social difference with the harmful way in which particular interests dominated marketplace societies, radical thinkers sought a comprehensive set of "true human interests" that would completely abolish political strife. In extensive analyses of Rousseau, Hegel, Marx, Lenin, and Arendt, Schwartz seeks to mediate the radical critique of democratic capitalist societies with the concern for pluralism evidenced in both liberal and postmodern thought. He thus escapes the authoritarian potential of the radical position, while appropriating its more democratic implications.In Schwartz's view, a reconstructed radical democratic theory of politics must sustain liberalism's defense of individual rights and social pluralism, while redressing the liberal failure to question structural inequalities. In proposing such a theory, he criticizes communitarianism for its premodern longing for a monolithic, virtuous society, and challenges the "politics of difference" for its failure to question the undemocratic terrain of power on which "difference" is constructed. In conclusion, he maintains that an equitable distribution of power and resources among social groups necessitates not the transcendence of politics but its democratic expansion.
Note:
Frontmatter --
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CONTENTS --
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS --
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CHAPTER 1. Introduction: The Radical Impulse to Transcend Politics --
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CHAPTER 2. The Threat of Interests to the General Will: Rousseau’s Critique of Particularism --
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CHAPTER 3. The Hegelian State: Mediating Away the Political --
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CHAPTER 4. The Origins of Marx’s Hostility to Politics: The Devaluation of Rights and Justice --
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CHAPTER 5. Lenin (and Marx) on the Sciences of Consciousness and Production: The Abolition of Political Judgment --
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CHAPTER 6. Hannah Arendt’s Politics of "Action": The Elusive Search for Political Substance --
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CHAPTER 7. Conclusion: Redressing the Radical Tradition’s Antipolitical Legacy—Toward a Radical Democratic Pluralist Politics --
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NOTES --
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BIBLIOGRAPHY --
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INDEX.
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In English.
Language:
English
DOI:
10.1515/9781400821778
URL:
https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400821778
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