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The Permanence of the Political : A Democratic Critique of the Radical Impulse to Transcend Politics / Joseph M. Schwartz.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, [1995]Copyright date: ©1996Edition: Course BookDescription: 1 online resource (352 p.)Content type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9780691033570
  • 9781400821778
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 320.01 335
LOC classification:
  • HX73.S385 1995
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources: Available additional physical forms:
  • Issued also in print.
Contents:
Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- CHAPTER 1. Introduction: The Radical Impulse to Transcend Politics -- CHAPTER 2. The Threat of Interests to the General Will: Rousseau's Critique of Particularism -- CHAPTER 3. The Hegelian State: Mediating Away the Political -- CHAPTER 4. The Origins of Marx's Hostility to Politics: The Devaluation of Rights and Justice -- CHAPTER 5. Lenin (and Marx) on the Sciences of Consciousness and Production: The Abolition of Political Judgment -- CHAPTER 6. Hannah Arendt's Politics of "Action": The Elusive Search for Political Substance -- CHAPTER 7. Conclusion: Redressing the Radical Tradition's Antipolitical Legacy-Toward a Radical Democratic Pluralist Politics -- NOTES -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- INDEX
Summary: 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.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9781400821778

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- CHAPTER 1. Introduction: The Radical Impulse to Transcend Politics -- CHAPTER 2. The Threat of Interests to the General Will: Rousseau's Critique of Particularism -- CHAPTER 3. The Hegelian State: Mediating Away the Political -- CHAPTER 4. The Origins of Marx's Hostility to Politics: The Devaluation of Rights and Justice -- CHAPTER 5. Lenin (and Marx) on the Sciences of Consciousness and Production: The Abolition of Political Judgment -- CHAPTER 6. Hannah Arendt's Politics of "Action": The Elusive Search for Political Substance -- CHAPTER 7. Conclusion: Redressing the Radical Tradition's Antipolitical Legacy-Toward a Radical Democratic Pluralist Politics -- NOTES -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- INDEX

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http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

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.

Issued also in print.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 30. Aug 2021)