Public Philosophy and Political Science: Crisis and Reflection

(Paperback)

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This collection of essays catalogues the decay of the moral and intellectual foundations of civic liberty, and portrays a generation of Americans alienated from institutions built on public philosophy. The contributors examine the evolution of public philosophy, the inextricable relationship between politics and philosophy, and the interplay between public philosophy, the constitution, natural law and government. They reveal the dire threat to deliberative democracy and the fundamental order of constitutional society posed by public philosophy's waning power to refine, cultivate and civilize. This work is an indictment of a society which has discarded a way of life roted in natural law, democracy and the traditions of civility and is, furthermore, a denunciation of an educated elite that has divorced itself from the standards upon which public philosophy rests.

Reviews

A provocatively diverse collection of deeply thoughtful responses to the twin crises of our disintegrating public philosophy and our intellectually floundering political science. Walter Lippman's famous warning meditation is updated, vindicated, and made the starting point for instructive and potentially galvanizing recommendations for a wholesale redesign of political science education and research agendas. -- Thomas L. Pangle, University of Texas at Austin
E. Robert Statham Jr has brought together a diverse and interesting array of perspectives on the relation between the current 'crisis of public philosophy' and the discipline of political science. Commentators who question contemporary political 'science' from the 'outsider' perspective of classical political philosophy or natural law rub shoulders with others who emphasize, in different ways, the failure of political scientists to make an effective contribution to the renewal of public philosophy. Anyone who wishes to reflect seriously on this ongoing 'crisis' needs to confront the questions raised so well in this volume. -- Christopher Wolfe, Marquette University

Author Bio

E. Robert Statham Jr is Associate Professor of Political Science and Chair of the Division of Social & Behavioral Sciences at the University of Guam.