Faith, Reason, and Political Life Today

(Paperback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

This rich and varied collection of essays addresses some of the most fundamental human questions through the lenses of philosophy, literature, religion, politics, and theology. Peter Augustine Lawler and Dale McConkey have fashioned an interdisciplinary consideration of such perennial and enduring issues as the relationship between nature and history, nature and grace, reason and revelation, classical philosophy and Christianity, modernity and postmodernity, repentance and self-limitation, and philosophy and politics. These tensions are explored through the works of such eminent thinkers as Aristotle, Augustine, and Tocqueville, but the contributors engage a wide variety of texts from popular culture, American literatureFlannery O'Connor receives notable attentionand social theory to create a remarkably comprehensive, if far from harmonious, introduction to political philosphy today.

Reviews

Offers challenging and often brilliant examples of what moral and political reflection must be today, as the history of human striving for meaning seems to be finding its end in the satisfactions of technology..... -- Ralph Hancock, Brigham Young University
For the authors in this volumeas it was for Tocqueville and Nietzsche before thema homogeneously democratic epoch would be one permeated by narcissistic self-satisfaction and moral degradation. Anyone troubled by these unintended byproducts of the democratic ageand hoping to find resources with which to resist themwill relish the serious and sober essays collected in this volume. * First Things *
The collection... describe[s] interesting new directions that liberated and pluralistic scholarship can take.... Individual essays... resonate deeply with readers' own academic projects.... There are many good reads here. * American Political Science Review *
With the Applications of Political Theory series, professors Peter Lawler and Dale McConkey offer a fine assorttment of essays in two complementary volumes, making a considerable contribution to that dialogue...Together, they constitute an impressive cross-section of research and reflection friendly to saving a place for religion in American politics. * Perspectives on Political Science *
Lively, thought-provoking essays on the relevance of Christianity and classical thought to the crisis of modernity and the challenges of postmodernism. The voices of Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Tocqueville, Solzhenitsyn, Manent, O'Connor, Percy, Murray, and Strauss transcend both secular optimism and pessimism in their encounter with the American identity and Kojve's "end of history." -- Ann Hartle, Emory University

Offers challenging and often brilliant examples of what moral and political reflection must be today, as the history of human striving for meaning seems
to be finding its end in the satisfactions of technology.

Author Bio

Peter Augustine Lawler is Professor Government at Berry College. Dale McConkey is Associate Professor of Sociology at Berry College. He is the Editor-in-Chief of The Christian Sociologist, and co-editor of Social Structures, Social Capital, and Personal Freedom (with Peter Augustine Lawler, 2000).