Democracy Reconsidered

(Paperback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

Democracy Reconsidered provides an enlightening study of democracy in America's post-modern context. Elizabeth Kaufer Busch and Peter Augustine Lawler explore some of the foundational principles of democracy as they have been borne out in American society. The essays included in this volume examine the lessons that novelists, philosophers, and political theorists have for democratic societies as they progress towards postmodern skepticism or even disbelief in the absolute principles that form the foundation of democracies.

Led by the provocative observations of Lawler, a member of President Bush's Council on Bioethics, the first section lays out the predicament caused by the gravitation of democracy towards a disbelief in absolute truth, leading to a "crisis of self-evidence." The second section searches for tools that one might use to restore health to the individual and community within American democracy, including spiritual faith, creative autonomy, and philosophic inquiry. The third section addresses the supposed "crisis in liberal education" caused by our "crisis of self-evidence." Included essays explore the extent to which the professed aims of liberal education may be at odds with the cultivation of dutiful citizens. The book closes by considering some of the political consequences of employing content-less freedom as the primary standard by which human behaviour is judged.

Reviews

The contributors to this fine collection offer a Tocquevillian reflection on democracy in America today in two respects: their investigation of thought and its relation to political action comprehends philosophy, science, religion, and the fine arts; and they write as friends of democracy who address what they regard as contemporary challenges to American government. -- Murray Dry, Middlebury College
Democracy Reconsidered is a remarkably lively and wide-ranging collection of essays that addresses the impact of democratic relativism on the modernand Americancharacter and soul. Whether exploring the contemporary crisis of self-evidence, the thought of Rorty, Montaigne, Tocqueville, and Strauss, or the role that liberal education can play in opening up democratic hearts and minds, these essays instruct, provoke, and charm. -- Daniel J. Mahoney, Assumption College

Author Bio

Elizabeth Kaufer Busch is assistant professor of American Studies and Government and co-director of the Center for American Studies and Civic Leadership at Christopher Newport University.

Peter Augustine Lawler is Dana Professor of Government at Berry College.