Democracy ReconsideredElizabeth Kaufer Busch, Peter Augustine Lawler "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 toward 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 behavior is judged."--BOOK JACKET. |
Contents
Our Crisis of SelfEvidence | 3 |
The American Context of Leo Strausss Natural Right and History | 13 |
Gender Feminism in America A Reconsideration of Nietzsches Anti feminism | 27 |
AntiSnobs and AntiArtists | 49 |
Autonomy and Cruelty Rorty and Montaigne on the Social Bond | 67 |
Democracy and Philosophy as a Way of Life | 79 |
A Tale of Two Liberals Rediscovering American Liberalism in Flannery OConnors The Barber | 87 |
The Rift in the Modern Mind Tocqueville and Percy on the Rise of the Cartesian Self | 101 |
Chapter 11 Liberal Education and the Democratic Man | 147 |
Liberal Education A Friendly Critic of Liberal Democracy | 155 |
Friendly Critics Tocqueville and Croly on American Political Parties | 173 |
Bioethics and the American Character | 193 |
A response by Eric Stone | 210 |
Progress or Tyranny? The Goodridge Dissents | 215 |
Women against Liberation Opposing Feminism in a Democratic Age | 233 |
| 261 | |
Religion and Community in Liberal Education and Liberal Democracy | 121 |
A Plea to Protect and Promote the Small Liberal Arts College as Such | 137 |
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