On Cultivating Liberty: Reflections on Moral Ecology - Hardcover

Novak Former U.S. Ambassador To The U.N. Human Rights Commission 1994 Templeton, Michael; Anderson, Brian C.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0847694054 ISBN 13: 9780847694051

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1999

Synopsis

Few writers have covered the intellectual terrain traversed by Michael Novak, who has written on theology, philosophy, political economy, and business theory. This book brings together many of Novak's crucial essays on "moral ecology": the ethos that must be cultivated and preserved if liberal democratic societies are to survive. Novak argues in defense of the free and virtuous society by examining the family, welfare reform, free markets, self-government, and the American founding. A series of remarkable intellectual studies on figures such as Jacques Maritain, St. Thomas Aquinas, and John Courtney Murray, along with an autobiographical essay by Novak and an introduction by Brian C. Anderson, complete On Cultivating Liberty, an indispensable book for anyone concerned about the future of the democratic project as we enter the third millennium.

About this title

About the Author:

Michael Novak is a cofounder and former publisher of Crisis magazine, and a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, National Review, and Forbes. He has written more than 25 books, including The Fire of Invention: Civil Society and the Future of the Corporation (Rowman & Littlefield, 1997). Novak lives in Washington DC.

Brian C. Anderson is a research associate in social and political studies at the American Enterprise Institute, and the author of Raymond Aron: The Recovery of the Political (Rowman & Littlefield, 1997).

Review:

Michael Novak's concern over many years has been to ground the defense of capitalism in a long tradition of western moral reflection. This collection of essays presents this concern in a compact and highly lucid form. The book can be read with pleasure both by those familiar with Novak's earlier work and by those coming to his ideas for the first time. (Peter L. Berger, Boston University)

In these essays on the cultural foundations of freedom, one of America's leading intellectuals reinvigorates a great tradition of social thought. Michael Novak enriches theories of civil society by supplying their missing links to Jewish and Christian teachings, and modernizes them with his sophisticated concept of 'moral ecology.' On Cultivating Liberty is a compelling brief against the moral deregulation that threatens the free market and the democratic experiment alike. (Mary Ann Glendon, Learned Hand Professor of Law, Harvard University, former U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See)

In these reflections, Michael Novak moves with magisterial ease over the common ground between ethics and economics. More even than in his earlier volumes, Novak demonstrates with calm clarity, how a proper understanding of liberty and its moral ecology leads not only to the good life but to good lives. A major contribution to resolving issues that still vex us at the end of the century. (Bob Royal, Ethics and Public Policy Center)

This collection of Michael's Novak's 'best essays' is a necessary resource for those interested in the mature thought of this important thinker. ...the final essay, Errands into the Wilderness, covers some of the same ground as the essay Controversial Engagements from an interestingly different angle. (First Things, May, 1999)

Novak <... is well known as a defender of democratic capitalism. The pieces in this collection <... are intended to situate that defense in a larger context. (Joseph M. Knippenberg, Oglethorpe University Perspectives on Political Science, Vol. 29, No. 2)

Novak's suggestions for preserving and improving regimes of liberty is still another fine contribution to the growing list of theorists attempting to grapple with the slide of liberty into individual and collective relativism and even nihilism. (The Journal Of Religion)

About this edition

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0847694054
• ISBN 13: 9780847694051
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 368