Narrative Power and Liberal Truth: Hobbes, Locke, Bentham, and Mill - Hardcover

Eisenach, Eldon J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0742507904 ISBN 13: 9780742507906

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2002

Synopsis

Liberal political thought-from its origins in the seventeenth-century through today's rights discourse-is grounded in the ideal of the autonomous individual. As the theory holds, these individuals are "born in freedom" from religious, political, social or economic obligations and then construct these systems through individual and collective choices. Over the past thirty years, however, this understanding of freedom has been challenged from a variety of perspectives.

Eldon J. Eisenach has been at the forefront of that challenge, stressing the centrality of religious elements and assumptions in liberal writings that many scholars suppressed or ignored. In Narrative Power and Liberal Truth Eisenach brings together eleven of his previously published essays to demonstrate that many "postmodernist" ideas of persons and freedom are already present within the tradition of liberal political philosophy and that liberalism itself is more capacious of human experience and meanings than modern critiques allow.

About this title

About the Author:

Eldon J. Eisenach is professor of political science at the University of Tulsa, and author of The Next Religious Establishment.

Review:

Fine writing style and impressive depth of scholarship. (Political Studies Review)

Serious scholars of any of these thinkers will benefit from Eisenach's book. Recommended. (CHOICE)

About this edition

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0742507904
• ISBN 13: 9780742507906
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256