The Ennobling of Democracy: The Challenge of the Postmodern Age (The Johns Hopkins Series in Constitutional Thought) - Hardcover

Pangle, Professor Thomas L.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 080184262X ISBN 13: 9780801842627

Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991

Synopsis

With the end of the Cold War, says Thomas L. Pangle, liberal democracy was deprived of its traditional enemy, and forced to re-examine its internal structure and fundamental aims. One result has been the moral-relativist "postmodernism" of mainstream Western intellectuals.

Focusing on Lyotard, Vattimo, and Rorty, The Ennobling of Democracy offers a searching critique of postmodernism and its implications for political life and thought. Pangle carefully examines the political dimensions of postmodernist teachings, including the rejection of the natural-rights doctrines of the Enlightenment, the discounting of public purposefulness, and the disenchantment with claims of civic virtue and reason. He argues that a serious challenge has been posed to postmodernism by the emerging democracies of Eastern Europe, which have directly experienced heroic political leadership, maintained a prominent place for religion, and preserved a belief in the virtues and duties of citizenship. They consequently make demands on Western thought that postmodernism has been unable to meet.

Drawing on the classical republican ideal, Pangle opens the door to a bold new synthesis in political philosophy. He argues that by reappropriating classical civic rationalism--and especially classical philosophy of education--a framework may be established to integrate the most significant findings of modern rationalism into a conception of humanity that encompasses, in an unprecedented way, the entire scope of the human condition.

"Pangle's argument forces me to articulate and deepen my own views. The book, consequently, is a fine example of the dialectic which it is part of Pangle's purpose to defend, and will make an important contribution to civic education."-- Wilson Carey McWilliams, Rutgers University

About this title

About the Author

Thomas L. Pangle is professor of political science at the University of Toronto. His many acclaimed publications include Montesquieu's Philosophy of Liberalsim and The Spirit of Modern Republicanism: The Moral Vision of the American Founders and the Philosophy of Locke. He has also published a number of translations of Platonic dialogues, including The Laws of Plato and The Roots of Political Philosophy: Ten Forgotten Socratic Dialogues.

Reviews

Following in the wake of Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind--a valiant attempt by Pangle (Political Science/Univ. of Toronto) to deconstruct deconstructionism and to post a warning of the threat of postmodernism. Pangle asserts that it is a mistake, despite the collapse of Communism, to believe that the threat to the West and to traditional conceptions of liberal education is over. He argues that, while we possess powerful technological and economic resources, they ``fuel a society that is deeply unsure of its moral purpose and foundations'' and that has come to be ``increasingly penetrated and shaped by a new, highly problematic and skeptical (not to say nihilistic) cultural dispensation known as `postmodernism.''' It is in this trend, dominant in many universities and hostile to the principles of liberal democracy, that Pangle finds civic irresponsibility, spiritual deadliness, and a philosophical dogmatism--all of which require a serious response. He traces the roots of postmodernism in Heidegger and in the recent work of Lyotard, Derrida, Vattimo, Rorty, and Levinson, and he finds the proper response to be a reexamination of the views of the founders of American republicanism, and of the Greek philosophers who so powerfully affected their thinking. Pangle believes that many aspects of Greek and early American thought, including a responsiveness to the emancipation of women, have been lost, and that a rediscovery of that thought would provide grounds for a regeneration of public life not only in the US but in countries like Canada, where some of these values also, he says, have fallen away. The prose is dense, sometimes clotted, but Pangle provides a useful warning of the possible dangers of current modes of thought. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Pangle, political science professor at the University of Toronto, believes liberal democracy is in grave danger of losing its way in the tricky Cold War "endgame." Geared to academics, this ambitious, dense philosophical discourse rethinks the foundations of democratic society through a dialogue with Locke, Kant, Jefferson, Montesquieu, Hume, Plato and other seminal figures. Diagnosing the "disintegration all around us" from the classical republican perspective of Aristotle and Socrates, Pangle presents a batter of prescriptions involving workplace democracy and greater citizen participation in government; he espouses policies encouraging the aged to remain employed, urges tough-minded incentives for hard work as part of welfare programs and advocates civic education as the heart of American public schooling. The last chapter defines the goals of higher education in terms of a Socratic dialogue with great books.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press
• Publication date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 080184262X
• ISBN 13: 9780801842627
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 240