The Ennobling of Democracy: The Challenge of the Postmodern Age

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JHU Press, 1993 - Political Science - 240 pages

A searching critique of postmodernism and its implications for democratic political life and thought.

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.

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Contents

PART I
13
2 The Heideggerian Roots of Postmodernism
34
3Weak Thinking
48
PART II
69
6 The Need to Rethink Our Rights and Our Republicanism
91
7 Reinvigorating the Legacy of Classical Republicanism
105
Rethinking the Foundations of Liberalism
131
9Retrieving Civic Education as the Heart of American Public
163
Dialectic as the Heart
183
Select List of Works Cited
219
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About the author (1993)

Thomas L. Pangle holds the Joe R. Long Chair in Democratic Studies at the University of Texas at Austin and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. His many acclaimed publications include The Ennobling of Democracy: The Challenge of the Postmodern Age and Political Philosophy and the God of Abraham, both published by Johns Hopkins. 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.

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