The past fifteen years in France have seen a remarkable flourishing of new work in political philosophy. This anthology brings into English for the first time essays by some of the best young French political thinkers writing today, including Marcel Gauchet, Pierre Manent, Luc Ferry, and Alain Renaut. The central theme of these essays is liberal democracy: its nature, its development, its problems, its fundamental legitimacy. Although these themes are familiar to American and British readers, the French approach to them--which is profoundly historical and rooted in the tradition of continental philosophy--is quite different from our customary one. Included in this collection is a series of reconsiderations of French critics of liberal society (Lévi-Strauss, Foucault, Bourdieu) and of classical European liberals (Kant, Constant, Tocqueville). The continuing controversies over the nature of the modern era and the place of religion within it play a central role throughout the collection. The book includes a debate on the foundations of human rights and on the nature of a liberal political order. The concluding section presents some of the new sociological writing on modern individualism, its pleasures and its discontents. An introduction by Mark Lilla provides the historical background to the revival of French political thought about liberalism, and offers an analysis of what American and English readers might learn from it. Originally published in 1994. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Product Description: Vivimos tiempos en los que la religión intenta con ahínco volver a gobernar territorios hace tiempo conquistados por la política. No es un afán novedoso, pero resulta preocupante cómo algunas democracias aceptan ver mermada la laicidad por la que lucharon...read more

Examines the relationship between religion and politics throughout Western history, the influence of political theology on Western thought, and the destructive results that sometimes occur when religion and politics are connected.

Product Description: Mark Lilla aborda en Pensadores temerarios el intrigante tema de los diversos intelectuales del siglo XX que sucumbieron, en distinto grado, a la fascinacion del poder totalitario, sus lideres carismaticos o sus mesianicas ideologias...read more

Profiles of the last century's philosophical giants highlight their contributions to political thought, including Martin Heidegger, Carl Schmitt, Walter Benjamin, Alexandre KojFve, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida.

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Product Description: This comprehensive introduction to the philosophy of Giovanni Battista Vico puts all the elements of his theories of authority, politics and civil religion in their proper relationship with his theory of history. As such, it raises provocative questions about the subsequent intellectual development of the anti-modern tradition as it relates to the historical and social sciences of our time...read more

Product Description: The Italian scholar Giovanni Battista Vico is viewed as the first modern philosopher of history, a judgement largely based on his obscure 1744 masterpiece, "New Science". In this study Mark Lilla complicates this picture by presenting Vico as one of the most troubling of anti-modern thinkers...read more