Cliquer sur une vignette pour aller sur Google Books.
|
Chargement... Rationalism, Pluralism, and Freedompar Jacob T. Levy
   Aucun Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre.  dhmontgomery | Dec 13, 2020 |  aucune critique | ajouter une critique
Intermediate groups - voluntary associations, churches, ethnocultural groups, universities, and more - can both protect threaten individual liberty. The same is true for centralized state action against such groups. This wide-ranging book argues that, both normatively and historically, liberalpolitical thought rests on a deep tension between a rationalist suspicion of intermediate and local group power, and a pluralism favorable toward intermediate group life, and preserving the bulk of its suspicion for the centralizing state.The book studies this tension using tools from the history of political thought, normative political philosophy, law, and social theory. In the process, it retells the history of liberal thought and practice in a way that moves from the birth of intermediacy in the High Middle Ages to the BritishPluralists of the twentieth century. In particular it restores centrality to the tradition of ancient constitutionalism and to Montesquieu, arguing that social contract theory's contributions to the development of liberal thought have been mistaken for the whole tradition.It discusses the real threats to freedom posed both by local group life and by state centralization, the ways in which those threats aggravate each other. Though the state and intermediate groups can check and balance each other in ways that protect freedom, they may also aggravate each other'sworst tendencies. Likewise, the elements of liberal thought concerned with the threats from each cannot necessarily be combined into a single satisfactory theory of freedom. While the book frequently reconstructs and defends pluralism, it ultimately argues that the tension is irreconcilable and notsusceptible of harmonization or synthesis; it must be lived with, not overcome. Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
Auteur LibraryThingJacob T. Levy est un auteur LibraryThing, c'est-à-dire un auteur qui catalogue sa bibliothèque personnelle sur LibraryThing. Discussion en coursAucunCouvertures populaires
 Google Books — Chargement...GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)322Social sciences Political Science Relation of the state to organized groups and their membersClassification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne: (3.83)
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
1
Its point is to explore a tension within the ideals that underpin most modern democracies. If one believes that a key value of democratic government is to protect the freedom of its individual citizens (by no means a universally held belief) then that raises a further question: who should that freedom be protected from?
More specifically, the central government can pose a threat to citizens' liberty. But so can subnational groups within society: a local government, or a religious group, or a business, or the family. Some theorists see the primary threat to liberty as being the state, and see these "intermediary groups" as bulwarks against tyranny. But others see the biggest threat as being those very intermediary groups and seek to use the power of the state to prevent those groups from oppressing their members.
An example: in a liberal democracy, citizens have freedom of expression. But a homeowners association — entered into willingly by its members — might impose limits on that freedom of expression, such as forbidding its members to display political signs. Can free democratic citizens willingly surrender some of their political rights by joining an association? If the government passes a law banning homeowners associations from forbidding political signs, does that law make the country more or less free?
It's a theoretical but very relevant question that gets to the root of many questions in modern politics and society. Levy comes at it from philosophical and historical angles, and the book is genuinely enlightening.
But it's also an odd duck. It's caught in the middle between being a work for lay readers and being one for a technical audience, with large sections discussing questions in a general, accessible manner and others dropping half-explained jargon all over the place. I'm not sure if I could recommend it to someone who doesn't already have a background in political theory, which is a shame, because the question is one worth considering more broadly.
It also is caught in between an exploration of the topic and an advocacy for one side of the debate. The author ultimately believes that neither side is all correct, but spends much of the book defending one perspective because he's responding to literature in the field that, he says, predominantly backs the other side. That's all well and good if you're familiar with the latest developments in liberal political theory, but less so for someone coming at the topic fresh. (