Reading Obama
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€25.99
A Theory of Justice
A01=James T. Kloppenberg
Activism
Affirmative action
African Americans
American philosophy
American Thinker
An American Dilemma
Author_James T. Kloppenberg
Barack Obama
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Category=NHB
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Christian fundamentalism
Christian Realism
Civil society
Clifford Geertz
Communitarianism
Community organizing
Cornel West
Critical legal studies
Critical race theory
Critique
Culture war
David Garrow
Deliberation
Deliberative democracy
Democracy in America
Dreams from My Father
Edward Said
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eq_history
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eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Frantz Fanon
Harvard Law School
Hilary Putnam
Historicism
John Dewey
John Rawls
Judicial activism
Law school
Liberalism
Logical positivism
Original position
Overlapping consensus
Philosopher
Philosophy
Political Liberalism
Political philosophy
Political science
Politics
Popular sovereignty
Populism
Pragmatism
Public sphere
Puritans
Racism
Rational choice theory
Raymond Geuss
Religion
Republicanism
Richard J. Bernstein
Robert D. Putnam
Robert Nozick
Rules for Radicals
Saul Alinsky
Self-interest
Sensibility
Slavery
Social science
Social theory
The End of Ideology
The Philosopher
Tom Wolfe
Veil of ignorance
Woodrow Wilson
World War II
Writing
Product details
- ISBN 9780691147468
- Weight: 482g
- Dimensions: 140 x 216mm
- Publication Date: 31 Oct 2010
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Derided by the Right as dangerous and by the Left as spineless, Barack Obama puzzles observers. In Reading Obama, James T. Kloppenberg reveals the sources of Obama's ideas and explains why his principled aversion to absolutes does not fit contemporary partisan categories. Obama's commitments to deliberation and experimentation derive from sustained engagement with American democratic thought. Reading Obama traces the origins of his ideas and establishes him as the most penetrating political thinker elected to the presidency in the past century. Kloppenberg demonstrates the influences that have shaped Obama's distinctive worldview, including Nietzsche and Niebuhr, Ellison and Rawls, and recent theorists engaged in debates about feminism, critical race theory, and cultural norms. Examining Obama's views on the Constitution, slavery and the Civil War, the New Deal, and the civil rights movement, Kloppenberg shows Obama's sophisticated understanding of American history. Obama's interest in compromise, reasoned public debate, and the patient nurturing of civility is a sign of strength, not weakness, Kloppenberg argues.
He locates its roots in Madison, Lincoln, and especially in the philosophical pragmatism of William James and John Dewey, which nourished generations of American progressives, black and white, female and male, through much of the twentieth century, albeit with mixed results. Reading Obama reveals the sources of Obama's commitment to democratic deliberation: the books he has read, the visionaries who have inspired him, the social movements and personal struggles that have shaped his thinking. Kloppenberg shows that Obama's positions on social justice, religion, race, family, and America's role in the world do not stem from a desire to please everyone but from deeply rooted--although currently unfashionable--convictions about how a democracy must deal with difference and conflict.
James T. Kloppenberg is the Charles Warren Professor of American History and chair of the History Department at Harvard University. His books include "Uncertain Victory: Social Democracy and Progressivism in European and American Thought, 1870-1920"; "The Virtues of Liberalism"; and "A Companion to American Thought".
