A01=Dick Howard
Author_Dick Howard
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=JPA
Category=NL-HP
Category=NL-JP
Category=QDTS
COP=United States
Discount=15
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Format=BC
Format_Paperback
HMM=229
IMPN=Columbia University Press
ISBN13=9780231135955
Language_English
PA=Available
PD=20100908
POP=New York
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
PUB=Columbia University Press
SN=Columbia Studies in Political Thought / Political History
Subject=Philosophy
Subject=Politics & Government
WMM=152
Product details
- ISBN 9780231135955
- Format: Paperback
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 30 Sep 2010
- Publisher: Columbia University Press
- Publication City/Country: New York, US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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The conflict between politics and antipolitics has replayed throughout Western history and philosophical thought. From the beginning, Plato's quest for absolute certainty led him to denounce democracy, an anti-political position challenged by Aristotle. In his wide-ranging narrative, Dick Howard puts this dilemma into fresh perspective, proving our contemporary political problems are not as unique as we think. Howard begins with democracy in ancient Greece and the rise and fall of republican politics in Rome. In the wake of Rome's collapse, political thought searched for a new medium, and the conflict between politics and antipolitics reemerged through the contrasting theories of Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas. During the Renaissance and Reformation, the emergence of the modern individual again transformed the terrain of the political. Even so, politics vs. antipolitics dominated the period, frustrating even Machiavelli, who sought to reconceptualize the nature of political thought. Hobbes and Locke, theorists of the social contract, then reenacted the conflict, which Rousseau sought (in vain) to overcome.
Adam Smith and the growth of modern economic liberalism, the radicalism of the French revolution, and the conservative reaction of Edmund Burke subsequently marked the triumph of antipolitics, while the American Revolution momentarily offered the potential for a renewal of politics. Taken together, these historical examples, viewed through the prism of philosophy, reveal the roots of today's political climate and the trajectory of battles yet to come.
Dick Howard is distinguished professor of philosophy at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. He is the author of numerous books in French and English, including The Specter of Democracy: What Marx and Marxists Haven't Understood and Why, From Marx to Kant, Defining the Political, and The Birth of American Political Thought.
