Prudence : classical virtue, postmodern practice / edited by Robert Hariman.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Hariman, Robert.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Prudence.

Physical Description:

xi, 337 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

University Park, Pa. : Pennsylvania State University Press, [2003]

Summary:

Realizing that a world remade by techno-science and global capital stands in great need of practical wisdom as an antidote to various forms of modern hubris, scholars across the human sciences have taken a renewed interest in exploring how the classical virtue of prudence can be reformulated as a guide for postmodern practice. This volume brings together scholars in classics, political philosophy, and rhetoric to analyze prudence as a distinctive and vital form of political intelligence. Through case studies from each of the major periods in the history of prudence, the authors identify neglected resources for political judgment in today's conditions of pluralism and interdependency. Three assumptions inform these essays: the many dimensions of prudence cannot be adequately represented in the lexicon of any single discipline; the Aristotelian focus on prudence as rational calculation needs to be balanced by the Ciceronian emphasis on prudence as discursive performance embedded in familiar social practices; and understanding prudence requires attention to how it operates through the communicative media and public discourses that constitute the political community.

Contents:

1 Theory Without Modernity / Robert Hariman 1

I. Conceptual Frameworks

2 Cicero and the Development of Prudential Practice at Rome / Robert W. Cape Jr. 35

3 After Virtu: Rhetoric, Prudence, and Moral Pluralism in Machiavelli / Eugene Garver 67

4 The "Enlightenment Project" Revisited: Common Sense as Prudence in the Philosophy of Thomas Reid / Peter J. Diamond 99

II. Rhetorical Structures

5 Edmund Burke's Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol and the Texture of Prudence / Stephen H. Browne 127

6 Idioms of Prudence in Three Antebellum Controversies: Revolution, Constitution, and Slavery / James Jasinski 145

7 Fanny Wright and the Enforcing of Prudence: Women, Propriety, and Transgression in Nineteenth-Century Public Oratory of the United States / Christine L. Oravec 189

III. Provisional Networks

8 Prudence as Republican Politics in American Popular Culture / John S. Nelson 229

9 Lyotard's Postmodern Prudence / Maurice Charland 259

10 Prudence in the Twenty-First Century / Robert Hariman 287.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0271022558

OCLC:

51040039