The cultural contradictions of democracy : political thought since September 11 / John Brenkman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Brenkman, John.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Political science--Philosophy.

Political science.

Democracy.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (218 p.)

Edition:

Course Book

Place of Publication:

Princeton : Princeton University Press, c2007.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Since 9/11, American foreign policy has been guided by grand ideas like tyranny, democracy, and freedom. And yet the course of events has played havoc with the cherished assumptions of hawks and doves alike. The geo-civil war afflicting the Muslim world from Lebanon through Iraq and Afghanistan to Pakistan confronts the West with the need to articulate anew what its political ideas and ideals actually are. In The Cultural Contradictions of Democracy, John Brenkman dissects the rhetoric that has corrupted today's political discourse and abused the idea of freedom and democracy in foreign affairs. Looking back to the original assumptions and contradictions that animate democratic thought, he attempts to resuscitate the language of liberty and give political debate a fresh basis amid the present global turmoil. The Cultural Contradictions of Democracy picks apart the intellectual design and messianic ambitions of the neoconservative American foreign policy articulated by figures such as Robert Kagan and Paul Berman; it casts the same critical eye on a wide range of liberal and leftist thinkers, including Noam Chomsky and Jürgen Habermas, and probes the severe crisis that afflicts progressive political thought. Brenkman draws on the contrary visions of Hobbes, Kant, Max Weber, Hannah Arendt, and Isaiah Berlin in order to disclose the new contours of conflict in the age of geo-civil war, and to illuminate the challenges and risks of contemporary democracy.

Contents:

Introduction: Political thought in the fog of war

War and democracy

Hobbes versus Kant?

Leviathan

The neoconservative illusion

The frailty of human affairs

Crises of the republic

The argument

Seized by power

Death and the governor of Texas

The new American exceptionalism

The cold warrior myth

Kant with Arendt

Targeting Iraq

Al Qaeda and ultimate ends

A grammar of motives

The imagination of power

State of exception

Arendt versus Agamben

Schmitt and Hobbes

Decision and covenant

The ordeal of universalism

September 11 and fables of the left

First response

Multilateral ambivalence

Terrorism as symptom

Chomskian certitudes

Hardt and Negri's Empire

The multitude and prophecy

Iraq : delirium of war, delusions of peace

The idealism of means

The idealism of ends

Neither left nor right

The Atlantic misalliance

Diplomatic intrigues and political truths

Repudiations of the UN left and right

The Hobbesian nightmare : occupied Iraq

Democracy and war

Postnational cosmopolitanism versus liberal nationalism?

Kant with Hobbes

Habermas's Agon with Schmitt

Hobbes with Kant

Europe, or, the empire of rights

Islam's geo-civil war

Global neoliberal religious conservatism?

No exit

Conclusion: Prelude to the unknown

Ideas and errors

Arendt with Berlin

Liberty without democracy versus democracy without liberty?

Democratic striving and sectarian mobilization

Untimely meditation.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9786612158049

9781282158047

128215804X

9781400827954

1400827957

OCLC:

437427285