Moral Imagination : Essays / David Bromwich.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bromwich, David, author.

Standardized Title:

Essays. Selections

Language:

English

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (375 p.)

Edition:

Course Book

Place of Publication:

Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, [2014]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Spanning many historical and literary contexts, Moral Imagination brings together a dozen recent essays by one of America's premier cultural critics. David Bromwich explores the importance of imagination and sympathy to suggest how these faculties may illuminate the motives of human action and the reality of justice. These wide-ranging essays address thinkers and topics from Gandhi and Martin Luther King on nonviolent resistance, to the dangers of identity politics, to the psychology of the heroes of classic American literature.Bromwich demonstrates that moral imagination allows us to judge the right and wrong of actions apart from any benefit to ourselves, and he argues that this ability is an innate individual strength, rather than a socially conditioned habit. Political topics addressed here include Edmund Burke and Richard Price's efforts to define patriotism in the first year of the French Revolution, Abraham Lincoln's principled work of persuasion against slavery in the 1850s, the erosion of privacy in America under the influence of social media, and the use of euphemism to shade and anesthetize reactions to the global war on terror. Throughout, Bromwich considers the relationship between language and power, and the insights language may offer into the corruptions of power.Moral Imagination captures the singular voice of one of the most forceful thinkers working in America today.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface

One

Chapter 1. Moral Imagination

Chapter 2. A Dissent on Cultural Identity

Chapter 3. The Meaning of Patriotism in 1789

Two

Chapter 4. Lincoln and Whitman as Representative Americans

Chapter 5. Lincoln's Constitutional Necessity

Chapter 6. Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Ambition

Three

Chapter 7. The American Psychosis

Chapter 9. The Self-Deceptions of Empire

Four

Chapter 10. What Is the West?

Chapter 11. Holy Terror and Civilized Terror

Chapter 12. Comments on Perpetual War

Index

Notes:

Includes index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 23. Mai 2019)

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9781400850013

1400850010

OCLC:

872633968