Evil in Contemporary Political Theory PDF Download

Author: Bruce Haddock
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 0748654143
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 241

View

Book Description
Explores the actual and possible roles of evil in contemporary political theory

Author: B. A. Haddock
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780748652860
Category : Cultural pluralism
Languages : en
Pages :

View

Book Description

Author: Patrick Hayden
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113405792X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 172

View

Book Description
Hannah Arendt is widely regarded as one of the twentieth century’s most powerful political theorists. The purpose of this book is to make an innovative contribution to the newly emerging literature connecting Arendt to international political theory and debates surrounding globalization. In recent years the work of Arendt has gathered increasing interest from scholars in the field of international political theory because of its potential relevance for understanding international affairs. Focusing on the central theme of evil in Arendt’s work, this book weaves together elements of Arendt’s theory in order to engage with four major problems connected with contemporary globalization: genocide and crimes against humanity; global poverty and radical economic inequality; global refugees, displaced persons, and the ‘stateless’; and the destructive domination of the public realm by predatory neoliberal economic globalization. Hayden shows that a key constellation of her concepts—the right to have rights, superfluousness, thoughtlessness, plurality, freedom, and power—can help us to understand and address some of the central problems involving political evil in our global age. In doing so, this book takes Arendtian scholarship and international political theory into provocative new directions. Political Evil in a Global Age will be of interest to students, researchers and scholars of politics, philosophy, sociology and cultural studies.

Author: Susan Neiman
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691168504
Category : Ethics & Moral Philosophy; Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 408

View

Book Description
Whether expressed in theological or secular terms, evil poses a problem about the world's intelligibility. It confronts philosophy with fundamental questions: Can there be meaning in a world where innocents suffer? Can belief in divine power or human progress survive a cataloging of evil? Is evil profound or banal? Neiman argues that these questions impelled modern philosophy. Traditional philosophers from Leibniz to Hegel sought to defend the Creator of a world containing evil. Inevitably, their efforts--combined with those of more literary figures like Pope, Voltaire, and the Marquis de Sade--eroded belief in God's benevolence, power, and relevance, until Nietzsche claimed He had been murdered. They also yielded the distinction between natural and moral evil that we now take for granted. Neiman turns to consider philosophy's response to the Holocaust as a final moral evil, concluding that two basic stances run through modern thought. One, from Rousseau to Arendt, insists that morality demands we make evil intelligible. The other, from Voltaire to Adorno, insists that morality demands that we don't.

Author: Jean Bethke Elshtain
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess
ISBN: 0268161143
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 129

View

Book Description
Now with a new foreword by Patrick J. Deneen. Jean Bethke Elshtain brings Augustine's thought into the contemporary political arena and presents an Augustine who created a complex moral map that offers space for loyalty, love, and care, as well as a chastened form of civic virtue. The result is a controversial book about one of the world's greatest and most complex thinkers whose thought continues to haunt all of Western political philosophy. What is our business "within this common mortal life?" Augustine asks and bids us to ask ourselves. What can Augustine possibly have to say about the conditions that characterize our contemporary society and appear to put democracy in crisis? Who is Augustine for us now and what do his words have to do with political theory? These are the underlying questions that animate Jean Bethke Elshtain's fascinating engagement with the thought and work of Augustine, the ancient thinker who gave no political theory per se and refused to offer up a positive utopia. In exploring the questions, Why Augustine, why now? Elshtain argues that Augustine's great works display a canny and scrupulous attunement to the here and now and the very real limits therein. She discusses other aspects of Augustine's thought as well, including his insistence that no human city can be modeled on the heavenly city, and further elaborates on Hannah Arendt's deep indebtedness to Augustine's understanding of evil. Elshtain also presents Augustine's arguments against the pridefulness of philosophy, thereby linking him to later currents in modern thought, including Wittgenstein and Freud.

Author: Alan Wolfe
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0307271854
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 341

View

Book Description
A leading political scientist identifies "political evil" as wrongdoing perpetrated by individuals with specific political goals, cites specific examples throughout the world and explains that important changes can be initiated through adjustments in how political evil is treated.

Author: Anton Pelinka
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
ISBN: 9781412831444
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 268

View

Book Description
According to Pelinka, Jaruzelski's politics of democratization in Poland in the 1980s (which led to the first free and competitive elections in a communist system) illustrate personal leadership hampered by democracy. Jaruzelski initiated the roundtable process that transformed Poland into a democracy; yet, this process ultimately ended with his abdication.

Author: Phillip Cole
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 0748626859
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 240

View

Book Description
A philosophical history of the concept of evil in western culture. 'Evil is something to be feared, and historically, we shall see, it is the enemy within who has been seen as representing the most intense evil of all - the enemy who looks just like us, talks like us, and is just like us.' The Myth of Evil explores a contradiction: the belief that human beings cannot commit acts of pure evil, that they cannot inflict harm for its own sake, and the evidence that pure 'evil' truly is a human capacity. Acts of horror are committed not by inhuman 'monsters', but by ordinary human beings. This contradiction is clearest in the apparently 'extreme' acts of war criminals, terrorists, serial murderers, sex offenders and children who kill. Phillip Cole delves deep into our two, cosily established approaches to evil. There is the traditional approach where evil is a force which creates monsters in human shape. And there is the 'enlightened' perspective where evil is the consequence of the actions of misguided or mentally deranged agents. Cole rejects both approaches. Satan may have played a role in its evolution, but evil is really a myth we have created about ourselves. And to understand it fully, we must acknowledge this. Drawing on the philosophical ideas of Nietzsche, Arendt, Kant, Mary Midgley and others, as well as theology, psychoanalysis, fictional representations and contemporary political events such as the global 'war on terror', Cole presents an account of evil that is thorough and thought-provoking, and which, more fundamentally, compels us to reassess our understanding of human nature.

Author: Deirdre Lauren Mahony
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350034185
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 240

View

Book Description
The vast majority of studies of Hannah Arendt's thought are concerned with her as a political theorist. This book offers a contribution to rectifying this imbalance by providing a critical engagement with Arendtian ethics. Arendt asserts that the crimes of the Holocaust revealed a shift in ethics and the need for new responses to a new kind of evil. In this new treatment of her work, Arendt's best-known ethical concepts – the notion of the banality of evil and the link she posits between thoughtlessness and evil, both inspired by her study of Adolf Eichmann – are disassembled and appraised. The concept of the banality of evil captures something tangible about modern evil, yet requires further evaluation in order to assess its implications for understanding contemporary evil, and what it means for traditional, moral philosophical issues such as responsibility, blame and punishment. In addition, this account of Arendt's ethics reveals two strands of her thought not previously considered: her idea that the condition of 'living with oneself' can represent a barrier to evil and her account of the 'nonparticipants' who refused to be complicit in the crimes of the Nazi period and their defining moral features. This exploration draws out the most salient aspects of Hannah Arendt's ethics, provides a critical review of the more philosophically problematic elements, and places Arendt's work in this area in a broader moral philosophy context, examining the issues in moral philosophy which are raised in her work such as the relevance of intention for moral responsibility and of thinking for good moral conduct, and questions of character, integrity and moral incapacity.

Author: Andrea Veltman
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0739136526
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 239

View

Book Description
Until recently, philosophers have discussed evil primarily in theodicial contexts in pondering why a perfect God does not abolish evil. Evil, Political Violence, and Forgiveness: Essays in Honor of Claudia Card reflects a burgeoning interest among philosophers in a broader array of ethical and political questions concerning evils. Written in tribute to Claudia Card_whose distinguished academic career has culminated in the development of a new theory of evil_this collection of new essays explores the concept of evil, the multifaceted harms of brutal political violence, and the appropriateness of forgiveness as an ethical response to evils. Evil, Political Violence, and Forgiveness brings together an international cohort of distinguished philosophers who mediate with Card upon an array of twentieth-century atrocities and on the nature of evil actions, persons, and institutions. Contributors explore questions such as 'What distinguishes evil from lesser wrongdoing?' 'Is culpable wrongdoing a necessary component of evil?' 'How are we to understand atrocious political violence?' 'What are the best moral and political responses to atrocities?' 'Are there moral obligations to forgive contrite perpetrators of evils?' and 'Can anyone claim moral innocence amid a climate of evildoing?'