A Social Theory Of Freedom

Author : Mariam Thalos
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 131739495X
Total Pages : 278 pages
Book Rating : 4.52/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book A Social Theory of Freedom written by Mariam Thalos and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-17 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In A Social Theory of Freedom, Mariam Thalos argues that the theory of human freedom should be a broadly social and political theory, rather than a theory that places itself in opposition to the issue of determinism. Thalos rejects the premise that a theory of freedom is fundamentally a theory of the metaphysics of constraint and, instead, lays out a political conception of freedom that is closely aligned with questions of social identity, self-development in contexts of intimate relationships, and social solidarity. Thalos argues that whether a person is free (in any context) depends upon a certain relationship of fit between that agent’s conception of themselves (both present and future), on the one hand, and the facts of their circumstances, on the other. Since relationships of fit are broadly logical, freedom is a logic—it is the logic of fit between one’s aspirations and one’s circumstances, what Thalos calls the logic of agency. The logic of agency, once fleshed out, becomes a broadly social and political theory that encompasses one’s self-conceptions as well as how these self-conceptions are generated, together with how they fit with the circumstances of one’s life. The theory of freedom proposed in this volume is fundamentally a political one.

Author : Axel Honneth
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 140083502X
Total Pages : 95 pages
Book Rating : 4.27/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Pathologies of Individual Freedom written by Axel Honneth and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-05-11 with total page 95 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a penetrating reinterpretation and defense of Hegel's social theory as an alternative to reigning liberal notions of social justice. The eminent German philosopher Axel Honneth rereads Hegel's Philosophy of Right to show how it diagnoses the pathologies of the overcommitment to individual freedom that Honneth says underlies the ideas of Rawls and Habermas alike. Honneth argues that Hegel's theory contains an account of the psychological damage caused by placing too much emphasis on personal and moral freedom. Although these freedoms are crucial to the achievement of justice, they are insufficient and in themselves leave people vulnerable to loneliness, emptiness, and depression. Hegel argues that people must also find their freedom or "self-realization" through shared projects. Such projects involve the three institutions of ethical life--family, civil society, and the state--and provide the arena of a crucial third kind of freedom, which Honneth calls "communicative" freedom. A society is just only if it gives all of its members sufficient and equal opportunity to realize communicative freedom as well as personal and moral freedom.

Author : Frederick NEUHOUSER
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674041453
Total Pages : 351 pages
Book Rating : 4.55/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Foundations of Hegel's Social Theory written by Frederick NEUHOUSER and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study examines the philosophical foundations of Hegel's social theory by articulating the normative standards at work in his claim that the central social institutions of the modern era are rational or good.

Author :
Publisher : Cambria Press
ISBN 13 : 1621968278
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.76/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Freedom of Speech and Society written by and published by Cambria Press. This book was released on with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : S. Welch
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 1137295023
Total Pages : 299 pages
Book Rating : 4.26/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book A Theory of Freedom written by S. Welch and published by Springer. This book was released on 2012-09-14 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a liberatory conception of individual freedom that uniquely responds to the problems of social oppression and demands of the interrelatedness insofar as it pertains specifically to the social domain of activity.

Author : Axel Honneth
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 0745680062
Total Pages : 450 pages
Book Rating : 4.64/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Freedom's Right written by Axel Honneth and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2014-03-11 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The theory of justice is one of the most intensely debated areas of contemporary philosophy. Most theories of justice, however, have only attained their high level of justification at great cost. By focusing on purely normative, abstract principles, they become detached from the sphere that constitutes their “field of application” - namely, social reality. Axel Honneth proposes a different approach. He seeks to derive the currently definitive criteria of social justice directly from the normative claims that have developed within Western liberal democratic societies. These criteria and these claims together make up what he terms “democratic ethical life”: a system of morally legitimate norms that are not only legally anchored, but also institutionally established. Honneth justifies this far-reaching endeavour by demonstrating that all essential spheres of action in Western societies share a single feature, as they all claim to realize a specific aspect of individual freedom. In the spirit of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right and guided by the theory of recognition, Honneth shows how principles of individual freedom are generated which constitute the standard of justice in various concrete social spheres: personal relationships, economic activity in the market, and the political public sphere. Honneth seeks thereby to realize a very ambitious aim: to renew the theory of justice as an analysis of society.

Author : Frank Hearn
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000155838
Total Pages : 346 pages
Book Rating : 4.39/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Reason and Freedom in Sociological Thought (RLE Social Theory) written by Frank Hearn and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-08-26 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How has reason, believed since the Enlightenment to be the ally of freedom in the search for a better, more humanly satisfying world, been reduced to a technical rationality that has actually impoverished the bases of human freedom? What might be the options and obligations for sociologists who wish to restore reason to its proper status? Working within the tradition of C. Wright Mills and Jurgen Habermas, Frank Hearn sets out to answer these questions. He surveys the treatment of the relation between reason and freedom in both the classical tradition (especially the writings of Saint-Simon, Comte, Durkheim, Marx, Weber, and Freud) and an increasingly significant segment of social thought and criticism (and, for example, in the contrasting visions of Daniel Bell and Christopher Lasch.) He then analyses both the concrete social and historical forms of expression taken by what Mills calls 'rationality without reason' and their impact on individual autonomy and the freedoms associated with democratic politics. Finally, he develops Mills's and Habermas's claims that the cultivation of democratic publics and a critical social theory committed to a vibrant public life are indispensable to the protection and revitalization of the values of reason and freedom and of the practices they entail. This book updates and enriches Mills's influential argument by demonstrating its affinity with critical theory, by showing its contributions to a critical understanding of the classical tradition, and by showing its implications for contemporary social, political, and economic developments.

Author : G. A. Cohen
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1107393434
Total Pages : 293 pages
Book Rating : 4.31/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality written by G. A. Cohen and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1995-10-26 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book G. A. Cohen examines the libertarian principle of self-ownership, which says that each person belongs to himself and therefore owes no service or product to anyone else. This principle is used to defend capitalist inequality, which is said to reflect each person's freedom to do as he wishes with himself. The author argues that self-ownership cannot deliver the freedom it promises to secure, thereby undermining the idea that lovers of freedom should embrace capitalism and the inequality that comes with it. He goes on to show that the standard Marxist condemnation of exploitation implies an endorsement of self-ownership, since, in the Marxist conception, the employer steals from the worker what should belong to her, because she produced it. Thereby a deeply inegalitarian notion has penetrated what is in aspiration an egalitarian theory. Purging that notion from socialist thought, he argues, enables construction of a more consistent egalitarianism.

Author : Paul Dumouchel
Publisher : Berghahn Books
ISBN 13 : 1782386947
Total Pages : 296 pages
Book Rating : 4.40/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Social Bonds as Freedom written by Paul Dumouchel and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2015-08-01 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Central to discussions of multiculturalism and minority rights in modern liberal societies is the idea that the particular demands of minority groups contradict the requirements of equality, anonymity, and universality for citizenship and belonging. The contributors to this volume question the significance of this dichotomy between the universal and the particular, arguing that it reflects how the modern state has instituted the basic rights and obligations of its members and that these institutions are undergoing fundamental transformations under the pressure of globalization. They show that the social bonds uniting groups constitute the means of our freedom, rather than obstacles to achieving the universal.

Author : Philip Pettit
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 0745668151
Total Pages : 265 pages
Book Rating : 4.54/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book A Theory of Freedom written by Philip Pettit and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-05-31 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This innovative approach to freedom starts from an account of what we mean by describing someone, in a psychological vein, as a free subject. Pettit develops an argument as to what it is that makes someone free in that basic sense; and then goes on to derive the implications of the approach for issues of freedom in political theory. Freedom in the subject is equated with the person's being fit to be held responsible and to be authorized as a partner in interaction. This book is unique among contemporary approaches - although it is true to the spirit of classical writers like Hobbes and Kant - in seeking a theory that applies to psychological issues of free agency and free will as well as to political issues in the theory of the free state and the free constitution. The driving thesis is that it is only by connecting up the different issues of freedom, psychological and political, that we can fully appreciate the nature of the questions involved, and the requirements for their resolution. The book does not not seek a comprehensive reach just for its own sake, but rather for the sake of the illumination it provides. A Theory of Freedom is a ground-breaking volume which will be of wide interest to scholars and students in political philosophy and political science.