Enlightened Democracy: Visions for a New Millennium

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Publisher : CreateSpace
ISBN 13 : 9781481074773
Total Pages : 222 pages
Book Rating : 4.76/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Enlightened Democracy: Visions for a New Millennium by : J. Todd Ring

Download or read book Enlightened Democracy: Visions for a New Millennium written by J. Todd Ring and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2014-02-11 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Enlightened Democracy clarifies where we stand as human beings in the world at this time, at the dawn of the 21st century; and crystallizes the values, principles and awareness we will need to move through this century and beyond, with confidence, inspiration, boldness and vision. It is an encapsulation of five thousand years of human experience and learning: an overview of what we need to know in order to survive, and thrive, in the coming decades and centuries ahead. Humanity is now in danger of crossing a threshold of no return. We have set into motion, and continue stubbornly to set in motion, causes and conditions which are destroying the basis of life on this planet. In short, we must make major changes in our society now, or we will cross this threshold, the human species will go extinct, and there will be no future of any kind for the children of humanity. And all the evidence makes it abundantly clear that the changes which are urgently needed in the world today are not going to come about so long as a handful of corporate giants and business elites continue to dominate the economy, the financial system and the political process, and to effectively rule the world. Simply put, democratic revolution is now a matter of survival. And time is running out. The rightful power of the people to govern themselves through genuine citizens' democracy has been usurped and stolen by a handful of robber barons and corporate elites. Two hundred years ago Thomas Jefferson saw this danger, and warned us of it. But we refused to listen, and instead, gave in to the awful power of denial. More than two centuries later, the corporate high-jacking of our democracy and our world has become so blatant, so obvious, so undeniable, so brazen and extreme, that by now, virtually everyone can see it. The question, of course, is what are we going to do about it? Enlightened Democracy puts forth a bold vision for moving forward, and healing our very troubled, beautiful world - and for sparking the inspiration, and catalyzing the action, that are needed in order to fulfill that mission, as Thomas Paine put it, of creating the world anew. Truly, it is life or death now - anyone who is paying attention, knows this is the fact. And this inspiring, unflinchingly honest, fiercely frank, courageous, and deeply empowering book may be just what we need, in order to avoid the worst of disasters that are looming, and to come out the other side of our current, intertwined global crises, with confidence, joy, and a new and better world for all. Enlightened Democracy is a true must-read for anyone who cares about this world, or about the future of life on earth - or about their own future, for that matter, or that of their children. It is bracingly real, and at the same time, ultimately hopeful, and deeply inspiring. It is a tonic for the doldrums we live in, and very refreshing indeed. This book should be on every college and university reading list, at least in the fields of politics, world issues, philosophy and social analysis. It should also be on every home and library bookshelf. At the very least, it deserves to be widely read, widely discussed - and acted upon. "Passionate, powerful and extremely lucid." - Robert Carter, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Trent University

The Enlightenment Vision

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Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 1616146400
Total Pages : 286 pages
Book Rating : 4.05/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis The Enlightenment Vision by : Stuart D. Jordan

Download or read book The Enlightenment Vision written by Stuart D. Jordan and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It evaluates the process that society has made since the Enlightenment and offers a cautiously optimistic vision for the future. In the 17th and 18th centuries, a major cultural shift took place in western Europe. Leading thinkers began to emphasize the use of reason to tackle the challenges of life.

A Revolution of the Mind

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Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691152608
Total Pages : 294 pages
Book Rating : 4.08/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis A Revolution of the Mind by : Jonathan Israel

Download or read book A Revolution of the Mind written by Jonathan Israel and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-09-26 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Declaration of Human Rights.

The Democratic Soul

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Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 0812299892
Total Pages : 253 pages
Book Rating : 4.92/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis The Democratic Soul by : Aaron L. Herold

Download or read book The Democratic Soul written by Aaron L. Herold and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2021-08-06 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Democratic Soul, Aaron L. Herold argues that liberal democracy's current crisis—of extreme polarization, rising populism, and disillusionment with political institutions—must be understood as the culmination of a deeper dissatisfaction with the liberal Enlightenment. Major elements of both the Left and the Right now reject the Enlightenment's emphasis on rights as theoretically unfounded and morally undesirable and have sought to recover a contrasting politics of obligation. But this has re-opened questions about the relationship between politics and religion long thought settled. To address our situation, Herold examines the political thought of Spinoza and Tocqueville, two authors united in support of liberal democracy but with differing assessments of the Enlightenment. Through an original reading of Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise, Herold uncovers the theological foundation of liberal democracy: a comprehensive moral teaching rehabilitating human self-interest, denigrating "devotion" as a relic of "superstition," and cultivating a pride in living, acting, and thinking for oneself. In his political vision, Spinoza articulates our highest hopes for liberalism, for he is confident such an outlook will produce both intellectual flourishing and a paradoxical recovery of community. But Spinoza's project contains tensions which continue to trouble democracy today. As Herold shows via a new interpretation of Tocqueville's Democracy in America, the dissatisfactions now destabilizing democracy can be traced to the Enlightenment's failure to find a place for religious longings whose existence it largely denied. In particular, Tocqueville described a natural human desire for a kind of happiness found, at least partly, in self-sacrifice. Because modernity weakens religion precisely as it makes democracy stronger than liberalism, it permits this desire to find new and dangerous outlets. Tocqueville thus sought to design a "new political science" which could rectify this problem and which therefore remains indispensable today in recovering the moderation lacking in contemporary politics.

Requiem For Modern Politics

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Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 0429977301
Total Pages : 553 pages
Book Rating : 4.05/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Requiem For Modern Politics by : William Ophuls

Download or read book Requiem For Modern Politics written by William Ophuls and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-05-20 with total page 553 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This long-promised sequel to Ophuls’s influential and controversial classic Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity is an equally provocative critique of the liberal philosophy of government. Ophuls contends that the modern political paradigm—that is, the body of political concepts and beliefs bequeathed to us by the Enlightenment—is no longer intellectually tenable or practically viable. Our attempt to live individualistically, hedonistically, and rationally has failed utterly, causing a comprehensive crisis that is at once political, military, economic, ecological, ethical, psychological, and spiritual. Liberal politics has abandoned virtue, rejected community, and flouted nature, thereby becoming the author of its own demise. By exposing the intrinsically contradictory and self-destructive character of Hobbesian political systems, Ophuls subverts our conventional wisdom at every turn. Indeed, his impassioned text reads more like a Greek tragedy than a conventional political argument. He critiques feminism, multiculturalism, the welfare state, and a host of other “liberal” shibboleths—but Ophuls is not yet another neoconservative. The aim of his thesis is far more radical and progressive, offering a political vision that entirely transcends the categories of liberal thought. His is a Thoreauvian vision of a “politics of consciousness” rooted in ecology as the moral and intellectual basis for governance in the twenty-first century. Ophuls holds that a polity based on a renewed erotic connection with nature offers a genuine solution to this crisis of contemporary civilization and that only within such a polity will it be possible to fulfill the worthy liberal goal of individual self-development. Ophuls’s work will interest and challenge a wide spectrum of readers, though it will not necessarily be well liked or easily accepted. No one will put down this book with his or her settled convictions about American culture intact, nor will readers ever again take modern civilization and its survival for granted.

Styles of Enlightenment

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Publisher : JHU Press
ISBN 13 : 080189610X
Total Pages : 361 pages
Book Rating : 4.01/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Styles of Enlightenment by : Elena Russo

Download or read book Styles of Enlightenment written by Elena Russo and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2007-01-19 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Styles of Enlightenment argues that alongside its democratic ideals and its efforts to create a unified public sphere, the Enlightenment also displayed a tendency to erect rigid barriers when it came to matters of style and artistic expression. The French philosophes tackled the issue of the hierarchy of genres with surprising inflexibility, and they looked down on those forms of art that they saw as commercial, popular, and merely entertaining. They were convinced that the standard of taste was too important a matter to be left to the whims of the public and the vagaries of the marketplace: aesthetic judgment ought to belong to a few, enlightened minds who would then pass it on to the masses. Through readings of fictions, essays, memoirs, eulogies, and theatrical works by Fénelon, Bouhours, Marivaux, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, Mercier, Thomas, and others, Styles of Enlightenment traces the stages of a confrontation between the virile philosophe and the effeminate worldly writer, "good" and "bad" taste, high art and frivolous entertainment, state patronage and the privately sponsored marketplace, the academic eulogy and worldly conversation. It teases out the finer points of division on the public battlefields of literature and politics and the new world of contesting sexual economies.

Enlightened Democracy

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Publisher : Colonial Press L.P.
ISBN 13 : 9780977072224
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.23/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Enlightened Democracy by : Tara Ross

Download or read book Enlightened Democracy written by Tara Ross and published by Colonial Press L.P.. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Opponents of the Electoral College are swift to dismiss the institution as outdated and elitist, an anachronism that should be replaced by a direct popular vote. This book, written in straightforward language, examines the institutions role in selecting Presidents across the centuries and comes to a different conclusion the Electoral College protects our republic and promotes our liberty. (Amazon.com).

Open Democracy

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Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691212392
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.95/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Open Democracy by : Hélène Landemore

Download or read book Open Democracy written by Hélène Landemore and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-03-08 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To the ancient Greeks, democracy meant gathering in public and debating laws set by a randomly selected assembly of several hundred citizens. To the Icelandic Vikings, democracy meant meeting every summer in a field to discuss issues until consensus was reached. Our contemporary representative democracies are very different. Modern parliaments are gated and guarded, and it seems as if only certain people are welcome. Diagnosing what is wrong with representative government and aiming to recover some of the openness of ancient democracies, Open Democracy presents a new paradigm of democracy. Supporting a fresh nonelectoral understanding of democratic representation, Hélène Landemore demonstrates that placing ordinary citizens, rather than elites, at the heart of democratic power is not only the true meaning of a government of, by, and for the people, but also feasible and, more than ever, urgently needed. -- Cover page 4.

Thomas Paine

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Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 9780143112389
Total Pages : 436 pages
Book Rating : 4.84/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Thomas Paine by : Craig Nelson

Download or read book Thomas Paine written by Craig Nelson and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2007-09-04 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fresh new look at the Enlightenment intellectual who became the most controversial of America's founding fathers Despite his being a founder of both the United States and the French Republic, the creator of the phrase "United States of America," and the author of Common Sense, Thomas Paine is the least well known of America's founding fathers. This edifying biography by Craig Nelson traces Paine's path from his years as a London mechanic, through his emergence as the voice of revolutionary fervor on two continents, to his final days in the throes of dementia. By acquainting us as never before with this complex and combative genius, Nelson rescues a giant from obscurity-and gives us a fascinating work of history.

Twilight of Democracy

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Publisher : Anchor
ISBN 13 : 0385545819
Total Pages : 159 pages
Book Rating : 4.15/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Twilight of Democracy by : Anne Applebaum

Download or read book Twilight of Democracy written by Anne Applebaum and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2020-07-21 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • "How did our democracy go wrong? This extraordinary document ... is Applebaum's answer." —Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny The Pulitzer Prize–winning historian explains, with electrifying clarity, why elites in democracies around the world are turning toward nationalism and authoritarianism. From the United States and Britain to continental Europe and beyond, liberal democracy is under siege, while authoritarianism is on the rise. In Twilight of Democracy, Anne Applebaum, an award-winning historian of Soviet atrocities who was one of the first American journalists to raise an alarm about antidemocratic trends in the West, explains the lure of nationalism and autocracy. In this captivating essay, she contends that political systems with radically simple beliefs are inherently appealing, especially when they benefit the loyal to the exclusion of everyone else. Elegantly written and urgently argued, Twilight of Democracy is a brilliant dissection of a world-shaking shift and a stirring glimpse of the road back to democratic values.