They describe the conditions under which liberty and individuality can flourish and the threats to liberty's flourishing in our time.
Past and Present: The Challenges of Modernity, from the Pre-Victorians to the Postmodernists Encounter Classics
Gertrude himmelfarb helps us find a new perspective on contemporary issues through a trenchant analysis of debates and thinkers from earlier times. The common theme of the twenty essays gathered here is the intriguing, often unexpected ways in which the past continues to illuminate the present. It’s not even past, ” wrote William Faulkner.
The political figures who appear here are also diverse, from Benjamin Disraeli to Winston Churchill, from the American founders to Queen Elizabeth II. Running through all the essays as a first premise is the conviction that the pursuit of knowledge and truth, however difficult or discomfiting, matters immensely in the “practical life, ” to use Trilling’s terms, as it does in the “moral life.
Past and present is a notable contribution to this endeavor―to understanding where we have been, where we are today, and where we may be or should be going. In past and present, an eminent American historian and cultural critic shows the truth of that statement. The past is never dead.
On Human Nature
Princeton. This fact is manifested in our emotions, interests, and relations. It is the foundation of the moral sense, as well as of the aesthetic and religious conceptions through which we shape the human world and endow it with meaning. Ultimately, scruton offers a new way of understanding how self-consciousness affects the question of how we should live.
The result is a rich view of human nature that challenges some of today's most fashionable ideas about our species. We are not only human animals; we are also persons, in essential relation with other persons, and bound to them by obligations and rights. The book begins with kant's suggestion that we are distinguished by our ability to say "I"--by our sense of ourselves as the centers of self-conscious reflection.
And it lies outside the scope of modern materialist philosophy, even though it is a natural and not a supernatural fact. A brief, radical defense of human uniqueness from acclaimed philosopher Roger ScrutonIn this short book, acclaimed writer and philosopher Roger Scruton presents an original and radical defense of human uniqueness.
Encounter.
The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won
The second world wars examines how combat unfolded in the air, at sea, and on land to show how distinct conflicts among disparate combatants coalesced into one interconnected global war. A definitive account of world war II by America's preeminent military historianWorld War II was the most lethal conflict in human history.
Nor was its ultimate outcome surprising. Princeton. Encounter. The axis powers were well prepared to win limited border conflicts, but once they blundered into global war, they had no hope of victory. An authoritative new history of astonishing breadth, The Second World Wars offers a stunning reinterpretation of history's deadliest conflict.
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Why Liberalism Failed Politics and Culture
. This has created a peculiar situation in which liberalism’s proponents tend to forget that it is an ideology and not the natural end-state of human political evolution. Encounter. As patrick deneen argues in this provocative book, yet it discourages civic commitments in favor of privatism; and in its pursuit of individual autonomy, it has given rise to the most far-reaching, liberalism is built on a foundation of contradictions: it trumpets equal rights while fostering incomparable material inequality; its legitimacy rests on consent, comprehensive state system in human history.
Princeton.
Conservatism: An Invitation to the Great Tradition
Scruton analyzes the origins and development of conservatism through the philosophies and thoughts of John Locke, Adam Smith and Milton Friedman, Thomas Hobbes, among others. This clear, incisive guide is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand Western politics and policies, now and over the last three centuries.
Encounter. He shows how conservative ideas have influenced the political sector through the careers of a diverse cast of politicians, such as Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Disraeli, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. One of the most eloquent and even moving evocations of the conservative tradition in Western politics, philosophy and culture I have ever read…the ideal primer for those who are new to conservative ideas…” ―Richard Aldous, Wall Street JournalA brief magisterial introduction to the conservative tradition by one of Britain’s leading intellectuals.
In conservatism, roger scruton offers the reader an invitation into the world of political philosophy by explaining the history and evolution of the conservative movement over the centuries. He also takes a close look at the changing relationship between conservative politics, capitalism, and free markets in both the UK and the US.
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The Virtue of Nationalism
Encounter. A leading conservative thinker argues that a nationalist order is the only realistic safeguard of liberty in the world today Nationalism is the issue of our age. Princeton. From donald trump's "america first" politics to brexit to the rise of the right in europe, events have forced a crucial debate: Should we fight for international government? Or should the world's nations keep their independence and self-determination? In The Virtue of Nationalism, Yoram Hazony contends that a world of sovereign nations is the only option for those who care about personal and collective freedom.
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The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam
Murray travels to berlin, scandinavia, paris, and Greece to uncover the malaise at the very heart of the European culture, and to hear the stories of those who have arrived in Europe from far away. Declining birth rates, mass immigration, and cultivated self-distrust and self-hatred have come together to make Europeans unable to argue for themselves and incapable of resisting their own comprehensive alteration as a society and an eventual end.
A controversial and devastatingly honest depiction of the demise of Europe. The strange death of europe is the internationally bestselling account of a continent and culture caught in the act of suicide. He addresses the disappointing failure of multiculturalism, Angela Merkel’s U-turn on migration, and the Western fixation on guilt.
But perhaps spengler was right: "civilizations like humans are born, decay, briefly flourish, and die. Encounter.
The Liberal Mind
At least they are the heirs of what Minogue describes as "the triumph of an enlarged, flexible, and pragmatic version of liberalism. But what, more accurately, precisely, is liberalism? Or, can liberalism be defined precisely? Minogue attempts to answer both questions. By examining the larger implications of the concept of liberalism, Minogue offers fresh perspective on the political currents that continue to shape governments and policy in the Western world.
Such as: a planned economy, many would say, or free enterprise? Individual thrift, free enterprise, or protection?" These battles have largely been completed—and, individual thrift, have been won by the champions of, or social services? Free trade, respectively, and free trade. While few—especially in america—embrace the description of liberal, still, Minogue argues, most Americans and most Europeans behave as liberals.
Bloomsbury Publishing. Because of this claim, liberalism is forced into a series of moral and political evasions, both doctrines and emotional habits of thought.
The Idol of Our Age: How the Religion of Humanity Subverts Christianity
Bloomsbury Publishing. This book is a learned essay at the intersection of politics, philosophy, and religion. With a foreword by the distinguished political philosopher Pierre Manent, Mahoney’s book follows Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI in affirming that Christianity is in no way reducible to a “humanitarian moral message.
In a pungent if respectful analysis, it demonstrates that Pope Francis has increasingly confused the Gospel with left-wing humanitarianism and egalitarianism that owes little to classical or Christian wisdom. It takes its bearings from a series of thinkers Orestes Brownson, Vladimir Soloviev, Aurel Kolnai, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn who have been instructive critics of the “religion of humanity.
These thinkers were men of peace who rejected ideological pacifism and never confused Christianity with unthinking sentimentality. Humanitarians, secular or religious, confuse peace with pacifism, equitable social arrangements with socialism, and moral judgment with utopianism and sentimentality. The book ends by affirming the power of reason, informed by revealed faith, to provide a humanizing alternative to utopian illusions and nihilistic despair.
The Infidel and the Professor: David Hume, Adam Smith, and the Friendship That Shaped Modern Thought
Vividly written, the infidel and the Professor is a compelling account of a great friendship that had great consequences for modern thought. Princeton University Press. In contrast, adam smith was a revered professor of moral philosophy, and is now often hailed as the founding father of capitalism. The book reveals that smith's private religious views were considerably closer to Hume's public ones than is usually believed.
Members of a vibrant intellectual scene in enlightenment scotland, joined the same clubs, Hume and Smith made many of the same friends and enemies, and were interested in many of the same subjects well beyond philosophy and economics--from psychology and history to politics and Britain's conflict with the American colonies.
. Used book in Good Condition. The infidel and the professor is the first book to tell the fascinating story of the friendship of these towering Enlightenment thinkers--and how it influenced their world-changing ideas. The book follows hume and smith's relationship from their first meeting in 1749 until Hume's death in 1776.