Liberalism S Crooked Circle

This book is a profoundly moving and analytically incisive attempt to shift the terms of discussion in American politics. It speaks to the intellectual and political weaknesses within the liberal tradition that have put the United States at the mercy of libertarian, authoritarian populist, nakedly racist, and traditionalist elitist versions of the right-wing; and it seeks to identify resources that can move the left away from the stunned intellectual incoherence with which it has met the death of Bolshevism. In Ira Katznelson's view, Americans are squandering a tremendous ethical and political opportunity to redefine and reorient the liberal tradition. In an opening essay and two remarkable letters addressed to Adam Michnik, who is arguably East Europe's emblematic democratic intellectual, Katznelson seeks to recover this possibility. By examining issues that once occupied Michnik's fellow dissidents in the Warsaw group known as the Crooked Circle, Katznelson brings a fresh realism to old ideals and posits a liberalism that "stares hard" at cruelty, suffering, coercion, and tyrannical abuses of state power. Like the members of Michnik's club, he recognizes that the circumference of liberalism's circle never runs smooth and that tolerance requires extremely difficult judgments. Katznelson's first letter explores how the virtues of socialism, including its moral stand on social justice, can be related to liberalism while overcoming debilitating aspects of the socialist inheritance. The second asks whether liberalism can recognize, appreciate, and manage human difference. Situated in the lineage of efforts by Richard Hofstadter, C. Wright Mills, and Lionel Trilling to "thicken" liberalism, these letters also draw on personal experience in the radical politics of the 1960s and in the dissident culture of East and Central Europe in the years immediately preceding communism's demise. Liberalism's Crooked Circle could help foster a substantive debate in the American elections of 1996 and determine the contents of that desperately needed discussion.

This book is a profoundly moving and analytically incisive attempt to shift the terms of discussion in American politics. It speaks to the intellectual and political weaknesses within the liberal tradition that have put the United States at the mercy of libertarian, authoritarian populist, nakedly racist, and traditionalist elitist versions of the right-wing; and it seeks to identify resources that can move the left away from the stunned intellectual incoherence with which it has met the death of Bolshevism. In Ira Katznelson's view, Americans are squandering a tremendous ethical and political opportunity to redefine and reorient the liberal tradition. In an opening essay and two remarkable letters addressed to Adam Michnik, who is arguably East Europe's emblematic democratic intellectual, Katznelson seeks to recover this possibility. By examining issues that once occupied Michnik's fellow dissidents in the Warsaw group known as the Crooked Circle, Katznelson brings a fresh realism to old ideals and posits a liberalism that "stares hard" at cruelty, suffering, coercion, and tyrannical abuses of state power. Like the members of Michnik's club, he recognizes that the circumference of liberalism's circle never runs smooth and that tolerance requires extremely difficult judgments. Katznelson's first letter explores how the virtues of socialism, including its moral stand on social justice, can be related to liberalism while overcoming debilitating aspects of the socialist inheritance. The second asks whether liberalism can recognize, appreciate, and manage human difference. Situated in the lineage of efforts by Richard Hofstadter, C. Wright Mills, and Lionel Trilling to "thicken" liberalism, these letters also draw on personal experience in the radical politics of the 1960s and in the dissident culture of East and Central Europe in the years immediately preceding communism's demise. Liberalism's Crooked Circle could help foster a substantive debate in the American elections of 1996 and determine the contents of that desperately needed discussion.

This book is a profoundly moving attempt to shift the terms of discussion in American politics. "(Ira) Katznelson's prose style is as elegant as his political stance is sophisticated. This is a subtle, searching examination of liberalism's complicated relationship to concerns about class inequality and social difference".--LIBRARY JOURNAL.

In Eine Kritik der kommunitaristischen Moralphilosophie analysiert und kritisiert Harald Stelzer die grundlegenden Aspekte der normativen Theorien von kommunitaristischen Autoren wie MacIntryre, Sandel, Taylor und Walzer und er entwickelt ein alternatives Verständnis von Moral als Problemlösungsprozess. In A Critique of the Moral Philosophy of Communitarianism Harald Stelzer analyses and criticizes the main aspects of communitarian moral thought by authors like MacIntryre, Sandel, Taylor, and Walzer, and develops an alternative account of a problem solving ethics.

Everyone eschews labels yet we all seem to posses them in the minds of legions of politicians, marketers and even the ever-peering government. We are being targeted daily by flaming liberals, left-wing liberals, right-wing conservatives, compassionate conservatives, religious conservatives and liberals, pinko liberals, middle-of-the-road liberals conservatives and liberals, pinko liberals, middle-of-the-road liberals and conservatives and of course by neoconservatives and neoliberals. The search is on for kindred souls -- the types who will open their wallets to support whatever it is the hucksters are peddling. But what to these concepts mean and do their torchbearers grasp the underlying philosophies or do they care? This bibliography lists over hundreds of entries under each category which are then indexed by title an author.

Publisher Description

First published in 1998, this book analyses and reconsiders one of the great economic dramas of Western history, the march to capitalism in Russia, Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic. The period is from 1989, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, when the liberated countries rushed headlong into democracy and capitalism. Special emphasis is on the role, often misunderstood, played by the Western-dominated aid agencies, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. They were called in while the Western countries dawdled and made empty promises. They basically financed and guided the transition, their own funds amounting to $50 billion, while issuing free-market strictures in the process. This reflected the supremacy of such ideology in the Thatcher-Reagan era. Russia, in its agony, offers a laboratory for the conflicting claims of free-market theory against a more pragmatic, experimental approach. China's hybrid-capitalism is also analyzed and compared.

A study of contemporary politics in Russia, assessing the attempted transition from totalitarianism to liberal democracy. It shows that although liberal institutions have been tentatively established, the weak social and cultural supports threaten the success of Russia's liberal project.