The Age Of Ideology

Assesses the major ideologies of modern times, including liberalism, socialism, and conservatism, and traces their relationships with one another, with the ambiguous ideology of nationalism, and to the emergence of modern societies, democratic politics, and Enlightenment ideas. Overviews key themes.

This volume explores the role of some of the most prominent twentieth-century philosophers and political thinkers as teachers. It examines how these teachers conveyed truth to their students against the ideological influences found in the university and society. Philosophers from Edmund Husserl and Hannah Arendt to political thinkers like Eric Voegelin and Leo Strauss, and their students such as Ellis Sandoz, Stanley Rosen, and Harvey Mansfield, are in this volume as teachers who analyze, denounce, and attempt to transcend ideology for a more authentic way of thinking. What the reader will discover is that teaching is not merely a matter of holding concepts together, but a way of existing or living in the world. The thinkers in this volume represent this form of teaching as the philosophical search for truth in a world deformed by ideology.

Written simply and directly—but without sacrificing intellectual depth—this widely acclaimed text explores the preeminent theorists of Western political thought from the pre-Socratics to the contemporary era. The author provides an in-depth analysis of a limited number of major thinkers, which allows for a richly detailed examination of each philosopher in historical context. Western Political Thought, Second Edition, presents the fundamental terms, ideas, and dilemmas of Western political philosophy in a straightforward, easy-to-understand manner. It organizes the theorists historically, explains basic concepts in depth, and draws out and analyzes the implications of various political theories. Moreover, this cohesive volume employs an overarching theme, examining each thinker in terms of the changing relationships of ethics and politics in Western political philosophy.

Thinking Politically brings together a series of remarkable interviews with Raymond Aron that form a political history of our time. Ranging over an entire lifetime, from his youthful experience with the rise of Nazi totalitarianism in Berlin to the denouement of the cold war, Aron meditates on the threats to liberty and reason in the bloody twentieth century. In addition to the interviews published in the original edition, Thinking Politically incorporates three interviews never before published in book form. This supplemental material clarifies Aron's role as a voice of prudential reason in an unreasonable age and allows unparalleled access to the principal influences on Aron's thought. The volume concludes with "Democratic States and Totalitarian States," an address by Aron to the French Philosophical Society as well as the accompanying debate with Jacques Maritain, Victor Basch, and other intellectuals.