Includes bibliographical references (pages 247-288) and index.
Contents:
The Status of politics and the political -- Realism : Weber -- Absolutism, fascism and authoritarianism : Schmitt -- Idealism : Ricoeur -- Public and private, self and world : Arendt -- The social, the political and democracy : Wolin -- Economics, culture and the political : Lefort, Laclau and Mouffe -- Theories of the political, political theory and politics.
Summary:
A recent trend in contemporary western political theory is to criticize it for implicitly trying to "conquer," "displace" or "moralize" politics. James Wiley's book takes the "next step," from criticizing contemporary political theory, to showing what a more "politics-centered" political theory would look like by exploring the meaning and value of politics in the writings of Max Weber, Carl Schmitt, Paul Ricoeur, Hannah Arendt, Sheldon Wolin, Claude Lefort, and Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. These political theorists all use the concept of "the political" to explain the value of politics and defend it from its detractors. They represent state-centered, republic-centered and society-centered conceptions of politics, as well as realist, authoritarian, idealist, republican, populist and radical democratic traditions of political thought. This book compares these theorists and traditions of "the political" in order to defend politics from its critics and to contribute to the development of a politics-centered political theory. --Publisher description.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.