Jean Elshtain examines how the myths of Man as "Just Warrior" and Woman as "Beautiful Soul" serve to recreate and secure women's social position as noncombatants and men's identity as warriors. Elshtain demonstrates how these myths are undermined by the reality of female bellicosity and sacrificial male love, as well as the moral imperatives of just wars.

Women and War, with a new epilogue

History

Elshtain, Jean Bethke

Americas

University of Chicago Press

Jean Bethke Elshtain brings Augustine's thought into the contemporary political arena and presents an Augustine who created a complex moral map that offers space for loyalty, love, and care, as well as a chastened form of civic virtue. The result is a controversial book about one of the world's greatest and most complex thinkers whose thought continues to haunt all of Western political philosophy. What is our business "within this common mortal life?" Augustine asks and bids us to ask ourselves. What can Augustine possibly have to say about the conditions that characterize our contemporary society and appear to put democracy in crisis? Who is Augustine for us now and what do his words have to do with political theory? These are the underlying questions that animate Jean Bethke Elshtain's fascinating engagement with the thought and work of Augustine, the ancient thinker who gave no political theory per se and refused to offer up a positive utopia. In exploring the questions, Why Augustine, why now? Elshtain brings Augustine's thought into the contemporary political arena and presents an Augustine who created a complex moral map that offers space for loyalty, love, and care, as well as a chastened form of civic virtue. The result is a controversial book about one of the world's greatest and most complex thinkers, one whose thought continues to haunt all of Western political philosophy. In making Augustine's thought relevant to the contemporary world Elshtain discusses how, for Augustine, wisdom comes from experiencing fully the ambiguity and division that characterized the human condition after the fall, and how human beings are fated to narrate their lives within temporality and to work at gathering together a 'self' and forging a coherent identity. This is the central feature of what Augustine called our business "within this mortal life," and he insisted that any politics that disdains this business, this caring for the quotidian, is a dangerous or misguided or misplaced politics. Elshtain argues that Augustine's great works display a canny and scrupulous attunement to the here and now and the very real limits therein. She discusses other aspects of Augustine's thought as well, including his insistence that no human city can be modeled on the heavenly city, and further elaborates on Hannah Arendt's deep indebtedness to Augustine's understanding of evil. Elshtain also presents Augustine's arguments against the pridefulness of philosophy, thereby linking him to later currents in modern thought, including Wittgenstein and Freud.

Augustine and the Limits of Politics (Catholic Ideas for a Secular World)

World

University of Notre Dame Press

In this study, the author attempts to capture the complex ways that political bodies deal with one another through norms and rules and not simply by force by examining two dominant currents in international politics: sovereignty and nationalism.

New Wine and Old Bottles: International Politics and Ethical Discourse (Notre Dame Studies on International Peace)

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

Univ of Notre Dame Pr

Format Paperback Subject Literary Criticism Feminist Publisher Penn State University Press

Meditations on Modern Political Thought: Masculine/Feminine Themes from Luther to Arendt (Women and Politics.)

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

Penn State University Press

Meditations on Modern Political Thought: Masculine/Feminine Themes from Luther to Arendt (Women and Politics)

Praeger Pub Text

Meditations on Modern Political Thought: Masculinefeminine Themes from Luther to Arendt

Greenwood Pub Group

Each essay in this collection treats a particular historical or contemporary topic of civic concern. Some are centered on current family crises and issues; the "family wage", child abuse, the "new eugenics"; others look to the wider national and international polity. Yet each, insistently, returns to common themes; the many faces and forms of power; struggles for autonomy as well as deep commitment to human sociality and community. All are rooted in Jean Bethke Elshtain's profoundly human perspective. In the last section of this book, related essays on women's power and powerlessness on patriotism, and on war, track a movement from domestic politics to foreign affairs. They are cautionary tales which simultaneously express realizable hopes and honour those, like the Mothers of the Disappeared in Argentina, who have taught us, through their desperation and triumph, what it means to fashion a politics of hope and justice against a politics of vengeance and despair.

Power Trips and Other Journeys: Essays in Feminism As Civic Discourse

Univ of Wisconsin Pr

A thought-provoking discussion of the public and political expression of America's diverse religious beliefs. Raise any number of public issues? health care, education, welfare? and religious beliefs inevitably shape Americans' viewpoints. On certain topics the introduction of religion can be explosive. This book discusses how we can and why we should hear religious voices in the public square. An American Assembly Book.

Religion in American Public Life: Living with Our Deepest Differences (American Assembly)

Religion & Spirituality

Religious Studies

W.W.Norton&Company

Even as Russia and the other former Soviet republics struggle to redefine themselves in democratic terms, our own democracy if faltering, not flourishing. We confront one another as aggrieved groups rather than as free citizens. Cynicism, boredom, apathy, despair, violence—these have become coin of the civic realm. They are dark signs of the times and a warning that democracy may not be up to the task of satisfying the yearnings it unleashes—yearnings for freedom, fairness, and equality.In this timely, thought-provoking book, one of America's leading political philosophers and public intellectuals questions whether democracy will prove sufficiently robust and resilient to survive the century. Beginning with a catalogue of our discontents, Jean Bethke Elshtain asks what has gone wrong and why. She draws on examples from America and other parts of the world as she explores the politics of race, ethnicity, and gender identity—controversial, and essential, political issues of our day. Insisting that there is much to cherish in our democratic traditions, she concludes that democracy involves a permanent clash between conservatism and progressive change.Elshtain distinguishes her own position from those of both the Left and the Right, demonstrating why she has been called one of our most interesting and independent civic thinkers. Responding to critics of democracy, ancient and modern, Elshtain urges us to have the courage of our most authentic democratic convictions. We need, she insists, both hope and a sense of reality.Writing her book for citizens, not experts, Elshtain aims to open up a dialogue and to move us beyond sterile sectarian disputes. Democracy on Trial will generate wide debate and controversy.

Democracy On Trial

Politics & Government

Basic Books

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