Liberalism, Nationalism, Citizenship: Essays on the Problem of Political Community – Ronald Beiner
In Liberalism, Nationalism, Citizenship, Ronald Beiner engages critically with a wide range of important political thinkers and current debates in light of the Aristotelian idea that shared citizenship is an essential human calling. Virtually every aspect of contemporary political experience — globalization, international migration, secessionist movements, the politics of multiculturalism — pose urgent challenges to modern citizenship. Beiner’s work on the philosophy of citizenship is essential reading not just for students of politics and political philosophy, but for all those who rightly sense that these kinds of recent challenges demand an ambitious rethinking of the nature of political community.
In the last two centuries, our world would have been a safer place if philosophers such as Rousseau, Marx and Nietzsche had not given intellectual encouragement to the radical ideologies of Jacobins, Stalinists and fascists. Maybe the world would have been better off, from the standpoint of sound practice, if philosophers had engaged in only modest, decent theory, as did John Stuart Mill. Yet, as Ronald Beiner contends, the point of theory is not to think safe thoughts; the point is to open intellectual horizons.
- Publisher: University of British Colombia Press (July 1, 2003)
- ISBN-10: 0774809884
- ISBN-13: 9780774809887