Tag political philosophy

Open Yale Courses Fall 2012 Book Sampler

Download the Open Yale Courses Fall 2012 Book Sampler This fall we’ve expanded the Open Yale Courses Series to include three new publications: Introduction to the Bible by Christine Hayes, The Moral Foundations of Politics, by Ian Shapiro, and Political Philosophy, by Steven B. Smith. We invite you to take a

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Open Yale Courses: Political Philosophy with Steven Smith

Yale Professor of Political Science, Steven B. Smith has a personal relationship with rapper Ludacris. He is an obsessive Yankees fan, and can often be spotted smoking cigarillos in a bright pink blazer. The portrait of him hanging in Branford College shows him wearing a tie, on the tie: an

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The Amorality of the State: An Excerpt from Why Niebuhr Matters

Famously cited as one of Obama’s favorite philosophers, midcentury religious and political thinker Reinhold Niebuhr offered “a political realism that refuses to abandon high moral principles to short-term practical compromises.” In Why Niebuhr Matters, from Yale University Press’s Why X Matters Series, author Charles Lemert explores the continued relevance of

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Michael Walzer on Politics in the Hebrew Bible

As one of America’s foremost political thinkers, Michael Walzer has written about a wide variety of topics in political theory and moral philosophy, including political obligation, just and unjust war, nationalism and ethnicity, economic justice, and the welfare state. In his forthcoming book, In God’s Shadow: Politics in the Hebrew

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Administrative Tyranny: Marx’s Misguided View of the State

The discussion heats up for Why Marx Was Right at Bensonian.org: Andrew Walker, contributor to Mere Orthodoxy, gets into the claim that “Marxism believes in an all-powerful state.” Andrew Walker Terry Eagleton insists that Marx’s understanding of the state has been misunderstood. Objecting to the claim that the state leads

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When Does Truth Not Matter? A Study of Marx and Materialism

Over on the "Why Marx Was Right" blog discussion at Bensonian.org, Albert Lee responds to Chapter 6 of Why Marx Was Right, which is Terry Eagleton's response to: "Marx was a materialist."               Albert Lee In the wake of the latest financial crisis of

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Why Marx Was Right Blog Discussion

Today, Christopher Benson kicks off the “Why Marx Was Right” blog discussion, addressing the contemporary relevance of Marxist ideas in the midst of our current social and economic problems as presented in Terry Eagleton’s newest book, Why Marx Was Right. In his capacity as organizer, Benson writes: Let me compare

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Why Arendt Matters

Saturday, October 14, marks the centennial of the birth of Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), the German-born political philosopher whose analysis of the nature of power, totalitarianism, and the “banality of evil” still resonates powerfully in our own time. “So it is no accident,” says Edward Rothstein in the New York Times,

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