What do you think?
Rate this book
The Ennobling of Democracy: The Challenge of the Postmodern Age
A searching critique of postmodernism and its implications for democratic political life and thought. With the end of the Cold War, says Thomas L. Pangle, liberal democracy was deprived of its traditional enemy, and forced to re-examine its internal structure and fundamental aims. One result has been the moral-relativist "postmodernism" of mainstream Western intellectuals. Focusing on Lyotard, Vattimo, and Rorty, The Ennobling of Democracy offers a searching critique of postmodernism and its implications for political life and thought. Pangle carefully examines the political dimensions of postmodernist teachings, including the rejection of the natural-rights doctrines of the Enlightenment, the discounting of public purposefulness, and the disenchantment with claims of civic virtue and reason. He argues that a serious challenge has been posed to postmodernism by the emerging democracies of Eastern Europe, which have directly experienced heroic political leadership, maintained a prominent place for religion, and preserved a belief in the virtues and duties of citizenship. They consequently make demands on Western thought that postmodernism has been unable to meet. Drawing on the classical republican ideal, Pangle opens the door to a bold new synthesis in political philosophy. He argues that by reappropriating classical civic rationalism―and especially classical philosophy of education―a framework may be established to integrate the most significant findings of modern rationalism into a conception of humanity that encompasses, in an unprecedented way, the entire scope of the human condition.
- GenresPhilosophyPolitics
240 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 1991
1 person is currently reading
43 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
June 1, 2024
One constant in American politics today is that everyone thinks that some section or other of our leaders is corrupt. Which section varies with partisan loyalty, but this need not detain us. The important consideration is that all believe that vice is rewarded and virtue punished in the highest levels of society. Books of moral instruction that were celebrated throughout antiquity now strike us as stale at best, if they are not enervated by bad faith. In art, only depictions of power that is married to cruelty and viciousness strike us as entirely sincere.
Writing shortly after the collapse of the USSR, Thomas Pangle thinks that this loss of moral sensibility, foretold by Alexis de Tocqueville's critique of "individualism" will tend to increase and represents the most severe threat to American democracy. It seems to him that victory abroad has created the conditions for accelerated unraveling at home. Most education aims at the production of morally neutral skills. The humanities, which ought to shape their student's moral character, in Pangle's view have contented themselves with deconstructionist studies of old forms that are already passing away and are both unable and worse unwilling to offer training in virtues that are necessary for our time.
Pangle's discussion of postmodernism, by which he mainly means the works of Lyotard, Rorty, and Vattimo, is the least developed part of his book. This is perhaps inevitable, given that his argument is that students should return to the great books of the traditions of classical republicanism and modern rights-based liberalism. (He also praises the idea of engagement with classics of other traditions like the Mencius though this is not his specialty). By examining many passages from these books, Pangle makes a convincing case that the classic writers have already considered many of the most pressing problems for our own democracy, and that they are therefore worth returning to. I could give examples such as Locke's emphasis that "reason" has to be learned through a rigorous process of moral education situated in a family and in given cultural traditions before the student becomes a "rational" self-governing agent, which inspired a long lived but now senescent tradition of liberal education in the US.
In short, I think this makes as good a case as I have read for Great Books curriculums. Oddly, it feels as timely to me now as when it was written.
Writing shortly after the collapse of the USSR, Thomas Pangle thinks that this loss of moral sensibility, foretold by Alexis de Tocqueville's critique of "individualism" will tend to increase and represents the most severe threat to American democracy. It seems to him that victory abroad has created the conditions for accelerated unraveling at home. Most education aims at the production of morally neutral skills. The humanities, which ought to shape their student's moral character, in Pangle's view have contented themselves with deconstructionist studies of old forms that are already passing away and are both unable and worse unwilling to offer training in virtues that are necessary for our time.
Pangle's discussion of postmodernism, by which he mainly means the works of Lyotard, Rorty, and Vattimo, is the least developed part of his book. This is perhaps inevitable, given that his argument is that students should return to the great books of the traditions of classical republicanism and modern rights-based liberalism. (He also praises the idea of engagement with classics of other traditions like the Mencius though this is not his specialty). By examining many passages from these books, Pangle makes a convincing case that the classic writers have already considered many of the most pressing problems for our own democracy, and that they are therefore worth returning to. I could give examples such as Locke's emphasis that "reason" has to be learned through a rigorous process of moral education situated in a family and in given cultural traditions before the student becomes a "rational" self-governing agent, which inspired a long lived but now senescent tradition of liberal education in the US.
In short, I think this makes as good a case as I have read for Great Books curriculums. Oddly, it feels as timely to me now as when it was written.
Displaying 1 of 1 review