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

by Jean Bethke Elshtain

Contents On Writing This Text ix Acknowledgments xiii 1. On Reading This Text 1 2. Luther's Two Kingdoms and the Eclipse of the Female [ Mater Ecclesiae ] 5 3. Kant and Rational Woman as a Suspect Category 21 4. Rousseau Bodies Social and Political 37 5. Feminism and Liberalism and Its Discontents 55 6. Self/Other, Citizen/ G. W. F. Hegel and Jane Addams 71 7. Freud and the Therapeutic Homo Politicus or Homo Psychologicus ? 85 8. War and Political From Machiavelli to Arendt 103 9. A Concluding Chapter That Doesn't 115 Bibliography 119 Index 127

Genres: Philosophy

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Jean Bethke Elshtain is an American political philosopher. She is the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics at the University of Chicago Divinity School, and is a contributing editor for The New Republic. She is, in addition, newly the Thomas and Dorothy Leavey Chair in the Foundations of American Freedom at Georgetown University. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and she has served on the Boards of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and the National Humanities Center. She is also the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and has received nine honorary degrees. In 2002, Elshtain received the Frank J. Goodnow award, the highest award for distinguished service to the profession given by the American Political Science Association.

The focus of Elshtain's work is an exploration of the relationship between politics and ethics. Much of her work is concerned with the parallel development of male and female gender roles as they pertain to public and private social participation. Since the September 11, 2001 attacks she has been one of the more visible academic supporters of U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Jean Bethke Elshtain, scholar of religion and political philosophy, 1941-2013 http://news.uchicago.edu/article/2013...

Reviews

[Hayden Lukas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think it's an uneven book. The Luther she uses is certainly dated, even if she makes (too) much of the two realms. The first essay was uninteresting. The essay on feminism in Rousseau was good, and the essay on Hegel and Jane Addams was brilliant, certainly the best in the book, and worth reading on its own.