Democracy and Vision: Sheldon Wolin and the Vicissitudes of the Political

Published by Princeton University Press 2001

Democracy and Vision

Sheldon Wolin and the Vicissitudes of the Political

Edited by: Aryeh Botwinick and William E. Connolly

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691186771

Overview
Contents

About this book

American democracy faces severe challenges today, as everyday life gathers pace, national borders become increasingly porous, and commodity culture becomes more dominant. Democracy and Vision assembles a cast of prominent political theorists to consider the problems confronting political life by reviewing, assessing, and expanding on the ideas of one of the most influential political thinkers of the past forty years, Sheldon Wolin.

The book consists of three sections linked by the underlying theme of Wolin's monumental effort to define ''the political'' and the conditions of democratic life. In the first, Nicholas Xenos, George Kateb, Fred Dallmayr, and Charles Taylor focus, in particular, on whether mass political participation, sustainable in times of upheaval as what Wolin aptly termed ''fugitive democracy,'' can be buoyed by political institutions during periods of stability. In the second section, Wendy Brown, Aryeh Botwinick, Melissa A. Orlie, and Anne Norton examine the relevance of Wolin's ideas to current debates about, for example, social diversity and the commercialization of culture. In the last, Stephen K. White, Kirstie M. McClure, Michael J. Shapiro, and J. Peter Euben address globalization and temporality in relation to Wolin's narrative of decline, asking, among other things, whether citizenship today must incorporate a cosmopolitan dimension.

These essays--and an introduction by William Connolly that lucidly outlines Wolin's thought and the deep uncertainty about political theory in the 1960s that did much to inspire his work--offer unprecedented insights into Wolin's lament that modernity has meant the loss of the political.

Author / Editor information

Aryeh Botwinick is Professor of Political Science at Temple University. He is the author of Skepticism, Belief, and the Modern: Maimonides to Nietzsche, Postmodernism and Democratic Theory, and of two other books. William E. Connolly is Professor of Political Science at The Johns Hopkins University. He is the author, most recently, of Why I Am Not a Secularist, The Ethos of Pluralization, and Political Theory and Modernity. Princeton published his The Terms of Political Discourse.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Acknowledgements Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	vii
DEMOCRACY AND VISION Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. Politics and Vision William E. Connolly Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	3
PART I: DEMOCRATIC ENERGY AND INSTITUTIONAL DEFINITION
2. Momentary Democracy Nicholas Xenos Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	25
3. Wolin as a Critic of Democracy George Kateb Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	39
4. Beyond Fugitive Democracy: Some Modern and Postmodern Reflections Fred Dallmayr Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	58
5. A Tension in Modern Democracy Charles Taylor Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	79
PART II: CAPITALISM, DIFFERENCE, AND DEMOCRACY
6. Reflections on Tolerance in the Age of Identity Wendy Brown Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	99
7. Wolin and Oakeshott: Similarity in Difference Aryeh Botwinick Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	118
8. Political Capitalism and the Consumption of Democracy Melissa A. Orlie Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	138
9. Evening Land Anne Norton Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	161
PART III: TIME AND COSMOPOLITANISM
10. Three Conceptions of the Political: The Real World of Late Modern Democracy Stephen K. White Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	173
11. Between the Castigation of Texts and the Excess of Words: Political Theory in the Margins of Tradition Kirstie M. McClure Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	193
12. Time, Disjuncture, and Democratic Citizenship Michael J. Shapiro Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	232
13. The Polis, Globalization, and the Politics of Place J. Peter Euben Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	256
The Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	291
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	293