The necessity of choice : nineteenth-century political thought

Author(s)

• Hartz, Louis
• Roazen, Paul

Bibliographic Information

The necessity of choice : nineteenth-century political thought

Louis Hartz ; edited, compiled, and prepared by Paul Roazen ; with a preface by Benjamin Barber

Transaction Publishers, c1990

Note

Includes index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

Louis Hartz is best known for his classic study, The Liberal Tradition in America. At Harvard University, his lecture course on nineteenth-century politics and ideologies was memorable. Through the editorial hand of Paul Roazen, we can now share the experience of Hartz's considerable contributions to the theory of politics. At the root of Hartz's work is the belief that revolution is not produced by misery, but by pressure of a new system on an old one. This approach enables him to explain sharp differences in revolutionary traditions. Because America essentially was a liberal society from its beginning and had no need for revolutions, America also lacked reactionaries, and lacked a tradition of genuine conservatism characteristic of European thought. In lectures embracing Rousseau, Burke, Comte, Hegel, Mill, and Marx among others, Hartz develops a keen sense of the delicate balance between the role of the state in both enhancing and limiting personal freedom. Hartz notably insisted on the autonomy of intellectual life and the necessity of individual choice as an essential ingredient of liberty.

Table of Contents

Foreword, by Benjamin R. Barber Introduction, by Paul Roazen Part I: The Revolutionary Background 1 Origins 2 The Religious Problem 3 The Economic Question 4 Culture and Tradition: Condorcet 5 Jean-Jacques Rousseau 6 Rousseau and Our Constructive Problem Part II: Reaction and Authoritarianism 7 The Setting 8 Romanticism 9 Edmund Burke 10 Joseph de Maistre 11 Louis de Bonald 12 Auguste Comte 13 Georg W. F. Hegel 14 A Free Society and Its Relation to the State Part III: Liberalism 15 The Problem of Industrial Society 16 Bentham's Utilitarianism 17 John Stuart Mill 18 Pierre-Paul Royer-Collard 19 Benjamin Constant 20 Italy and Mazzini 21 Historic Success and Failure Part IV: Socialism 22 Robert Owen 23 Francois Fourier 24 Karl Marx Conclusion Index

by "Nielsen BookData"

Details

• NCID: BA1134448X
• ISBN:
  • 0887383262
• LCCN: 89028039
• Country Code: us
• Title Language Code: eng
• Text Language Code: eng
• Place of Publication: New Brunswick, N.J.
• Pages/Volumes: xi, 215 p.
• Size: 24 cm
• Classification:
  • LCC : JA83
  • DC20 : 320.5/09/034
• Subject Headings:
  • LCSH : Political science -- History -- 19th century