The Deepening Darkness: Patriarchy, Resistance, and Democracy's Future

by Carol Gilligan , David A. J. Richards

• ISBN13: 9780521898980
• ISBN10: 0521898986
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-11-10
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Why is America again unjustly at war? Why is its politics distorted by wedge issues like abortion and gay marriage? Why is anti-Semitism still so powerfully resurgent? Such contradictions within democracies arise from a patriarchal psychology still alive in our personal and political lives in tension with the equal voice that is the basis of democracy. The book joins a psychological approach with a political-theoretical one that traces both this psychology (based on loss in intimate life) and resistance to it (based on the love of equals) to the Roman Republic and Empire and to three Latin masterpieces: Virgil's Aeneid, Apuleius's The Golden Ass, and Augustine's Confessions. In addition, this book explains many other aspects of our present situation including why movements of ethical resistance are often accompanied by a freeing of sexuality and why we are witnessing an aggressive fundamentalism at home and abroad.

Author Biography

David A. J. Richards is Edwin D. Webb Professor of Law at New York University School of Law.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction and Overview	p. 1
Roman Patriarchy: Entering the Darkness
Why Rome? Why Now?	p. 9
Roman Patriarchy and Violence	p. 22
Vergil on the Darkness Visible	p. 53
Apuleius on Conversion	p. 82
Augustine on Conversion	p. 102
Resistance Across Time and Culture
Resistance: Religion	p. 121
The Historical Jesus	p. 122
The Jews and Christian Anti-Semitism	p. 129
The Argument for Toleration	p. 137
Christian Resistance: Bayle and Locke	p. 137
Jewish Resistance: Spinoza	p. 139
Ethical Religion and Constitutional Rights	p. 140
Radical Abolitionism	p. 141
Martin Luther King, Jr.	p. 144
Religion and the Values of Constitutional Democracy	p. 150
The Legacy of Celibacy	p. 151
The Priest Sexual Abuse Scandal	p. 151
James Carroll on Resistance to War and to Anti-Semitism	p. 156
Resistance: Psychology	p. 159
Freud's Opening and Closing to Women	p. 160
The Alternative Psychology of Ian D. Suttie	p. 190
The Lens of Gender	p. 192
Resistance: The Artists	p. 198
Why Art?	p. 198
Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms	p. 201
Joyce's Ulysses	p. 203
Wharton's The Age of Innocence	p. 209
Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and Three Guineas	p. 213
Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover	p. 217
Resistance: Politics	p. 225
Between Patriarchy and Democracy: Contradictions in American Constitutionalism	p. 225
The Psychological Roots of Fascism and the Rebirth of Democratic Constitutionalism	p. 232
Irrational Prejudice: Anti-Semitism as the Model for Racism, Sexism, and Homophobia	p. 238
The Resistance Movements of the 1960s and Later	p. 240
Resistance to Fundamentalism in American Constitutional Law	p. 243
Democracy's Future
The Contemporary Scene	p. 249
Impact of Western Colonialism in Asia and the Middle East	p. 249
The War on Terror	p. 253
Sexual Voice and the Interpretation of the 1960s	p. 257
Conclusion	p. 264
Notes	p. 269
Bibliography	p. 303
Index	p. 325
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