Reason And Self-enactment in History And Politics

by Barnard, F. M.

• ISBN13: 9780773529656
• ISBN10: 0773529659
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-05-30
• Publisher: McGill Queens Univ

Summary

F.M. Barnard goes beyond the seventeenth-century understanding of the social contract by making national self-enactment contingent on public reasons for individual liberty within civic mutuality. He examines the possibilities and limits for a self-enacting, principled politics, acknowledging reason and self-enactment as central concepts of historical and political thinking. But he qualifies each by viewing the former as practical reason that only indirectly acts as a cause and the latter as operating in relation to reciprocity with the other. Accordingly, enactment is opposed to determination, purposive action to functional processes, and historical consciousness to historical inevitability. Barnard also stresses that unitary truths and moral perfectionism are not the concerns of politics. Reappraising basic political principles and constructs, he argues for bridging differences among a plurality of truths and forming practical judgments by the cultivation of a sense of situational appropriateness.

Author Biography

F. M. Barnard is professor emeritus of political science, University of Western Ontario

Table of Contents

Preface	xi
Introduction	3	(22)
PART I: FROM HISTORICAL TO REVOLUTIONARY CONSCIOUSNESS: FOUR THEMES
Reasons in History: Causality of Ends	25	(26)
Reasons in Politics: Explanation and Commitment	51	(21)
Reasons, Ideology, and Politics	72	(25)
Revolutionary Purpose: Rational and Natural Necessity	97	(22)
PART II: FROM PUBLIC REASON TO REPRESENTATIVE THINKING: FOUR VOICES
Practical Reason and Civic Mutuality: Christian Thomasius	119	(26)
Public Reason and Political Self-Mastery: Jean-Jacques Rousseau	145	(30)
Rational Principles and Civic Self-Legislation: Immanuel Kant	175	(33)
External Principles but no Banisters: Hannah Arendt	208	(35)
Epilogue: Highlights without Footnotes	243	(24)
Index	267