Description
Book SynopsisWith crisp prose and intellectual fairness, Family Politics traces the treatment of the family in the philosophies of leading political thinkers of the modern world. What is family? What is marriage? In an effort to address contemporary society's disputes over the meanings of these human social institutions, Scott Yenor carefully examines a roster of major and unexpected modern political philosophers--from Locke and Rousseau to Hegel and Marx to Freud and Beauvoir. He lucidly presents how these individuals developed an understanding of family in order to advance their goals of political and social reform. Through this exploration, Yenor unveils the effect of modern liberty on this foundational institution and argues that the quest to pursue individual autonomy has undermined the nature of marriage and jeopardizes its future.
Trade Review" Family Politics is the pursuit of political philosophy at its best. Enthusiastically recommended not only to scholars but to all who care about the fate of the family in the modern world." --Carson Holloway, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Nebraska, and author of The Way of Life: John Paul II and the Challenge of Liberal Modernity
"Indispensable. While engaging the deepest and most vexing contemporary moral and political issues, Yenor avoids polemics, presenting opposing arguments in the best possible light while developing a distinctive position that is immediately relevant to vital contemporary debates." --Ralph C. Hancock, Professor of Political Science, Brigham Young University, and President of the John Adams Center for the Study of Faith, Philosophy and Public Affairs
"[Yenor] covers a wide range of the most important modern philosophic, political, social scientific, and religious works on the family. Few treatments of the foundational problems of the family are this thorough or deep.... Family Politics provides a good starting point for all those who seek to grapple with the problem of the modern family." --Claremont Review of Books (2011, 11:4)
"... an important contribution to the recovery of the family's meaning. [Yenor] argues convincingly that the framework provided by modern political thought does not provide sufficient means for our doing so." -- Perspectives on Political Science (2011, 40:3)
Scott Yenor's book...tackles an incredibly ambitious task in its aim to understand marriage in political thought over the last several centuries. -- Alison Lefkovitz, New Jersey Institute of Technology -- Humanities and Social Sciences Online
Table of ContentsPreface Acknowledgments 1 Nature, Marital Unity, and Contract in Modern Political Thought 1 Part I: The Ballast of Nature and the Ends of the Family 2 Locke and the Invention of the Modern Family 3 Rousseau and the Romance of Family Life Part II: The Movin g Ballast of History 4 Hegel's Modern Marital Unity: More Than a Contract, Less Than a Sacrament 5 In Hegel's Shadow: French Sociologists and Positivist Defenses of the Family Part III: Liberation and the Movement toward the Family's End 6 The City and the Soul Mate: Mill's Late Liberal Vision 7 Marx, Engels, and the Abolition of the Family 8 Freud, Russell, and the Liberated Family 9 Feminism and the Family Part IV: The Old Family and a New Nature 10 Positivism Supplemented: Anatomy, Evolution, and the Family 11 A Second Sailing?: Recovering Marital Unity and the Purposes of the Family 12 What Is to Be Thought?: Tensions and Lessons Notes Bibliography Index
