Description
Book SynopsisThe political project of pragmatism has focused primarily on its defense of democracy as the best political system to maintain and improve human well-being over lifetimes and generations. Pragmatism Politics and Perversity: Democracy and the American Party Battle describes this project of Peirce, Dewey, Hook, and Rorty, and combines it with Charles Beard's study of the party battle as the most determinative influence upon American democracy. The book updates and confirms Beard's hypothesis that the history of the party battle is a chronicle of perverse schemes and self-inflicted wounds the most salient to date being the American Civil War because it reflects a ceaselessly disruptive contest over the creation of two largely incompatible political states: nation state and market state. The book supports its thesis with detailed historical accounts of the formation of the Constitution and early federal judiciary, the sedition trials and political schemes of the 1790s, the frustration
Trade ReviewEsposito has written a fascinating and important book. It combines a pragmatic perspective on political practice and its products with a revisionist view of America’s political history—especially in the context of the onset and aftermath of the Civil War. The historical basis of the book is solid and its perspectives novel and thought-provoking. It affords a guide and goad to intelligent political discussion. -- Nicholas Rescher
First, [Esposito] provides a theoretical overview of the philosophical tradition of pragmatism, and seeks to place historian Charles A. Beard's arguments about the economic circumstances of America's founding fathers squarely within this tradition. Second, he offers a novel--and idiosyncratic--interpretation of American history from the Revolution to Reconstruction as a battle among competing views of America as a commercial empire or a democratic republic. Finally, he argues for a normative update of free speech doctrines as necessarily requiring reasoned explanations....As a contribution to pragmatic and democratic theory, the book is successful; the author's call for a rejection of "passive free speech" in order to ward off "perverse politics" should be taken seriously. Recommended for specialized collections. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate and research collections. * CHOICE *
Table of ContentsIntroduction Part I. Toward a Pragmatic Theory of Democracy Chapter 1: Pragmatism and the Democracy Project Chapter 2: Pragmatic Political History Part II. Perverse Themes and Schemes in Party Battle History Chapter 3: A Foundation on a Serbonian Bog Chapter 4: Market State and Nation State Chapter 5: A Judiciary for the Market State Chapter 6: Rogue Justice Chapter 7: Too Much Democracy Chapter 8: Judicial Review as Ideology Chapter 9: Religion and Race Chapter 10: Old Wine in New Bottles Chapter 11: Rewriting History Chapter 12: The Great Kansas Charade Chapter 13: Free Labor and the Economics of Slavery Chapter 14: Civil War Chapter 15: Disorder in the Court Part III. Improving American Democracy Chapter 16: Understanding the Party Battle Chapter 17: Free Speech in the Age of the Big Megaphone
