Description
Book SynopsisThe freedom to take part in civic life--whether in the exercise of one''s right to vote or congregate and protest--has become increasingly less important to Americans than individual rights and liberties. In Public Freedom, renowned political theorist Dana Villa argues that political freedom is essential to both the preservation of constitutional government and the very substance of American democracy itself.
Through intense close readings of theorists such as Hegel, Tocqueville, Mill, Adorno, Arendt, and Foucault, Villa diagnoses the key causes of our democratic discontent and offers solutions to preserve at least some of our democratic hopes. He demonstrates how Americans'' preoccupation with a market-based conception of freedom--that is, the personal freedom to choose among different material, moral, and vocational goods--has led to the gradual erosion of meaningful public participation in politics as well as diminished interest in the health of the public rea
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"In his argument for a more vital and robust public square and a more capacious conception of freedom, Villa makes a substantial contribution, both to the political theory literature and to a more textured understanding of the nature of a genuinely free society."--Sheila Suess Kennedy, Law and Politics
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ix Chapter 1: Introduction: Public Freedom Today 1 Chapter 2: Tocqueville and Civil Society 27 Chapter 3: Hegel, Tocqueville, and "Individualism" 49 Chapter 4: Tocqueville and Arendt: Public Freedom, Plurality, and the Preconditions of Liberty 85 Chapter 5: Maturity, Paternalism, and Democratic Education in J. S. Mill 108 Chapter 6: The Frankfurt School and the Public Sphere 143 Chapter 7: Genealogies of Total Domination: Arendt, Adorno, and Auschwitz 210 Chapter 8: Foucault and the Dystopian Public 255 Chapter 9: Arendt and Heidegger, Again 302 10 The "Autonomy of the Political" Reconsidered 338 Notes 355 Index 421
