Search results for ""Siep Stuurman" "The Invention of Humanity""
Harvard University Press Freedom
Book SynopsisMany Americans assume that the country was founded by skeptics of “big government,” who saw minimal state power as freedom’s prerequisite. Annelien de Dijn takes on this myth. In fact, this was the view not of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century revolutionaries who created modern democracies, but of their critics and opponents.Trade ReviewAmbitious and impressive…Explores an alternate history of the concept from the ancient world to the Age of Revolution to the Cold War, charting those moments when new notions of freedom—such as freedom from government supervision or repression—deviated from its more classical and longstanding definition as self-government… At a time when the very survival of both freedom and democracy seems uncertain, books like this are more important than ever, as our societies contemplate both the heritage of the past and the prospects for the future. -- Tyler Stovall * The Nation *Ambitious and bold, this book will have an enormous impact on how we think about the place of freedom in the Western tradition. -- Samuel Moyn, author of Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal WorldAt once magisterial and finely grained, this is history on the grand scale. De Dijn succeeds in bringing, with clarity and a lightness of touch, the weight of the past to bear on freedom and its fragilities in our own time. -- Darrin M. McMahon, author of Divine Fury: A History of GeniusWith remarkable sweep and erudition, de Dijn recounts the whole history of thinking about freedom in the West. In the process, she also profoundly upends the standard liberal narrative, convincing us that what we understand by freedom today—namely, the opportunity to be left alone to do our own thing—is a recent invention. This is an important book for historians, political theorists, and all readers who like big ideas. -- Sophia Rosenfeld, author of Democracy and Truth: A Short HistoryDe Dijn has written a marvelous book on the history and various meanings of freedom. Its scope is enormous, its writing elegant, its insights strikingly original. We will all be reading this book for many years to come. -- Michael P. Zuckert, author of Launching LiberalismA sweeping history of the idea of freedom in the West, from Ancient Greece, to our time…Shows how the notion of democratic freedom has developed and deepened…Importantly, de Dijn traces how the Old Oligarchy—which was overthrown by Athenian democracy—feared the redistributive power of political democracy. From the time of Ancient Athens until today, this fear has been a constant in reactionary thought. -- Paul Sutton * Jacobin *For two millennia liberty was conceived as popular self-government. But nineteenth-century liberals and conservatives redefined freedom as the guarantee of individual rights against state power, and democratic equality as a threat to liberty. This timely book presents urgent and persuasive arguments to rethink liberty and democracy in an era of fast-increasing inequality. -- Siep Stuurman, author of The Invention of Humanity: Equality and Cultural Difference in World HistoryThis book brings remarkable clarity to a big and messy subject, the definition of freedom in the Western tradition. New insights and hard-hitting conclusions about the resistance to democracy make this essential reading for anyone interested in the roots of our current dilemmas. -- Lynn Hunt, author of History: Why It MattersA wonderful book—extremely well written, engaging, and compelling. De Dijn offers a sweeping history of the notion of freedom across 2,000 years, arguing that identifying liberty with limited government, the way we do today, is a very modern idea. -- Helena Rosenblatt, author of The Lost History of LiberalismThought-provoking…Helps explain how partisans on both the right and the left can claim to be protectors of liberty, yet hold radically different understandings of its meaning…This deeply informed history of an idea has the potential to combat political polarization. * Publishers Weekly *Works through the intellectual history of the idea of freedom from antiquity to the present and puts those ideas in their political and historical context to show how the idea of freedom was used…Challenge[s] us to look at our history to better understand our present and to fight for our future. -- Michael Mirer * Public Books *Annelien De Dijn delivers a compelling and accessible analysis of a highly relevant subject…In a post-pandemic world that has exposed the fragile tension between individual rights, collective interests and democratic legitimacy, De Dijn’s plea for a re-evaluation of our understanding of liberty deserves to be listened to. -- Christophe Maes * Legal History Review *Beautifully written…De Dijn’s work is singularly ambitious and iconoclastic, seeking to restructure a field thick with entrenched interpretation while sending a message about the necessary reform of the politics of the present. -- Richard Whatmore * Journal of Modern History *
£17.95
Harvard University Press The Invention of Humanity
Book SynopsisFor much of history, strangers were seen as barbarians, seldom as fellow human beings. The notion of common humanity had to be invented. Drawing on global thinkers, Siep Stuurman traces ideas of equality and difference across continents and civilizations, from antiquity to present-day debates about human rights and the “clash of civilizations.”Trade ReviewStuurman writes with great clarity and authority. He is judicious, insightful, and often thinks against the grain in a fresh and productive way. -- Darrin M. McMahon, author of Divine Fury: A History of GeniusFar from being an empirical fact or obvious truth, our common humanity, Stuurman shows in this bold and magisterial history, had to be imagined and invented. Sprightly in its coverage of a vast expanse of time and wide-ranging in its mastery of a host of thinkers across space, Stuurman’s challenging and uplifting account sets a new standard for global intellectual history and will prompt grateful agreement and productive dispute in the years to come. -- Samuel Moyn, author of The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History[A] splendid book…Stuurman’s panoramic vision of discovery and invention, reiterated in many different cultural and religious idioms across a vast expanse of time and space, makes for a dramatically original history. -- Michael Walzer * The Nation *The book demonstrates [Stuurman’s] enormous scope of knowledge and his consistent effort to challenge Eurocentric bias in writing of the global history of ideas. This is by far the most comprehensive, authoritative treatment of the subject matter. -- X. Fan * Choice *In this season of growing inequality, few books could be more timely than one focused on the origins and evolution of the concept of equality in world history. Siep Stuurman has undertaken the herculean task of exploring the emerging belief in the commonality of all humankind from the beginning of complex human societies to the present. The author is ambitious in his scope and impressive in his familiarity with cultural traditions from every corner of the globe. He has written a balanced and erudite treatment of complex issues, transcending the ideological divisions of our fractured age to remind readers that the impulse to cooperate, to recognize a shared humanity, to draw from the collective wisdom and knowledge of others, has been inherent in the human experience for thousands of years…A marvelous, truly magisterial work that leaves the reader with a deeper and richer appreciation of the human condition. -- Alan T. Wood * American Historical Review *
£41.61
Brill The Citizenship Experiment : Contesting the Limits of Civic Equality and Participation in the Age of Revolutions
Book SynopsisThe Citizenship Experiment explores the fate of citizenship ideals in the Age of Revolutions. While in the early 1790s citizenship ideals in the Atlantic world converged, the twin shocks of the Haitian Revolution and the French Revolutionary Terror led the American, French, and Dutch publics to abandon the notion of a shared, Atlantic, revolutionary vision of citizenship. Instead, they forged conceptions of citizenship that were limited to national contexts, restricted categories of voters, and ‘advanced’ stages of civilization. Weaving together the convergence and divergence of an Atlantic revolutionary discourse, debates on citizenship, and the intellectual repercussions of the Terror and the Haitian Revolution, Koekkoek offers a fresh perspective on the revolutionary 1790s as a turning point in the history of citizenship.Trade Review"René Koekkoek has written one of the most important, and most provocative comparative studies of the late eighteenth-century Atlantic Revolutions since R.R. Palmer's The Age of the Democratic Revolution. Based on exhaustive research in original French, Dutch and American sources, and written in exceptionally lucid prose, The Citizen Experiment makes a bold argument about how the reaction to the violence and perceived excesses of the French "reign of Terror" and the Haitian Revolution led revolutionaries throughout the Atlantic world to embrace far more narrowly national and circumscribed ideas of citizenship than they had done at the start of their respective revolutions. All historians of the period will want to read, and engage with this book." - David A. Bell, Princeton University "The Citizenship Experiment presents a highly original study of the American, French and Dutch eighteenth-century revolutions. Instead of a traditional side-by-side comparison of the three revolutions, René Koekkoek demonstrates that political ideas on citizenship and equality circulated in an Atlantic political space and cannot be well understood in national frameworks. Koekkoek identifies a radical-democratic Atlantic historical moment in the early seventeen-nineties, followed by a conservative turn impacted by the Terror in France and the successful slave revolution in Haiti. His book is an inspiring example of intercrossing history, highlighting the entanglement of domestic and colonial politics in the making of citizenship in the Age of Revolutions." - Siep Stuurman, author of The Invention of Humanity: Equality and Cultural Difference in World History (Harvard, 2017)Table of Contents Acknowledgments Cover Illustration Introduction 1Citizenship in the Age of Revolutions 2The Terror and the Haitian Revolution 3A Comparative Approach to the ‘Atlantic Thermidor’ 1‘The Kindred Spirit Tie of Congenial Principles’ 1Rights Declarations and the Constitutional Framework of Citizenship 2Converging Revolutionary Citizenship Ideals 3The French Revolution and the Heyday of a Transatlantic Ideal of Citizenship 4Regimes of Exclusion 2Saint-Domingue, Rights and Empire 1The Logic of Rights and the Realm of Empire 2The Nation’s Colonial Citizens 3Slavery and Civic Inequality in the US before Saint-Domingue 3The Civilizational Limits of Citizenship 1The Enlightenment Language of Civilization 2Unity and Hierarchy in the French Empire 3Levelling Principles and Remorseless Savages 4The Turn Away from French Universalism 1Citizenship and Inequality in the Dutch Republican Empire 2‘The vile machinations of men calling themselves philosophers’ 3The French Colonial Thermidor 5Uniting ‘good’ Citizens in Thermidorian France 1The Revolutionary Political Culture of Citizenship, 1792–1794 2Good Citizen / Bad Citizen 3Isolating the Citizen 4What is a Good Citizen? Redefining Civic Virtues 5Narrowing Down Political Citizenship 6The Post-Revolutionary Contestation and Nationalization of American Citizenship 1A Burgeoning Partisan Public Sphere 2‘Whether France is Saved or Ruined, is still Problematical’ 3Political Societies, Faction, and the Limits of Democratic Citizenship 4Anti-Jacobinism and the American Citizenship Model 7Forging the Batavian Citizen in a Post-Terror Revolution 1Portraying the Terror between Orangist Restoration and Batavian Revolution 2Limiting Power, Protecting Rights: The Terror and the Need for a Constitution 3Channelling the Participation of the People 4Nationalization 5The End of the Democratic-Republican Citizen Epilogue. The Age of Revolutions as a Turning Point in the History of Citizenship Bibliography Index
£104.00
