Search results for ""author peg birmingham""

Hannah Arendt's most important contribution to political thought may be her well-known and often-cited notion of the "right to have rights." In this incisive and wide-ranging book, Peg Birmingham explores the theoretical and social foundations of Arendt's philosophy on human rights. Devoting special consideration to questions and issues surrounding Arendt's ideas of common humanity, human responsibility, and natality, Birmingham formulates a more complex view of how these basic concepts support Arendt's theory of human rights. Birmingham considers Arendt's key philosophical works along with her literary writings, especially those on Walter Benjamin and Franz Kafka, to reveal the extent of Arendt's commitment to humanity even as violence, horror, and pessimism overtook Europe during World War II and its aftermath. This current and lively book makes a significant contribution to philosophy, political science, and European intellectual history.

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This book reflects on the problematic relation of ethics to politics in our 'democratic' era. If democracy implies the loss of an ultimate foundation for both ethics and political action, how can it be defended against its (ultra-nationalist, fundamentalist,...) critics. Are there reasons for being a 'democrat' and what does it mean to be so or to act 'democratically'. Does this merely imply strict obedience to certain procedures that we call 'democratic' or does a democratic society ask for a democratic attitude or ethos. If so, how can this ethos be defined and grounded. All contributions to this volume articulate answers to these questions or to problems intrinsically related to them (i.e. what is the status of the law when it loses ultimate foundation). They do so by reflecting on the work of some important contemporary French philosophers: Lefort, Lyotard, Derrida, Levinas, Lacan, etc.

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