Archive for September, 2006
A Student’s Guide to the Core Curriculum, by Mark C. Henrie
A Student’s Guide to the Core Curriculum, by Mark C. Henrie, ISI Books, 2000.
College students today have tremendous freedom to choose the courses they will take. With such freedom, however, students face a pressing dilemma: How can they choose well? Which courses convey the core of an authentic liberal arts education, transmitting our civilizational inheritance, and which courses are merely passing fads? From the smorgasbord of electives available, how can students achieve a coherent understanding of their world and their place in history? In a series of penetrating essays, A Student’s Guide to the Core Curriculum first explains the value of a traditional core of studies in Western civilization and then surveys eight courses available in most American universities which may be taken as electives to acquire such an education. This study guide puts “the best” within reach of every student.
Mark C. Henrie is Editor of the Intercollegiate Review: A Journal of Scholarship and Opinion and Senior Editor of Modern Age: A Quarterly Review. He holds degrees from Dartmouth, Cambridge, and Harvard.
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A Student’s Guide to Liberal Learning, by James V. Schall
A Student’s Guide to Liberal Learning, by James V. Schall, S.J., ISI Books, 2000.
This study guide is an inviting conversation with a learned scholar about the content of an authentic liberal arts education. It surveys ideas and books central to the tradition of humanistic education that has fundamentally shaped our country and our civilization. This accessible volume argues for an order and integration of knowledge in order that meaning might be restored to the haphazard approach to study currently dominating higher education. Freshly conveying the excitement of learning from the acknowledged masters of intellectual life, this study guide is also an excellent blueprint for building one’s own library of books that matter.
James V. Schall, S.J., is professor in the Department of Government at Georgetown University. He is the author of numerous books, including Another Sort of Learning; At the Limits of Political Philosophy; Reason, Revelation, and the Foundations of Political Philosophy; Idylls and Rambles; and Schall on Chesterton: Timely Essays on Timeless Paradoxes.
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Richard A. Posner, Not a Suicide Pact: The Constitution in a Time of National Emergency
Richard A. Posner, Not a Suicide Pact: The Constitution in a Time of National Emergency, Oxford University Press, 2006.
Eavesdropping on the phone calls of U.S. citizens; demands by the FBI for records of library borrowings; establishment of military tribunals to try suspected terrorists, including U.S. citizens–many of the measures taken by the Bush administration since 9/11 have sparked heated protests. In Not a Suicide Pact, Judge Richard A. Posner offers a cogent and elegant response to these protests, arguing that personal liberty must be balanced with public safety in the face of grave national danger.
Critical of civil libertarians who balk at any curtailment of their rights, even in the face of an unprecedented terrorist threat in an era of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, Posner takes a fresh look at the most important constitutional issues that have arisen since 9/11. These issues include the constitutional rights of terrorist suspects (whether American citizens or not) to habeas corpus and due process, and their rights against brutal interrogation (including torture) and searches based on less than probable cause. Posner argues that terrorist activity is sui generis — it is neither “war” nor “crime”–and it demands a tailored response, one that gives terror suspects fewer constitutional rights than persons suspected of ordinary criminal activity. Constitutional law must remain fluid, protean, and responsive to the pressure of contemporary events. Posner
stresses the limits of law in regulating national security measures and underscores the paradoxical need to recognize a category of government conduct that is at once illegal and morally obligatory.
One of America’s top legal thinkers, Posner does not pull punches. He offers readers a short, sharp book with a strong point of view that is certain to generate much debate.
A Student’s Guide to the Study of Law, by Gerard V. Bradley
A Student’s Guide to the Study of Law, by Gerard V. Bradley, ISI Books, 2006.
In a society in which courts, and hence lawyers, have achieved extraordinary power, it is not surprising that the discipline of law is contentious and controversial. In A Student’s Guide to the Study of Law, Gerard V. Bradley, professor of law at the University of Notre Dame Law School and an expert in the areas of constitutional law and law and religion, introduces readers to the major concepts, cases, and thinkers that have shaped American legal scholarship and history. He also helps readers better understand what, at bottom, is at stake in the different understandings of the nature of law that drive many of our national debates.
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Ronald Dworkin, Is Democracy Possible Here? Principles for a New Political Debate
Ronald Dworkin, Is Democracy Possible Here? Principles for a New Political Debate, Princeton University Press, 2006. 192 pages.
Politics in America are polarized and trivialized, perhaps as never before. In Congress, the media, and academic debate, opponents from right and left, the red and the blue, struggle against one another as if politics were contact sports played to the shouts of cheerleaders. The result, Ronald Dworkin writes, is a deeply depressing political culture, as ill equipped for the perennial challenge of achieving social justice as for the emerging threats of terrorism. Yet this need not be. Dworkin, one the world’s leading legal and political philosophers, identifies and defends core principles of personal and political morality that all citizens can share. He shows that recognizing such shared principles can make substantial political argument possible and help replace contempt with mutual respect. Only then can the full promise of democracy be realized in America and elsewhere.
Dworkin lays out two core principles that citizens should share: first, that each human life is intrinsically and equally valuable and, second, that each person has an inalienable personal responsibility for identifying and realizing value in his or her own life. He then shows what fidelity to these principles would mean for human rights, the place of religion in public life, economic justice, and the character and value of democracy. Dworkin argues that liberal conclusions flow most naturally from these principles. Properly understood, they collide with the ambitions of religious conservatives, contemporary American tax and social policy, and much of the War on Terror. But his more basic aim is to convince Americans of all political stripes–as well as citizens of other nations with similar cultures–that they can and must defend their own convictions through their own interpretations of these shared values.
Ronald Dworkin is the author of many books, including Sovereign Virtue, Freedom’s Law, and Life’s Dominion. He is Frank Henry Sommer Professor of Law at New York University, and Quain Professor of Jurisprudence at University College London.
Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments ix
Preface xi
Chapter 1: Common Ground 1
Chapter 2: Terrorism and Human Rights 24
Chapter 3: Religion and Dignity 52
Chapter 4: Taxes and Legitimacy 90
Chapter 5: Is Democracy Possible? 127
Epilogue 160
Notes 165
Index 171
A Student’s Guide to Political Philosophy, by Harvey C. Mansfield
A Student’s Guide to Political Philosophy, by Harvey C. Mansfield. ISI Books, 2001.
Hidden within every political debate—in legislatures, on radio talk shows, and even in coffee shops—is an implicit philosophy of the polity, or a particular understanding of the limits and possibilities of human life in community. Harvard University’s Harvey C. Mansfield, one of the philosophers who have shaped our fundamental views of politics through the ages. In an era when “partisanship” is deplored, Mansfield shows that taking sides in disputes about the common good is a permanent part of politics; and it is the place to begin the quest for wisdom concerning the human things.
Dr. Mansfield is the William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of Government at Harvard University. He has held Guggenheim and NEH Fellowships and has been a Fellow at the National Humanities Center. One of America’s leading political theorists, his books include Machiavelli’s Virtue, Taming the Prince, America’s Constitutional Soul, and The Spirit of Liberalism.
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