| ashu |
Posted
on 29-Nov-01 05:42 AM
Hi all,
I once had to read this book for a philosophy seminar. This is a collection of well-argued essays in response to Martha Nussbaum's essay that had first appeared in The Boston Review.
This book may be of interest to those of you who consider yourself patriots. THis may also be of interest to those of you looking for models for heated public debates, well, even by normally placid philosophers.
If this is not of interest, please ignore this.
Taken from amazon.com
oohi
ashu
ktm,nepal
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BOOK: For Love of Country : Debating the Limits of Patriotism
by Joshua Cohen (Editor), Martha Craven Nussbaum
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Editorial Reviews
From Booklist
In the essay that opens this slim but demanding volume, law and ethics professor Nussbaum argues that it is better to prepare children to be cosmopolitans--citizens of the world--rather than patriots of a nation. She states her case provocatively enough to allow 15 other professors to respond with demurrers ranging in tone from "yes, but" to "poppycock!"
Each of the 15 offers a distinct perspective on the argument, although most respond with versions of the position that both patriotism and cosmopolitanism are worth inculcating. Only conservative historian Gertrude Himmelfarb is utterly dismissive of cosmopolitanism, thinking it a utopian abstraction that "obscures, even denies . . . the givens of life: parents, ancestors, family, race, religion, heritage, history, culture, tradition, community--and nationality."
The most piquant of the other essays are Richard Falk's, with its reservations about such present-day, real-world aspects of cosmopolitanism as transnational capitalism and global marketing, and Judith Butler's critique, crabbed but cogent, of the universality of moral concepts on which cosmopolitanism depends. Ray Olson
From Kirkus Reviews
Nationalism or internationalism? That is the question debated in this provocative collection of essays by some of today's most subtle minds. In a 1994 Boston Review essay, ``Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism,'' Nussbaum (Poetic Justice, 1995, etc.) powerfully argued against patriotism as well as its darker incarnations (such as ethnocentrism), in favor of a universalist allegiance ``to the worldwide community of human beings.''
While not particularly new in its philosophical underpinnings, this essay created an enormous controversy in academia. Now, in a work featuring such notable scholars and thinkers as Nathan Glazer, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Hilary Putnam, and Michael Walzer, Nussbaum and editor Cohen (who is the editor of the Boston Review) have brought together 15 of the most notable and considered responses. As Europe and North America seem to be moving slowly toward confederation--and much of the Third World toward disintegration--the issues these essays raise are of vital importance.
Philosophically, the conflict between patriotism and cosmopolitanism goes straight to the heart of what it means to be human. Are we political animals, forged by the particularities of our lives? Or do we share a larger commonality, some irreducible essence that is true everywhere and always? Predictably, most of the authors in this collection seem to come down somewhere near the middle, emphasizing, with only slightly different weightings, the importance of both the national and the cosmopolitan.
Almost without exception, their critiques are thoughtful, revealing, and perfectly nuanced. Nussbaum concludes the book by answering and critiquing the previous pieces. Retreating a little from her previous position, she does acknowledge that cosmopolitanism is an ethical ideal that can only be aspired to through the ``local.'' Rarely does one come across a forum where all the facets of an important idea are so thoroughly debated. This is the give-and-take of intellectual debate at its finest. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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