Public Philosophy in a New Key: Volume 2, Imperialism and Civic Freedom

by James Tully

Overview

These two ambitious volumes from one of the world’s most celebrated political philosophers present a new kind of political and legal theory that James Tully calls a public philosophy, and a complementary new way of thinking about active citizenship, called civic freedom. Professor Tully takes the reader step-by-step through the principal debates in political theory and the major types of political struggle today. These volumes represent a genuine landmark in political theory. In this second volume, Professor Tully studies networks and civic struggles over global or imperial relations of inequality, dependency, exploitation and environmental degradation beyond the state. The final chapter brings all of the author’s resonant themes together in a new way of thinking about global and local citizenship, and of political theory in relation to it. This forms a powerful conclusion to a major intervention from a vital and distinctive voice in contemporary thought.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521728805
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	12/18/2008
Series:	Ideas in Context , #94
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

James Tully is Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of Victoria, Canada. He is one of the most distinguished political philosophers in the world.

Table of Contents

Dedication; Acknowledgements; Credits; Introduction; Public philosophy and civic freedom: a guide to the two volumes; Part I. Global Governance and Practices of Freedom: 1. The Kantian idea of Europe: cosmopolitan and critical perspectives; 2. Democracy and globalisation: a defeasible sketch; 3. An ecological ethics; 4. The unfreedom of the moderns in relation to their ideals of constitutionalism and democracy; Part II. On Imperialism; 5. On law, democracy and imperialism; 6. Communication and imperialism; 7. The imperial toles of modern vonstitutional democracy; Conclusion: civic freedom contra imperialism: 8. A new kind of Europe? Democratic integration in the European Union; 9. On global and local citizenship; Bibliography; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"Emplotting Aboriginal claims in a narrative of sovereignty and equality, optimistically identifying and making real to us the often obscured (even by many realists) realities of daily postcolonial practices of freedom, Tully writes about politics as a new realist, in a way that dignifies all sides and vivifies an agnostic humanism all too often absent from even the best political theorizing today."
Bonnie Honig, American Bar Foundation and Northwestern University, Perspectives on Politics

"Tully's contributions to what Foucault called a "history of the present" are as theoretically sophisticated as they are context-oriented and politically engaged, always addressing even the most abstract questions by way of discussing concrete cases that turn out to be exemplary or representative.... Tully's work is exemplary in pushing this limit in ways from which both theory and practice can learn a great deal."
Robin Celikates, University of Amsterdam, Constellations

From the Publisher