Description
The Politics of Moralizing issues a stern warning about the risks of speaking, writing, and thinking in a manner too confident about one's own judgments and asks, "Can a clear line be drawn between dogmatism and simple certainty and indignation?" Bennett and Shapiro enter the debate by questioning what has become a popular, even pervasive, cultural narrative told by both the left and the right: the story of the West's moral decline, degeneration, or confusion. Contributors explore the dynamics and dilemmas of moralizing by advocates of patriotism, environmental protection, and women's rights while arguing that the current discourse gives free license to self-aggrandizement, cruelty, vengeance and punitiveness and a generalized resistance to or abjection of diversity.
Table of Contents
Introduction, Jane Bennett and Michael J. Shapiro The Moraline Drift, Jane Bennett Generating a Virtuous Circle: Democratic Identity, Moralism, and the Languages of Political Responsibility, Alan Keenan Political not Patriotic: Democracy, Civic space, and the American Memorial/Monument Complex, Steven Johnston Autobiography and Cultivating the Arts of the Female Self, Ann Curthoys The Tragedy of the Ethical Commons: Demoralizing Environmentalism, William Chaloupka Out for a Walk, Helen Liggett Just the facts, Please: Why Civil Society Does Not Need Moral Truths, Jill Locke The challenge of Polytheism: Moses, Spinoza and Freud, John Docker Affirming the Political: Tragic Affirmations vs. Gothic Displacements, Michael J. Shapiro Contributors
