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"Avramenko, Richard"
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Courage
Courage: The Politics of Life and Limb is a compelling
and highly original study of the paradox of courage. Richard
Avramenko contends that courage is not simply one virtue among
many; rather, it is the primary means for humans to raise
themselves out of their individualistic, isolated, and
materialistic existence. As such, courage is an absolute and
permanent good for collective human life. Specifically, Avramenko
argues that when we risk \"life and limb\" for one another we reveal
a fundamental care that binds our community together.
Paradoxically, the same courage that brings humans together also
drives us apart because courage is traditionally understood as
manly, by definition, exclusionary, inegalitarian, and violent.
Avramenko explores the efforts of political thinkers throughout
history-such as Aristophanes, Plato, Aristotle, Rousseau, and
Tocqueville-to reformulate courage so as to hold fast to all that
is good about it while jettisoning that which is problematic. In
addition to martial courage, the book looks at political courage,
moral courage, and economic courage.
Courage: The Politics of Life and Limb makes a vital
contribution to the discipline of political science. Clearly and
engagingly written, the book will be of particular interest to
students and scholars of political theory, ethics, and gender
studies.
eBook
When Toleration Becomes a Vice: Naming Aristotle's Third Unnamed Virtue
Toleration is lauded as a chief virtue of contemporary liberalism. Without this virtue, it seems, citizens are ill-equipped to reconcile ethical disagreements appropriately in pluralistic societies. In recent scholarship and practice, however, toleration has undergone significant transformation. The tolerant citizen, we are told, avoids causing the discomfort or pain associated with uncomfortable conversations, criticism, or even difference of opinion. Regrettably, this understanding of toleration hinders rather than facilitates dialogue and conflates pain or discomfort with cruelty. To offer a more viable theoretical grounding for toleration, this article turns to the third unnamed virtue of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. When conceptualized as an Aristotelian moral virtue with vices of both deficiency and excess, it is clear how toleration, taken too far, becomes a vice. Moreover, Aristotle's principles of contextual sensitivity, other-regarding virtue, and non-cruel pain constitute a better foundation for restoring toleration as a healthy virtue for liberal citizens.
Journal Article
The Grammar of Indifference: Tocqueville and the Language of Democracy
This essay analyzes what Alexis de Tocqueville calls an \"application of linguistics to history.\" Beginning with Tocqueville's position that language is the ground of meaningful bonds between people, I argue that the internal logic of a language—the grammar—is correlated with the internal logic governing the social order that both begets and is begotten by that language. Social orders therefore have both linguistic and political grammars and, as the internal logic of language changes, so too can the political grammar. This essay thus traces what Tocqueville envisions as the historical importance of language: from the language of aristocracy and the grammar of difference, to revolutionary language and the grammar of concurrence, to democratic language and the grammar of indifference. It concludes with Tocqueville's suggestion of how good grammar might be taught in democratic ages.
Journal Article
Disciplining the Rich: Tocqueville on Philanthropy and Privilege
This article inquires into the moral successes and failings of the superrich in America. To do this, we turn to Alexis de Tocqueville who outlines a set of expectations for any privileged elite. Drawing from his Old Regime, Memoir on Pauperism, and Democracy in America, we argue that the superrich are obliged to a particular kind of charity, which we specify as philanthropy. To fulfill their philanthropic duties, the superrich must steadfastly attend to three obligations: maintaining their local communities, safeguarding local liberties, and providing moral leadership. In the conclusion, we suggest how the superrich might be disciplined unto this virtue.
Journal Article
Friendship and Politics
Throughout the history of Western political philosophy, the idea
of friendship has occupied a central place in the conversation. It
is only in the context of the modern era that friendship has lost
its prominence. By retrieving the concept of friendship for
philosophical investigation, these essays invite readers to
consider how our political principles become manifest in our
private lives. They provide a timely corrective to contemporary
confusion plaguing this central experience of our public and our
private life.
This volume assembles essays by well-known scholars who address
contemporary concerns about community in the context of
philosophical ideas about friendship. Part One includes essays on
ancient philosophers including Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero. Part
Two considers treatments of friendship by Christian thinkers such
as Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin, and Part Three continues
with Thomas Hobbes, Montaigne, the American founders, and de
Tocqueville. The volume concludes with two essays that address the
postmodern emphasis on fragmentation and the dynamics of power
within the modern state.
Contributors: John von Heyking, Richard Avramenko, James M.
Rhodes, Stephen M. Salkever, Walter Nicgorski, Jeanne Heffernan
Schindler, Thomas Heilke, Timothy Fuller, Travis D. Smith, George
Carey, Joshua Mitchell, and Jürgen Gebhardt.
eBook
Democratic Dystopia: Tocqueville and the American Penitentiary System
It is well established that for Alexis de Tocqueville the future of democracy is contingent. This essay argues that in his oft-neglected report on the penitentiary system in America, Tocqueville bears witness to one of these futures—a dystopic democracy in which the essential bulwarks of liberty have been stripped away, leaving behind perfect equality but also perfect servitude. Specifically, the penitentiaries deprive prisoners of their basic religious freedoms, attack their habits of association, and subject them to the tyranny of public opinion through the rigorous but mild disciplinary regime of the warden. By presenting a tangible imaginative of democratic equality taken to its limits, Tocqueville encourages his readers to heed his later recommendations for the maintenance of institutions and practices without which freedom is, at best, contingent.
Journal Article
Subprime Virtues: The Moral Dimensions of American Housing and Mortgage Policy
The so-called “subprime mortgage crisis” has led to intense scrutiny of American housing policy, mortgage finance, and even the goods of homeownership. Some critics allege that the housing bubble and ensuing financial crisis were consequences of misguided state intervention, while others contend that the sources of the crisis lay in the pathologies of unregulated markets. Both sides, however, treat the crisis and its underlying causes primarily through an economic lens of cost-benefit analysis. Building on the insights of contemporary political theorists and the new institutionalism in political science, we consider American housing policy from the vantage of virtue theory. Not only is housing and mortgage policy inevitably normative, but public policy can be an important tool in fostering what we call the “subprime virtues” of truth-telling, promise-keeping, frugality, moderation, commitment, foresight, and judgment that are absolute prerequisites for any decent society.
Journal Article
The Wound and Salve of Time: Augustine's Politics of Human Happiness
97 He finds that serious questioning concerning happiness inevitably leads to questions of time; that these questions perforce raise the storms of incoherent events [that] tear to pieces [his] thoughts, the inmost entrails of [his] soul98 and, in so doing, force upon him a sense of the radical difference between time and eternity.
Journal Article