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"Kateb, George"
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Lincoln's political thought
\"The book concentrates on Lincoln's political ideas. His speeches, messages, and letters were powerful and concise; they are of lasting theoretical interest and repay close attentive reading. Lincoln's words repay close interpretative reading because he was not always straightforward, and he was unusually complex. The book is about the meanings of his memorable words, especially his Second Inaugural address, and also considers those moments of truth that burst through Lincoln's political caution. In addition, the book takes up Lincoln's troubled justification for unconstitutional constitutionalism, in his unprecedented suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, and examines some reservations toward the claimed military necessity for its justification. Always present in the background was the national crisis over slavery from 1850 to 1865. The book aims to show that Lincoln's success in achieving power came from a deliberate and at times artful moderation\"--Provided by publisher.
Book
Patriotism and Other Mistakes
George Kateb has been one of the most respected and influential political theorists of the last quarter century. His work stands apart from that of many of his contemporaries and resists easy summary. In these essays Kateb often admonishes himself, in Socratic fashion, to keep political argument as far as possiblenegative: to be willing to assert what we are not, and what we will not do, and to build modestly from there some account of what we are and what we ought to do.Drawing attention to the non-rational character of many motives that drive people to construct and maintain a political order, he urges greater vigilance in political life and cautions against \"mistakes\" not usually acknowledged as such. Patriotism is one such mistake, too often resulting in terrible brutality and injustices. He asks us to consider how commitments to ideals of religion, nation, race, ethnicity, manliness, and courage find themselves in the service of immoral ends, and he exhorts us to remember the dignity of the individual.The book is divided into three sections. In the first, Kateb discusses the expansion of state power (including such topics as surveillance) and the justifications for war recently made by American policy makers. The second section offers essays in moral psychology, and the third comprises fresh interpretations of major thinkers in the tradition of political thought, from Socrates to Arendt.
eBook
Moral Dilemmas—An Introduction
We should be struck by the title of our panel, \"moral dilemmas.\" At first sight it should seem odd that discussion of a particular disease lends itself to worry about moral dilemmas. After all, we usually expect that the only issue about a disease is medical: how to treat it. But as we know all too keenly, AIDS is no ordinary disease; it is not even an ordinary fatal disease. It is, rather, a disease that is contracted because of two kinds of intense pleasure: sex and drugs. This fact, by itself, would guarantee that society would take either a puritanical or a prurient interest in the disease and thus infect discussion of it with all sorts of nonmedical considerations. Whenever pleasures figure, one can also be sure that religious ideologists will take their pleasure in denouncing pleasure, and find an even greater pleasure in the fact that pleasures of a certain sort can lead to premature death. The height of religious inanity was reached by a Catholic spokesman, who said (as quoted by Robert Suro in the New York Times), that the church could not condone the public provision of condoms because the greatest physical harm is less important than the smallest moral harm. (This inanity, by the way, has its sources in the past, and can count Cardinal Newman as one of its authorities.) Not all the religions reach this height, but many climb quite far. The subject of AIDS, if it does nothing else, exposes the intimate connection between religion and sex (to leave aside drugs). There is something almost uncanny in the devious ways by which religion despises sex, guards it, inflames it, contorts it, sullies it, and sanctifies it. In some moods one may think that sex is all that religion is about.
Journal Article
Individuality and Loyalty to Truth under Tyranny
Individuality takes on certain emphases in a modern democracy, and has three components: encouraged self-expression within moral boundaries; resistance on behalf of others; and a large-minded apprehension of phenomena apart from one's individual interests and purposes. If democracy lapses, the cultural soil of democratic individuality disappears. Extreme crises can lead to tyranny. The best relation to oneself that remains under tyranny is inner freedom, single-minded devotion to truth, in the name of human dignity: truth about human potentialities that tyranny forecloses, including democratic individuality, and the human situation more generally, even if such truth must be kept to oneself.
Journal Article
Human Dignity
Kateb asserts that the defense of universal human rights requires two indispensable components: morality (as promoted or enforced by justice) and human dignity. For Kateb, morality and justice have sound theoretical underpinnings; human dignity, by virtue of its “existential\" quality, lacks (but merits) its own theoretical framework. This he proceeds to establish with a critique of the writings of canonical Western political philosophers (Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseu, Mill, Emerson, Thoreau) and contemporary thinkers like Peter Singer and Thomas Nagel. The author argues that while morality compels just governments to prevent, reduce, or eliminate human suffering inasmuch as it is possible, people possess and are entitled to dignity by mere virtue of their “status\" as human beings. Homo sapiens, he maintains, have a “stature,\" manifest in the species's “great achievements,\" that exceeds that of other creatures, even in (or especially in) the secular cosmos.
eBook
Locke and the Political Origins of Secularism
The paper tries to show the importance of the writings of John Locke in preparing the way for secularism. He provides a theory for disentangling religion and the state for several main reasons, including the avoidance of religious persecution of minorities; the avoidance of civil strife; and the need to leave it to individuals to work out their own salvation by exercising their conscience free of state interference. Locke is a creative theorist; his creativity shows itself in the new arguments he formulates and publishes (sometimes anonymously) on behalf of the freedom of religion from the state and the freedom of the state from religion. The influence of his Letter on Toleration and the Second Treatise in Two Treatises of Government (both works published in 1689) has proved worldwide and lasting. The paper also takes up a later work by Locke, The Reasonableness of Christianity, where Locke retreats to some extent from the religious individualism, but not the religious toleration, of his most famous works. But even that retreat gives only a little comfort to those who deplore secularism. Adapted from the source document.
Journal Article
Democracy and Untruth
A common belief is that one main reason for the superiority of representative democracy to all other political systems is that it works by procedures that compel officials to be held accountable. Kateb asserts that democracy in America operates by means of untruth not just by denial of accountability but withholding knowledge and deploying propaganda, exaggeration and other kinds of distortion. Here, he focuses on foreign policy, where citizens fail to insist on transparency.
Journal Article
