Teachers of the people: political education in Rousseau, Hegel, Tocqueville, and Mill
Editorial THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
- Verlag THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
- ISBN13 9780226467498
- ISBN10 022646749X
- Gegenstandsart Buch
- Buchseiten 367
- Jahr der Ausgabe 2017
- Sprache Englisch
- Bindung Gebunden mit Klappen
Teachers of the people: political education in Rousseau, Hegel, Tocqueville, and Mill
Editorial THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
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Buch Details
2016 witnessed an unprecedented shock to political elites in both Europe and America. Populism was on the march, fueled by a substantial ignorance of, or contempt for, the norms, practices, and institutions of liberal democracy. It is not surprising that observers on the left and right have called for renewed efforts at civic education. For liberal democracy to survive, they argue, a form of political education aimed at “the people” is clearly imperative.
In "Teachers of the People", Dana Villa takes us back to the moment in history when “the people” first appeared on the stage of modern European politics. That moment—the era just before and after the French Revolution—led many major thinkers to celebrate the dawning of a new epoch. Yet these same thinkers also worried intensely about the people’s seemingly evident lack of political knowledge, experience, and judgment. Focusing on Rousseau, Hegel, Tocqueville, and Mill, Villa shows how reformist and progressive sentiments were often undercut by skepticism concerning the political capacity of ordinary people. They therefore felt that “the people” needed to be restrained, educated, and guided—by laws and institutions and a skilled political elite. The result, Villa argues, was less the taming of democracy’s wilder impulses than a pervasive paternalism culminating in new forms of the tutorial state.
Ironically, it is the reliance upon the distinction between “teachers” and “taught” in the work of these theorists which generates civic passivity and ignorance. And this, in turn, creates conditions favorable to the emergence of an undemocratic and illiberal populism.
1 Introduction
2 Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Creating—and Preserving—a Free People
3 Hegel as Political Educator
4 Tocqueville: The Aristocrat as Democratic Pedagogue
5 J. S. Mill: Democracy and the Authority of the Instructed
6 Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Index
- Verlag THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
- ISBN13 9780226467498
- ISBN10 022646749X
- Gegenstandsart Buch
- Buchseiten 367
- Jahr der Ausgabe 2017
- Sprache Englisch
- Bindung Gebunden mit Klappen