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My/traditional American liberalism: a recollection of recurrent themes -- The new face of American liberalism -- Why did it happen? -- The deontology trap -- New democratic vistas

Reason and Democracy breaks new ground in providing a plausible philosophical basis for the communitarian view of a healthy democracy as the rational pursuit of common purposes by free and equal citizens. Thomas A. Spragens Jr. argues that the most persistent paradigms of Western political rationality originated in classical philosophy, took their modern expression in the philosophies of Kant and Mill, and terminated in Max Weber's pairing of purely technical rationality with arbitrary ends.Drawing on recent work in the philosophy of science and the philosophy of language, combined with approp

Recent debates over American liberalism have largely ignored one way
of understanding democratic purposes that was widely influential for much
of American history. This normative conception of democracy was inspired
by philosophical ideas found in people such as John Stuart Mill and G. W.
F. Hegel rather than by rights-based or civic republican theories. Walt
Whitman and John Dewey were among its notable adherents. There is much
that can be said on behalf of Richard Rorty's recent argument that
American liberals would be well advised to recover and reclaim the
heritage of Whitman and Dewey; but some additions and emendations to his
construction of these champions of democracy would strengthen his
case.

This book serves as an introduction to the ongoing political debate about the relationship of capitalism and democracy. In recent years, the ideological battles between advocates of free markets and minimal government, on the one hand, and adherents of greater democratic equality and some form of the welfare state, on the other hand, have returned in full force. Anyone who wants to make sense of contemporary American politics and policy battles needs to have some understanding of the divergent beliefs and goals that animate this debate. In Capitalism and Democracy, Thomas A. Spragens, Jr., examines the opposing sides of the free market versus welfare state debate through the lenses of political economy, moral philosophy, and political theory. He asks: Do unchecked markets maximize prosperity, or do they at times produce wasteful and damaging outcomes? Are market distributions morally appropriate, or does fairness require some form of redistribution? Would a society of free markets and minimal government be the best kind of society possible, or would it have serious problems? After leading the reader through a series of thought experiments designed to compare and clarify the thought processes and beliefs held by supporters of each side, Spragens explains why there are no definitive answers to these questions. He concludes, however, that some answers are better than others, and he explains why his own judgement is that a vigorous free marketplace provides great benefits to a democratic society, both economically and politically, but that it also requires regulation and supplementation by collective action for a society to maximize prosperity, to mitigate some of the unfairness of the human condition, and to be faithful to important democratic purposes and ideals. This engaging and accessible book will interest students and scholars of political economy, democratic theory, and theories of social justice. It will also appeal to general readers who are seeking greater clarity and understanding of contemporary debates about government's role in the economy

Two principal issues interact and overlap in this penetrating analysis: the relationship between Hobbes' natural philosophy and his civil philosophy, and the relationship between Hobbes' thought and the Aristotelian world view that constituted the philosophical orthodoxy he rejected.On the first point Thomas A. Spragens Jr. argues that Hobbes' political ideas were in fact significantly influenced by his cosmological perceptions, although they were not, and could not have been, completely derived from that source. On the second, the author demonstrates that Hobbes undertook a highly systematic

Two principal issues interact and overlap in this penetrating analysis: the relationship between Hobbes' natural philosophy and his civil philosophy, and the relationship between Hobbes' thought and the Aristotelian world view that constituted the philosophical orthodoxy he rejected. On the first point Thomas A. Spragens Jr. argues that Hobbes' political ideas were in fact significantly influenced by his cosmological perceptions, although they were not, and could not have been, completely derived from that source. On the second, the author demonstrates that Hobbes undertook a highly systematic

A review essay on a book by Bruce Miroff, The Liberals' Moment: The McGovern Insurgency and the Identity Crisis of the Democratic Party (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007).

What they have in common is that they all represent attempts by Shapiro (and Alexander Wendt and Donald Green, each of whom coauthored one of the essays) to respond to what he calls 'one of the central challenges for political theorists: serving as roving ombudsmen for the truth and the right by stepping back from political science as practiced, to see what is wrong with what is currently being done and say something about how it might be improved' (p. 179). The authors seek to show that the specific pieces of social science research cited by these critics as examples of rational-choice theoretical research that make important contributions either do not make such contributions or do so only because these pieces of research venture beyond the confines of the rational-choice paradigm.