 | Fugitive Democracy Subjects: POLITICAL SCIENCE / Civics & Citizenship.; POLITICAL SCIENCE / Essays.; POLITICAL SCIENCE / History & Theory.; Political science; Democracy; Sheldon Wolin was one of the most influential and original political thinkers of the past fifty years. Fugitive Democracy brings together his most important writings, from classic essays such as "Political Theory as a Vocation," written amid the Cold War and the conflict in Vietnam, to his late radical essays on American democracy such as "Fugitive Democracy," in which he offers a controversial reinterpretation of democracy as an episodic phenomenon distinct from the routinized political management that passes for democracy today. The breathtaking range of Wolin's scholarship, political commitment, and critical acumen are on full display in this authoritative and accessible collection. He critically engages a diverse range of political theorists, including Thomas Hobbes, Karl Marx, Max Weber, Hannah Arendt, John Rawls, Michel Foucault, and Richard Rorty. These essays grapple with topics such as power, modernization, the sixties, revolutionary politics, and inequality, all the while showcasing Wolin's enduring commitment to writing civic-minded theoretical commentary on the most pressing political issues of the day. Here, Wolin laments the rise of conservatives who style themselves as revolutionary, criticizes Rawlsian liberals as abstract to the point of being apolitical, diagnoses postmodern theory as a form of acquiescence, and much more. Fugitive Democracy offers enduring insights into many of today's most pressing political predicaments, and introduces a whole new generation of readers to this provocative figure in contemporary political thought. Sheldon Sanford Wolin was born in Chicago, Illinois on August 4, 1922. During World War II, he served as a bombardier and navigator in the Pacific for the Army Air Forces. He received a bachelor's degree from Oberlin College in 1946 and a doctorate from Harvard University in 1950. He taught at the University of California, Berkeley and Princeton University before retiring in 1987. He wrote several books during his lifetime including Hobbes and the Epic Tradition of Political Theory, Tocqueville Between Two Worlds: The Making of a Political and Theoretical Life, and Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism. Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought was published in 1960, received the Benjamin E. Lippincott Award in recognition of its lasting impact in 1985, and was reissued in expanded form in 2004. He also wrote frequently for The New York Review of Books on Watergate, Henry Kissinger, the presidency of Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and American conservatism. Some of his essays on the Free Speech Movement and campus unrest at Berkeley were included with those written by John H. Schaar in The Berkeley Rebellion and Beyond: Essays on Politics and Education in the Technological Society. He died on October 21, 2015 at the age of 93. (Bowker Author Biography) |
