Secular Powers

图书信息

作者	Cooper, Julie E.
出版社	University of Chicago Press
ISBN	9780226081328
出版时间	2013-10-18
字数	60.4万
分类	University of Chicago Press,进口书,外文原版书,法律,政治,宗教

读书简介

Secularism is usually thought to contain the project of self-deification, in which humans attack God's authority in order to take his place, freed from all constraints. Julie E. Cooper overturns this conception through an incisive analysis of the early modern justifications for secular politics. While she agrees that secularism is a means of empowerment, she argues that we have misunderstood the sources of secular empowerment and the kinds of strength to which it aspires.Contemporary understandings of secularism, Cooper contends, have been shaped by a limited understanding of it as a shift from vulnerability to power. But the works of the foundational thinkers of secularism tell a different story. Analyzing the writings of Hobbes, Spinoza, and Rousseau at the moment of secularity's inception, she shows that all three understood that acknowledging one's limitations was a condition of successful self-rule. And while all three invited humans to collectively build and sustain a political world, their invitations did not amount to self-deification. Cooper establishes that secular politics as originally conceived does not require a choice between power and vulnerability. Rather, it challenges us-today as then-to reconcile them both as essential components of our humanity.

目录

Cover

Copyright

Title Page

Dedication

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Toward a Revised History of Modesty and Humility

2. Modesty: Hobbes on How Mere Mortals Can Create a Mortal God

3. Humility: Spinoza on the Joys of Finitude

4. Self-Love: Rousseau on the Allure, and the Elusiveness, of Divine Self-Sufficiency

Conclusion. A Modest Tale about Theoretical Modesty

Notes

Bibliography

Index