Republicanism - A theory about freedom and government

Author: Peter Gay
Publisher:
Publication Date: 2006-10-01
Features: The revival of civic republicanism has now been half a century. In the past half-century, Western political philosophy and ideology have formed a historical scroll of rise and fall, with one replacing the other. Yet, the grand revival of civic republicanism has not only continued its momentum despite the passage of time and the changing landscape of academic discourse, but has also exerted an increasingly profound influence across multiple and broad fields, including the history of political thought, American constitutional law, political philosophy, and even empirical research. The revival of republicanism has become one of the most striking phenomena in contemporary Western academia. At this moment, Peter Gay's controversial democracy may be even more worthy of emphasis. In a context where a healthy rational consensus has not yet formed, and even the motivation to form such a consensus remains insufficiently stimulated, while the false "prior consensus" still remains unchallenged, is not controversial democracy more targeted or better able to inspire the motivation to form a rational consensus than deliberative democracy? Starting from the concept of freedom in republicanism, this book explains important theoretical issues such as the division between negative and positive freedom, freedom from domination, domination as a political ideal, the egalitarian ideal of the community, the communitarian ideal of the community, the republican destination, constitutionalism and democracy, the repressive mechanisms of the republic, and the civic mechanisms of the republic, proposing a republican theory of freedom and government. This book has been translated into multiple languages and is one of Peter Gay's important works.