This book offers a conversation with Nietzsche rather than a consideration of the secondary literature, yet it takes to task many prevalent approaches to his work, and contests especially the way we often restrict our encounter with him to ...

The Heart of Judgment explores the nature, historical significance, and continuing relevance of practical wisdom. Primarily a work in moral and political thought, it also relies extensively on research in cognitive neuroscience to confirm and extend our understanding of the faculty of judgment. Ever since the ancient Greeks first discussed practical wisdom, the faculty of judgment has been an important topic for philosophers and political theorists. It remains one of the virtues most demanded of our public officials. The greater the (...) liberties and responsibilities accorded to citizens in democratic regimes, the more the health and welfare of society rest upon their exercise of good judgment. While giving full credit to the roles played by reason and deliberation in good judgment, the book underlines the central importance of intuition, emotion, and worldly experience. (shrink)

Focusing on the concept of freedom, Leslie Paul Thiele makes Heidegger's philosophical works speak directly to politics in a postmodern world. Neither excusing Heidegger for his political sins nor ignoring their lesson, Thiele nonetheless refrains from polemic in order creatively to engage one of the greatest philosophers of our time. The product of this engagement is a vindication of a democratic and ecological politics firmly grounded in philosophic inquiry. Using Heidegger's understanding of freedom as a point of departure, Timely Meditations (...) lays out the philosophic and political nature and potential of freedom in thought, speech, and deed. This disclosive freedom is contrasted to both modern (positive and negative) and postmodern (Nietzschean and Foucaultian) variations. The result is an original and provocative study that challenges our present understanding of liberty while underlining dangerous collusion with the contemporary forces of technology. Timely Meditations marks an increasingly rare achievement today. For unlike many theorists who attempt to steer a course into the world of postmodern politics, Thiele does so without forsaking philosophic foundations and without abandoning practical hopes and tasks for rhetorical diversions. Originally published in 1995. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Bernard Yack’s Longing for Total Revolution asserts that a prominent tradition of modern moral and political theory is founded on the binary opposition between nature and culture. Yack rejects this dichotomy in favor of an Aristotelean outlook, and in so doing embraces the opposition between the ancients and the moderns. Neither binary is as oppositional as Yack suggests. There is, however, a more viable distinction to be made between the ancients and the moderns—concerning the role played by teleology—and it (...) better serves the purpose of mapping the historical trajectory of moral and political theorizing. Teleology does not survive modernity, and it is this development that was truly revolutionary. (shrink)

This dissertation offers an original interpretation of the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche's enterprise, it is claimed, was anti-political. His aim was to describe the means of achieving greatness in an age of nihilism. This was primarily a philosophic, aesthetic, even religious project. The goal was to live heroically, and Nietzsche defined modern heroism as the realization of individuality. Concern for and engagement in political matters was considered unworthy of and detrimental to this prescribed life. ;The author argues, nonetheless, the (...) Nietzsche did not so much abandon politics as internalize it. Nietzsche is shown to have developed a spiritual politics, a politics within a multipartite self whose agonistic interaction is evoked. Nietzsche's concern was to propagate this strife-filled politics of the soul, and he offered his as a model of such a heroically styled life of continuous self-overcoming. ;The dissertation examines the incarnations Nietzsche proposed for the heroic individual: the philosopher, the artist, and the saint, their incorporation in the educator and the solitary, and their apotheosis in the overman. Nietzsche's higher man is shown to be he who has actualized his underlying potential for a heroic life, which, in the end, is marked by his love of fate and his acceptance of the eternal recurrence. ;The dissertation surveys the entirety of Nietzsche's writings, including his notes and correspondence. An attempt is made to demonstrate the continuity of his project. The author argues that heroic individualism and its politics of the soul are the predominant themes of Nietzsche's work, accounting for the development of Nietzsche's thought and its paradoxes. (shrink)

A reformulation of our understanding of freedom is required if we are adequately to confront the environmental crisis. Engaging the debate between biocentric ecologists and sociocentric ecologists, I argue that the biocentric effort to ascribe rights to nature is misbegotten. In turn, I suggest that the sociocentric effort to seek ecological realignment through the extension of human reason is equally problematic. Martin Heidegger, who rejects both “negative” and “positive” notions of liberty, offers an understanding of human freedom that constitutes an (...) ecologically attuned alternative. (shrink)

Power and leadership are typically theorized as exercises of sovereignty in the western tradition of thought. This essay takes up Michel Foucault’s challenge to escape the ‘spell of monarchy’ in our thinking in order to move beyond sovereign models of power. Interdisciplinary scholarship on complex adaptive systems provides fertile ground for this endeavor, illustrating the dynamics of post-sovereign power and opportunities for post-sovereign leadership. Viewing human organizations as complex adaptive systems helps us to theorize leadership without over-simplifying its nature or (...) exaggerating its potential. It also undermines the prevailing identification of sovereign power as the only antidote for anarchy. (shrink)

We are in trouble just now because we do not have a good story. We are in between stories. The old story, the account of how the world came to be and how we fit into it, is no longer effective. Yet we have not learned the new story.... We need a story that will educate us, a story that will heal, guide, and discipline us. Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth.

The second edition of this intellectually and practically engaging book, includes a valuable new section on justice and updated material throughout. While integrating the insights of ancient, modern and postmodern political thought, Thiele offers a thorough exploration of the art and craft of political theory.