Metamorphoses of the City

Synopsis

What is the best way to govern ourselves? The history of the West has been shaped by the struggle to answer this question, according to Pierre Manent. A major achievement by one of Europes most influential political philosophers, "Metamorphoses of the City" is a sweeping interpretation of Europes ambition since ancient times to generate ever better forms of collective self-government, and a reflection on what it means to be modern. Manents genealogy of the nation-state begins with the Greek city-state, the "polis. " With its creation, humans ceased to organize themselves solely by family and kinship systems and instead began to live politically. Eventually, as the "polis" exhausted its possibilities in warfare and civil strife, cities evolved into empires, epitomized by Rome, and empires in turn gave way to the universal Catholic Church and finally the nation-state. Through readings of Aristotle, Augustine, Montaigne, and others, Manent charts an intellectual history of these political forms, allowing us to see that the dynamic of competition among them is a central force in the evolution of Western civilization. Scarred by the legacy of world wars, submerged in an increasingly technical transnational bureaucracy, indecisive in the face of proliferating crises of representative democracy, the European nation-state, Manent says, is nearing the end of its line. What new metamorphosis of the city will supplant it remains to be seen.

Copyright:

2013

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

ISBN-13:

9780674727700

Publisher:

Harvard University Press

Date of Addition:

09/19/13

Copyrighted By:

Harvard University Press

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

History, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Politics and Government, Sociology

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.