4 results for "Science"

Fear: the history of a political idea

Robin, Corey
For many commentators, September 11 inaugurated a new era of fear. But as Corey Robin shows in his unsettling tour of the Western imagination--the first intellectual history of its kind--fear has shaped our politics and culture since time immemorial. From the Garden of Eden to the Gulag Archipelago to today's headlines, Robin traces our growing fascination with political danger and disaster. As our faith in positive political principles recedes, he argues, we turn to fear as the justifying language of public life. We may not know the good, but we do know the bad. So we cling to fear, abandoning the quest for justice, equality, and freedom. But as fear becomes our intimate, we understand it less. In a startling reexamination of fear's greatest modern interpreters--Hobbes, Montesquieu, Tocqueville, and Arendt--Robin finds that writers since the eighteenth century have systematically obscured fear's political dimensions, diverting attention from the public and private authorities who sponsor and benefit from it. For fear, Robin insists, is an exemplary instrument of repression--in the public and private sector. Nowhere is this politically repressive fear--and its evasion--more evident than in contemporary America. In his final chapters, Robin accuses our leading scholars and critics of ignoring "Fear, American Style," which, as he shows, is the fruit of our most prized inheritances--the Constitution and the free market. With danger playing an increasing role in our daily lives and justifying a growing number of government policies, Robin's Fear offers a bracing, and necessary, antidote to our contemporary culture of fear.
Oxford University Press 2006 316 pages

The monarchy of fear: a philosopher looks at our political crisis

Nussbaum, Martha C.
"From one of the world's most celebrated moral philosophers, an examination of the current political crisis. In The Monarchy of Fear Martha C. Nussbaum--an acclaimed scholar and humanist--analyzes the political standoff that has polarized American life since the 2016 presidential election and focuses on what so many pollsters and pundits have overlooked: the political is always emotional. Globalization, automation, and the rising costs of higher education have produced feelings of powerlessness in millions of American people. Related issues trouble European unity. That sense of powerlessness and a pervasive underlying fear of change bubble into resentment and blame: of immigrants, Muslims, those of other races, and cultural elites. While this politics of blame played a role in the election of Donald Trump and the vote for Brexit, Nussbaum argues it can be found on all sides of the political spectrum--confusingly intertwined, however, with reasonable arguments aiming at greater justice. She argues that retribution is always a bad response to fear and articulates a politics of constructive work and hope. Drawing on a mix of historical and contemporary examples, from classical Athens to the musical Hamilton, The Monarchy of Fear untangles our web of emotions and provides a road map of where to go next."--Dust jacket ; Globalization, automation, and the rising costs of higher education have produced feelings of powerlessness in millions of American people. That sense of powerlessness and a pervasive underlying fear of change bubble into resentment and blame: of immigrants, Muslims, those of other races, and cultural elites. While this politics of blame played a role in the election of Donald Trump and the vote for Brexit, Nussbaum argues it can be found on all sides of the political spectrum. She analyzes the political standoff that has polarized American life since the 2016 presidential election and focuses on what so many pollsters and pundits have overlooked: the political is always emotional. -- adapted from jacket
Simon & Schuster 2018-07-03 249 pages

COVID: the politics of fear and the power of science

Siegel, Marc
"Life for citizens of the developed world before the pandemic was safer, easier, and healthier than for any other people in history thanks to modern medicine, science, technology, and intelligence ... but COVID-19 has stolen that security and our nation's peace of mind. Now there is a pandemic virus, as well as a crippling epidemic of fear sweeping America. Why? The answer, according to nationally renowned health commentator Dr. Marc Siegel, is that we already lived in an artificially created culture of fear that was just waiting to be unleashed. In COVID: The Politics of Fear and the Power of Science, Siegel identifies three major catalysts of the culture of fear: government, the media, and our own psyche. With fascinating, blow-by-blow analyses of the most sensational false alarms of the past few years, compounded now by the worst contagion of our lifetimes, he shows how fear mongers manipulate our most primitive instincts-- often without our even realizing it. COVID shows us how to look behind the hype and hysteria, inoculate ourselves against these crippling fear tactics, and develop the emotional and intellectual skills needed to take back our lives, even as we battle the pandemic itself."--Provided by publisher
Turner Publishing Company 2020 230 pages